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Firefox, Google, IE9, Microsoft, Tech

Internet Explorer only? IE doubt it

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Fewer businesses standardizing browser use on Internet Explorer, but the practice isn’t gone yet.

Just as Internet users in general have defected in huge numbers from Microsoft Internet Explorer over the past several years, the business world, as well, is becoming less dependent on the venerable browser.

Companies that used to mandate the use of IE for access to web resources are beginning to embrace a far more heterodox attitude toward web browsers. While it hasn’t gone away, the experience of having to use IE 6 to access some legacy in-house web app is becoming less common.

“Things have changed a lot in the last three years, and I think a lot of it has to do with the emergence of the modern web and the popularity of mobile. They have made it very different for companies to truly standardize on a browser,” says Gartner Research analyst David Mitchell Smith.

One example of the changing face of business browser use is SquareTwo Financial, a Denver-based financial services company that works primarily in distressed asset management. The firm’s 280 employees handle both consumer and commercial business, buying and selling debt, and a franchise program means that there are upwards of 1,500 more people working at SquareTwo affiliates. According to CTO Chris Reigrut, the company takes in roughly $280 million in annual revenue.

“In addition to buying and selling debt, we also provide a software-as-a-service platform that our franchises (and we) use to actually negotiate and litigate the debt,” he tells Network World.

Square Two hasn’t needed to standardize, he says, because keeping their offerings diverse is part of the idea – the company’s various online resources all have differing requirements.

“We do distribute Firefox on Windows systems – however, Safari and IE are both frequently used. Our internal wiki is only officially supported on Firefox and Safari. Our SaaS ‘client’ is a pre-packaged Firefox install so that it looks more like a traditional thick-client application. Most of our employees use their browser for a couple of internal systems, as well as several external services (i.e. HR, training, etc),” says Reigrut (who, like the other IT pros quoted in this story is a member of the CIO Executive Council Pathways program for leadership development).

The Microsoft faithful, however, are still out there. Many businesses have chosen to remain standardized on IE, for several reasons. SickKids, a children’s research hospital in Toronto, sticks with Microsoft’s browser mostly for the ease of applying updates.

“We have more than 7,000 end-point devices. Most of those devices are Windows workstations and Internet Explorer is included as part of the Microsoft Windows operating system. As such, this makes it easier and integrates well with our solution to manage and deploy upgrades, patches and hotfixes to the OS including IE,” says implementations director Peter Parsan.

“Internet Explorer is more than a browser, it is the foundation for Internet functionality in Windows,” he adds.

The complexity of managing an ecosystem with more than 100 types of software – running the gamut from productivity applications to clinical programs – requires a heavily controlled approach, according to Parsan.

Smith agrees that IE still has its advantages for business users that want just such a strictly regimented technology infrastructure.

“If you want a managed, traditional IT environment … really, your only option is Internet Explorer,” he says, adding that both Firefox and Chrome lag behind IE in terms of effective centralized management tools.

Some companies, however, have gone a different way – standardizing not on IE, but on a competing browser.

Elliot Tally, senior director of enterprise apps for electronics manufacturer Sanmina, says his company’s employees are highly dependent on browsers for business-critical activities. Everything from ERP to document control (which he notes is “big for a manufacturing company”) to the supply chain is run from a web app.

Tally says Sanmina made the move to standardize on Chrome in 2009, in part because of a simultaneous switch to Gmail and Google Apps from IE and Microsoft products.

“It made sense to go with the browser created and supported by the company that created the apps we rely on. Also, Chrome installs in user space so it doesn’t require admin privileges to auto-update,” he says. “It also silently auto-updates, as opposed to Firefox, which requires a fresh install to update versions, or IE, which is similar. Chrome, over the last year or so, has supported web standards better than any other browser, and (until recently) has offered significantly better performance.”

Plainly, broad diversity exists both in the actual browsers used by workers and the approaches businesses have taken in managing their use.

That diversity, says Smith, is the reason Gartner has been advising clients against standardization from the outset.

“Standardize on standards, not browsers,” he urges. “That was a controversial position for 10 years. People really didn’t agree with it, they didn’t listen to it, and they paid the price.”

Microsoft, as well, has had to pay a price.

“[Standardization] hurts Microsoft’s reputation as an innovator; as a forward-thinker,” he says. “When people’s impression of using Microsoft technology – whether it’s a browser, whether it’s an operating system – is something that is two or three versions old, because they’re dealing with it through what enterprises want.”

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Top 5 cities for big data jobs

San Francisco tops Modis list, followed by McLean, Va., Boston, St. Louis and Toronto

Corporate data stores are growing exponentially, nearly every tech vendor is positioning their products to help handle the influx of data, and IT departments are scrambling to find the right people to collect, analyze and interpret data in a way that’s meaningful to the business. On the employment front, the big data deluge is creating a hiring boom across North America. Modis, an IT staffing firm, identified five cities in particular where big data is driving job growth.

San Francisco tops the Modis list, followed by McLean, Va., Boston, St. Louis and Toronto. The roles that companies in these cities are fighting to fill include data scientist, data analyst, business intelligence professional and data modeling/data modeler.

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Business intelligence and data analysis have been core enterprise disciplines for a long time, but they’re becoming more important to businesses as data volumes rise, says Laura Kelley, a Modis vice president in Houston. “We’re in a new era in terms of how large the databases are, the amount of data we’re collecting, and how we’re using it. It’s much more strategic than it’s ever been.”

Big data professionals can be particularly difficult to find since many roles require a complicated blend of business, analytic, statistical and computer skills — which is not something a candidate acquires overnight. In addition, “clients are looking for people with a certain level of experience, who have worked in a big data environment. There aren’t a lot of them in the market,” Kelley says.

 

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Looking at recruiting trends across its offices, Modis finds there’s not one industry that’s doing the most big-data hiring. Rather, the cities have in common a concentration of large enterprises across myriad industries.

San Francisco, for instance, is home to large companies in the retail, insurance, healthcare, and e-commerce sectors.

McLean, Va., has both a strong commercial sector and government presence. “There are many data center operations in this area, both commercial and government related, that require talent to support the high volume of that data,” Modis explains in its report. “In addition, there is no larger consumer of IT products and services in the world than the US federal government.”

Banking and bio/pharmaceutical industries helped put Boston on the big data hiring map. “Both industries deal with large amounts of data that are detailed and complex in nature. That data then needs to be analyzed and placed in reports, dashboards and spreadsheets by data scientist and analysts,” Modis writes.

In St. Louis, universities and healthcare companies lead the big data hiring boom, followed by pharmaceutical and bioresearch firms that need to fill data analyst and scientist roles.

Lastly, in Toronto, financial institutions are fueling a need for business intelligence pros who can help organizations get a more precise and complete picture of the business and customers, Modis finds.

In the big picture, companies often have to compromise and prioritize their wish list — technical expertise, industry experience or quantitative statistical analysis skills, for experience — to find available big-data candidates.

“What is this person going to be doing? Do you need the technical skills? Or is the quantitative/statistical expertise more important? Is this person going to be doing data modeling or making business decisions?” Kelley says. “In an ideal world, companies want all of it. But it’s not an ideal world.”

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Google, Tech

Google boosts Web bug bounties to $20,000

Increases payments for bugs in core sites, services and Web apps

Computerworld – Google today dramatically raised the bounties it pays independent researchers for reporting bugs in its core websites, services and online applications.

The search giant boosted the maximum reward from $3,133 to $20,000, and added a $10,000 payment to the program.

The Vulnerability Reward Program (VRP) will now pay $20,000 for vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution against google.com, youtube.com and other core domains, as well as what the company called “highly sensitive services” such as its search site, Google Wallet, Gmail and Google Play.

Remote code flaws found in Google’s Web apps will also be rewarded $20,000.

The term “remote code execution” refers to the most serious category of vulnerabilities, those which when exploited allow an attacker to hijack a system and/or plant malware on a machine.
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A $10,000 bounty will be paid for SQL injection bugs or “significant” authentication bypass or data leak vulnerabilities, Google said in the revised rules for the program.

Other bugs, including cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (XSRF) flaws, will be compensated with payments between $100 and $3,133, with the amount dependent on the severity of the bug and where the vulnerability resides.

Google explained the higher bounties as ways “to celebrate the success of this [program] and to underscore our commitment to security.”

The website and web app reward program debuted in November 2010, and followed Google’s January 2010 launch of a bug bounty program for its Chrome browser. Google paid out about $180,000 in Chrome bounties last year.

The maximum award for reported Chrome vulnerabilities remains at $3,133, Google confirmed today.

Since VRP’s introduction, Google today said it has received more than 780 eligible bug reports, and in just over a year, paid out around $460,000 to approximately 200 researchers.

“We’re confident beyond any doubt the program has made Google users safer,” said Adam Mein, a Google security program manager, and Michal Zalewski, a engineer on the Google security team, in a Monday post to a company blog.

Google has shown that upping bounty payments will shake loose vulnerabilities it wasn’t aware existed.

Last month, the company wrote $60,000 checks to two researchers at Pwnium, the Chrome hacking contest it ran at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Both researchers revealed bugs and associated attack code that demonstrated how hackers could escape the browser’s isolating, anti-exploit “sandbox, to hijack the browser and plant malware on a machine.

Google, Tech

Why Google should be allowed to ‘harvest’ your Wi-Fi data

The hysteria around the Google ‘WiSpy’ case is based on an irrational double standard

Computerworld – The Federal Communications Commission cleared Google of wrongdoing in the so-called “WiSpy” case. It was the right decision.

Why? Because Google didn’t do anything wrong.

Two years ago, Google said its Street View cars had been “harvesting” information from Wi-Fi networks, including personal home networks, as a matter of course.

In some cases, data gathered included passwords, e-mail messages and browser information.

The data gathering was accidental. Google as an organization didn’t mean to collect this information. But even if it had meant to, there would be nothing wrong with doing so. I’ll tell you why later.
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The FCC did charge Google a pathetic $25,000 fine for taking too long to respond to requests for information during the investigation. But it didn’t levy any fine for the actual data harvesting. Inconvenient truth: In a country ruled by law, you can’t legally punish people or companies when they haven’t in fact broken an actual law.

Still, critics are coming out of the woodwork to denounce both Google and the FCC.

“FCC’s Ruling that Google’s Wi-Fi Snooping is Legal Sets Horrible Precedent,” said PC World’s John P. Mello Jr. “Google Breaches Highlight Need for Regulation,” said Jason Magder of the Montreal Gazette.

And as they tend to do in such cases, the pandering politicians are trying to get in front of the parade.

For example, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) this week issued a statement that says “The circumstances surrounding Google’s surreptitious siphoning of personal information leave many unanswered questions. I believe Congress should immediately hold a hearing to get to the bottom of this serious situation.”

Other countries, including Germany, France and Australia, concluded (unlike the FCC) that Google was guilty of wrongdoing.

Australian Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy called the it the “largest privacy breach in the history across western democracies.” The Australian government forced Google to publicly apologize.

France made Google pay a $142,000 fine.

The global consensus is that Google’s so-called “snooping” was an invasion of privacy, accidental or otherwise.

Unfortunately, this consensus is based on emotion and knee-jerk populism, rather than facts and reason.

Let’s try something different. Let’s analyze what actually happened.
Wi-Fi is radio broadcast over the public airwaves

The hyperbolic accusations against Google imply that the company electronically reached into people’s homes, breached their Wi-Fi systems, took data and stored it in a database.

That’s not what happened.

Google did not harvest data from inside people’s homes. Google plucked data from the public airwaves — data that was voluntarily broadcast into those airwaves by the owners of that data.

In the U.S., the airwaves belong to the public.

Wi-Fi devices that people use for home networking have radios built in. And it’s via radio waves that the miracle of wireless networking takes place.

A home Wi-Fi device generates radio waves that are sent out in 360 degrees, like the ripples that radiate across the surface of a pond when you throw a rock into it. These radio waves go right through the walls of the house, and out into the world at high speed.

At some point in their journey, Wi-Fi radio waves breach the private-public barrier. They wash over your privately owned lawn before continuing on over the publicly owned sidewalk and street.

A person walking or driving by is physically penetrated by these waves. (Some studies have suggested that the waves may increase the risk of cancer; they probably don’t.) The radio waves enter people’s bodies, are conveyed through their bodies, and then continue on their journey on the other side.

Wi-Fi radio waves also trespass onto other peoples’ private property. If your laptop can see the name of your neighbor’s Wi-Fi, that means he is broadcasting radio waves over your property line, through the walls of your house and into your home.

What’s interesting about this broadcasting of electromagnetic radiation is that it’s nothing new. People do it all the time with other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Shining light on Wi-Fi ‘snooping’

Let’s say you took your big-screen TV and put it in your home’s front window facing out so that people could see the screen from the sidewalk or the street.

Then let’s say you connected your laptop to it, then made a PowerPoint slide so that in large letters, the TV displayed the following phrase: “My password is bond007.”

If anyone, whether Google or your neighbor, stood on the sidewalk and took a picture of your house, they would be recording your password. And this would be, and should be, perfectly legal.

There are two reasons why this is legal. First, the recording happened from a public space. And second, the recording was made with a device in general public use — a camera.

Any outrage expressed by the person broadcasting his password via electromagnetic radiation (light) into the public space would be ludicrous.

In fact, there are many ways to use electromagnetic radiation to broadcast personal data into the public airwaves.

One could say “My password is bond007” into a walkie-talkie, a ham radio or a CB radio.

It’s perfectly legal for a passerby or anyone else to listen to and record that audio signal, as long as he’s in a public space or in his own home.

Even if the broadcaster is ignorant of the fact that speaking into a radio conveys his voice into the public space, it’s still not illegal for someone else to listen to it or record it.

In each of these cases — the TV in the window, the walkie-talkie, the ham radio or the CB radio — the data is being broadcast via electromagnetic radiation out into the public airwaves and therefore it is not a violation of privacy for someone else to receive and record the data.

A Wi-Fi signal is exactly the same thing. It uses electromagnetic radiation to broadcast data into the public airwaves.

As in my thought-experiment, it’s up to the owner of the equipment to determine whether and what data is broadcast publicly.

When someone sets up a Wi-Fi network and a Google Street View car drives by and captures the data, it’s not that Google is invading the home. The Wi-Fi signal is invading the Street View car on a public road.

I believe the burden is on anyone who says Google’s data harvesting is illegal to explain why recording data voluntarily broadcast into publicly owned airwaves over one part of the electromagnetic spectrum is legal, but doing so over another part of the spectrum is illegal.
What’s the difference?

It’s not as if the equipment that’s needed to view and record such data is hard to find. You can buy it at Wal-Mart, and nearly everyone owns such equipment.

Look, Wi-Fi is no longer some new, mysterious and rare phenomenon. It’s not witchcraft, or some unknown to be feared and confused about.

I think we can all agree that anyone who broadcasts unencrypted, un-password-protected data over public airwaves in a way that is readable by devices millions of people own has no reasonable expectation of privacy.

And anyone who views, records or “harvests” such publicly broadcast data has — and should have — every right to do so. The hysteria around the so-called Google “WiSpy” scandal represents an ignorant double standard about data voluntarily broadcast over public airspace.

Give it a rest. Google did nothing wrong.

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Google, Tech

Google Drive will offer 5GB of free storage, leak suggests

Google’s cloud storage service rumored for release next monthIt looks as though Google will offer users 5GB of free cloud storage space on its new Drive service.

According to a leaked image obtained by the Talk Android blog, Google Drive will give users “5GB from the start” with the ability to “upgrade to get more space at any time.” The cloud storage service also says that users will be able to “put files in Google Drive” where they can then be accessed via “desktop, mobile phone or tablet, and drive.google.com.”

MORE GOOGLE NEWS: New Google Account Activity lets you know what Google knows about you

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TECH ARGUMENT: Amazon Cloud Drive vs. Apple iCloud
If the leaked image proves accurate, it will mean that Google is matching the 5GB of free data storage currently offered by Box, Amazon Cloud Drive and Apple’s iCloud to all users, and is exceeding the 2GB of free data storage offered by Dropbox to all users. There are no details yet on how much additional storage space users will be able to purchase on Google Drive, but it will likely fall somewhere between the 50GB of maximum cloud storage offered by Box, Apple and Amazon and the 100GB limit that Dropbox offers subscribers.

Google is a relatively later entry into the cloud storage market, as Apple has had its cloud storage service up and running since last June while Amazon has had its Cloud Drive app running since last March. Google has already been offering a cloud-based music service, Google Music, that lets users store up to 20,000 songs online where they can be accessed from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an Internet connection.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tech

Essential browser tools for Web developers

Essential browser tools for Web developers
What the professionals use and recommend to their colleagues

Computerworld – Out of the thousands of cool add-ons out there for Firefox, Chrome and other popular Web browsers, only a select few make it onto the desktops of professional Web developers and designers. Which are the most useful for the day-to-day work of designing and developing websites?

Browser tools for Web devs

Code inspection, editing and debugging
Design assistance
Enhancing performance
Handy utilities
Boosting SEO
Collaboration

 

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Computerworld asked more than 20 professionals from across the country what they recommend to their colleagues and why. While they stuck mostly with free browser extensions, they couldn’t resist throwing in a few highly useful tools and services that are accessed via a browser rather than being true add-ons.

Here’s their hot list, where you’ll find some old favorites and, we hope, discover some new tools for your arsenal.
Code inspection, editing and debugging

These three tools make the job of viewing website code and prototyping page changes fast and easy. No need to touch the live code until you’re ready to commit to changes.

What it does: Inspects, edits and debugs website code within your browser.

Who recommends it:
• Matt Mayernick, vice president of Web development, Hudson Horizons in Saddle Brook, N.J.
• Josh Singer, president, Web312 in Chicago
• Richard Kesey, president and founder, Razor IT in Syracuse, N.Y.
• Ryan Burney, lead Web developer, 3 Roads Media in Greenwood Village, Col.

Why it’s cool: Probably the best known of all the tools listed here, “Firebug is the greatest add-on ever created,” Mayernick says. It’s not just the fact that Firebug lets developers inspect website code and elements, but how it helps with debugging that makes the tool great. “If I am writing JavaScript that’s changing the background color in a row, Firebug will show what’s happening to the CSS code in real time,” he says.
Firebug
Firebug displays the page’s HTML code in the lower left window and its CSS data in the lower right. Click to view larger image.

Firebug inspects the code by presenting the HTML and the CSS code in two side-by-side windows. “Firebug is indispensable. What’s cool is you can turn styles on or off or add styles on the fly. It lets me make changes live on the page without having to save or reload the files,” says Burney.

“It’s great for finding JavaScript errors,” adds Kesey. “When you click on an Ajax link, it reads out what the action is and gives you the response in an https: format so you can see what the headers were and what’s happening behind the scenes.”
Web Developer
Author: Chris Pederick
Browsers supported: Chrome, Firefox
Price: Free
Where to get it: Install Web Developer for Chrome or Web Developer for Firefox

What it does: Provides a toolkit for viewing, editing and debugging websites.

Who recommends it:
• Darrell Armstead, mobile developer, DeepBlue in Atlanta
• Jen Kramer, senior interface developer, 4Web in Keene, N.H.

Why it’s cool: “I love Web Developer because of the control it gives me over any site. It gives me the ability to strip a site down to its core, and lets me modify and tweak things to get it looking and working the way I want it to,” Armstead says. But that’s not all he likes: “I love the Outline Block Level Elements feature because it gives me a visual representation of how a site is built on the front end.”
Web Developer add-on
Web Developer displays the style sheets associated with a page and lets you edit them to quickly see how changes will look before actually making any changes to the website’s code. (Credit: Jen Kramer)
Click to view larger image.

Kramer chimes in: “What I like about it is the ability to look at CSS. It shows all of the style sheets available on the page, and I can edit those on the fly and see how it looks in the browser,” she says. “That’s particularly helpful to me because I work with content management systems. It allows me to style what’s being sent to the browser.

“Firebug has something similar, but I find it more difficult to use. It’s much harder to get a style sheet out of Firebug and into Joomla,” Kramer adds. For me, Web Developer works better.”
Google Chrome Developer Tools
Author: Google
Browser supported: Chrome
Price: Free
Where to get it: Included with the Chrome browser. Right-click on any Web page in Chrome and choose “Inspect Element,” or choose View –> Developer –> Developer Tools from the menu.

What it does: Provides tools for inspecting, editing and debugging website code.

Who recommends it:
• Jason Hipwell, managing director, Clikzy Creative in Alexandria, Va.
• Shaun Rajewski, lead developer at Web Studios in Erie, Pa.
• Ryan Burney, 3 Roads Media

Why it’s cool: Developer Tools is Google’s answer to Firebug for Firefox, but there’s no add-on to download: Google built it right into the Chrome browser.

“It is my favorite ‘extension’ because of its intuitive design, with HTML on the left, CSS on the right,” says Hipwell. “Inspect Element will highlight elements on a page as you hover over them, which makes it easy to find the div tag I am looking for. It gives me the ability to see changes on a live site, but those changes exist only on my local computer, making it a perfect testing environment. Its simplicity is really what makes the tool so effective.”
Chrome Developer Tools
Using Chrome Developer Tools, Clikzy’s Jason Hipwell has replaced the Computerworld logo with his own in just a few clicks. (Credit: Clikzy Creative) Click to view larger image.

Rajewski is also a big fan. “Developer Tools allows you to see the final output of what is rendered to [the] screen, and has the ability to highlight individual elements, view the elements’ CSS tags and inherited tags, and make ‘live’ changes to the code to see what it looks like in the browser without making file changes,” he says.

“One nice thing about Chrome’s Developer Tools is that it will give you the dimensions of things,” says Burney. Click on the image URL and up pops the image with the associated link, image dimensions and file type displayed. That’s something Firebug doesn’t do, he says. “Being able to know at a glance the dimensions of an object, that’s a big time saver.”

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Google

Apple launches the iPad into the classroom

A home is where treasures are kept. Treasures in many California homes are in the form of furniture collections with a coffee table from a favorite antique store or a wing-back chair you inherited from a grandmother , or may be your electronics collection with flat screen high-definition television and surround sound equipment. Even your garage is full of things boxes of treasures of which you may only have of vague recollection.

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Your most important treasures are, of course, your wife and children. Naturally, you want all these to remain safe and a part of your life. Unfortunately, there are others who share your world who would like to relieve you of these treasures for their own gain. There may come a time when you feel the need to protect yourself and those you love with security. California security is available in many forms: by a guard with training in Los Angeles, by electronic alarm systems, or by camera surveillance.

Investing in an alarm system for your home can help you sleep better at night in your own bedroom, as well as help you play better when away from home on vacation or business trips. Representatives from alarm system companies may visit your home in person to help you design the perfect alarm system to protect your possessions and your family. Sophisticated electronic systems are disguised in a simple control panel that mounts on a convenient wall in your house, which can then be programmed to alert you and local law enforcement when a door or window of your home is opened, or when an intruder is seen on camera surveillance.

For example, one man was concerned about nightly robberies which were occurring in his small rural mining town. He traveled out of state often with his work. He decided to be proactive in protecting his possessions, and bought an electronic alarm system with a proven track record. One feature of this system included the capability to alert him by mobile phone text if his home alarm system were activated. One week after he bought and installed the system, he received a text that his alarm system had sounded. He immediately called the local police near his residence. Law enforcement was already en route; they caught the thief, who was still at the residence in the act of removing expensive electronic equipment.

There are ways to be sure your personal guard has training in Los Angeles and is completely trustworthy. One such service, called the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, accepts applications from would-be guards. The Bureau, and other companies like it, then checks criminal history and posts applicants who are ready for employment as guards on their web site. It is important to note, however, that some states may allow those applicants with a past history of felony or misdemeanor offenses to qualify for employment as a registered guard after careful review of circumstances and possible rehabilitation. Some applicants with a criminal history may become guards, but may be restricted from carrying a weapon.

Not everyone needs this type of personal security. However, a widow in a large city felt particularly vulnerable after her husband’s death. She even suspected she was being followed when she left her house to go shopping or to walk her dog. Her children, who lived out of state, contacted an agency that provided personal security guard protection at specified times of the day to help her feel more confident every time she went out of her home. The widow saw no more evidences that she was being followed by strangers, and she was comforted to know someone was nearby that she could trust to help her if needed. Her children were also comforted to know the one they treasured was protected.

Google, Tech

Report: Google, Intel among Chinese hacker targets

Bloomberg report says Chinese cyberspies have hit hundreds of companies, government agencies

Cyberspies from China have hit 760 companies, research institutions, ISPs and government agencies over the past decade, according to a Bloomberg article published Tuesday.

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YEAR IN REVIEW: 2011’s biggest security snafus

The Bloomberg story names a range of possible industrial espionage victims of China-based computer hacking, including technology companies such as Intel, HP, Yahoo and Salt Lake City-based iBahn, whose network services international travelers. Also on the list: Xerox division Associated Computer Systems, Volkswagen, Innovative Solutions & Support, MIT, the Italian Academic and Research Network, the California State University Network and Boston Scientific. The Bloomberg article also mentions Google, which in 2010 itself publicly disclosed an attack it indicated was likely tied to China.

The Bloomberg article doesn’t detail the exact source of its information, other than to allude to “a senior U.S. intelligence officer.” One named source for the article, Dmitri Alperovitch, head of his own firm Asymmetric Cyber Operations, says hackers launching a cyberattack from China broke into South Korean steel company POSCO in July 2006 at the time of a large business transaction related to a steel mill in China.

Additional allegedly hacked companies listed by Bloomberg but not attributed to named sources other than “intelligence data” include Danish technology company Thrane & Thrane, Abbott Laboratories, Wyeth (now part of Pfizer), Parkland Computer Center in Rockville, Md., Cypress Semiconductor, Research in Motion, Aerospace Corp. and Environmental Systems Research Institute.

Read more about security in Network World’s Security section.

Android, Google, HTC, IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Tech

Android IceCream Sandwich 4.0 Features

Android IceCream Sandwich 4.0 aka ICS is finally announced and its packed with features. Galaxy Nexus is the flagship device that would run ICS.
ICS basically brings Android 3.x Honeycomb features to phones. Lets go through the features quickly:

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30minutes Video demo of IceCream Sandwich

Android 4.0 ICS Features:

Updated Settings:  Revamped Settings screen organization. Items are arranged much better now.
Disabling Apps:  ICS adds the ability to disable an app outright. Don’t like an app that came preinstalled? Disable it! Its resources never run and its launcher icon is gone until you re-enable it.
Improved Download Manager.
Support for Encryption for Phones:  Honeycomb added full-device encryption, but ICS brings it to phones.
Audio Effects:  There’s a new audio effects API. Better media players coming!
New Font, Roboto: Droid Sans font is now gone for good.

OnScreen buttons, no hardware buttons: You dont need any hardware buttons for running ICS device, all the buttons: back, home are on-screen. Like Honeycomb, the buttons go invisible, smartly, to let you enjoy full screen video.
Resizable Widgets, Folders, Favorites: Dragging apps and contacts on top of each other create re-arrangeable folders. Users can stow their favorite apps, links, and folders into a new Favorites tray for quick and easy access
Screenshots: Hold down the power button and the volume down button to take a screenshot.
Notifications Revamped: Music controls have been integrated, and notifications can be dismissed by swiping
Improved Copy & Paste
Face Unlock
Enhanced Talk-to-Text: It’s more accurate.
Browser Tabs, offline: Upto 16 browser tabs. You can also save web pages offline
Gmail: Gmail now supports two-line previews, and sports a new context-sensitive action bar at the bottom of the screen. Gesture support allows you to swipe left and right between emails.
Contacts – People App: Contacts get re-vamped by showing contacts from Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Data Usage: You can now look at the details of what app is doing what with your data usage. Best part: The ability to limit data usage to a certain threshold.
Camera: Image stabilization, improved autofocus, and integration with other apps for sending photos or instant upload to Google+, built-in face detection, panorama and time lapse modes, and on-the-fly photo retouching and enhancements.
Android Beam: An secure NFC-powered sharing platform that lets users share nearly any kind of content, save for applications (in that case, a link to the Market is sent instead)