Microsoft launches a pre-emptive strike against cloud competition
Almost every sector of the computing field either has, or is forming, dividing lines between Microsoft and its partners, and a coalition of familiar players outspoken in their criticism of Microsoft. Both factions are vying for the right to the "open" computing mantle, but historically, both sides have actively worked to keep each other away from their respective clubhouses.
Certainly IBM has made no secret of its intention of becoming an axis for cloud computing development; in late 2007, its Blue Cloud Initiative was the topic of our New York Bureau Chief Jacqueline Emigh's very first article for Betanews. Since that time, IBM has been pairing with Google, most ostensibly for a program called the IBM Academic Initiative which aims to inspire, fund, and facilitate the education of new programmers in the distributed computing model. And just last month, IBM took the next step in building out Blue Cloud by announcing something it's calling the Infrastructure Strategy and Planning for Cloud Computing.
The Melissa virus turns 10
The computer worm that gave macros a bad name and changed the shape of malware detection was first detected ten years ago today (Thursday). Melissa was a stake in the heart of the old signature-based anti-virus model and pointed the way toward both more interesting forms of detection and more virulent malware.
Like most infants, Melissa started out as a harmless expression of love -- in this case, allegedly a hacker's love for a lap dancer (don't judge). It was, appropriately enough, first distributed via alt.sex, the Usenet group. The host Word file allegedly contained information for an assortment of adult-entertainment sites, but the payload was the Word macro, which functioned in the 97 and 2000 versions of Microsoft's word processor as well as in various versions of Excel. If a Melissa-infected file was opened in one of those programs, the poisonous macro looked into Outlook's address book and sends itself to 40-50 of the names it found there.
IE8 loads pages faster, but not fast enough, in Microsoft test recreation
Performance needs to be something the user feels. That's the explanation we hear from companies that have had difficulty of late demonstrating raw performance by the numbers (AMD comes readily to mind). Numbers may tell you a certain story, Microsoft's marketing team proclaims, but if the user doesn't perceive the speed increase, it may as well not be there.
So in a white paper released last week along with IE8, entitled "Measuring Browser Performance" (PDF available here), made the case that today's Web pages are comprised of so many components, any one of which may load faster or slower in one browser than another. And because of that, the only way to get a real sense of which browser is generally faster is to feel the overall speed.
Tech journos vs. tech bloggers (cue slapfight)
So which tech-review venues get the job done better, traditional publications or gadget blogs? There's a lovely little fuss brewing online over the matter. In the print corner, weighing in at I Edited Windows Magazine You Whippersnappers, Computerworld's Mike Elgan. In the blog corner, weighing in at What Have You Got Against Living Trees And Breaking News, Brian Lam of Gizmodo. Enjoy the feud, boys!
Another day, another Google privacy kerfuffle
One suspects that sooner or later Google will catch grief from every single person who's ever felt grumpy about all those other people cluttering up his or her planet, as yet another privacy "watchdog" complains about the search site's Street View maps. This time it's the UK's Privacy International, the director of which says that various British citizens have experienced "clear embarrassment and damage" thanks to months- or years-old images on the site. PI is asking the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to shut the service down.
Setting aside the question of why a group based in the nation with the highest number of surveillance cameras per citizen would bother stressing about Street View, the "clear embarrassment and damage" clause leads to just one question for the casual observer: What in the name of Tim Berners-Lee are they doing in the streets of the UK these days, and does the term ASBO come into play at any point?
System update fixes Wii's problematically tiny storage
Nintendo today has provided a solution for the Wii's painfully underdeveloped onboard storage by endowing the console with the ability to boot games directly off of SD cards.
Previously, any downloaded games could only be launched if they were installed on the Wii, but with the System's meager 512 MB flash memory, that only left space for a handful of titles. While this was manageable early on, when all that was available were Virtual Console emulator titles that didn't consume much space, the introduction of WiiWare titles made that small amount of storage seem even smaller.
Facebook addresses whining over recent redesign
It's axiomatic that any site redesign will cause hysterics among some portion of the readership. But Facebook's user complaints over the new look have succeeded to the extent of eliciting a lengthy, slightly abashed, and palpably frustrated blog post from Chris Cox, the company's "director of product," discussing where the site goes from here.
What users apparently will not succeed in doing is in getting Facebook to back down from its new, more Twitter-like mien. The post outlines a variety of adjustments in the works, including live page updating (no more hitting Refresh!), better control over which applications intrude in one's stream, realignment with the new Highlights features to bring it back in line with the old News Feed functionality, and some reorganization of navigation components.
'Sprint 4G' to come to 15 new markets in 2009-2010
Sprint announced today that WiMAX will be coming to ten major markets this year: Atlanta, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, Charlotte, and Fort Worth.
Unlike Baltimore, the only city with a complete Sprint WiMAX deployment, these will not fall under the Xohm moniker. Nor will they fall under the spun-off "Clear" brand, even though the deployments are going to be essentially the same.
Analysis: Dell's data center play will meet new opposition from Cisco's system
Today's big data center announcements from Dell may have been expedited just a tad by Cisco, which stirred up interest last week after having unveiled its very first Unified Computing System. In an environment where other big companies are scaling back, Cisco is building on two fronts, the other one being the acquisition -- also last week -- of pocket camcorder maker Flip Video.
While switch-maker Cisco is a newcomer to data center servers, Dell already places third in the overall blade server rankings with a 9% market share, according to analyst group IDC. But although much less so than Cisco, Dell still has a long way to go to catch up with market leader Hewlett-Packard with its 58% share, and IBM with 22%.
Dell unveils a comprehensive set of cloud underpinnings
At customer events today in San Francisco, London, Dubai, and Sydney, Dell is taking the wraps off of blade servers, storage systems and other products aimed at grabbing a larger share of the data center market, an arena that Cisco entered just last week.
More specifically, Dell's new products include five new EqualLogic PS 6000 storage arrays and the NX4 network-attached storage (NAS) system, along with M-Series blade servers, Precision workstations, two new service offerings, and the Dell Management Console, a console designed for managing both Dell and non-Dell data center hardware.
ComScore: Hulu viewership skyrockets
Maybe it was thanks to its surprisingly popular Super Bowl commercial featuring an alien Alec Baldwin, or maybe it's thanks to its clean interface and ever-growing library of content, but Hulu's popularity exploded last month.
According to comScore's Video Metrix service, Hulu became the fourth most-viewed video site on the Internet, bypassing Microsoft, Viacom, and AOL sites, and snaring a 2.5% share of the market. The NBC-News Corp. joint venture climbed two positions in the ranking and experienced a 42% increase in views in February. The majority of the growth (33%) took place after the Super Bowl advertisement began running.
Last in the 3G race, T-Mobile finally unveils its USB modem
If you happen to be in one of the 130 US Cities with T-Mobile 3G coverage, you're in luck. The perennial last horse in the 3G race today unveiled its first 3G USB modem, called T-Mobile webConnect.
The device is made by Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei, which specializes in UMTS/HSPA products, and due to the current sparseness of T-Mobile's 3G network, webConnect carries a modicum of additional features to add value.
BlackBerry gets Google Voice Search
After releasing the voice-activated search application in November for iPhone, and then last month for Android with its RC33 update, Google has brought the functionality to BlackBerry users.
The feature works either with the Google Mobile App, or by simply navigating to http://m.google.com, and holding down the "talk" button to administer vocal searches. The Google Mobile app is available on all versions of BlackBerry running on O/S 4.1+ and voice-enabled searches only on O/S 4.2 and above. Additionally, the updated site also supports "My Location," which uses the phone's location data to automatically narrow down searches to results within a close proximity to the user.
Doing just fine on its own, Xobni's Outlook plug-in emerges from beta
From time to time, Microsoft has announced its intent to build its Outlook component of Office into a more fully-featured system for organizing personal contacts, as well as doing some automatic background research into those contacts on the side. Last year, the company very nearly concluded a deal with a San Francisco-based company called Xobni that would have given Microsoft that functionality in one fell swoop, but that deal collapsed.
As it turns out, that's where the good news actually began for Xobni. It managed to obtain startup funding from such top-tier venture capital sources as Y Combinator, First Round Capital, Cisco, and now BlackBerry Partners Fund. Now, the company is prepared to remove the little piece of sticky-tape that says "Beta" from its principal product, which now becomes "Xobni 1.7" for the first time, though it remains a free download.
At last, a bridge between Windows Home Server and Media Center
Ever since Microsoft's innovative Windows Home Server operating system first appeared on the scene a few years ago, prospective users have asked why a Windows Media Center computer can't stream content from a Home Server-based unit. As early as January 2007, popular MSVP Chris Lanier (not a Microsoft employee) posed the question himself publicly, adding, "Microsoft would be crazy to not include access functionality to Media Center Extenders, but I think we all know that Microsoft is good at leaving out features that we all think should be there."
And a forum thread on the Media Center blog The Green Button on the topic of Media Center/Home Server integration, launched in December 2007, is still an active and vibrant discussion.
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