HP launches 'no phone calls' remote support software for SMBs
Known as HP Insight Remote Support, Hewlett-Packard's new software, announced this morning, connects small to medium-sized businesses directly to their HP solution providers for automated event monitoring and fault detection, also generating requests for support service dispatch.
The software is aimed at small information technology environments that do not require more advanced management systems, such as HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) or HP Operations Manager.
Ballmer: The challenge for Windows Mobile
In a mobile device market being driven by capacitive touch-optimized operating systems, Windows Mobile has been forfeiting stature, and the enterprise sector has taken note. At the annual US Public Sector Chief Information Officer summit yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked up the forthcoming Windows Mobile 6.5 release, and almost immediately pushed it to the side.
"We have a significant release coming this year -- not the full release we wanted to have this year -- but we have a significant release coming this year with Windows Mobile 6.5...we still don't get some of the things that people want on the highest end phones. Those will come with Windows Mobile 7 next year."
AMD gives birth to Global Foundries, which is now hiring
AMD's gamble to create the processor production foundry to which it will outsource its own projects, in an effort to scale down while maintaining some measure of control over its production methods, is now offically under way. Global Foundries is the official name of "The Foundry Company," formed by a vote of approval by AMD's shareholders last month.
Its CEO is Doug Grose, previously AMD's Senior Vice President of Manufacturing. His opening message on GF's Web site yesterday put a very thin veil over the reason for his new company's existence: "Who we are and what we do is a direct reflection of trends in the semiconductor industry. Seismic changes in the business, driven by global economics and technology, make the timing right for this new approach to the foundry business."
Firefox 3.0.7 addresses maybe more than three security issues
The latest commercial edition of Firefox, version 3.0.7, is said to address three "critical" security issues. But a close look at the list itself shows that a myriad of similar issues were grouped together as one, making the total list of high-level issues as high as six.
Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7 for Windows from Fileforum now.
FISMA, CAG, and the Department of Redundancy Department
There's a plaintive subhead in the draft of the Consensus Audit Guidelines (CAG) that sums up how the writers of the document must feel about their work to improve governmental IT security. It's right there on page 3: "Why this project is so important: Gaining agreement among CISOs, CIOs and IGs." See? pleads the subtext See, information security offices and information officers and federal inspectors general? You can't possibly ignore this very important information if we address you by your title... can you?
Oh, but they can. This is, after all, information security, where people regularly spend more energy circumventing a system than following it. The guidelines are a mighty attempt to ease government and private-sector organizations into embracing good security controls. It remains to be seen if this time will finally prove the charm.
OMB releases its annual FISMA security report to Congress
It's report-card time again for government agencies as the Office of Management and Budget released its fiscal year 2008 report to Congress on Wednesday in accordance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
The report (PDF available here) covers 25 major and dozens of small and independent agencies and includes, as usual, qualitative and quantitative testing. Area measured include certification and accreditation, controls testing, and contingency plan testing, along with privacy protection.
Touchscreen competition keeps the US smartphone market afloat
In recent days, consumers are being deluged with economy-related terminology and newspeak. There's almost nowhere for them to turn to avoid the onslaught. Every current event is being presented in the context of the economy, which now seems to be providing the backdrop for our everyday life. The other day I saw an ad for "Recession Proof Recipes."
So yes, when market research group NPD released its findings that the US smartphone market is growing, that bad-news backdrop couldn't be avoided even then. NPD said this growth is taking place "despite recession conditions."
Flickr expanding flickering-image capability to general membership
YouTube's probably not running scared just yet, but the Flickr community has finally gotten general access to video-posting capability. The Pro (paid-user) community has been uploading 90-second "long photos" to the service last year, but now any registered user can post to two standard-definition videos each month on the service.
According to Yahoo's Yodel Anecdotal blog, which announced the change earlier this week, the limit is in addition to the usual 100MB/month cap on photo uploads for non-paying users. Paying users also get a service boost, allowing them to upload HD video. And all hands are free to browse videos through the odd-but-amusing Flickr Clock, which sorts the clips by time.
When can cloud computing really cut costs?
"You can pay with a credit card, and only pay for what you use," noted Forrester Research analyst James Staten, as he outlined a number of ways in which clouds are being implemented already, during a presentation about implementing cloud applications across international borders.
Clouds allow companies to rent applications for short-term use, without investing in servers, software, or other infrastructure. Businesses can also pay for temporary access to computing resources -- such as data centers in other countries, for example -- without inking long-term contracts, according to Staten, speaking in a webcast sponsored by 3Tera, a competitor to cloud providers ranging from Amazon's EC2 to GoGrid and GridLayer.
Java-based feature phones to get their own app store
Later tonight, Research in Motion is expected to open an app store for BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile will get one before Christmas. Apple has the iTunes App Store, Android has the Android Market, Nokia's got its own Ovi Store. But why should it be limited to smartphones when over 80% of the handsets sold daily are simple feature phones?
That's the same question Everypoint wants to address with its Nemo application development platform. Nemo is a branded app creation platform that provides free cloud services, a mobile runtime and developer environment for application developers interested in making their content available to the Internet-enabled, J2ME-based phone users out there.
Linux.com won't be a news site, but instead a place for Linux
As first reported by my friend and colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at Computerworld yesterday, probably the most important domain name that a Linux-associated entity could ever want, Linux.com, was sold by SourceForge, and is now in the hands of the Linux Foundation.
As a press release revealed, the Foundation's plans for the domain are quite different from a Linux-oriented news site: "The new Linux.com site will transform in the months ahead from solely being a news source to a collaborative site that will be 'for the community, by the community.' Much like Linux itself, Linux.com will rely on the community to create and drive the content and conversation. While the Linux Foundation will host the collaboration forum, the site will feature the real Linux experts -- users and developers -- and give them the tools needed to connect with each other and with Linux."
Preliminary Q1 numbers at Adobe indicate profit, shortfall
Adobe on Wednesday released preliminary earnings information indicating that it won't make its revenue targets for the first quarter of 2009, which ended for the company on February 27. The company will, however, deliver earnings per share within -- though at the low end of -- its target range.
Based on what the company knows right now, Adobe should report revenue of between $783 million and $786 million, below its target range of $800 million to $850 million. Operating margins are expected to be between 26% and 26.5% on a GAAP basis, which falls within the predicted 26-28% range for Q1; likewise, non-GAAP operating margins are in the ballpark, coming in between 37% and 37.5% compared to the 37-38% target.
Firefox 3.1 could catch up to Safari 4 in beta speed duel
With the next -- though probably not the last -- public beta of Firefox 3.1, testers outside of Mozilla will get their first chance to see in action perhaps the number-one reason customers would want to upgrade: the browser's new TraceMonkey JavaScript execution engine. Expectations have been raised quite high over the past several months, as developers have promised orders of magnitude faster execution of functionally-driven Web pages.
But last week, it was Apple that threw down the gauntlet with its public release of a Safari browser beta, for both Mac and Windows, that tore through the speed records for JavaScript in public betas. Right now, it's Safari 4 that has the provisional pole. Yesterday, however, Mozilla managers instructed developers to start wrapping up their final check-ins, as it's nearing time for a public release of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3.
Skype unfurls a royalty-free SILK codec
At eComm on Tuesday, Skype announced that it'll make its SILK wideband codec available royalty-free to third-party developers. The release gives Skype a shot at solidifying its lead in the VoIP race and should increase consumers' exposure to, and desire for, wideband-quality call quality.
SILK, which debuted to positive reviews in the 4.0 version of Skype for Windows released last month, is Skype's default audio codec for Skype-to-Skype calls. It scales its bandwidth usage in real time between 6 Kpbs and 40 Kbps, and in "superwideband" (best) mode samples at 24 KHz. Likewise, bit rate scales from 6-40 Kbps as dictated by connection conditions.
AOL's IM hiccups during morning server upgrades
Available... no, away... no, available again... wait, no: Users of AOL's Instant Messenger service didn't know whether they were coming or going for a brief period this morning. According to an AOL spokesperson, the outage occurred during a software update and were resolved. By 11:00 am PST, no further glitches were officially reported, though Betanews tests have been revealing evidence of AIM misbehavior up until mid-afternoon.
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