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.
ZillionTV promises unlimited TV through targeted ads
Beta testing for ZillionTV is currently under way, the streaming service closely follows the model Roku took with its own set-top box, but applies it to commercial television.
Users pay a one-time fee to activate the ZillionTV set top box and remote, and then hook it up to their broadband connection to begin streaming content. The service then offers viewing tiers: the free, ad-subsidized tier, the rental tier, and the "buy to own" tier. The ad-subsidized tier features interactive ads targeted to the user's preferences. Before watching subsidized programming, for example, the user could have to select the ads they'd most like to see, the ads are also affected by the user's location, viewing habits, and demographics.
Vista SP2 RC image goes live
An .ISO file for the DVD image of the installation routine for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate was made publicly accessible by Microsoft early this morning. As of 1:45 pm EST, however, there was no official word from Microsoft as to the release candidate's public availability. Private testers began receiving their early copies last week.
Download Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Release Candidate from Fileforum now.
Not quite tru2way, TiVo will get new streaming VOD
Tru2way is the brand name for the open cable standard architecture that will allow next generation TV hardware to work with any cable provider. The hallmarks of tru2way are interactive services and HD on demand content. Unfortunately, there has yet to be an industry-wide breakthrough in the adoption of tru2way outside of companies such as Panasonic, Comcast, and TiVo.
This week, TiVo announced a deal with streaming on demand and IPTV middleware company SeaChange that promises to bring tru2way-style features to CableCard-equipped TiVo set top boxes in areas where the architecture has not been implemented yet.
Already outdated, Treo Pro hits March 15
Officially announced in the Summer of 2008, and expected to come to the US in the Fall, the Treo Pro was supposed to raise Palm's suffering margins as it crawled through the end of the year. The device's release was pushed back all the way to the point of inopportunity: after the Pre's unveiling.
Now, the Treo Pro just looks like a Centro update that showed up for the party after everybody has gone home. In the company's third quarter earnings call this week, Palm put the delay of the Treo Pro up there with the economic crisis in terms of severe detriments to the company's bottom line. Today, it has finally been announced, and it will be available through Sprint on March 15.
Phoenix to embed an OOXML office suite in firmware
Most of us who have been in the PC business ever since there was such a thing know the Phoenix Technologies brand for having helped catalyze the PC "clone" revolution in the 1980s, as one of the first great independent BIOS producers. It's still in the firmware business, and its programs are still the first ones many PCs run after their users flip the switch. But gradually, the company is assembling a comprehensive software platform and embedding it in its latest firmware: the HyperSpace platform that embeds Linux on motherboards.
HyperSpace premiered last July with a built-in hypervisor that can run operating systems not as native, but as guest environments within a secure envelope. But since then, it's acquired some native applications of its own, including a DVD player from Corel, and just last November, the Opera Web browser. Now Phoenix is preparing to add the piece de resistance: a commercial office suite called ThinkFree Office that's designed to use the OOXML format created for Microsoft Office 2007 and now published as an open standard by Microsoft.
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