China takes questions for Obama from Internet users

China's state-run news agency Friday started collecting questions from local Internet users for U.S. President Barack Obama, who is slated to speak to Chinese youth next week during his first visit to the country. Obama is scheduled to hold the session in Shanghai next Monday as part of a three-day visit to a country of rising economic and political influence worldwide. China and the U.S. have appeared to wrangle over the details of the dialogue session, such as whether it will be broadcast live. China's Xinhua News Agency opened an online forum for users to submit questions and said the Web site would broadcast the event.

Chinese officials often portray the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, as a dangerous separatist, while he is usually seen as a peaceful religious activist in the West. "Do you really understand our China?" another question read. Questions that appeared in the forum ranged in tone from innocently curious to accusatory and nationalistic. "China's total elimination of serfdom [in Tibet] in 1959 was identical in nature to Lincoln's abolition of slavery in the U.S.," one post in the forum read, repeating a comparison made by a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman at a press briefing the previous day. "Mr. Obama, do you plan to meet with the Dalai Lama after leaving China?" Demands for greater religious and political autonomy in Tibet are among the most hot-button issues in China. Other questions were more personal. "What kind of Chinese name would you pick for yourself?" one post read. A representative at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said a final decision on the format of the event still had not been reached. Xinhua did not say if the event would also be broadcast on other Web portals or on TV. When asked earlier this week if the event would be broadcast, Ben Rhodes, a U.S. deputy national security advisor, told reporters that Obama hoped to reach as wide an audience as possible at the session but that details remained to be worked out, according to a transcript of his comments.

Chinese leaders including President Hu Jintao have held rare online chats with Chinese Internet users in an apparent attempt to boost the government's image. Local Internet companies are expected to erase sensitive comments that appear on blogs or other parts of their Web sites and can face punishment for failing to do so. Chinese authorities heavily police the Internet for sensitive political content, pornography and other material deemed harmful.

Cloud computing, virtualization proponents getting antsy

While many organizations have only begun down the cloud computing and virtualization roads in the past few years, some in the industry can't wait to take these technologies to the next level. "The easy steps in consolidation and virtualization have been taken," said Martin McCarthy, president of 451 Group, during introductory remarks for his company's annual client conference in Boston this week. This was a theme I heard repeatedly at the event on Tuesday from users, analysts and vendors. Now new hybrid cloud environments are emerging where IT is asking what workloads they will own and which they will put on third parties, he says. FAQ: Cloud computing demystified  David Allen, CTO of backup and recovery company i365, told me that "The lines are blurring between what's on premise and what's in the cloud." Allen says his outfit, a Seagate company, increasingly sees its role as helping customers use the cloud for storage, though not necessarily moving everything to it.

Currently, cloud integration between providers is mainly at the lowest common denominator level, Allen says. What really has him pumped is a future in which various vendors' clouds interact (like say i365's and Microsoft's Azure) and in which advanced analytics and other services can be offered to exploit data stored in the cloud. On the virtualization front, early adopters said they are looking to make their next step. The hospital first got into virtualization after finding end users, namely doctors, were dissatisfied with IT services despite Genesys having good clinical systems. Dan Stross, CIO for Genesys Regional Medical Center (a 410-bed hospital 50 miles north of Detroit), said during a panel discussion that his organization is ready to move virtualization to back office systems after reaping benefits from it at kiosks used by medical staff on hospital floors.

It turned out that physicians were mainly frustrated by kiosks that saddled them with 45 second logins and logoffs that might work in an office setting but not in a situation where doctors are moving from kiosk to kiosk throughout the day ("Anything over 10 seconds and they're mad before they even see the application."). He also tossed off this line that I liked: "Physicians can remember every bone and muscle in your body, but don't ask them to remember more than 2 or 3 usernames and passwords," he says. That technology enabled Genesys to get initial logins down to 10 seconds and subsequent ones to 5 seconds or less, and it supports single sign-on. Best desktop virtualization software Genesys wound up going with a virtualization product from nSuite (now Symantec Workspace Corporate) because the company was very focused on healthcare organizations. The company's desktop virtualization effort also involves low cost, low energy thin clients from Wyse. Genesys will look to virtualize applications and stream them to its office environment, he said.

As if virtualizing desktops supporting 30 different applications wasn't enough, next up is virtualizing the back office, which is home to about 100 more applications, Stross said. Rachel Chalmers, a 451 Group research director, noted that while many expected benefits of virtualization have been realized – energy efficiency, decoupling of hardware and software, automation – increasingly virtualization is being recognized as a producer of less obvious results, including HIPAA compliance. The pitch from Len Rosenthal, VP of marketing with Virtual Instruments, during a sit-down meeting between sessions was that many organizations fear making the leap to virtualizing their most important applications because of possible performance issues (his company sells products that give visibility into apps performance by examining SAN I/O performance and determining whether ports are underused or overused). "Virtualization has largely centered around the low-hanging fruit up until now, the testing, development and file serving environments," he says. "Virtualizing Oracle, SAP and Siebel applications is the next frontier." Follow Bob Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/alphadoggs Chalmers said that she expected desktop virtualization to fall off after early adopters in the investment banking community saw their businesses implode along with the economy, but she has been encouraged to see hospitals, schools and government agencies pick up the slack.

China rules Microsoft violated intellectual property rights

A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems, state media said Tuesday. Microsoft plans to appeal the case, a company representative said in a statement. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court this week ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, state broadcaster CCTV said. The ruling comes as Barack Obama visits China for his first time as U.S. president.

A U.S. business association this week appealed to Obama for further efforts to protect intellectual property rights in China, where pirated copies of DVDs and computer software including Windows are widely sold on streets and in bazaars. The visit has brought renewed focus on tensions over piracy and the trade of high-tech products between the countries. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Microsoft agrees with the court that the key in the two cases is a dispute over the scope of licensing agreements, the Microsoft representative said. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property from Windows 98 to Windows XP. The court reportedly also ruled that Microsoft's use of a Chinese input system from Zhongyi did not violate any licensing agreements. But it disagrees with the ruling on the coverage of the agreements, which it believes also include its use of the fonts, the representative said.

Pirated versions of Windows 7 were on sale in one Beijing bazaar weeks before the software officially went on sale last month. Windows XP is the most widely used OS in Chinese offices and homes, but countless users run pirated copies. Microsoft offers Windows 7 in China for a lower price than in developed markets, and often labels its software "legal" to differentiate it from the pirated versions common in the country. Windows 7 Home Premium costs 699 yuan (US$103) in China, compared to $199.99 in the U.S.

Sybase smooths enterprise path for iPhones

Sybase is extending its Afaria mobile-device management platform and database software to the Apple iPhone, taking advantage of new enterprise features in Version 3.1 of the iPhone's software to give IT departments more control and capabilities on the popular handset. Going on sale in the middle of this month, Sybase's Afaria 6.5 will finally give administrators the kinds of controls they have had previously for mobile platforms such as Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1, Research In Motion BlackBerry and PalmOS. Apple's recent iPhone 3.1 release added the capability to lock down certain settings on a device so the user can't change them using the phone's configuration utility, said Mark Jordan, senior product manager for Afaria. Though many enterprise employees bring iPhones into the office and rely on them for personal communications, the device originally caught on as a consumer gadget for music, Web browsing and entertainment applications, and has only gradually made inroads as a workplace tool. That allowed Sybase to give enterprise IT departments the power to do things such as block applications, define the required password strength and lock down Wi-Fi and VPN (virtual private network) settings.

With the new Afaria, enterprises can make and change settings on employees' iPhones over the air based on overall policies for certain departments, job descriptions and other criteria. Administrators can now establish a trusted relationship between Afaria and the employee's phone using a certificate, he said. Among other capabilities, they can also require device authentication for access to a corporate directory and set up compliance reporting on the employee's use of the phone. Also on Tuesday, it announced tools for the Sybase SQL Anywhere database to be used for synchronization of data between an iPhone application and a back-end database. Sybase announced Afaria's iPhone capabilities on Tuesday at the iPhone Developer Summit in Santa Clara, California.

Using SQL Anywhere, internal developers and software vendors can build in bi-directional synchronization between an on-device app and relational databases including Sybase, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 and MySQL. This frees employees from having to depend on the cellular data connection to get work done while on the road, Jordan said. Also on Tuesday, the company's Sybase 365 subsidiary introduced a turnkey system for mobile banking on the iPhone. There is a beta test program now open for SQL Anywhere for iPhone. With it, banks can allow their customers to check balances, transfer funds among accounts, securely communicate with bank representatives, find branches and automatically dial the bank, Jordan said. The Sybase mBanking 365 iPhone platform is available now and is already deployed by BBVA Compass as the BBVA Compass Mobile application.

1Password 3 beta now open to all

Encumbered by passwords? Want to help out some classy Mac developers in their quest to kill bugs dead? Eager to try unreleased software? If you missed out when Agile Web Solutions was offering a private beta of 1Password 3 to customers on Snow Leopard, there's good news! 1Password 3 is now available as a public beta for one and all.

Feel special? Yes, that means you. You should! 1Password 3's new features include 1PasswordAnywhere, which allows you to open a 1Password Agile Keychain as a folder with a password-protected Web interface on any operating system. Software Licenses now have their own category, complete with icons and a new vault-like appearance. You can even add and edit existing items in your Agile Keychain from the browser, but only on Mac OS X computers that have 1Password 3 installed and the Agile Keychain selected.

There's also a separate dashboard for iPhone and iPod Touch syncing that will allow you to sync just the passwords you want to 1Password Touch. 1Password 3 also features touch gestures inspired by those in Apple Mail; a brand new UI; metadata tags to better organize items; the ability to create, edit and remove fields for Login and Wallet items; and 64-bit support for Snow Leopard. First, it requires that you're running at least Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. Second, since it's a beta, you really should backup your 1Password Keychain just in case this beta spawns the dread lord Cthulhu and your passwords are dragged into an inky black abyss. (We are assured that this is a very remote possibility, but you can never be too careful.) Finally, it'd be nice if you had an account at Agile Web Solutions' support forums to tell the developers about bugs you've found or learn about bugs that have been discovered by fellow beta testers. Before you give this software a try, you need to be aware of a few things. It's all part of being a good beta tester. If you've purchased 1Password 2 before then, fear not! The beta of 1Password 3 is free for everyone, but the full version will cost $40 with the same 100% money back guarantee as 1Password 2. If you've bought 1Password 2 after February 1, you'll get an upgrade for free.

You can upgrade a single user today for the limited time price of $20 or upgrade a family license for $30.

Quicksilver beta 57 released, not dead yet

Fans of the launcher-and-do-everything utility Quicksilver have been concerned for a while that it had might have transformed into a Norwegian Blue parrot. Although Jitkoff has since released Quicksilver as open source, the fact that he's being paid to work on similar software, combined with widespread Quicksilver problems after the release of Snow Leopard, led many to believe that Quicksilver's days were numbered. (And if they are, there will probably be a trigger to count them.) A maintenance release on November 6 brought basic compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6, but many plugins remained broken, and the process of getting much of the functionality working wasn't easy. The primary developer, Nicholas Jitkoff, is now a Google employee and the author of the far less featureful Google Quick Search Box.

It seemed questionable whether any more upgrades were in the pipeline, so we Quicksilver addicts can be heartened by Monday's release of 1.0 beta 57. (The last official "stable" version was 1.0 beta 54 in December, 2007, and 1.0 beta 57 upgrades from beta 56a7. Obscure versioning being, of course, part of Quicksilver's charm.) The update doesn't bring new features, but that's not a problem to the Quicksilver community, 95 percent of whom (myself included) can't figure out how to use all of the functionality that's already there. It's not much, but it's reassuring to know that we're in the "I'm not dead yet" routine rather than the parrot sketch. Instead, the change log highlights a dozen things which "don't crash anymore," and several behind-the-scenes tweaks and upgrades. One oddity: you may have missed this upgrade, as it doesn't seem to have been released through regular channels. So either I'm running the latest version of an open-source project, or my MacBook (and around 400,000 other people's) is about to self-destruct in a hotkey-triggered fireball. I found it on MacUpdate, but there's no mention of it on Blacktree's web site, Wikipedia (that's a first), or in the automatic update mechanism.

Readers with more sense than I have may want to wait a while before installing. And despite its problems, it still has lovely plumage. Quicksilver is free software; users of older versions of Mac OS X can download relevant versions directly at the Blacktree site.

Microsoft launches new version of MSN

Microsoft plans to start rolling out a redesigned MSN.com on Wednesday in the U.S., the first major update for the page in more than 10 years. That's a sharp departure from the previous design, which featured around 40 links on just the top third of the page. Frequent visitors to the site will immediately notice one major change: The new page has only half the number of links as the old one. The site has also dropped the trademark blue background for a simpler white page.

Users also said that they sometimes had a hard time finding what they were looking for, they were dissatisfied with search results prior to the launch of Bing, and they said the site had an outdated look and feel. The new design aims to address user feedback and complaints, said Erik Jorgenson, corporate vice president for MSN. Customers said they want a single site that is easy to use, he said. "What they don't like is too much clutter," he said. Microsoft called Wednesday's launch a preview of the redesign, meaning it will appear for some people immediately but will become widely available in the new year. The site is now divided into just a handful of sections, many of which are fed information that may be personally relevant to the specific user. Those who don't immediately get the new site can visit preview.msn.com to see it. For instance, a box in the lower right corner of the home page includes three tabs: Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter.

A box in the lower left corner of the page displays local weather, headlines and events. The Facebook tab shows a list of friends' recent updates to Facebook and lets the user update their Facebook status from the MSN page. Clicking on the local link launches a new page, MSN Local Edition. It also displays more detailed weather information and a local map where users can view traffic data. That page uses Bing search to draw in local news and information.

The site draws on users' IP addresses to deliver local information to them. That page won't launch Wednesday, but in the future people who have Silverlight installed may begin seeing the page. Microsoft will also be testing out a version of the home page that uses Silverlight. In the Silverlight version, clicking on the Twitter link, for example, pops up a box where users can view updates as well as trending topics. Yahoo, Microsoft's biggest portal competitor, also recently redesigned its home page, but with different results. Around 50 percent of MSN.com users already have Silverlight, Jorgenson said.

The Yahoo page still includes a long list of links to other pages and otherwise mainly features a list of links to news stories. MSN will also still offer MyMSN, a customizable page, but Microsoft has found that not many people use it. "A large majority of users aren't willing to put time into customizing and personalizing," Jorgenson said. Yahoo users can build themselves a customized page to include instant messaging, stock quotes, e-mail, weather, calendar and other tools. The new design represents a change in thinking at MSN. "We've moved away from the days of being an Internet directory of everything to everyone," he said. As many as 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN.com each month, Microsoft said.

Instead, MSN wants to deliver useful content across areas that it believes users find most important, Jorgenson said.

Apple opens up iTunes LP and Extras to developers

Looking to author your own interactive extras for the iTunes store? Apple introduced iTunes LP and Extras in September, giving listeners and viewers more of the experience they are used to with CDs and DVDs. People who opt for an iTunes LP get their music with all kinds of bells and whistles, including album art and lyrics; with Extras, movies come with DVD-like add ons such as deleted scenes and interviews. Well, à la the App Store, Apple has now opened up iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for independent musicians, bands, and other developers.

Initially, these interactive goodies were available only on albums and films from the major labels and studios. Now the company has made good on its promise and provided access and tools to everyone. There were even some unfounded rumors that Apple was charging outrageous LP production fees that would prevent smaller outfits from getting in on the fun. In 2010, the developer submission process will be electronic and automated. But if you're hardy enough, you can wade through an extensive library of templates, specifications, and best practices.

But for now it remains, as Apple calls, it "manual and limited." If that doesn't scare you off, you should also be aware that you need an iTunes contract; and as with the App Store, you'll have to endure an approval process. The good news for any competent Web developer is that the user interface and navigation for LP and Extras are based on standard HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Hopefully this new openness will result in more and more content on the iTunes Store including the kinds of goodies we've begun to enjoy with today's limited selection of LP and Extras titles. Apple has also released TuneKit SDK, which provides a Javascript framework to make the job easier.

Five Reasons Windows XP Has About a Year to Live

For all the stories about enterprises holding off on Windows 7 deployments, Windows XP's dominance in the enterprise is at the beginning of the end, says one industry analyst. Windows 7 Bible: Your Complete Guide to the Next Version of Windows Indeed, Windows XP still powers almost 80 percent of commercial PCs, according to a survey of 665 IT decision-makers that was part of the Forrester report entitled "Windows 7 Commercial Adoption Outlook." Nevertheless, many factors point to XP's demise. This will not happen overnight, writes Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray in a new research report, but there are enough reasons for IT managers to "shake the status quo, and finally end Windows XP's corporate reign." XP, now an eight-year-old OS, "has delivered the compatibility, security, and reliability that firms had hoped for and to this day remains the desktop standard for most businesses and government agencies," Gray writes. Two-thirds (66 percent) of the 655 surveyed IT decision-makers from North American and European enterprises and SMBs are planning to migrate to Windows 7 eventually, although most don't have firm plans yet.

Forrester also urges that companies should prepare for employee requests for Windows 7 as it becomes more popular with consumers. Additionally, the research shows that 51 percent of respondents plan to have Windows 7 as the primary OS on their PCs within 12 months. Here are five other key factors that Forrester believes will loosen Windows XP's grip on the enterprise and make way for Windows 7. Businesses Are Supporting Old Infrastructure Forrester's Gray writes that because of the recession, IT managers needed to lower costs by extending the life of existing desktops and laptops. For global companies that support thousands of apps, compatibility testing can take up to 18 months. Many also held off on hardware upgrades because they wanted them to coincide with a Windows 7 deployment. So if they've been testing in anticipation of Windows 7's release, full deployments will conclude by the end of 2010. Windows XP Support Is Waning Since April of this year, Windows XP SP2 has been in the extended support stage, which means support is no longer free and only includes security updates and patches.

All support for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 will end in April 2014. Windows XP Availability Will Get Pinched The ability to buy Windows XP machines will change after Windows 7 becomes generally available this week, Gray writes. Next July, XP SP3 will enter extended support as well. With the release of Windows 7's first service pack, scheduled to be a year or so after its initial release, OEM licenses bundled with every PC will no longer have downgrade rights to XP. This means that to deploy Windows XP on a new PC, companies will have to purchase volume license copies of Windows along with the new PCs or use existing, unused Windows volume licenses. Some features that Forrester recommends IT departments prepare for include: DirectAccess, which lets remote workers connect to corporate networks without the use of a VPN; BranchCache, which speeds up access to networks in remote offices that are away from corporate headquarters; BitLocker To Go, an extension of the BitLocker hard-drive encryption feature introduced in Vista that will now protect removable devices like external hard drives and USB thumb drives; AppLocker, which aims to protect users from running unauthorized software; and federated search, which promises to simplify access to data across local and remote networks. Business Reasons Encourage Upgrade to Windows 7 Forrester has found that the enterprise features in Windows 7 will help companies improve networking and security and ultimately cut costs.

Improved Client Virtualization Can Accelerate Deployment Plans Windows 7 ships with Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode, which provide the ability to run apps not yet compatible with Windows 7 in an XP-compatible virtual machine. Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Moreover, customers with software assurance agreements can use MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), a subscription-based suite of apps that includes virtualization technologies allowing IT pros to deploy and manage virtual images, "thus removing the last barriers to deploy Windows 7," writes Gray. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.

Oracle breaks silence on Sun plans in ad

Oracle Corp. ended it silence Thursday on its post-merger plans for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Unix systems in an advertisement aimed at Sun customers to keep them from leaving the Sparc and Solaris platforms. Ever since Oracle announced in April its plans to acquire Sun, its competitors - notably IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. - have been relentlessly pursuing Sun's core customer base, its Sparc and Solaris users. Oracle's ad to "Sun customers," makes a number of promises that includes spending more "than Sun does now," on developing Sparc and Solaris, as well as boosting service and support by having "more than twice as many hardware specialists than Sun does now." Analysts see Oracle's ad as a defensive move that doesn't answer some of the big questions ahead of the $7.4 billion merger with Sun . In fact, there may be a lot of room for skepticism and parsing of Oracle's claims, despite their apparent black and white assertions.

Among the top hardware makers, Sun registered the biggest decline in server revenue in the second quarter, offering evidence that this protracted merger may be eroding Sun's value. Europe is allowing until mid-January to sort this out, which keeps the merger in limbo for another quarter. Oracle wanted the acquisition completed by now but the European Commission this month said it would delay its antitrust review because of "serious concerns" about its impact on the database market. Analysts point out that Oracle's plans to spend more "than Sun does now," may be a little hallow because Sun's spending on developing Sparc and Solaris is probably at a low. "The ad sounds convincing - but perhaps being a word nitpicker, the Sun does now' might not mean much if Sun has drastically cut back due to plummeting sales," Rich Partridge, an analyst at Ideas International Ltd., said in an e-mail. "I think someone at Oracle suddenly realized that Sun was bleeding so badly that what would be left when Oracle finally got control would be worth a small fraction of what they paid and no one would buy the hardware unit," Rob Enderle, an independent analyst, said in an e-mail. But Enderle said the ad's claims do not preclude Oracle from selling its hardware division, and says the company "will have to support the unit for a short time after taking control; during that short time they can easily outspend Sun's nearly non-existent budgets." Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., said if it was Oracle's plan to start on day one of the merger to shop the Sparc processor around, "would they have put this ad out? Taken at face value, the ad seems to indicate that Oracle will keep Sun's hardware and microprocessor capability and not spin it off, as some analysts believe possible.

Probably not," he said. "Does it preclude Oracle from changing their mind? Indeed, Oracle's major competitive concern was indicated in the ad in a quote by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: "IBM, we're looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business." No. Companies change their mind all the time." An erosion of Sun's customer also hurts Oracle, because a lot of Sun customers are also Oracle customers, and Oracle doesn't want its existing customer to go to IBM and move away from Oracle's platform, Haff said.

Ballmer: Windows 7 sells twice as fast as past operating systems

Microsoft Corp. said today that Windows 7 has sold twice as many units as any other Microsoft operating system in the same time period. Those Windows 7 sales include pre-orders that Microsoft and partners began taking in June. During its annual shareholders' meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer also dismissed market share gains by Apple Inc.'s Mac computer to "a couple of tenths of a percent" and said that many young people would eventually outgrow their preference for Macs. "Some of it is marketing, some of it is phase of life," Ballmer said in response to a shareholder question about Microsoft's poor perception among younger buyers. "The truth is we do quite well, even among college students. "Windows 7 gives us a real opportunity to get back that audience," he continued. "With the down economy, people understand that the Mac is a lot more expensive for essentially the same computer" as Windows 7. NPD Group reported earlier this month that first-week retail sales of Windows 7 in North America were 234% higher than Vista's were at launch. The Mac has been making strong market share gains for most of this decade, though that has been limited mostly to North American consumers.

It ranks in fourth place, behind Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer Inc. In the most recent third quarter, Apple's unit shipments grew 6.8% year-over-year to give it 8.8% of the U.S. market, according to Gartner Inc. Ballmer said Microsoft plans to keep investing in Web search, the Windows Phone operating system (formerly known as Windows Mobile), and cutting-edge technologies, such as the Xbox's in-air motion controller, Project Natal. We have about 10%-12%, Android has 3%, iPhone about 20%, RIM 20%-25%, and Nokia about 45%." "It is a competitive game," he continued. "We have a lot of opportunities to improve our products and market position." Addressing persistent rumors of a Microsoft-manufactured phone, such as a Zune Phone, Ballmer said, "We think we have the right strategy, which is to focus on the software, not build a phone, and offer a diversity of phones like we offer a diversity of Windows PCs." He defended Windows Phone from a questioner, saying it was a "small but important fact, that we have quite a bit more market share than Android.

Is Twitter-only gadget TwitterPeek a one-hit wonder?

There's a new gadget out today that will let people Twitter while they're on the go. And that's going to be a problem, according to one analyst. The issue is that it's the only thing the device, dubbed TwitterPeek , can do. Gadget-maker Peek unveiled its TwitterPeek mobile device today on Amazon.com.

Even businesses that Twitter will dig TwitterPeek as a convenient way to stay connected with their customers." But the gadget market has moved beyond devices that can only do one thing. The company is touting the $99 device for people who don't have a smartphone or data plan. "TwitterPeek will make it easy and affordable for everyone who doesn't have a smartphone to really enjoy Twitter on the go," said "Peekster-in-Chief" Amol Sarva, in a statement. ""Twitter die-hards will appreciate its 'always-on' instant tweet delivery and newbies will finally 'get Twitter' once they have TwitterPeek in hand. Are users going to lay down money for a gadget that can't multi-function as a cell phone, camera, digital organizer, video camera and GPS navigator? So for the first year, users will be shelling out $146.70 just for the ability to tweet. Dan Olds, principal analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said he doesn't think so. "Just what everyone wants, one more device to carry around," Olds said. "In order to get on the TweetPeek bus, customers will have to pony up $99 and, after six months, an additional $7.95 per month. And only tweet . This thing is just a piece of high-impact plastic that can send and receive great thoughts in 140 character servings.

That would be handy." I don't see the point." While mobility seems to be the next wave for Web 2.0, Olds added that he doesn't think TwitterPeek will be in a position to benefit from it. "Mobile is certainly going to be an increasingly important part of the advance of Web 2.0, but single-function devices like TweetPeek aren't the route mobile is going to take," said Olds. "I guess people could duct tape this thing to whatever old archaic non-Web browsing cell phone they have and maybe to a cheap digital camera too.

Quick actions help financial firm avoid security disaster

While most of the IT world has been spared a devastating security attack like Blaster and Sasser for the last few years, the damage wrought by all manner lesser-known computer viruses continues to inflict corporate pain. 10 of the Worst Moments in Network Security History For example, New York City-based investment firm Maxim Group, faced a security ordeal this year when a virus outbreak pummeled the company's Windows-based desktop computers and servers. "On early April 15th, a few people called to say they were having problems with their computers," relates John Michaels, CTO there in describing how the investment firm's IT staff started to get an inkling that morning that something was terribly wrong. "After looking into it, we knew something bad was happening, affecting all our users, and my servers." Malware was disabling applications by corrupting .exe files so they wouldn't open once they were closed, while also making thousands of connections to servers, saturating the network. "It damaged all the .exe files by corrupting them," says Michaels. "People were logging on and getting a blank screen." The virus was altering the registry of the computers. Maxim Group didn't have a centralized antivirus product in place, having allowed various groups to go their own way with differing products. In response, Maxim Group told the approximately 325 computer users not to shut down the computers while Michaels and his team contacted vendors for assistance.

The decision to change that practice was made on the spot. It wasn't easy. "Symantec took about three days to identify what the variant of the virus was," Michaels says. "They said they had never seen a variant of this." The virus was finally identified as a variant on "Sality," an older virus that strikes at .exe and now also will install a backdoor and Trojan. "We asked Symantec, are we the only ones telling you about this? Antimalware vendor Symantec was called in to set up a centralized antivirus server, while also attempting to analyze what the malware was and advise on clean-up. And they said 'We have 3 million infected.'"Cleaning up more than 300 virus-riddled PCs was a huge headache. In the course of beating back Sality, Michaels says he also contacted another vendor, Cymtec Systems, whose product he had demoed, to install the security vendor's Sentry gateway, which monitors traffic and bandwidth usage, enforcing Web site policies and blocking antimalware. Symantec advised total re-imaging of the computers, which Maxim Group undertook, a process that consumed several weeks.

The reason for the Sentry gateway is to prevent employees from going to "Web sites they probably shouldn't," especially as Web surfing raises the risks of malware infection, Michaels says. To this day, Michaels says he's not sure how the Sality variant got into Maxim Group's network to explode in that April 15 outbreak. "Maybe it was a Web site or a USB device, I don't know," Michaels says. But the virus outbreak also showed there was communication from the infected PCs to what might be a botnet. "They were connecting to rogue Internet sites," Michaels says, saying Sentry would help monitor for that kind of activity in the future. But on that day things changed in terms of the investment firm deciding to enforce stricter Internet usage policies. "Before this episode, we allowed social network sites, but we don't now," Michaels says. And are the old Blaster and Sasser worms that struck with such devastation over half a decade ago gone?

Social networking sites are gaining a reputation as places where malware gets distributed, and if there's no clear business reason for using them, they're put off limits. Unfortunately not, says the "Top Cyber Security Risks" report released this week by SANS Institute in collaboration with TippingPoint and Qualys. The report — which examined six months of data related to 6,000 organizations using intrusion-prevention gear and 100 million vulnerability-assessment scans on 9 million computers to get a picture of various attack types — notes "Sasser and Blaster, the infamous worms of 2003 and 2004, continue to infect many networks."

Mac News Briefs: Chronos updates SOHO Notes, Organizer

Chronos overhauled both SOHO Notes and SOHO Organizer Thursday, adding a slew of changes to its note management and information organization applications. The application also provides a way to store voice, video, and photo notes. SOHO Notes 8 adds new ways to view notes, with Cover Flow and Icon views to go with a standard list view. In addition, users will be able to sync notes with their iPhone or iPod touch via the new NoteLife mobile app. (As this article was published, NoteLife was not yet available from Apple's App Store.) SOHO Notes 8 also features new backup and encryption systems as well as overall performance improvements, Chronos says.

The look of Desktop Calendar is customizable, and users can position it at any of nine different locations. The new version costs $40, with a family pack available for $70. Users who bought SOHO Notes 7.x after July 21, 2009, can upgrade for free; otherwise, upgrades cost $25. Changes in SOHO Organizer 8 include a desktop calendar feature that puts users' schedules on the desktop for convenient viewing. Organizer also features e-mail integration and the ability to record or shoot video, photo, or voice notes and attach them to contacts. SOHO Organizer 8 costs $100, with a family pack available for $180. As with Notes, anyone who bought SOHO Organizer 7.x after July 21 can upgrade for free; others can upgrade for $50.-Philip Michaels Bug fixes highlight NetNewsWire update NewsGator on Thursday announced the release of NetNewsWire 3.2.2, the latest update to its popular news-reading application for the Mac. Other features include a new print preview and performance improvements.

The new version primarily fixes issues in earlier iterations, such as a bug where command-W would accidentally close a tab instead of a window, a problem where the program could crash while getting the unread count of flagged items, and a broken Check for Updates feature (as a result, you must download the update manually). In addition, NetNewsWire now sports a French localization. The new version incorporates a number of fixes for users running Snow Leopard, including a pair of crashing bugs. NetNewsWire 3.2.2 costs $10 and is also available as a free ad-supported download; it requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.-Dan Moren Delicious Library update rolls out Snow Leopard fixes The latest update to Delicious Monster's media-cataloging software, Delicious Library 2.3, was announced on Thursday. Other enhancements include the introduction of Help files, faster browsing in cover view, and faster selection of large shelves. Delicious Library 2.3 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later and a license costs $40.-DM Sente 6 academic reference manager released Sente updated its self-titled academic reference manager this week, adding synchronized libraries, reference tagging, and PDF markup features. There are a number of other improvements with iSight scanning, Bluetooth scanners, and the program's Feedback Panel.

Sente 6 features synchronized libraries, making it easier to maintain multiple copies of a reference library on multiple computers. New PDF markup commands can be used to highlight passages in a PDF file. The update's hierarchical reference tagging allows users to assign and use tags on references; the tags can be assigned hierarchically, and Sente will treat references with child tags as though they had been assigned parent tags. Also, Sente 6 includes support for hundreds of new bibliography formats. Twitterrific 3.2.1 fixes a number of bugs, such as an issue where command-C would not work on Snow Leopard, a problem where tweets were not deleted, and a problem with URLs that use Unicode encoding in the domain name.

A single-user license for Sente 6 costs $130; academic licenses cost $90, with an Undergraduate Edition-which works with 250-reference libraries-available for $35. Users who bought Sente 5 on or after January 1, 2009 can upgrade for free; otherwise, an upgrade costs $40. Sente 6 runs on Mac OS X 10.5.8 and later on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.-PM Iconfactory updates Twitter client for Mac The Iconfactory released an update to its Twitter client, Twitterrific, on Thursday. In addition the program now features a keyboard shortcut to view a tweet in your Web browser: command-shift-left arrow. In addition, it fixes a number of bugs, such as drawing glitches in Snow Leopard and overwriting existing files when exporting to disc. Twitterrific 3.2.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later-a new license costs $15.-DM Snowtape adds support for Windows Media streams Snowtape 1.3, the newest version of Vemedio's application for recording Internet radio, was released on Thursday with support for Windows Media streams, a new option to export songs in the MP3 format, and support for HTTP authentication. Snowtape costs $29 and requires Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later.-DM

HP upgrades Unix platform with data protection

HP this week unveiled updates to its HP-UX Unix OS and Serviceguard high-availability software, offering capabilities in data protection, data privacy, and business continuity. The software packages run on HP Integrity and HP 900 servers. [ Check out InfoWorld's report on how HP has been looking to lure Sun Solaris Unix users to HP-UX. ] The Unix upgrade offers automated features to reduce maintenance requirements, improve availability, and enhance security, the company said. Update 5 of HP-UX 11i v3 and Serviceguard restore application services in the event of hardware or software failure, HP said. Users can lower operational costs and increase efficiency in such demanding applications as online transaction processing or business intelligence, according to HP. "Comprehensive" data protection is provided through encryption for data in transit and at rest, HP said.

Update 5 provides as much as 99 percent of raw disk performance, enabling reduction in operational costs for large databases and accelerated access to business-critical information. Enhanced data privacy is provided through Bastille, an automated system-hardening tool that configures a system to protect against unauthorized access. Administrator productivity is improved with expanded security bulletin analysis and patch maintenance. Business continuity is improved through minimization of downtime in the OS's Logical Volume Manager. Security issues are identified for as many as 100 systems in a single view when integrated with HP System Insight Manager. Simplified standards compliance is offered through PCI (Payment Card Industry) and Sarbanes-Oxley Act report templates HP Serviceguard, which is part of the HP Virtual Server Environment software suite, is integrated with HP-UX 11i to protect applications from down time, HP said.

Another improvement is elimination of business interruptions with Online Package Maintenance capabilities that run routine maintenance and upgrades while the system is active. Business connectivity is enabled during Serviceguard upgrades through a Dynamic Root Disk tool that reduces server network down time by 75 percent, the company said. Management of server connections is improved with a graphical cluster topology map for administration and configuration.  Also, traffic is coordinated between clustered servers and storage arrays.

Novell adds debugger to Mono to help Windows apps get to Linux

Novell Tuesday released a Mono-based plug-in for Visual Studio that gives developers a debugger to help them use Windows to design applications that will run on Linux. Mono Tools for Visual Studio is a plug-in for Microsoft's integrated development environment (IDE). The plug-in lets developers use Visual Studio to write and maintain applications that can run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Unix platforms. In addition, Novell is integrating its Suse Studio Online, which lets users build custom distributions of Linux so they can package their applications on an appliance loaded with a Linux operating system. Mono Tools for Visual Studio runs with Mono 2.4, which is available now, and 2.6, which is slated for release in December or January.

Novell's Mono is a .Net-compatible set of tools that includes a Common Language Runtime environment that enables the cross-platform capabilities. Mono Tools for Visual Studio does not support Mono on the iPhone because it requires a Macintosh. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows. Now we have a full debugger that people can use from the comfort of their Windows machines with Visual Studio and deploy their applications on remote Linux machines." Mono Tools adds a pull-down menu within Visual Studio that gives access to the debugging capabilities and other coding and testing functionality contained in Mono. Novell officials said the most important part of the plug-in is a debugger that will make it easier for Visual Studio users to tap Linux as a deployment platform. "We did not have a debugger story," says Miguel de Icaza, vice president of the developer platform at Novell and the creator of Mono. "People had to fly by instruments when developing their applications with .Net and wanting to deploy them on a Linux server.

The software also includes an integrated porting analysis tools that directs users onto non-Windows platforms without needing to know any of the development nuances for those platforms. The Professional Edition for individuals is $99, while the Enterprise Edition (one developer per organization) is $249, and the Ultimate Edition is $2,499. The Ultimate Edition includes a limited commercial license to redistribute Mono on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It also provides five enterprise developer licenses. Mono Tools for Visual Studio is available in three editions. Follow John on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnfontana

Ellison mocks Salesforce.com's 'itty bitty' application

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison mocked on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor Salesforce.com during a shareholder meeting Wednesday, saying its "itty bitty" application depends on Oracle's products. "We think Salesforce.com has got terrific underlying technology," he said in response to a question from a shareholder about Salesforce.com and the competitive pressures posed by the cloud-computing model. "In fact, everything they run is on an Oracle database. But they don't stop there. We think the Oracle database is fabulous cloud technology. On top of the Oracle database they build their applications using - what is it?

Oh, my God." Ellison's comments follow reports that Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff will be speaking at Oracle's OpenWorld conference during an "executive solution session." Salesforce is also a sponsor of OpenWorld this year. Oracle middleware. His appearance seemed surprising to some observers, given the history between the two companies. Indeed, Ellison's scathingly sarcastic remarks on Wednesday made it sound like the companies' rivalry has not dimmed at all. "Let's look at their technology," he said. "They buy computers. Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.com and once sat on its board, but left after a falling out with Benioff. They rent a room.

They buy electricity and plug it in. Uh, they put the computers in the room. They then buy an Oracle database to run on those computers and then they buy Oracle middleware to build their applications. A Salesforce.com spokesman wouldn't directly address Ellison's comments, but pointed to the company's successes. "Customers are moving towards cloud computing and away from traditional software," said Bruce Francis, vice president of corporate strategy, via e-mail. "We have more than 63,000 customers experiencing success in the cloud. Oh, excuse me, and then they build this little itty-bitty application for salesforce automation. ... Most of the technology at Salesforce.com is ours." In addition, a long list of companies have "chucked" Salesforce.com's software and replaced it with Oracle's on-demand CRM software, Ellison claimed. And, as we reported in August, the number of customers grew 32% in Q2."

Security researchers ask: Does self-destructing data really vanish?

Researchers this week published a paper describing how they broke Vanish, a secure communications system prototype out of the University of Washington that generated lots of buzz when introduced over the summer for its ability to make data self-destruct. But interesting wasn't good enough for researchers at Princeton University, the University of Texas and the University of Michigan, who wondered how well the system could really stand up to attack. I gave the system a whirl back in July and found it to be pretty interesting.

Ed Felten from Princeton describes in the Freedom to Tinker blog how he, a fellow researcher at Princeton and peers at the University of Michigan and University of Texas figured out how to beat Vanish. Such networks, the same kinds used to share music and other files, change over time as computers jump on or off. Their paper is titled "Defeating Vanish with Low-Cost Sybil Attacks Against Large DHTs."  Vanish exploits the churn on peer-to-peer networks by creating a key whenever a Vanish user puts the system to use and then divvying up that key and spreading across the P2P net. As such, portions of the key disappear forever and the original message can't be unencrypted. This led to some interesting technical discussions with the Vanish team about technical details of Vuze and Vanish, and about some alternative designs for Vuze and Vanish that might better resist attacks." Later, Felten ran into an ex-student now at the University of Texas who happened to be investigating Vanish as well, and they wound up collaborating. "The people who designed Vanish are smart and experienced, but they obviously made some kind of mistake in their original work that led them to believe that Vanish was secure - a belief that we now know is incorrect," Felten writes. Felten wrote that after reading about Vanish during the summer "I realized that some of our past thinking about how to extract information from large distributed data structures might be applied to attack Vanish. [S]tudent Scott Wolchok grabbed the project and started doing experiments to see how much information could be extracted from the Vuze DHT [Vuze is the P2P network used by Vanish and DHT is a distributed hash table]. If we could monitor Vuze and continuously record almost all of its contents, then we could build a Wayback Machine for Vuze that would let us decrypt [vanishing data objects] that were supposedly expired, thereby defeating Vanish's security guarantees." Felten goes on to tell an interesting tale about the timing of this realization and the experiments that followed. "We didn't want to ambush the Vanish authors with our break, so we took them aside at the [Usenix Security conference in Montreal in August] and told them about our preliminary results.

The University of Washington researchers investigated the other researchers' findings, updated Vanish and issued a report of their own on the experience.  Among other things, they came up with a way to make breaking Vanish more expensive, Felten writes. We do encourage researchers, however, to analyze it and improve upon it. The University of Washington researchers sum up their latest findings here as well, noting that Vanish does not have to be wedded to Vuze and in fact might be better based on a hybrid system that uses multiple distributed storage systems.  They write: "However, we recommend that at this time, the Vanish prototype only be used for experimental purposes. We strongly believe that realizing Vanish's vision would represent a significant step toward achieving privacy in today's unforgetful age." For more on network research, read our Alpha Doggs Blog. Follow Bob Brown on Twitter.

Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation leader soaks in stinging critique

After a stinging critique from a noted expert in establishing consortia, the leader of Microsoft's new CodePlex Foundation says such frank evaluation is welcome because the open source group's structure is a work in progress. The CodePlex Foundation's aim is to get open source and proprietary software companies working together. Sam Ramji, who is interim president of the CodePlex Foundation, was responding to last week's blog by Andy Updegrove, who said the group has a poorly crafted governance structure and looks like a sort of "alternative universe" of open source development.

Updegrove, a lawyer, noted expert on standards, and founder of ConsortiumInfo.org, laid out in a blog post five things Microsoft must change if it wants CodePlex to succeed: create a board with no fewer than 11 members; allow companies to have no more than one representative on the Board of Directors or Board of Advisors; organize board seats by category; establish membership classes with rights to nominate and elect directors; and commit to an open membership policy. He added, however, "There are some best practices [for running the boards of non-profits] that we are not as familiar with as we would want to be." Slideshow: Top 10 open source apps for Windows  Stephanie Davies Boesch, the foundation's secretary and treasurer, is the only board member with experience sitting on a non-profit's board. Despite the stinging tone in Updegrove's assessment, Ramji says he is thankful for the feedback. "Andy's been incredibly generous with his expertise and recommendations," Ramji says. "It is the kind of input and participation we were hoping to get by doing what is probably non-traditional for Microsoft but not necessarily non-traditional for non-profit foundations, which is to basically launch as a beta." For instance, Ramji says that the decision to go with only five people on the board came from Microsoft's experience that larger groups often have difficulty with decision making. Ramji says Updegrove's suggestion to have academic representation on the board was "outstanding. And basically it is re-writable. We did not think of that." And to Updegrove's point on becoming an open membership organization, Ramji says, "our goal is to become a membership organization and Andy has some excellent recommendations for that."He says the fact that Updegrove took the time to respond "in the format that he did is more proof that there is something worth doing here." Ramji, compares the Foundation's formation to the early days of a software development project. "We have said in these first 100 days we are looking at everything as a beta.

Obviously, there are some areas like contributions and licensing agreements we put a lot of time into but even those can be modified." Microsoft announced the foundation Sept. 10 with a stated goal "to enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." The company seeded the group with $1 million and Microsoft employees dominated the interim board of directors and board of advisors. One is a call for a broad independent organization that can bridge cultural and licensing gaps in order to help commercial developers participate in open source. Ramji says the foundation has spent the past couple of weeks listening to feedback in "Twitter messages, email, and phone calls in order to understand what people hope this can be." Within that feedback two patterns have emerged, Ramji says. The other focuses on creating a place where open source .Net developers can gain strong backing. "Look at projects related to Mono, you also can look at NUnit, NHibernate, we really feel optimistic that the Foundation could help them gain a higher level of credibility in the open source community. Miguel de Icaza, the founder of the Mono project and the creator of the Gnome desktop, is a member of the Foundation's interim board of directors. They feel they have been lacking that strong moral support," Ramji says.

From a high level, Ramji says the Foundation stands as a sort of enabler that helps independent developers, companies and developers working for those companies navigate the nuances and practices of open source development so they can either contribute source code to projects or open source their own technologies. "One suggestion has been that the Foundation should house all the best practices we have seen software companies and open source communities use," said Ramji. "We want to have a place where everyone interested in how to participate can come and read and if they choose they can use our license agreements or can use the legal structure of the Foundation to grant patent licenses and copyrights for developers and derivative works." Those licensing agreements have a distinct focus, Ramji said, on the rights that are related to code that is being contributed and on how to contribute the patent rights on that code. Ramji says the goal is to service multiple projects, multiple technologies and multiple platforms rather than having one specific technology base, which is how most current open source foundations are structured. "It's early days and we have received a lot of good ideas from experts in a variety of fields from law to code to policy that is what we had hoped for," says Ramji. "Someone wrote it is nice to see Microsoft engaging early on without all the answers and to have the community solve what they would like to see. Once those issues are settled, code would be submitted using existing open source licenses. That is satisfying for me and refreshing to others. This is the right way to proceed." Follow John on Twitter

Malware Threat Emanates from Growing Unemployed Ranks

Looking at the statistics, February was a positively brutal month for workers being idled. There were 2,769 mass layoff actions putting throwing 295,477 out of work. Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the ugly numbers.

That's 542 mass layoff actions more than January and 57,575 laid off. The BLS only obliquely breaks out what could represent IT workers as "professional and technical services." Not surprisingly, manufacturing bore the brunt of February's layoffs accounting for 47% of the unemployment claims, but IT folks could represent a small piece in all the 19 industry sectors that BLS follows. I wondered how many of those were IT people and what percentage might turn to cyber crime. Suffice it to say there's plenty of IT folks with little or nothing to do. The story explores how idled workers in China are turning to cyber crime.

That out of work IT professionals turn to cyber crime should come as no surprise so the headline China becoming the world's malware factory on top of an IDG News service is to be expected. Everyone needs to be vigilant (but not turn into vigilantes). Indeed, a story at Chief Security Officer cites a Symantec study that says 98 percent of organizations suffer "tangible loss" as the result of cyber crime (more than a little self-interest on Symantec's part should be noted). With the third variant of the Conficker worm set to strike on April 1, take the message of vigilance to heart (let's hope it's as tepid as Y2K). By the way, the BBC reported this morning that the U.K. Government is monitoring social networking sites like Facebook to "tackle criminal gangs and terrorists." That's vigilance of a controversial nature. It's obvious: the latter. Is this just another day in the cyber jungle or is the cyber crime problem exacerbated by the expanding ranks of the idled? So if you want to freshen up your knowledge of malware, check out the many primers on the subject. I like Wikipedia's or check out the Chief Security Officer web site.