Report: Hathaway resigns as acting cybersecurity czar

Melissa Hathaway, who was regarded as one of the top contenders for the newly created position of White House cybersecurity coordinator, has withdrawn from consideration and resigned as acting senior director for cyberspace citing personal reasons, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Hathaway's resignation is effective Aug. 24. She had been viewed as a top contender for the post of White House cybersecurity coordinator, which was announced by President Barack Obama in May. According to the Journal, Hathaway asked not to be considered for that post about two weeks ago, citing personal reasons.

Hathaway, a former Bush administration aide, was working as cybercoordination executive for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) when she was appointed to her new role by President Obama in February. She was directed to conduct a 60-day review of governmentwide cybersecurity preparedness.

Hathaway's highly anticipated review was completed in May, and recommended several measures that the government needed to take to bolster cybersecurity. One of her recommendations was to establish a cybersecurity office within the executive offices of the president to oversee and enforce the development and implementation of a national cyber security policy.

As cybercoordination executive for the ODNI during the Bush Administration, Hathaway headed a multiagency group called the National Cyber Study Group that was instrumental in developing the multibillion-dollar, highly classified Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (CNCI) that was approved by former President Bush in early 2008. Since then, right up to the time she was reassigned by Obama, Hathaway had been in charge of coordinating and monitoring the CNCI's implementation.

Hathaway's sudden resignation is likely to raise questions about the delay in naming the new White House cybersecurity coordinator. Though it's been more than eight weeks since Obama announced his plans to appoint a White House cyber czar, there is no indication that he is close to naming anyone to the post.

Some observers say the administration may be having a hard time finding someone to fill the role because it is expected to be a largely consultative position with little real enforcement clout.

Mac News: PocketMac releases RingtoneStudio 2 software

PocketMac announced on Tuesday the release of RingtoneStudio 2.0, an update to its software for creating and editing iPhone ringtones. Included in version 2.0 are visual sound editing, which lets you view the actual waveforms in realtime with a zoom of up to 16x, volume control for sound clips, and the ability to add fade-ins or fade-outs to any ringtone.

RingtoneStudio 2.0 costs $30 for a new license, or $10 to upgrade from version 1.0; it requires Mac OS X 10.5 and supports any model of iPhone.-Dan Moren

Sonar adds Leopard, Snow Leopard compatibility

Matterform media has released Sonar 2.0, an update to the real-time security monitor for the Mac. It's now compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Sonar displays realtime info about changes made to your hard drive; it's helpful for debugging apps that write too frequently to the hard disk and for monitoring untrusted apps downloaded from the Internet. Sonar costs $18.-Peter Cohen

SharewarePublisher fixes several bugs

SharewarePublisher 1.1 is an improved version of Ergonis Software's shareware submission tool and assistant for Mac OS X. The software assists shareware software developers with submitting information about their products to software listing sites and repositories, and works with more than 100 Web sites. The latest update adds a function to extract a category from a Web page and store it in the database, fixes drag and drop in Snow Leopard, and more.

SharewarePublisher requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later and costs €70.-PC

Freeway extends CSS menu creation tool

Softpress Systems has updated Freeway to version 5.4. The new release of the Web page design software features an extended Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) menu creation tool and AddThis social bookmarking capabilities, among other new features and bug fixes.

Freeway 5.4 is a free update for registered owners; it comes in Pro and Express versions for $249 and $79 respectively.-PC

Palm delays webOS developer kit, Mojo

With little explanation, Palm has delayed the release of Mojo, the software development kit for its webOS platform, until the end of the summer.

Hackers dissect Palm Pre

The operating system, based on a Linux kernel with an embedded Webkit rendering and JavaScript engine, is the foundation for building applications for the just-released Palm Pre. Mojo provides an array of interfaces and services that let developers easily access Pre features and functions.

The delay, announced on the Palm developers blog, makes it more difficult for existing PalmOS developers and the new army of HTML and JavaScript developers to coalesce behind the new operating system and create the wealth of applications that will make it a viable challenge to Apple's iPhone.

"We've been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren't ready yet. Our goal is to make the SDK available to everyone by the end of this summer," wrote Palm's Chuq Von Rospach in a June 19 post on the Palm developer blog.

But Palm is trying to expand the number of developers with access to Mojo as rapidly as possible in a series of stages, he added.

Starting at once, Palm will "accelerate the growth of the [Mojo] early access program, expanding as quickly as resources allow, to include thousands of developers in the next few weeks," Rospach wrote.

At the same time, Palm said it will start publishing new webOS, development, and Mojo information outside of the early access program, and free up existing Mojo users finally to talk more freely about the SDK and webOS.

Developers working with the early-release version of Mojo have been impressed: Applications are written in JavaScript, HTML, HTML 5 and Cascading Style Sheets, all widely used and well-known Web development tools. The webOS with its embedded Webkit engine runs these programs, which mimic traditional native applications in performance and interactivity, natively on the Palm Pre handset.

Plenty of developers aren't happy about the release target, and vented on the Palm blog.

"END OF SUMMER!? Am I the only one [appalled] at this??" posted Jeremy.

"You have developers climbing all over themselves trying to help your platform be a success and trying to help your ecosystem grow, but you just keep putting us off with vague promises of releasing Soon or the End of the Summer or Early Access or "hundreds" and "thousands", but the longer you delay actually getting the SDK in the hands of developers like myself who are ready, willing, and able to use it to make your platform a success the more of an uphill battle it will be once you finally do," wrote Kyle Goodwin, CEO of Palindrome Softworks, a custom developer of reusable business software.

Hackers have already been busy dissecting and working with the webOS software even before the phone went on sale earlier this month. One poster on the Palm blog alluded to those activities, urging Palm to leverage it by releasing Mojo as soon as possible.

"Given the success of the experimental/homebrew community in less than two weeks, without official support, documentation, or debugging tools, I can only imagine that the pool of quality apps will explode exponentially once the SDK is released," wrote Jason LaBrun.

Another poster, Adam, wrote, "Come on guys. You need to open up this phone and get the apps flowing. It's sad that more exciting things are coming out of the Palm/webOS dev wiki instead of Palm itself! It's like you've dropped a wonderful gadget into the hands of thousands of people and now it has to just sit there looking pretty for months before [its] potential can be unleashed! You need to pull all-nighters and get this SDK released BEFORE that fall deadline."

Mozilla to let enterprises build custom Firefox browsers

Mozilla is readying a program that will allow companies to build their own customized browsers based on the next version of Firefox, which will be out in a few weeks.

The Build Your Own Browser program is a good fit for enterprises that want to create a customized browser that can be easily installed across multiple corporate desktops, said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp.

Through the program, which will start sometime soon after Firefox 3.5 is released at the end of June, companies can use a Web application provided by Mozilla to specify certain customizations for the browser - such as bookmarks to certain sites or corporate intranets or portals, he said.

Companies also can brand the browser through technology called Personas that allows them to code a skin across the top of the browser with a company's logo on it, Beltzner said.

Once the custom browser is developed, the application then will send it to the company and give it an installation program that makes it possible to install the browser across all desktops in the company, Beltzner added.

The bulk of enterprises still use Internet Explorer if they mandate a browser for company use, because Microsoft provides provisioning and installation software for IE that makes it easy for enterprises to control browser settings and install across all corporate desktops, said Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish.

Mozilla has not historically done this, but something like the Build Your Own Browser program is a good start to encourage enterprises to use Firefox over IE, she said.

"If Mozilla can enable some customization to developers and IT professionals to not only brand but give greater control to manage and administer the Firefox browser, that will certainly have companies take another look at it to make it the default browser of choice," McLeish said.

Up until now Mozilla has offered "deep customization tools" for Firefox, but they weren't always obvious to the average user and there has never been a good way for someone to build a customized version of the browser, Beltzner said.

Mozilla also has not provided software akin to Microsoft's installation pack for IE, but does make it possible for people to build their own multiple-machine installers for Firefox, given that the browser is open source and applications for it can easily be developed, he said.

Firefox has about 300 million users worldwide, and Firefox 3.5 will be available in more than 70 languages on the day it is available, according to Mozilla. A beta of the browser is available online now.