Information Technology And More

Google bolsters 3-D API for browser

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:48:00 +0000

Google's O3D API has gotten a substantial upgrade aimed at enhancing O3D's ability to run on many different types of hardware

Google this week began offering a "substantial" update to its O3D API for building rich, interactive 3-D applications in a browser, tuning it for different types of hardware.

Highlighted at the Google I/O conference in May and shown running in a Google Chrome browser at that time, O3D enables 3-D graphics and features a JavaScript API. IT began as an effort to establish an open Web standard for 3-D graphics. An update was released Monday.

[ Google is also seeking a faster Web. ]

"With today's release, we focused on addressing a theme we heard in the requests and feedback from the community: That O3D should run as well as possible on many different types of hardware," said Google product manager Henry Bridge in a blog post. "Toward that end, we're releasing two new additions: Software rendering and feature requirements. If you've already installed the O3D plugin, you should receive these additions automatically."

Software rendering lets O3D use the main processor to render 3-D images if the machine running the application does not have supported graphics hardware. The concept of feature requirements, meanwhile, will help minimize how often O3D has to fall back to software rendering.

"Feature requirements allow developers to state upfront that their app will require certain hardware capabilities to render properly. If the machine running the app supports those features, O3D will run it fully hardware accelerated; if however, it is lacking any of the required capabilities, O3D will drop into a software rendered mode," Bridge said.

Other features include a full-screen mode to make O3D applications more absorbing and a community gallery featuring demonstrations that use O3D. Developers can submit applications for inclusion in the gallery.

O3D is intended to use hardware acceleration on a variety of GPU chip sets to provide high-end real-time 3-D graphics on most systems.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.

IBM offers open source machine learning compiler

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:47:00 +0000

Big Blue partners with European Union venture on software to optimize applications

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

IBM is announcing on Tuesday availability of an open source machine learning compiler, which the company said intelligently optimizes applications, thus meaning shorter development times and bigger performance gains.

Called Milepost GCC, the compiler is the result of a collaboration between IBM and partners in the European Union-funded Milepost consortium. The project is an extension of the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) effort.

[ Also in the development world, IBM recently pushed agile development as a better alternative to waterfall-style development. ]

IBM expects the compiler to dramatically reduce time-to-market for new software designs. Applications can be more quickly tuned for a targeted architecture. Initial IBM experiments on IBM System p servers had an average of an 18 percent performance improvement on embedded application benchmarks, IBM said.

"Our technology automatically learns how to get the best performance from the hardware -- whether mobile phones, desktops, or entire systems -- the software will run faster and use less energy," said Bilha Mendelson, manager of code optimization technologies at IBM Research. "We opened the compiler environment so it can access artificial intelligence and machine learning guidance to automatically determine exactly what specific optimizations should be used and when to apply them to ramp up performance."

The Milepost GCC compiler is available from the consortium Web site. Also, the consortium has launched a code-tuning Web site available to developers.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.

Google fixes search problem in Outlook sync tool for Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:47:00 +0000

The Google plug-in disabled Windows Desktop Search in Outlook

By Juan Carlos Perez | IDG News Service

Google has fixed an issue with the Outlook synchronization tool it released recently for its Apps hosted communications and collaboration suite, Google said Tuesday.

That tool, called Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, didn't play well with programs that interact directly with the Outlook data file, such as Windows Desktop Search. Specifically, Apps Sync, during installation, disabled Windows Desktop Search, which lets users find information in Outlook.

[ Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. ]

However, the new version of Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook now works properly with Windows Desktop Search. The plug-in has always worked properly with Outlook's native search feature, according to Google.

Another change to the Google tool is that it now lets users access Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in, which the Google tool didn't support before.

Other enhancements to Apps Sync are the ability to enable or disable auto-archive during installation and an improved two-way synchronization of notes in contacts, Google said.

Existing users will get the upgrade automatically. New users will find the new version here.

Google launched Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook on June 9 in order to give users the option to use Outlook as a front end to the Gmail and Calendar component of the Premier and Education editions of Apps.

Currently, the plug-in lets people synchronize e-mail, contacts and calendar items between Outlook and Apps, but it doesn't provide the full parity of features that exist between Outlook and Exchange.

This is why a variety of industry analysts are recommending that before deciding to replace Exchange with Apps, IT managers run tests of the plug-in to make sure that their Outlook users will not miss functionality they need for their work.

The plug-in isn't available to users of the Standard edition of Apps, which is free and limited to 50 end-users per domain. Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is for Apps' Premier edition, which costs $50 per user annually, and for Apps' Education edition, which is free and aimed at students, teachers and school staffers.

Microsoft didn't respond to a request for comment about the newest version of the Google plug-in.

Oracle offers ISVs monthly SaaS platform pricing

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:46:00 +0000

Both existing and new customers can opt to pay by the month instead of buying perpetual licenses

By Chris Kanaracus | IDG News Service

Oracle is now offering ISVs the ability to pay by the month for its SaaS (software as a service) infrastructure platform, versus shelling out major sums for perpetual licenses.

The vendor's platform for SaaS combines a variety of its software, including the Oracle database, Fusion Middleware, Oracle VM, and Enterprise Manager, into a stack for building and deploying SaaS applications.

[ Tomorrow, Oracle will release the long-awaited Fusion Middleware 11g. ]

Many SaaS vendors are already using the system.

But Oracle has primarily "serviced the high end" of the SaaS market to date, and the new pricing model will allow the company to "reach a much broader base of ISVs," said Judson Althoff, senior vice president, worldwide alliances and channels, in a video message posted on his official Oracle blog Tuesday.

Under the new system, license fees would be paid each month and determined "as a percentage of Oracle's published processor based pricing for perpetual licenses," according to a company data sheet. Further details weren't immediately available.

The switch "represents a continued gradual easing of Oracle into the SaaS arena," particularly toward the infrastructure side of the space, as well as its own on-demand applications, 451 Group analyst China Martens said.

A wide range of PaaS (platform as a service) vendors are courting ISVs, and Oracle is trying to figure out its play, Martens said.

What's interesting is that some SaaS ISVs using Oracle technology, such as the sales compensation management vendor Xactly, are also advocates of Salesforce.com's Force.com development platform, she added.

"It's a sign that SaaS ISVs that started out very closely aligned to Salesforce.com are continuing that relationship as they grow, but the next place they look for PaaS, particularly if they're looking to attract more higher midmarket and enterprise customers, is Oracle," Martens said.

But another observer questioned how much more business Oracle will gain from new companies, given the cost of its software, monthly pricing or not.

"For many [SaaS vendors] the price of 'free' for open source middleware -- be it the LAMP stack, JBoss, Tomcat, et cetera -- is hard to beat," said RedMonk analyst Michael Coté.

That said, monthly payments could be attractive to Oracle's current ISV clients since that system maps to the way they're already charging customers, Coté added.

But another RedMonk analyst, James Governor, had a more skeptical reaction.

"Oracle is the industry's leading tech-fashion conglomerate. Nobody knows next season's hemlines like [CEO] Larry Ellison. He likes to act like everyone else is about hype while he just sells classics -- but he is truly superb at tailoring to the latest fashions," Governor said via e-mail. "ISV pricing on a monthly plan responds to current industry trends for low [capital expenditure] IT."

Firefox 3.5 hits general availability

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Mozilla's latest browser features a speed boost and HTML 5 capabilities

Mozilla fired another shot in the browser wars today with the release of Firefox 3.5. The browser, which was previewed before going to the Release Candidate stage, was driven by quality instead of a timeline, according to the company.

The focus for this version of Firefox is speed. Vlad Vukicevic, tech lead for the Firefox project at Mozilla, says that "the main significance [of the browser upgrade] is that Firefox 3.5 is really, really fast."

[ Firefox 3.5's speed boost lines up nicely with Google's push for a faster Web. | InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese compared Firefox 3.5 and IE8 side by side. ]

Aside from the speed boost, Firefox 3.5 also boasts HTML 5 capabilities for handling audio and video, and a JavaScript performance and stability boost courtesy of the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

In a nod to data security concerns, the browser will include a private browsing mode, in which Web site visits are not recorded or saved, and for developers, Mozilla is including CSS enhancements and the HTML drag-and-drop API. Enterprises will be able to customize Firefox 3.5 via the Build Your Own Browser program.

Mozilla no doubt is hoping Firefox 3.5 will help reverse the company's falling browser market share; on June 16, Firefox's market share was 21.4 percent, down from 22.51 percent in May, according to Net Applications.

InfoWorld

Cisco won't take on Amazon in cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:44:00 +0000

Cisco's CTO says the company will set itself apart by helping enterprises move resources among internal and external clouds instead of becoming a pay-as-you-go cloud provider

By Stephen Lawson | IDG News Service

Cisco Systems won't try to compete with pay-as-you-go cloud computing providers like Amazon, and instead will sell its infrastructure to those companies and provide its own software as a service.

The company sees virtualization as the next major computing model and its own Unified Computing System (UCS) as the first step toward a fully virtualized data center, CTO Padmasree Warrior said in a briefing Monday during the Cisco Live user conference in San Francisco. The company's presence in both enterprise and service provider networks makes it the ideal partner for companies adopting cloud computing, because they want to gain cloud benefits like scalability and disaster recovery without pushing out control of all their infrastructure, she said.

[ Check out InfoWorld's cloud computing InfoClip, a three-minute animation that provides a crisp, cogent overview. ]

Cisco is positioning itself in the cloud world as all major vendors find their places there. Warrior said her company's approach differs from those of rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM because those vendors are moving into the sale of cloud computing resources. Cisco doesn't see a big enough opportunity in that business, she said.

There are four layers in cloud computing, Warrior said: SaaS (software as a service), development platforms as a service, capacity as a service, and the underlying infrastructure for providing those services. Cisco already provides SaaS in the form of its WebEx collaboration and IronPort security products. Its WebEx Connect offering for third-party application development is a platform as a service. Cisco will leave the business of selling raw capacity to others while supplying the infrastructure for those kinds of companies, Warrior said.

With Cisco-based cloud infrastructures available for hire, enterprises will be able to hold on to some of their own resources while tapping into public clouds and smoothly moving data, applications, and computing workloads between the two, according to Warrior. Cisco's UCS, which combines the company's new blade server platforms with networking and storage elements, is a step toward that capability, she said. It's a pre-integrated architecture that removes the burden of manual integration from the enterprise IT department, according to Cisco. The company has already sold UCS to some customers, Warrior said.

Cisco doesn't intend to have a completely closed system between enterprise and cloud-provider networks, she added. Where the infrastructure on one end isn't Cisco's, the company's goal is to work with other vendors' systems, she said.

The company also gave an update on its WebEx SaaS collaboration product. Cisco is updating the WebEx interface to appeal to "Main Street" users in addition to the "early adopters" who have made up much of its user base, said Doug Dennerline, senior vice president of Cisco's Collaboration Software Group.

The software will be oriented less toward virtual meeting spaces and more toward individuals whom a user collaborates with, he said. For example, users will be able to click on a contact's name in an instant-messaging buddy list and see a history of interaction between the user and that person, such as what meetings they have both attended. If any of those meetings were recorded, links to those recordings would also pop up.

Cisco is also using its acquisition of PostPath last year to create a cloud-based e-mail system integrated with the presence technology it acquired from Jabber, Dennerline said. And its move to bring smartphone users into WebEx is continuing, with more than 150,000 downloads so far of the WebEx application for the iPhone, he said. Cisco is also talking with Research In Motion, Nokia and Samsung about smartphone clients, he added.

Cloud computing is critical for collaboration because the next wave of productivity gains will come from inter-company collaboration, Warrior said.

There is a trend toward richer collaboration between companies, where so far most tools for interaction have been within organizations, said IDC analyst Abner Germanow, who attended the briefing. This is where Cisco has an edge over its competitors, namely Microsoft and IBM, which have dominated intra-company collaboration, he said. The faster that enterprises move in this direction, the better for Cisco, Germanow said, because its rivals are trying to catch up. However, the trend is likely to take two to five years to play out, he said.

Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and revisionist history

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:42:00 +0000

Microsoft zealots ignore their platform's past in an effort to bash Apple and Mac OS X

Last week, Microsoft revealed that Windows 7 would be priced similarly to Windows Vista. There were some discounts to be had -- a kind of "Crazy Eddy" pre-order sale for upgrade licenses -- but by and large the retail cost remained the same.

This, of course, resulted in criticism within the blogosphere. Some claimed that Microsoft didn't go far enough with its discounting -- that the company should essentially give the product away for free to Vista users (which is not going to happen) or at least be more aggressive with its stated retail pricing, which ranges from $130 to $200 depending on the Windows 7 version.

Many of these critics were Mac enthusiasts referencing Mac OS X Snow Leopard's more palatable-sounding upgrade price of $29. And they were quickly countered by the Microsoft apologists who noted how Windows 7 will at least run on some older systems, whereas Mac users with pre-Intel hardware are left out in the cold with regard to Apple's latest Mac OS X release.

[ Find out what Mac OS X Snow Leopard brings to business in InfoWorld's in-depth analysis. ]

It's this latter argument that caught my eye as being somewhat disingenuous. While it's true that Windows 7 will run on older hardware, the reason it can has more to do with the stability of the Intel (x86) platform than any altruistic impulses on Microsoft's part.

Simply put, Microsoft has never faced the kind of fundamental architectural shift that Apple was forced to navigate when it abandoned the fading PowerPC platform nearly four years ago. In fact, the closest thing to Apple's Intel migration within the Microsoft realm would be Windows NT's long-forgotten support for the MIPS R4xxx and DEC Alpha platforms. And even there, Microsoft ultimately abandoned those dead-end platforms in favor of more tightly focusing on the volume Intel architecture.

In fact, most modern-day users would be surprised to learn that Windows 7's progenitor was originally designed to be entirely platform-agnostic and that Microsoft even ported Windows NT to the much maligned PowerPC chip at one point in its history (though it never shipped the PowerPC version). For Windows proponents to now criticize Apple's decision to cut the cord to a dead-end CPU architecture seems a bit hypocritical.

After all, it's not like Microsoft hasn't ditched its fair share of declining hardware platforms (my money is on Itanium getting the ax next). It's just that these decisions happened long ago and affected mostly niche systems in the engineering and supercomputing segments. Apple is doing the same thing with Snow Leopard. Unfortunately for Apple, the final divorce settlement from its PowerPC union is being played out on a larger stage, in front of an industry press hungry for story ideas.

The bottom line: Nothing fuels the Windows 7 zealot fires like a good Mac-bashing angle.

www.infoworld.com

First look: Microsoft Office 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:40:00 +0000

An early Community Technology Preview reveals the obligatory Windows 7 flash, a more smoothly integrated Outlook, easy macro-like automation, and the blissful end to nested-menu tedium

By Randall C. Kennedy | InfoWorld

Call it serendipity. As I was working through my review of OpenOffice.org 3.1 and SoftMaker Office 2008, an early version of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Office 2010 was conveniently leaked to the Internet. Sporting mostly incremental improvements, Office 2010 serves to bridge the gap between the Vista and Windows 7 eras by streamlining the product's controversial Ribbon-based user interface and extending it to encompass the full range of Office applications.

The most visible manifestation can be found in Microsoft Outlook. Gone is the "hybrid" UI where new Ribbon elements were isolated to client forms (e-mail message windows, calendar appointments, and so on) and where the main Outlook window retained the earlier Office 2003 UI. In its place is a new, four-tab Ribbon that helps to surface much of Outlook's hidden workflow power while bringing the overall user experience in line with the rest of the suite. Add to this some much needed Windows 7 Jump List integration and suddenly Outlook feels less like the neglected stepchild of the Office world and more like the well-integrated cog it has always longed to be.

[ Take an InfoWorld guided tour of the usability improvements in Office 2010. Compare leading Office alternatives, SoftMaker Office 2008 and OpenOffice.org 3.1. ]

During testing under Windows Vista, I was pleased to discover the Junk Email options displayed prominently on the primary Ribbon surface. With Outlook 2007, these options were buried within the Actions menu, prompting me to create a custom toolbar button, Block Sender, as my first act upon visiting a newly minted Office installation. Another neat feature, Quick Steps, allows you to stitch together a series of common actions and to assign them as a single button to a dedicated section of the primary Ribbon surface. It's a great way to streamline repetitive tasks, like moving all messages from "xyz@123.com" to a specific folder, without requiring that you define a custom rule or macro. Simply click through your selections in the Quick Step dialog, adding or subtracting new actions as necessary.

Microsoft has also tweaked the overall Office Ribbon experience, bringing its layout and structure in line with the newly standardized Ribbon objects from the Windows 7 SDK. By far the biggest change is the removal of the funky round Office "orb" buttons. They've been replaced by the more staid-looking Application button first introduced with the "Ribbonized" Paint and WordPad applications from the Windows 7 betas.

The layout of the underlying button menu has also changed. Each Office application now sports a customized, window-spanning alternative view that combines information about the currently selected object (document, spreadsheet, e-mail message) with various actions and application-level configuration options. It's a clever way to eliminate one of the few remaining vestiges of Office's nested menu-driven past while serving to focus the user on the available actions or options. And since the view is context sensitive, it can adapt itself to match your current work status -- for example, switching its default display from a "recently opened files" view when working with a new and unsaved project to a comprehensive file info "dossier" view once you've saved the data to disk.

Of course, one of the biggest changes involves the product's core underpinnings. For the first time, Microsoft is offering a 64-bit version of Office. It's a clear nod to the success of the x64 edition of Windows Vista and tacit recognition of the fact that the 32-bit world's days are indeed numbered. And while I doubt that many casual users will feel a need to stretch Office's newfound 64-bit legs, I can think of a few Wall Street shops that will be thrilled to get their hands on an even beefier Excel for running those multigigabyte Monte Carlo simulations they just can't live without.

Randall C. Kennedy is a contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center, and he writes the Enterprise Desktop blog.

Mobile pollution sensors deployed

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:39:00 +0000

The smallest devices can be linked to people's mobile phones

Cyclists, buses, cars and even pedestrians will become mobile pollution detectors in an initiative launched on Tuesday.

Led by Imperial College London, the project will trial three types of mobile, wireless pollution sensor.

These will measure traffic pollutants throughout the UK, and transmit their data via the mobile phone network.

Scientists say such detailed mobile measurements could help improve the management of air quality.

Four UK universities are collaborating on the project, which will deploy 100 sensors in London, Leicester, Gateshead and Cambridge.

Each one will measure up to five different traffic pollutants simultaneously, including carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide.

"We will be able to gather much finer detail about pollution, and really understand its microstructure," Neil Hoofe, coordinator of the Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across Grid Environments (Message) project, told BBC News.

He explained that the measurements would be fed into a database that could be accessed "in real time".

"Each sensor has a satellite positioning system, so we could have a bus create a map of the air pollution as it drives along its route," he said.

"This data could be used to provide people with local information - perhaps advice for those with respiratory problems about their journey to work .

"In a wider sense, it could also be used by traffic managers, helping them decide how to phase traffic lights in a way that might reduce traffic pollution."

Larger sensors also measure noise levels and temperature

The smallest sensors can be carried by people and linked up to their own mobile phones. These "electrochemical cells" convert pollutants into a small electric charge.

Larger devices, capable of monitoring temperature and noise levels as well as pollution, have been designed to be attached to lampposts and traffic light poles.

The most sophisticated and largest of the three devices, which is designed to be fitted to vehicles, uses ultraviolet light to differentiate between the pollutants.

"There is a lot we do not know about air quality in our cities and towns because the current generation of large stationary sensors doesn't provide enough information," said the project's director, Professor John Polak, from the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London.

"We envisage a future where hundreds and thousands of mobile sensors are deployed across the country."

BBC

China cracks down on virtual cash

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:37:00 +0000

China has announced a series of crackdowns on computer use

Cash earned in games in China can no longer be spent on real world goods.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce policy aims to limit the impact of game currencies on real-world markets.

In the future, any cash earned by Chinese gamers can only be spent to acquire items or equipment in that particular game.

The move is widely seen as a crackdown on so-called "gold farming" in which players amass virtual money and then sell it to other players for real cash.

Virtual trade

Exact figures for virtual currency exchange are hard to come by, official estimates put the figure in China at "several billion yuan". At current exchange rates 1bn yuan is equal to about £88m.

"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services," the Ministry said in a statement.

The Chinese government has taken an interest in virtual currencies since 2007 when their use for gambling and black market trade became apparent.

One of the most popular virtual currencies in China are "QQ coins" issued by Chinese net firm Tencent. The QQ coins can be used to pay for in-game items or elements that subscribers can add to their blog. Some stores and websites had been starting to accept QQ coins in payment for low-value items.

The move is also likely to affect the many Chinese people who are involved in gold farming. This involves being paid to play an online game, such as World of Warcraft, with the virtual currency winnings sold on to other players for cash.

A survey of the world gold farming market carried out in 2008 estimated that up to 500,000 people in the developing world were involved in the trade.

The crackdown on virtual cash is one of several changes China has announced on the way computers can be used by citizens.

In early June, China announced that Green Dam filtering software would be put on all new PCs sold in the country. While not mandatory, the software aims to limit access to pornographic and violent sites.

China has also asked Google to ensure that its search engine cannot be used to let people get through to inappropriate sites.

BBC

US 'concerned' over cyber threat

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:36:00 +0000

Ms Napolitano said the US was capable of launching its own cyber attacks

The issue of cyber security is of "great concern" to the US, the nation's homeland security secretary has said.

Janet Napolitano told the BBC that protecting against virtual attacks was something the US was "moving forward on with great alacrity".

Speaking on a visit to the UK, she said the US also had "a number of capabilities" to launch such attacks.

Ms Napolitano's comments follow the announcement last month of a new cyber security office in the White House.

Ms Napolitano said cyber attacks were an "area where critical infrastructure can be affected and where economic damage can be done".

She said the US government took all aspects of cyber crime very seriously and that the US defence department had formed "an entire cyber command" to handle online threats.

When asked whether the US had been the instigator of cyber attacks, Ms Napolitano told the BBC: "I think there are a number of capabilities with which to do that, yes."

'Security priority'

Last month, US President Barack Obama said the cyber threat was "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation".

He said the country's computer networks were "a national security priority" and announced a multi-billion plan to protect them against attack, including the creation of a new cyber security department.

In 2007 alone, the Pentagon reported nearly 44,000 incidents of what it called malicious cyber activity carried out by foreign militaries, intelligence agencies and individual hackers.

The UK has also launched a cyber defence programme and indicated that it, too, has cyber warfare capabilities.

China delays internet filter plan

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Anger over web censorship

China is to delay a controversial plan requiring all new computers sold in the country to be equipped with an internet filtering software, state media says.

The filter, called Green Dam Youth Escort, was to have been required from Wednesday, but the industry ministry said computer makers needed more time.

Its planned rollout sparked widespread disapproval inside China, legal challenges and criticism from overseas.

Officials say it is designed to shield children from pornography and violence.

However, free speech activists have criticised the software plan as an attempt to tighten the Chinese government's already strict controls on internet usage.

A report by China's official Xinhua news agency gave no other details on the decision by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Virus risks

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, in Beijing, says the reversal is a very rare and embarrassing climbdown for the Chinese government.

Chinese internet users already endure one of the most heavily-censored and politically-controlled internets in the world, our correspondent says, and were furious about this additional control.

Foreign governments have complained that the new software could break trade rules, and concerns have been raised about its effectiveness and safety.

Tests carried out on Green Dam outside China indicated that it left personal computers open to many different security risks, including virus attacks.

Our correspondent says that despite the government's strict controls over internet usage in China, the country does have a vibrant internet culture.

Some people do manage to get around the controls, he says, and criticism of the Communist Party government is available online, even if political opposition is formally banned.

Source: BBC

NetBeans IDE enhanced for teams, scripting

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:58:00 +0000

However, it remains to be seen if Oracle will back the technology once the Sun merger is complete

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

NetBeans, the open source IDE championed by Sun Microsystems, is being fitted with additional capabilities this week for development teams and scripting languages.

Similar to other projects, though, developers will have to wait and see what decision Oracle makes on the fate of NetBeans should its plan to buy Sun come to fruition. Oracle already has its JDeveloper IDE for Java and also has been a supporter of the Eclpse Foundation, whose Eclipse IDE is the chief open source rival to NetBeans.

[ Earlier this week, (See "Eclipse's Galileo release train, featuring technologies from 33 different open source project teams, was released. ]

"I really don't have any information," on what the integration between Sun and Oracle holds, said David Folk, engineering director for developer products at Sun. Asked if NetBeans might possibly continue on its own without backing from Oracle or Sun, Folk responded that there is an enthusiastic community around NetBeans.

Version 6.7 of NetBeans, due for release Monday, integrates with Project Kenai, which is a Sun collaborative hosting site for open source projects. Kenai integration lets NetBeans users navigate between Kenai.com, local code, bug reports, IM chats, and project wikis. Other team members can become part of a developer workflow, Sun said.

"It's really a next-generation site for source code management and project-hosting," Folk said.

NetBeans began as a Java IDE but has branched out into other languages, and in the scripting language vein, version 6.7 improves PHP capabilities, offering additional support for the language in code coverage and code testing, including support for the PHPUnit tool. Also featured is support for Selenium, a tool to test PHP Web applications.

Grails and Groovy backing is improved, with capabilities added for Grails 1.1. Minor improvements are offered for code completion in these two languages. Additionally, remote debugging is offered for Ruby code, with Ruby able to be executed on a separate machine.

Also featured in version 6.7 is backing for the Hudson build integration project. Support for Zembly, meanwhile, enables developers to build mashups for lightweight social applications. A NetBeans plugin is available for installing the Zembly client library, reducing the need to write code to invoke a service. Zembly lets developers uniformly consume data services from multiple vendors including Amazon, Yahoo and Twitter.

Support for JavaFX 1.2, the latest version of Sun's rich media application technology, will be added soon to version 6.7. Other features in NetBeans 6.7 include improved support for the GlassFish application server, with capabilities added for the Derby database, and integrated support for the Maven software project management tool.

A plugin is no longer needed for Maven. "It's more efficient than what we've done previously and it's directly within the IDE," Folk said.

NetBeans 6.7 is accessible at this Web page.

Symantec to introduce reputation-based security

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:56:00 +0000

Information gathered under Symantec's Community Watch program will be used in Norton Antivirus 2010 and will eventually make its way into enterprise products

By Maxwell Cooter | Techworld

Symantec is to use the 'wisdom of the crowds' and introduce reputation-based security in the next version of its Norton Antivirus 2010 product.

The software, due out at the end of August, the company will be using information gathered under its Community Watch program.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

Gerry Egan, Symantec product management director said that the problem that the company faced was that the old way of checking for anti-viruses was inefficient. "There are two approaches: blacklisting works well with files that you know are bad, and whitelisting, which works well with files that are known to be good -- but these don't work so well in the middle -- it was clear that we needed a new model."

Egan said that since 2007, Symantec had been working on the idea that the wisdom of the crowds would fill the gap

"We already use this approach for things likes books, music and films, we're happy to be guided by other people's opinions. We're using a variant of that." He added that Symantec didn't ask the individual users themselves. "To a user it's not obvious what is safe: Some threats are silent, sometimes the user doesn't know they're there, some threats infect legitimate process while other threats pretend to be legitimate."

He said that this reputation-based approach worked by constantly surveying the data being gathered from users without any need for human interaction. "We've devised our own algorithm within Symantec that takes the data from the 30 million users who have signed up to Community Watch and calculates whether every individual program is safe or not," said Egan.

Obviously, there will be new files that we'd be unsure about but we have an arrangement with reputable publishers to pre-approve their software. "For example," said Egan, "Adobe could release a new program next week but they'd be on the approved list of publishers," he said.

Egan said that this reputation-based approach would be used in consumer products first but would eventually make it into enterprises. He thought the new release would move Symantec ahead of its competitors and, more importantly, ahead of the bad guys.

" I think it will be harder for the bad guys to beat this. We think this will keep us ahead for some time."

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Microsoft plays tennis match with Apple on Windows 7 pricing

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:55:00 +0000

Microsoft and Apple are using upgrade discounts to entice users to move to Windows 7 and OS X Snow Leopard

By Shane O'Neill | CIO.com

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Microsoft announced late last week a slew of announcements about Windows 7 pricing that enticed buyers with a big pre-order discount, but still left users angry that that the Windows 7 price cuts weren't steeper given the disappointment of Vista and the grim economy.

The discounted pre-order offer started on June 26 and will last through July 11. Buyers can choose the discounted Windows 7 Home Premium for $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for $99.99.

[ If you're thinking about adopting the newest version of Windows, check out InfoWorld's Windows 7 upgrade FAQ | Get the analysis and insights that only Randall C. Kennedy can provide on Windows tech in InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blog and Technology: Windows newsletter. And download our free Windows performance-monitoring tool. ]

The Windows 7 prices that pick up after the pre-order deal ends, though still mostly lower than Vista was at its launch, have been met with some gripes, particularly from users transitioning from the widely-disappointing Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate who will see no price reduction.

At the same time, Microsoft is taking deliberate steps to make it easier for users to move to Windows 7. In addition to the pre-order discounts, Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program provides free or nearly-free upgrades to Windows 7 for those who purchase a new Vista PC between now and Jan. 31, 2010.

A perception game with Apple
Yet with Windows 7 pricing, Microsoft had to face more than a skeptical, cash-strapped public. It was also competing with a previous announcement from an old nemesis: Apple.

Three weeks ago, Apple announced that the next version of its OS X, Snow Leopard, will be available a month before Windows 7 with a $29 upgrade charge for a single-user license, and $49 for a five-license pack. Apple traditionally charges $129 for an operating system upgrade.

Rob Enderle, president of tech consulting firm The Enderle Group, views Microsoft's price cuts as a tennis match with rival Apple.

"Apple came out a few weeks ago and said we're going to be cheaper and earlier," says Enderle. "But Microsoft stole back some momentum with the discounted pre-orders. In this economy, $50 for Windows 7 is a heavy incentive to upgrade. These deals will be a huge driver."

On Friday, the $49.99 upgrade for Windows 7 Home Premium, quickly took over the top spot on Amazon.com's best-seller list and the $99.99 Windows 7 Professional Upgrade was No. 2 in software.

Snow Leopard's deceptive pricing
Some industry experts have questioned the true value of Apple's $29 upgrade offer.

A blog post by veteran Microsoft watcher Ed Bott analyzes the Snow Leopard upgrade deal and discovers that getting the $29 upgrade depends on when you bought your Mac.

According to Bott, only those buyers who purchased a Mac between Oct. 2007 and June 2009 qualify for the $29 upgrade. If you bought it before that it will cost you $169 (and that's for Intel-based machines only). If you bought your Mac before Jan 2006, you cannot get Snow Leopard at all.

In contrast, Bott writes, "Any PC purchased with Windows XP or Windows Vista since October 2001 qualifies for a discounted upgrade to Windows 7, for a price as low as $50."

In this operating system pricing duel between Microsoft and Apple, Bott says Apple is the reactionary one, not Microsoft.

He writes: "If Windows 7 didn't exist, how much would Apple be selling Snow Leopard for? (Hint: The correct answer has three digits.)"

Will Microsoft cut prices again?
Enderle says Windows 7 price cuts are the culmination of a bad economy, negative perceptions of Vista, and Apple slowly taking OS market share from Windows.

And a retaliation from Apple is inevitable, Enderle adds. "It's a perception game. So you'll probably see Apple get aggressive with pre-orders of their own for Snow Leopard or other special deals, such as the chance to get a free iPod when you buy a MacBook."

So far, Apple's cheap upgrade strategy may be working against Microsoft. A recent ZD Net online poll of 1,800 users asks the question: "Did Microsoft do the right thing with Windows 7 retail pricing?" Forty-four percent chose, "I'm stunned Microsoft didn't cut even more, given Apple's $29 Snow Leopard pricing. (After all, both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are glorified service packs, right?)."

It is worth noting that 28 percent chose, "Yes! I am all over that 50+ percent pre-order offer."

It remains to be seen if Apple's lower upgrade price and/or user complaints that Windows 7 is still too pricey will force Redmond to slash prices even more as part of the "perception game."

Says Enderle: "At the very least, Microsoft should offer a big discount for Vista Ultimate users moving to Windows 7 Ultimate. They deserve it."

Are you a Tweeter? Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.

CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiliate.

JetBrains adds to Java IDE

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:53:00 +0000

OSGi and PHP support, among other capabilities, are highlighted in the IntelliJ Idea 9 milestone release

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

JetBrains is offering a milestone release of the upcoming IntelliJ Idea 9 IDE for Java application development, featuring capabilities ranging from OSGi backing to improved performance and PHP support.

The Milestone 1 release, unveiled late last week, is a precursor to the general release due this fall, JetBrains said. OSGi application development support includes automatic project configuration, coding assistance and inspections, and syntax and error highlighting.

[ Earlier this year, JetBrains announced the JetBrains RubyMine 1.0 IDE for Ruby and Ruby on Rails development. ]

Other capabilities in the IDE include on-the-fly detection of dead code, Java Enterprise Edition 6 support, and capabilities for Google's Android mobile platform and the Google App Engine cloud platform. Applications can be deployed from IntelliJ Idea to App Engine.

Usability also has been improved. Also featured is initial support for the PHP language and improvements for using UML (Unified Modeling Language).

"We want to demonstrate the progress we've made toward IntelliJ Idea 9 and show developers what it has in store for them," said Max Shafirov, IntelliJ IDEA project lead, in a statement released by the company. "A milestone release is also a great chance for our users to voice their opinions and provide input on areas that still need improvement. We will carefully evaluate and utilize all feedback. Developers, in turn, can already start using the latest features we've implemented."

JetBrains offers capabilities for Adobe Flex, including offering Adobe AIR support. Google Web Toolkit 1.6 is supported as well. A JavaScript debugger in the IDE is implemented as a Firefox plug-in, for debugging from within the Firefox browser.

The latest build can be downloaded at the JetBrains Web site. It can be downloaded for a free trial for 30 days.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.

Vodafone 'mulls bid for T-Mobile'

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:48:00 +0000

A takeover would give Vodafone a 40% share of the UK market

Mobile phone operator Vodafone has declined to comment on a report that it is considering buying T-Mobile UK.

The Financial Times reported that the company was interested in acquiring T-Mobile's UK operations, even though a deal may be blocked by regulators.

Any such move would make Vodafone the biggest mobile operator in the UK, with a 40% market share.

Vodafone has a 25% share of the UK market, behind O2. T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, has a 15% share.

Deutsche Telekom has appointed JP Morgan to advise on "strategic options", the newspaper said. Deutsche Telekom said it did not comment on market rumours.

Shares in Vodafone ended the day up 1.2% at 117.60 pence.

Falling sales

UK MOBILE PHONE MARKET SHARE

O2: 27%

Vodafone: 25%

Orange: 22%

T-Mobile: 15%

3: 8%

Source: Ofcom

T-Mobile UK reported a 21% fall in sales in the first three months of the year. According to the FT, it has an estimated enterprise value of between 3bn euros and 4bn euros ($4.2bn-$5.6bn; £2.5bn-$3.4bn).

A combined Vodafone/T-Mobile operation with a 40% UK market share in the UK would leapfrog the current UK market leader O2, which has a market share of about 27%.

Although the creation of one company with 40% of the UK market would almost certainly lead to competition questions, such large operators already exist in France, Italy and Spain.

Earlier this year, Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao said that his company was willing to play an active role in consolidation between operators.

In February, Vodafone and Hutchison Whampoa, which owns mobile operator 3 in the UK, announced plans to merge their Australian mobile phone businesses.

From Vodafone's perspective, why lay out a significant sum at a particularly bad time? You'll buy the extra customers but you'll get the operational costs as well

Steven Harley, Ovum analyst

In May, Vodafone said it was accelerating the pace of its £1bn cost-cutting programme because of the impact of the economic downturn on sales.

The company was forced to write off £5.9bn in the 12 months to the end of March - mostly related to its Spanish business - as its pre-tax profits fell 53.5% to £4.2bn from £9bn a year earlier.

Bad timing

One analyst questioned why either side would be interested in a deal.

Steven Harley, senior analyst with the mobile team at Ovum, said the timing seemed wrong.

"From T-Mobile's perspective, why sell at the bottom of the market? You're not going to get top dollar," he said.

"From Vodafone's perspective, why lay out a significant sum at a particularly bad time? Yes you'll buy the extra customers but you'll get the operational costs as well."

Mr Harley also pointed out that T-Mobile has a network-sharing deal with 3, while Vodafone has a similar deal with O2.

"How would 3 get compensated for this?" he asked.

"If you've got three operators running off the same network the costs for them will be a lot lower than for a single operator running off one network."

BBC

Universal phone charger deal done

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:38:00 +0000

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter

The European deal isn't legally binding at the moment

Life could soon be easier for millions of mobile phone users across Europe.

A deal's been done between industry bosses and the European Commission in Brussels to work towards a 'one size fits all' charger.

It would mean an end to users having to hunt around for the right type of charger for their handset and should help cut waste.

Perfectly good chargers can often be thrown away if someone gets a new type of phone handset.

The deal isn't legally binding though and, at this stage, is only voluntary.

But it means a universal charger, which will use a micro-USB connection, should be available by next year.

Under the accord, the companies, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, Research in Motion and Samsung, are committed to developing the charger.

It will work for data-enabled mobile phones that support USB data exchange.

The 10 companies involved represent 90% of the European mobile market so the vast majority of the estimated 350 - 400 million users across the EU would be covered by any changes.

Currently there are more than 30 different types of chargers for handsets throughout Europe.

EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen says he also wants to see the common charger expand in the years ahead to cover other phones, existing phones, cameras and laptops.

Pirate Bay starts video streaming

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:37:00 +0000

The new video streaming service is set to feature music and film

The world's most high-profile file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay (TPB), has lifted the lid on its new video sharing website, The Video Bay.

Billed as a rival to YouTube, the service will offer unrestricted video content, in violation of copyright law.

It is not clear when the service will actually go live; the site's founders said "it will be done when it's done".

In April, a court in Sweden jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay and ordered them to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

TBP founder, Peter Sunde, announced The Video Bay to the Open Video Conference in New York.

In a statement on the site, Mr Sunde said the service would use the latest HTML 5 features.

"More specifically the audio and video tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats.

"This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk encoding, so please don't bug us too much if the site isn't working properly," he said.

If you thought the people behind the Pirate Bay were going to keep a low profile after losing that epic court battle over copyright, think again

Rory Cellan-Jones

BBC's technology correspondent

Read Rory's thoughts in full

Although the site is in its early stages, a preview showed a number of copyright music videos available for viewing in the navigation sidebar.

The move will be seen by some as provocative, given that the founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail in April, though they are currently still free men.

Piracy battle

Speaking to the BBC, the head of Sweden's Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge, said this was another step in a "prolonged legal battle with the record industry".

"It's obvious that, given enough time, The Pirate Bay will win this war which will go on as long as the record industry has yet another penny to file a lawsuit.

"I think they [The Pirate Bay] are taking an important part in that battle, fighting for freedom of expression and culture against monopolistic companies," he added.

A spokesman for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said they were monitoring developments but declined to comment at this time.

BBC

Apple boss Jobs goes back to work

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:36:00 +0000

Steve Jobs looked gaunt back in 2008

Apple boss Steve Jobs is back at work following six months of medical leave, although he will work from home for part of the week, the company says.

His return to the office follows months of speculation about his health and his future at the firm he founded more than 30 years ago.

The 54-year-old had a liver transplant while on leave, reports said.

He was behind the Macintosh computer, iPhone and iPod, which helped to revive Apple's fortunes.

"Steve is back to work," an Apple spokesman said.

Having him back brings the halo back to the company

Ashok Kumar, analyst

The man at Apple's core

"He's currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days. We are very glad to have him back."

Mr Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004.

The company's share price fell in January this year, when he announced he was taking leave because of a hormone imbalance.

Investors are likely to welcome Mr Jobs' return to the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

"In many ways he's irreplaceable," Ashok Kumar, of financial analysts Collins Stewart, told Reuters news agency.

"Having him back brings the halo back to the company."

BBC

Digital TV now in 90% of UK homes

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:32:00 +0000

Almost 90% of UK homes have turned to digital TV

Almost 90% of British homes are using digital TV, reveal figures from Ofcom.

The latest statistics on take-up of digital TV in the UK suggest that 18 million households, 89.2%, have a DTV receiver.

Digital video recorders, that can store, pause, or rewind live TV, are also proving popular.

Ofcom reports that about one million were sold in the first three months of 2009, taking the total in UK homes to 8.9 million.

Switch over

The figures, gathered by Ofcom, suggest that five million of those recorders are Sky+ boxes, a further 2.6 million are Freeview recorders, and the remaining 1.2 million is split between Virgin Media's V+, BT Vision and Top Up TV.

The Ofcom report noted a drop of 28% in the sales of Freeview set-top boxes, as TVs with a digital tuner built-in start to take over from the stand-alone devices. Sales of TVs with an integrated tuner have now hit 20 million.

The figures also give insights into how Britain is switching to digital TV in advance of the analogue switch-off, due to be completed by 2012.

Analogue signals have already been turned off in a few areas in the UK including the West Country, Scottish borders, and the Isle of Man.

With almost 90% of TVs converted to digital, many homes were starting to update older sets.

Ofcom estimates that by the end of March 2009, 61% of secondary TV sets were capable of showing digital TV. They also think that about 27% of the TV sets in use in the UK are still only capable of receiving analogue signals.

BBC

Survey casts doubt on cloud adoption

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:18:00 +0000

Survey casts doubt on cloud adoption

A recent ITIC survey finds that businesses are lukewarm on cloud computing

By Jon Brodkin | Network World

New survey results cast doubt on whether cloud computing adoption will ramp up in the next 12 months, with only 15 percent of corporate customers having adopted or considering adopting cloud technology over the next year.

A survey of 300 corporations worldwide found that 38 percent are undecided or unsure about whether they will adopt cloud services, and another 47 percent said they are not considering implementing cloud in the next year. Security is the biggest roadblock.

[ The survey stands in stark contrast to the results from a Microsoft survey released earlier this week that found that many companies are planning to adopt cloud computing within two years. ]

"An overwhelming 85 percent majority of corporate customers will not implement a private or public cloud computing infrastructure in 2009 because of fears that cloud providers may not be able to adequately secure sensitive corporate data," writes Information Technology Intelligence Corp., principal analyst Laura DiDio in a new report.

The ITIC survey participants ranged from businesses with 100 users to large enterprises with more than 100,000 end users, in many types of industries. Companies in 19 countries were surveyed but 85 percent were based in North America.

The findings may be surprising given the industry's current obsession with cloud computing, but the numbers aren't too far off the findings of other surveys. Forrester recently found that 25 percent of enterprises with at least 1,000 employees are using or plan to use hosted virtual server offerings such as Amazon EC2, and that fewer than 20 percent of smaller companies plan to do so. Earlier this year, Gartner said that cloud application infrastructure technologies are not yet mature and that adoption right now is limited mostly to "pioneers and trailblazers."

DiDio says current cloud adoption is lagging behind the hype, but that is to be expected.

"When you hear the next big buzzword or hype, whether it's SOA or SaaS or the new version of Windows, the adoption will be slower than what the press, analyst and vendor community leads you to believe," she says. DiDio's poll calculated usage of both private and public cloud technologies in the aggregate. About 8 percent of respondents have already implemented either a public or private cloud service, she says.

Companies with at least 3,000 end users are moving faster on the cloud than their smaller counterparts, the survey found. Twenty-one percent have already adopted or plan to adopt cloud computing in the next year, and another 36 percent are considering doing so.

Vendors have not yet offered a clear roadmap on how they plan to secure data in the cloud, DiDio says. Therefore private clouds may end up as the model of choice for many businesses.

"I actually think private clouds are going to be more popular than their public cloud counterparts, particularly for mid-sized businesses anywhere in that 500 to 3,000 employee range," she says. "Folks are very risk-averse and that won't change."While private clouds don't introduce the same security risks as public ones, adoption is going slow because IT managers are still getting up to speed on the technology, DiDio says. There is also considerable up-front expense in buying new hardware and other services and products needed to build a private cloud, she notes.

While security was the top concern cited by survey respondents, customers are also worried about availability risks in the public cloud model.

One IT manager in the survey said "the idea that I would trust my e-mail, financial transactions, or other day-to-day business operations to cloud computing is just asking for trouble. I do not even want to imagine all my users being dead in the water because my link to the Internet is down."

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Busting the nine myths of cloud computing

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:14:00 +0000

Vendor hype and IT self-delusion can quickly lead to disappointment. If you're considering a cloud strategy, don't get fooled by these false premises

By Robert L. Scheier | InfoWorld

Wherever you turn, someone's ready to tell (or sell) you something related to cloud computing. Cutting through the myths is essential to deciding whether, when, and how the cloud is right for you. Here's our top list of myths; we welcome your suggestions and feedback in our cloud myths discussion area.

Myth No. 1: There's one single "cloud"
There are at least three forms of "cloud computing," each with different benefits and risks. They are 1) "infrastructure as a service" (bare-metal virtual servers available on demand from the likes of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud); 2) Web services providers, or "platform as a service," which are APIs or development platforms that let customers create and run apps in the cloud; and 3) software as a service, applications such as Salesforce.com's CRM software that users access over the Internet with little or no code running on their own machines.

[ What exactly is the cloud? Get past the hype and see what's real in InfoWorld's "What cloud computing really means" | Stay on top of the cloud from an IT pro's perspective in whurley's Cloud Computing blog. ]

The type of application you're running and the kinds of data you're generating also make a big difference in whether -- and how -- to move to the cloud. Which leads to:

Myth No. 2: All you need is your credit card
If you're a lone developer with time to burn, configuring a virtual bare-metal server from the command prompt may be no problem. But if you have a business to run, installing and configuring the OS, multiple applications, and database connections could get in the way of generating revenue. And if you're big enough to have any standards for security, data formats, or data quality, someone has to do that work, too.

Some vendors imply that a business user "can just go in and buy a development server in 15 minutes that's as good as the one it would take their IT department three or four days to provision," says Michael Kollar, chief architect at Siemens IT Solutions and Services North America, which virtualizes about 2,500 servers to provide cloud-based application services to internal users as well as external customers. However, he says, that cloud-based server may not be secure, meet corporate standards, or be integrated into the wider IT environment.

For example, even a Web server thrown up in the cloud for a short-term marketing campaign might need to meet corporate security and data format standards. That's because the customer data it gathers is subject to the same corporate and legal standards as "real" IT systems, says Kollar, and it must be usable by corporate analytic or customer tracking systems.

Many infrastructure-as-a-service players also can't meet the needs of enterprise applications. Phil Calvin, founder and CTO of Sitemasher, tried to find a cloud provider to manage the servers he now manages himself in a collocation facility. However, he says, "we couldn't find anyone to scale our standard servers" on demand. Nor could the cloud vendors provide the low-latency performance he requires or do global load balancing across datacenters.

Firefox 3.5 eyed for Tuesday release

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:13:00 +0000

Browser upgrade features speed improvements and HTML 5 capabilities

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

Mozilla is expected to release its Firefox 3.5 browser on Tuesday morning, a company representative said on Friday afternoon.

A key feature of the browser is the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which boosts performance and stability. Indeed, speed has been stressed as a key attraction of the upgrade.

[ InfoWorld's J. Pete Bruzzese takes a look into the IE8 vs. Firefox 3.5 browser wars, while Roger Grimes puts browsers to the security test. ]

A Private Browsing Model is highlighted as well, for control of private data. HTML 5 capabilities are included in such areas as encoded video.

A downloadable release candidate for version 3.5 was released Monday, following beta and preview releases this month.

Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld.

Solar plane to make public debut

noreply@blogger.com (Nguyễn Quốc Hòa) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:42:00 +0000

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Picard is set to unveil a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world.

The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night.

Mr Picard, who made history by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon in 1999, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies.

He expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012.

The flight would be a risky endeavour. Only now is solar and battery technology becoming mature enough to sustain flight through the night - and then only in unmanned planes.

But Picard's Solar Impulse team has invested tremendous energy - and no little money - in trying to find what they believe is a breakthrough design.

"I love this type of vision where you set the goal and then you try to find a way to reach it, because this is challenging," he told BBC News.

Testing programme

The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale - in terms of its width - of a modern airliner.

The aeroplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to get it through the dark hours.

Picard will begin testing with short runway flights in which the plane lifts just a few metres into the air.

As confidence in the machine develops, the team will move to a day-night circle. This has never been done before in a piloted solar-powered plane.

HB-SIA should be succeeded by HB-SIB. It is likely to be bigger, and will incorporate a pressurised capsule and better avionics.

It is probable that Picard will follow a route around the world in this aeroplane close to the path he took in the record-breaking Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon - going from the United Arab Emirates, to China, to Hawaii, across the southern US, southern Europe, and back to the UAE.

Measuring success

Although the vehicle is expected to be capable of flying non-stop around the globe, Picard will in fact make five long hops, sharing flying duties with project partner Andre Borschberg.

"The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," said Picard.

"We should fly at roughly 25 knots and that would make it between 20 and 25 days to go around the world, which is too much for a pilot who has to steer the plane.

"In a balloon you can sleep, because it stays in the air even if you sleep. We believe the maximum for one pilot is five days."

The public unveiling on Friday of the HB-SIA is taking place at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich.

"The real success for Solar Impulse would be to have enough millions of people following the project, being enthusiastic about it, and saying 'if they managed to do it around the world with renewable energies and energy savings, then we should be able to do it in our daily life'."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk