a2z Information: 2013-03-03

Friday, March 8, 2013

Why Intel, Apple need to team up

Intel's next CEO is likely to shepherd the top chipmaker into a growing contract-manufacturing business, a strategic shift that could lead to a deal with Apple Inc and give it a fighting chance to make inroads in the mobile arena.

Manufacturing chips on behalf of other companies is a major departure for Intel, which for decades has based its business on using its manufacturing prowess to offer its own PC chips superior to rival products. As PC sales contract and Intel's fabrication plants operate at less than full capacity, the chipmaker sees an opportunity to fill idle production lines while earning new revenue.

YouTube is reportedly planning to launch a music streaming service to rival Spotify later this year.

According to 'sources familiar with the negotiations', the tech giant has reportedly signed a deal with Warner Music, Billboard reported.

The deal will reportedly give Google the ability to stream music across both its Android music platform, Google Play and YouTube, news.com.au reports.

More than 48,000 square-feet of sedum (flowering plants) and native perennials cover the green roof ...

For the fifth time, the Ethisphere Institute has named Rockwell Automation (NYSE: ROK) as one of the “World’s Most Ethical (WME) Companies,” a recognition that highlights companies that outperform industry peers when it comes to business ethics. The Ethisphere Institute is a leading international organization dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics, governance, anti-corruption and sustainability.

When John Kerry took to Twitter on his first day as US secretary of state, he joined an army of diplomats using social media to reach out and connect directly with people around the world.

"Exhilarating to walk into @StateDept today and get to work with remarkable team. Dad on mind! -JK," Kerry wrote in his first personal tweet.

In less than 140 characters, the new US top diplomat instantly signaled he intended to carry on and deepen a commitment to using social media begun under his predecessor Hillary Clinton.

German business software group SAP is ahead of plan in getting to its 2015 sales target as it continues to win market share, its co-chief said on Tuesday.

"Compared to our competitors our business is doing better. We target to have sales of more than 20 billion euros ($26 billion) by 2015. At the moment we are ahead of our plan to get to that target," co-chief executive Jim Hagemann Snabe told Reuters in an interview.

SAP's original target was to reach 20 billion euros in sales by 2015, but the firm increased the outlook at the end of last year to 'at least' 20 billion euros.

Brazil, Russia, India and China still lag far behind developed countries in policies considered critical for the future of cloud computing, but each made some progress over the past year, a US industry group said.

The Business Software Alliance, which represents US industry heavyweights such as Microsoft, said the BRIC nations all came in at the bottom half of 24 countries surveyed in its second annual cloud computing report.

Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has launched the Electronics Project Proposal System (e-PPS), developed by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, through the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Sibal held a round table discussion with Academia, Industry and R&D organizations, here yesterday. The round table was held in order to have broad consensus and opinion on the proposed ICT&E R&D and Innovation Framework prepared by DeitY. The e-PPS system will initially operate on a pilot basis.

Google Play turned a year old on Wednesday and the Android-focussed rival to Apple's online iTunes shop celebrated with deals on books, games, music, movies and apps.

The launch of Google Play on March 6 of last year marked the rebirth of Android Market, a virtual store devoted to content for smartphones or tablets powered by the Google-backed software.

Google Play now boasts millions of e-books and songs along with more than 7,00,000 apps.

"You want to get rid of e-mail? Good luck with that," smiles Tom Reuner, an IT analyst at British firm Ovum.

But at the CeBIT, the world's biggest high-tech fair in the northern German city of Hanover, some firms are considering doing just that, as studies show that workers spend nearly one third of their day sorting through e-mails.

The French firm Atos, for example, plans to shift its internal communications onto a Facebook-style social networking platform by 2014.

Hackers attacked the websites of the Czech central bank and major commercial banks, blocking their servers with massive numbers of requests, the banks said.

The attack "targeted an external web server hosting the www.cnb.cz website," the central bank CNB said on its Facebook page.

Among commercial banks, hackers targeted Ceska sporitelna owned by Austria's Erste Bank, Komercni banka owned by France's Societe Generale, CSOB, which is in the hands of Belgium's KBC, and the local branch of Austria's Raiffeisenbank.

Facebook on Thursday plans to announce a substantial redesign of its News Feed - a makeover aimed both at keeping users glued to the social network and luring more advertising dollars. Company executives have broadly said they want to make the News Feed, the first page every user sees upon logging in, more relevant.

In an earnings call with Wall Street analysts in January, the company's founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, offered some hints of what a reimagined News Feed might look like: bigger photos, more videos and "more engaging ads."

Maybe you've wanted to control your big-screen TV with your smartphone for years, even though the idea has been a nonstarter for most of that time. Now Microsoft, which insists that it sees large-screen computing devices playing a dominant role in the home and workplace, says it will make that a reality.

On Tuesday, Microsoft kicked off TechFest (or, alternatively, TechForum — the company seems to use the names interchangeably), a research fair of sorts where the company's engineers emerge from their darkened labs and reveal their notion of the tech future. And perhaps more important, how we're going to get there.

ZTE has announced a strategic collaboration with Intel focused on the new Intel® Atom™ Processor Z2580 platform recently announced at Mobile World Congress. The platform will bring significant performance enhancements to the next generation of ZTE smartphones with Intel Inside®.

The collaboration with Intel is an important part of ZTE’s strategy for product development, both in terms of time-to-market and in providing customers’ with a great handset experience. ZTE is currently working with Intel to develop unique smartphones based on the Intel Atom Z2580 processor. The platform’s dual-core processor with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology provides double the compute performance and up to 3x graphics capabilities over the previous generation Intel® Atom™ Z2460 processor while delivering the same competitive battery life.

Confianza is proud to announce the 2nd edition of the CIO India Conclave, taking place on the 22nd of March,2013 in Mumbai. This exclusive initiative is a fantastic platform for both delegates and solution providers to network with each other and make important business decisions. Here at Confianza, we aim to create a perfect event format, providing Sponsors and CIOs’ with a time-saving opportunity to gain the most from networking.

India has ranked third on the list of the countries distributing spam across the world, after US and China, a new report has claimed.

While the US was the single highest-ranking country in the study, Asia topped the list of continents with 36.6 per cent of the world's spam accounted for.

In the latter half of 2012, India had been leading the way but has now fallen back to third, with China leapfrogging into second place after a spell in the lower half of the list, statistics from SophosLabs revealed.

According to a report today from TechCrunch, Google is at work on its own version of Amazon's premium fast-shipping subscription service, Amazon Prime. The service would be called 'Google Shopping Express' and could undercut Amazon Prime's $79 annual membership rates by as much as $15. TechCrunch's report names Google e-commerce product manager Tom Fallows as the head of the project.

ASG Software Solutions (ASG), a recognized innovator in enterprise IT software solutions and cloud computing, has been selected by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) as the vendor with the “Best SaaS Solution” in the industry.

With cloud computing becoming more prevalent in IT, large enterprises are actively searching for a cloud solution that solves business needs. Businesses want more agility and flexibility, simplified IT service delivery, better performance and security and a higher return on their IT investments.

Samsung Electronics, the leader in India's smartphone market, is aggressively pursuing a strategy to move beyond individual users and sell phones to businesses, putting Canadian phonemaker BlackBerry's dominance in the Indian enterprise market in jeopardy.

Last week, at a strategic meeting of its senior executives in Hyderabad, the South Korean device-maker revealed its new focus on enterprise market and said by year-end it wants at least 10% of its revenues coming from enterprise customers.

Indian IT bellwether Wipro has been recognised for the second year as one of the world's most ethical firms by leading business ethics think-tank Ethisphere Institute, the company said.

"The recognition is for our commitment to ethical leadership, compliance practices and corporate citizenship," the global software major said in a statement issued here.

When Marissa Mayer took over as Yahoo's chief executive last summer, she confronted a Silicon Valley campus that was very different from the one she had left at Google.

Parking lots and entire floors of cubicles were nearly empty because some employees were working as little as possible and leaving early.

Then there were the 200 or so people who had work-at-home arrangements. Although they collected Yahoo paychecks, some did little work for the company and a few had even begun start-ups on the side.

Remember the time when Sony used to enjoy a sizeable share of the mobile phone market with its Walkman series. However, it was not long before Apple and Samsung captured the market with iPhone and Galaxy series respectively. Over the course of the past 3-4 years, the Japanese giant has tried hard to catch up with the leaders, but has faltered time and again.

But this year - exactly a year dissolving its JV with Ericsson - Sony has been quick on the ball, bringing its flagship smartphone Xperia Z (touting a full HD screen measuring 5-inch) ahead of Samsung, the big fish of the Android sea. But does Xperia Z have what it takes to beat the current competitors as well as the upcoming rivals, specially Galaxy S IV? Read our review to find out...

Non-banking finance company (NBFC) Fullerton India Credit Company Limited has selected IBM SmartCloud Virtualized Server Recovery, a cloud-based disaster recovery service to ensure business continuity and operational resiliency for its clients' critical financial transactions.

The company runs its critical applications from a data centre in Navi Mumbai. In the highly competitive financial market, the company's business critically depends on its ability to process a large number of financial transactions continuously at the lowest cost possible. Any unplanned downtime means disruption in business operations resulting in significant financial losses, and more importantly, damage to brand reputation and customer satisfaction.

Google has announced its Maps app update for Apple iPhone, making it easier to find places and look up saved friends' addresses.

Google Maps app, which will now include new search icons, can now be downloaded from the Apple App Store.

Now, users will be presented with icons for restaurants, coffee shops, bars and gas stations, which they can tap to search quickly for nearby locations.

HCL Infosystems Introduces New Beanstalk AIO with Built in Battery for the Indian Market

--India’s first 21.5 inch HD LED AIO with frame-less design and in-built battery

-- Over 1.5 hrs power back up with an in-built battery for uninterrupted usage

-- Sleek design; portability and anti-glare backlit display for multi-viewing angles

-- Superior connectivity features like HDMI, Wi-fi and Bluetooth

Hewlett-Packard has maintained its position as India's No. 1 PC brand with a 16.5% market share in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to an IDC report. The manufacturer has regained the overall top position in Q4 2012, with market share gain of 3.5% on a year-on-year basis.

HP in December 2012 launched its first ultrathin hybrid PC - HP Envy X2, along with a new portfolio of touch-enabled Ultrabooks and All-in-One PCs. The following month, the company joined forces with Universal Music India and Hungama.com to launch HP Connected Music, a service that gives Indian consumers access to global and regional digital music and content. This subscription-based music service provides unlimited rental downloadable music free of charge for a year. This brand new service is available on selected HP notebooks with the embedded Windows 8 launcher.

The entertainment industry, struggling with the problem of piracy, is now being forced to deal with illegal copies of films finding their way on video-streaming site YouTube, robbing the content creators of revenue and putting the business model at risk. Google denies that it is doing anything wrong, but content creators as well as television channels that pay large sums of money for cable and satellite rights of movies think YouTube is not doing enough.

Datacipher Solutions Pvt. Ltd. has been certified as a Palo Alto Networks Authorized Training Center and will be the first training partner for Palo Alto Networks in India. Authorized instructors at Datacipher will conduct introductory to advanced training courses on Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls series and the Panorama management platform.

'We're very proud to be the first Palo Alto Networks' Authorized Training Center in India to provide training programs on their products,' said Amar R Kotha, CEO, Datacipher Solutions Pvt Ltd . 'There has been growing demand for Palo Alto Networks Certified Experts in this region and Datacipher’s focus is to increase the number of Palo Alto Networks certified experts in various product lines. We would like to work immediately with the regional sales teams and identify priority trainings and focus on them'.

Software giant Microsoft is developing an interactive whiteboard that would interpret users' sketches to complete the diagrams they were drawing.

The firm will unveil the prototype as part of Techfest, an annual event where its researchers reveal some of the projects they are working on.

The demonstration of SketchInsight will be hosted by Bongshin Lee at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, the BBC reports.

Infoblox Inc., the automated network control company, and Wipro Infotech, IT Business unit ofWipro Ltd., today announced a global reseller arrangement to give businesses and public organizations greater control over their corporate IT networks.

“IT leaders are looking for technology solutions that help them grow their businesses, reduce costs and achieve the balance needed to influence business strategy while also providing top-notch IT support,” said Anuj Bhalla, VP & BU Head, System Integration and Maintenance Services, Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited. “As IT is becoming closely aligned to business, the need to reduce growing complexity in networks is becoming critical. Wipro and Infoblox are offering the right mix of technologies for Telecom Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, and any other large enterprise having similar requirements.”

Michael Dell roiled Wall Street by announcing last month that he and the private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners would be taking his eponymous home-computer maker private. The deal raised many questions — most important, whether Dell, by far the largest shareholder, and Silver Lake were paying Dell's fellow shareholders a fair price for their stock. Gretchen Morgenson, writing about the need for an independent, third-party financial evaluation of Silver Lake's and the management's $24.4 billion proposal for Dell, too got it terribly wrong in a New York Times piece. For those who came away from the Morgenson column with the impression that Michael Dell might be stealing his own company , I'll recount what happened.

As chief technology officer of the $61-billion Amazon.com, 54-year-old Werner Vogels is responsible for driving technology services at the online retail company. In India, Amazon expects to work more closely with emerging ventures across the internet and online commerce sectors. In conversation with ET, he discussed the potential offered by growth in storage on the cloud and the opportunity it provides to set up new ventures. Edited Excerpts:

How large a market does India offer for Amazon cloud services?

Seagate, a US-based hard disk supplier, said it will launch its latest wireless storage solutions, which provides automatic backup, remote access from outside a home network among other niche features, for the Indian market by April.

This will include the NASDAQ-listed company's next generation networked home storage solution, Seagate Central, and wireless storage product, Seagate Wireless Plus.

Diebold, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD) today announced the launch of the world’s first intelligent-powered automated teller machine (ATM), the Diebold 429. This machine is specifically designed to meet the increasing demand for a robust self-service terminal in urban and rural areas of India. Built with a unique intelligent power management system, it automatically switches between three possible power sources (solar panel, alternating current (AC) grid and internal battery), maximizing terminal uptime, lowering total cost of ownership and delivering unprecedented convenience to consumers.

Targetting $300 billion revenue from IT sector by 2020, the industry representative body Nasscom on Monday announced expansion of its focus to include internet, mobile technology and cloud computing.

Currently revenue from software and services is around $100 billion.

The larger focus for Nasscom, from just software and services, has been suggested by a panel the industry body had set July last year under the chairmanship of Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy.

Largest software exporter of India, Tata Consultancy Services today said its brand value has jumped by over USD 1 billion in 2012, a growth of nearly 29 per cent to cross the USD 5 billion mark.

Quoting the latest report from international brand valuation firm Brand Finance, TCS said its "brand value rose to USD 5.247 billion in 2013, up from USD 4.068 billion in 2012. This is an increase of USD 1.179 billion or a growth of 28.9 per cent."

With virtual bodyguards, panic buttons and maps to pinpoint harassment blackspots, women in urban India are using their smartphones for protection after a notorious gang-rape in New Delhi.

Interest in safety apps and websites has surged since the fatal December attack, in which a 23-year-old student was set upon by a drunken gang on her way home from a cinema in the Indian capital.

After outrage and protests erupted, four businesswomen set up Safecity.in, a website for victims of harassment to channel their anger.

Even as many in the geek-o-sphere drool in anticipation for the onset of Google Glass, some technologists are starting to question the very real privacy issues entangled with the use of these wearable computers and cameras.

Predictably, the first concerns raised about Google Glass were about the user's privacy: If I am transmitting all of this data to Google, it is going to know even more about me than ever! Or so the reasoning goes. I have to admit that this has been bugging me, but since I carry around an Android phone already, I'm pretty sure Google pretty much knows whatever it wants to know about me.

Apple's much-awaited gadget, iWatch, which would be a wearable version of the iPhone, is at least three years away, one of the suppliers of the tech giant has said.

The makers of Willow glass, a flexible material expected to be used in the Apple iWatch, said that their product is not ready for use in such a complex design.

Apple supplier Corning, developer of the glass, which can be made in a roll similar to newsprint, said the technology should be in use on simple products within a year, but not for anything as complicated as a wearable smartphone, the Telegraph reports.

About 20,000 colleges across the country would be soon connected through a video conferencing software which will enable students to attend lectures of well known faculties through online classes.

The decision by the central government was followed by a meeting recently between Higher Education Secretary Ashok Thakur and 60 vice chancellors of colleges and universities from across the country to acquaint them about the software 'A-view'.

For decades, Microsoft Windows was the computer platform of choice — not just for the overhwelming majority of computer users, but also for a growing legion of malware creators. As the dominant computing platform, it offered the fattest, most lucrative target, and some of its fundamental architecture decisions made it vulnerable to many kinds of malware.

With the transition to the mobile era, Windows is no longer at the center of the computing universe — for users or for hackers. That role is now occupied by Android. According to Stephen Cobb, a distinguished security researcher for the IT security company ESET, 'Android is like early Windows.' It's now the locus for security attacks and prevention — even if it's not getting as much attention in this regard as Windows used to.

Software giant Microsoft launched its Office 365 for businesses in India, which will provide seamless sharing of data across PCs and mobiles using cloud computing technology.

"Office 365 unlocks social and mobility scenarios that will allow businesses and individuals to take full advantage of cloud computing. It gives them the freedom to do things, when, where and how they want," Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said.

The next generation Apple iPhone is likely to be launched in August or September 2013, an analyst has predicted.

According to This Week In Apple Rumors, Barclays analyst Kirk Yang predicted that the next iPhone would land in August or September, along with a cheaper iPhone aimed at emerging markets.

That August/September prognostication puts him in line with a growing squad of Apple-watchers calling for a July/August/September release, including Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities, Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster and Peter Misek of Jeffries, the Huff Post reports.

Kuo and Horwitz are the two prognosticators-to-watch as they've proven to be accurate in the past, the report said.

Cybercriminals and the mayhem they can cause have become the leading concern of security experts in cloud computing. That's the takeaway from the Cloud Security Alliance's latest poll on the top nine threats the industry faces.

Changes In Security Priorities

The nonprofit's latest survey found a reshuffling of security priorities pointing to the growing danger posed by cyberattacks aimed at stealing corporate data. Data breaches and account hijackings that were in the middle of CSA's 2010 list of top threats rose to the number one and three spots, respectively, this year. At the same time, denial of service attacks made their debut as the fifth most worrisome threat.

A new Australian jobs website has caused a stir by encouraging employees to anonymously rate and review their employers.

InsideTrak.com.au invites current and past employees of more than 50,000 businesses across the country to post anonymous reviews of their workplace and culture.

But experts have warned that it is a "legal minefield'' that could land users with serious lawsuits, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Leading software developer Infosys today said it will expand operations in the Atlanta metro area and add around 200 people at in Cobb county in the US in the 2013-14 fiscal.

In a filing to BSE, the IT major said that "...it plans to add approximately 200 new jobs in the next fiscal at its Cumberland location in Cobb County and expects additional expansion in the metro AtlantaBSE 2.48 % area over the next couple of years."

CloudFlare’s web security service went down for about an hour starting at 2:47 PDT Sunday morning, taking its customers down with it. The service was back up at 3:49 PDT, according to a post-mortem. CloudFlare attributed the outage to a system-wide failure of its Juniper edge routers that started after the company tried to prevent a DDoS attack on one of its customers.

Affected sites include Wikileaks, 4chan and others according to this Techcrunch report.

12 things Apple needs to do next — Is Apple at risk of losing its magic touch?

Evernote resets all passwords after hack compromises user data

Popular note taking service Evernote has reset all users' passwords following a 'co-ordinated' hack on its servers.

The company said it had taken the 'precautionary' step after its security and operations team discovered that hackers had gleaned access to members' usernames, encrypted passwords and email addresses.

Although the passwords were 'salted and hashed' in the company's database (making them extremely hard to decrypt and trace back to individuals) all users will have to create a new password next time they log in.

The phablet race is moving at a scorching pace right now and more so in the sub-Rs 10,000 segment. While the leader of the pack, Micromax Canvas 2, is out of stock, many are vying to take its place in the market as well as buyers' hearts. Lava has launched its own contender in the form of Iris 501, but does it have what it takes to wrest some market share from the top-dogs?

Hardware

Photoshop Touch for iPhone, Impressive features on a small screen

It was, frankly, a little bit surreal to be loading Photoshop on my iPhone this week. PS Touch ($4.99) was released for the iPhone and iPod touch (fifth-generation), and I’m still trying to decide if this is a fantastic design accomplishment, or something of a novelty. The answer, I suspect, lies in the middle.

Powerful editing tools on small-screen devices still to me seem an odd pairing. While I appreciate the ability to make more than cursory edits to a photo on my iPhone, it’s unlikely I’m going to delve too deeply into PS Touch’s feature set on my iPhone. The screen, even on the iPhone 5, it still too small to make editing photos a joy. There aren’t many times I’ve looked at a Samsung Galaxy S screen with envy, but testing out PS Touch was one of them.

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Friday, March 8, 2013

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