Posted On May 17, 2012 at 2:00 pm in Tech
Novell this week unveiled Mono Tools for Visual Studio 2.0, which enables development of Microsoft .Net applications for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X from within Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE.
Built as an add-in module for Visual Studio, Mono Tools for Visual Studio enables .Net developers to leverage existing skill sets to create applications for Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X. Version 2.0 features backing for Mac OS X and support for Mono on Windows. In turn, developers can now test and debug on Mono without the overhead of switching between operating systems.
[ Also on InfoWorld: At Novell, Miguel de Icaza's group has worked on the Moonlight project, putting Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application plug-in software on non-Windows platforms. ]
“With this generation of Mono Tools for Visual Studio, Novell continues to offer customers, partners and developers the best experience in Visual Studio for targeting Linux, one of the world’s leading deployment platforms,” said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Developer Platform vice president at Novell, in a statement released by the company.
Also, version 2.0 enables faster time to deployment. A new debugger engine enables developers to debug applications running on the latest versions of Mono on non-x86 hardware such as PowerPC. The newly released Visual Studio 200 platform is supported with this release of Mono Tools for Visual Studio.
Mono Tools for Visual Studio .0 is available at prices ranging from $99 for an individual edition to $,99 for the Ultimate Edition, which provides a limited commercial license to redistribute Mon on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Five enterprise developer licenses are included with the Ultimate edition.
This article, “Novell upgrades Mono Tools for Visual Studio,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter and on your mobile device at infoworldmobile.com.
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Posted On 1:59 pm in Tech
Apple, Oracle and EMC are involved with CPTN Holdings LLC, the Microsoft-led consortium that is purchasing 88 patents from Novell for US$0 million, according to a Dec. 9 posting on the website of German antitrust authority Bundeskartellamt, or Federal Cartel Office.
News of the sale emerged last month when Novell announced it was being purchased by Attachmate for $. billion.
Little remains known about which patents CPTN Holdings will acquire, although speculation has run rampant in recent weeks. Many had also wondered which other companies were involved in the LLC, and the nature of their interest in the patents.
An Oracle spokeswoman declined comment. Apple and EMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There seems little cause for immediate alarm, according to open-source advocate Florian Mueller, who flagged the Bundeskartellamt notice on his blog Thursday.
“I don’t have a crystal ball that would tell me what their business plan with those patents is, but those organizations have a track record and, very importantly, they have a reputation to protect,” Mueller wrote. “They all want to enjoy excellent relations with software developers, and software developers expect large players to make reasonable and constructive use of whatever patents they own. I guess that’s exactly what will happen in this case.”
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris’s e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com
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Posted On 7:08 am in Mobile
Samsung Electronics on Friday reported a record high operating profit and net profit for the second quarter, driven by strong sales of memory chips and LCDs, but it warned that stiff competition in consumer electronics means it may not be able to maintain profitability at current levels.
The company is considered a technology industry bellwether because it is the world’s largest producer of several products, including flat-screen TVs, DRAM, NAND flash memory chips and LCD screens, as well as the second-biggest mobile phone vendor. Its strong performance in the second quarter, which ended June 0, follows a string of glowing reports from technology industry leaders, from Apple to Intel.
Samsung said its operating profit reached 5.0 trillion Korean won (US$.22 billion) in the second quarter, while sales rose 7 percent year-on-year to 7.89 trillion won. The operating profit figure beat Samsung’s previous high of . trillion won in the first quarter of this year. Net profit at the company rose 8 percent to .28 trillion won.
“In the second quarter, our component businesses performed very strongly, yet it was a more challenging quarter for our [electronics] businesses,” said Robert Yi, a vice president at Samsung. While chips and LCDs did well for the company, competition in mobile phones, flat panel TVs and other consumer electronics hurt.
“With intensified competition throughout the digital media and mobile industries going forward, it may become a challenge to maintain current profitability levels,” he said..
The company sold 6.8 million mobile phones during the quarter, up 22 percent from last year, but average selling prices dropped due to the increased competition, Samsung said in a statement. The company’s mobile phone shipments also declined slightly compared to the first quarter due to weaker phone shipments to Europe, a sign sovereign debt concerns on the continent spread to consumers.
Looking ahead, Samsung sees continued challenges in its mobile phone unit due to intensifying competition, said Hwan Kim, vice president of the company’s mobile communications business, during a conference call.
Samsung anticipates that smartphones will continue to dominate the handset landscape in the second half of this year due to the release of new designs, “especially Android phones”, it said in a statement. Samsung plans to launch more smartphones, including a range of mid-end smartphones, in the third quarter to increase its share of the lucrative market.
The company expects revenue at its network equipment business to increase due to higher sales of mobile WiMax equipment in Asia.
The world’s largest TV maker struck a positive note for flat panel TVs, including new products.
Samsung said it has sold 00,000 D-capable TVs since launching its lineup in March. The company shipped 9.02 million flat TVs in the second quarter, noting strong growth in developing markets and increased sales of its LED TVs.
The third quarter may not be as strong as normal for flat TVs because so many people just bought new sets to watch the World Cup soccer tournament, the company said, but it still predicted 20 percent year-on-year growth during the third quarter. It also forecast continued strong sales of its LED TVs and D TVs.
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Posted On 7:08 am in World
HTC announced an incredible number of products today, including Facebook phones and a tablet, but it also revealed that it would be launching updates to three popular phones. The Incredible S, the Desire S and the Wildfire S will be heading to Europe and Asia in Q2 20.
HTC Incredible S
I am a big fan of the HTC Droid Incredible and I know many others are as well. The popular Verizon phone has gained many fans and I’m sure that the Incredible S will impress. There is one disturbing detail, however. The Incredible S will ship with Froyo–not Gingerbread. Let’s hope that an upgrade will be available shortly and that the US version (if there is one) will ship with the most recent update of Android. The Incredible sports an 8-megapixel camera, GHz processor, 720p video capture and a -inch display (larger than the .7-inch original Incredible).
HTC Desire S
The Desire is quite possibly one of the most attractive phones out there, but the Desire S somehow looks even better with an aluminum unibody shell (which is a trademark HTC design detail). Thankfully, this phone runs Gingerbread. It is powered by a GHz Snapdragon processor, has a front-facing and back-facing camera (with 720p video capture), and a .7-inch WVGA display.
HTC Wildfire
The HTC Wildfire is a bit on the lower end in terms of specs, but a solid phone nonetheless. The Wildfire S is a slight improvement with a better 20-by-80 HVGA .2-inch display (the previous generation had a 20-by-20 QVGA display). The Wildfire S also runs Gingerbread and has a -megapixel camera.
None of the phones are mind-blowing; in fact, they seem a bit dated considering the onslaught of G dual-core processor phones that we’ve seen at this year’s show. Nevertheless, the previous generation of these phones were incredibly popular and HTC is wise to retain the names and designs of the much-loved phones and only slightly tweak the specs.
I’m headed down to the showfloor to get my hands on these phones. Stay tuned for my first impressions and other news coming out of Barcelona at the 20 Mobile World Congress.
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Posted On 1:43 am in News
Apple on Tuesday released new models of Time Capsule, its combination backup drive and wireless base station.The new Time Capsules are available in 2TB and TB capacities–previously, Time Capsule had topped out at 2TB.
Time Capsule connects to a wireless network, allowing users to back up Macs on the network via OS X’s Time Machine feature. The Time Capsules also include a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port and three Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, as well as a USB port for connecting a printer or external drive.
The new Time Capsules still use the 802.n Wi-Fi networking standard, with dual-band operation available for 802.b/g devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. Other than the boosted hard drive capacities, it doesn’t appear the new Time Capsules score any new features.
The 2TB Time Capsule costs $299 while the TB model sells for $99; those prices are unchanged from the previous TB and TB offerings, respectively.
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Posted On 1:42 am in World
Facebook held a big media pow-wow today. Faced with a vocal user backlash, intense criticism from privacy advocacy groups , and scrutiny from the United States Senate, Facebook saw the error of its ways and introduced three significant changes to simplify its privacy controls.
Intertwined in the privacy soap opera sparked by Facebook are two fundamental marketing lessons that all businesses can learn from. A) Users like to have choices, and B) you sell the sizzle, not the bacon.
Facebook messed up on both of those issues. First, it has an established history of simply launching new features, and automatically opting all users in. The first users are aware of changes to the Facebook interface or the way Facebook shares their data is when they are experiencing the consequences of those changes. Users don’t like to be blindsided like that, which leads to a backlash.
On the second issue, Facebook never really sold the bacon or the sizzle. In other words, Facebook made changes to the way data is shared because it benefited Facebook, and with little or no regard for what value that provides to Facebook’s 00 million plus users.
But, recent surveys show that Facebook’s Zuckerberg may be onto something. Perhaps privacy is dead. Certainly, the boundaries that define privacy are subjective and open to interpretation, and there are some–many, in fact–users who simply don’t value privacy nearly as much as privacy advocacy groups like the EFF might like to think.
Back to the point, though–sell the sizzle. Have you ever seen a Budweiser commercial proclaiming the virtues of a beer gut or hangover? No, if you drink Budweiser you will have fun 2/7 and be surrounded by girls in bikinis.
Here is the real secret: if you sell the sizzle well, you can be honest about the negative consequences and customers will take the sizzle with the risk. Sticking with the bacon analogy, most people are aware that bacon is high in fat and cholesterol, and generally not good for you–but nobody cares because they love the taste of bacon. Plain and simple.
If you bought a new sports car, and the salesman told you that you should never exceed 60mph, and that for every hour you drove over 60mph you would lose an hour of warranty coverage, some would heed the warning, and some would accept that trade and floor it. If a doctor told you that every time you had sex you would die one day earlier, how many days of your life would you be willing to trade in?
OK. Let’s bring this marketing lesson back to Facebook. Facebook needs to let users know what’s in it for them. Don’t explain what the feature does or how it works. Users simply want to know “how will opting in and sharing my data benefit me?” If you give me a strong enough benefit to make it worth my while, and sell me on why using your new feature or service is a win-win, and not just a win for Facebook, I will gladly opt in and share my data.
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Posted On May 16, 2012 at 4:28 am in IT
Grid vendor Platform Computing has unveiled new private cloud software that aggregates servers, storage, networking tools and hypervisors to create a shared pool of physical and virtual resources.
The concept is similar to VMware’s cloud operating system, which is designed to aggregate all the virtualized x86 components of the data center into large computing pools. But Platform Computing says its new software, called Platform ISF, works with any type of hypervisor, and even hardware that has not been virtualized. VMware’s vSphere requires customers to use the VMware virtualization platform in order to build private clouds. (See slideshow, ” things we love/hate about VMware’s vSphere)
“Cloud management software cannot make any of these assumptions [about what technologies are used in customer data centers],” says Platform CEO Songnian Zhou. “It has to support and integrate with all these different hypervisors, operating systems and servers.”
According to Forrester analyst James Staten, Platform ISF meets all the requirements needed in a cloud management product: a workload distribution engine; an infrastructure aggregation layer; a self-service portal for IT administrators; metering and monitoring; and robust APIs for integration with third-party tools.
Cloud management platforms have popped up from vendors such as tera, Elastra, Enomaly, and Zimory, and the open source Eucalyptus. But according to Staten, most cloud vendors other than Platform Computing are missing at least one of the key components that Forrester believes are necessary to build a cloud.
“We believe [Platform ISF] is perhaps the most complete internal cloud software solution we’ve seen so far,” Staten says.
Platform ISF, which stands for Infrastructure Sharing Facility, was announced Monday and is being released in a beta trial on June 0, with general availability expected in the fall. Pricing will be about $,000 per node per year, according to Zhou.
Platform ISF builds upon the company’s VMO (virtual machine orchestrator) software, which was designed to speed up delivery of virtual machines to end users. Over the past half-year Platform has sought feedback from about 00 customers to find out what core requirements users expected from cloud management software.
ISF works out-of-the-box and integrates with any hypervisor or operating system with no need for customization, Zhou says. ISF integrates with third-party management tools for security and provisioning, for example, plugging into Windows Active Directory to manage authentication.
The shared infrastructure created by ISF lets the same hardware resources be used for test and development, high-performance computing clusters, J2EE, analytics and other types of applications, according to the vendor.
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Posted On 4:27 am in IT
As the U.S. Army ponders how to give every soldier a smartphone loaded with apps for military purposes — and be able to support global communications not only with commercial cellular networks like Sprint, Verizon or AT&T — it is also exploring how it can quickly set up its own wireless network almost anywhere in the world.
“The vision we’re looking at is, every soldier is issued a phone,” says Michael McCarthy, director of operations at the Brigade Modernization Command, Mission Command Complex, at Fort Bliss, Texas. Here the testing of commercial smartphones and tablets has been going on for several months, sometimes with soldiers toting them along for general administrative duties and training, or even taking them out in field exercises in the rugged desert surroundings. Along with McCarthy, Ed Mazzanti and Col. Marissa Tanner are leading the project the Army calls “Connecting Soldiers to Digital Apps.”
MORE ON MILITARY APPS: Army readies apps for Android mobile combat devices
But lots of questions need to be answered before the Army can give the go-ahead to give each U.S. solider a smartphone. McCarthy says Army analysts are seeking to find out whether smartphones, as well as tablets, could be adapted to meet specific security and operational considerations the military has.
The Army wants to know if assigned military radio frequencies can be securely used with the new generation of hand-held devices in order to support a more custom-designed network that could be set up on the go.
The Army is exploring that possibility by reviewing three new wireless technologies — one called Monax from Lockheed Martin, another from Oceus Networks (partnering with Northrop Grumman), and third, the “cognitive radio” gear from xG Technology.
McCarthy says Army technical analysts supervising the tests have been encouraged by what they’ve seen with xG’s “cognitive radio” gear which enables “frequency hopping” by continually searching for unused frequency spectrum, a technique that McCarthy says appears to reduce interference problems. The xG equipment provides voice and data, supporting approximately MB for each smartphone user, though it is dependent on the number of users and the distance from a base station.
“Our target going forward is to hit kilometers from the base station,” says McCarthy about the Army’s ideas for how it might set up a network of portable base stations on the go. The Army would like to be able to transport wireless radio base station equipment of some type to wherever it’s needed, quickly setting up and tearing down a network for smartphones for assigned military frequencies.
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Posted On May 14, 2012 at 5:59 am in News
A potentially damning e-mail from a Google engineer will be permitted at trial in Oracle’s lawsuit against the search giant, a judge ordered on Thursday.
Judge William Alsup denied Google’s latest attempt to have the e-mail removed from the record.
Google has argued that the e-mail, which suggests that Google thought it needed a license for Java, should be redacted because it was a draft and is subject to attorney-client privilege, and because Oracle didn’t properly reveal it to the court. The judge denied those claims earlier this week.
Google then asked to submit additional reasons for redacting the document. But the judge on Thursday said that request came too late.
Alsup himself warned Google that the e-mail would hurt it at trial.
The e-mail was written in August last year by Tim Lindholm, a Google engineer, to Andy Rubin, who runs Google’s Android division.
“What we’ve actually been asked to do by Larry and Sergey is to investigate what technology alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome,” Lindholm wrote. “We’ve been over a hundred of these and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java.” He was referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
When the e-mail surfaced during a hearing last month, Alsup told Google: “You’re going to be on the losing end of this document with Andy Rubin on the stand.”
A jury trial in the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is set for Oct. .
Oracle filed the suit last year, accusing Google of infringing on Java-related patents in Android. The suit is being closely watched by the mobile community because the implications could be severe, particularly if Google loses. Oracle could demand that Google pay a license fee each time Android is used on a phone or tablet. Google might pass that cost on to manufacturers. Android is currently available free to handset makers.
Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy’s e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com
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Posted On 5:59 am in Tech
The malicious code that led Google to remove more than 0 Trojan applications from the Android Marketplace appears to mainly be a “dropper” — a program designed to load other code to further compromise the affected smartphone, according to a security firm’s analysis.
The code, dubbed “DroidDream,” attempts to use two exploits to gain root privilege on a compromised smartphone by breaking out of the sandbox designed to limit what applications can do on Android devices, mobile security firm Lookout stated in its most recent analysis. While the vulnerabilities targeted by the program were patched by Google last year, the majority of phones do not have the update yet, allowing the attack to compromise more than 260,000 phones, Google said in a statement.
Also see: After attacks, Google vows to fortify Android Market
Following the first stage of the attack, the program then forwards phone-specific information — including hardware, software and service identifiers — to a command-and-control server, which can then direct the compromised phone to reconnect at a certain time and download additional functionality from a specific URL, according to Lookout’s analysis.
“The second stage is more interesting — it is essentially a blank check,” says Kevin Mahaffey, Lookout co-founder and chief technology officer.
The second-stage program appears to have unfinished functionality that would have allowed it to manipulate Marketplace ratings and post comments, the Lookout analysis states, concluding that “DroidDream could be considered a powerful zombie agent.”
Google pulled down 8 applications from the Android Marketplace and has started to identify affected users and remotely remove the malicious applications from their smartphones. The company will also be pushing a security update to all users to undo any malicious changes and augmenting security measures for the Android Marketplace to attempt to head off future incidents, the company stated in a blog post.
Security companies have repeatedly predicted the rise of mobile malware, but the threat has typically been more myth than reality. Previous attacks against Android-based smartphones have targeted non-Marketplace apps. Earlier this year, for example, Lookout warned of the Geinimi Trojan, which mainly spread in China.
Yet, malware developers seems to be focusing more intensely on mobile-device users. Businesses need to worry because their IT departments do not have the same control over smartphones that they may have over their PCs and laptops, Mahaffey says.
“When there is a vulnerability there are two choices: You can work around it or you can patch it,” he says. “With mobile, there really isn’t that ability (to patch) right now.”
Instead, businesses should deploy device management software that allows them to implement application whitelists, he says.
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