Industry News
Cybersecurity bill passes first hurdle
A closely watched bill that promises to introduce some major changes on the federal cybersecurity front was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee today just days after it was introduced by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
The proposed legislation is called the Cybersecurity Act (S.773) and is a revised version of a bill that was originally introduced by the two Senators last year.
It seeks to improve national cybersecurity preparedness by fostering a closer collaboration between the government and private sector companies, which own a vast portion of the country's critical infrastructure.
The bill would require the President to work with owners of critical infrastructure systems to identify and properly classify IT systems whose disruption would threaten strategic national interests.
It would also require federal agencies that are involved in cybersecurity, to share information with private sector operators of critical infrastructure networks.
The bill contains several provisions designed to encourage the growth of a trained and certified cybersecurity workforce, promote public awareness of cybersecurity issues and to foster and fund research leading to the development of new security technologies.
If passed, the bill would require agency heads to provide information on their cybersecurity workforce plans including recruitment, hiring and training details.
But s controversial provision in the original bill that would have given the president near complete authority to disconnect private and government networks from the Internet in the event of a cyber emergency has been removed in the new version of the bill.
Instead, the revised bill calls for the President to work with key executive in critical infrastructure industries to formulate an appropriate response in a cyber crisis.
The smooth passage of the bill through the Senate Commerce Committee is a sign of the broad bi-partisan support that the bill has garnered so far. Many see the legislation as vital to building the capabilities needed to respond to the array of cyber threats facing government, critical infrastructure and private industry these days.
In a statement, Mike Bregman, Symantec Corp.'s chief technology officer, lauded the passage of the bill out of committee. "The bill recognizes cybersecurity as a share, public/private collaboration, led by private sector innovation and based on market-driven incentives," Bregman said.
The bill comes amid heightened concern in Washington over the recent attacks against Google and dozens of other high-tech companies apparently by operatives based in China.
The attacks have prompted calls for the U.S. to develop a formal cybersecurity strategy that is focused on shoring up defenses while building out a cyber offensive capabilities.
The Rockerfeller-Snowe legislation is one of two major bills that have been proposed in Congress recently. The other bill is called the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act , and is sponsored by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
The bill, introduced in the Senate earlier this week, seeks to curtail aid, financial help and trade programs with countries that are seen as havens for cybercriminals. It has already garnered industry support from the likes of American Express, Mastercard, Visa , eBay, Facebook , Microsoft and Cisco , Gillibrand's office said.
Meanwhile, a separate proposal is being floated among lawmakers and the U.S. State Department for the creation of an ambassador-level position for negotiating cyber-security matters at the United Nations and for ensuring the country has a consistent international policy on the issue.
Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld . Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com .
Read more about cybercrime and hacking in Computerworld's Cybercrime and Hacking Knowledge Center.
Facebook tightens developer rules for publishing into user streams
Social network Facebook tightened rules over the way apps can automatically publish updates or tag photos in a person’s news feed today. The company said developers were abusing privileges and spamming users by auto-tagging multiple friends in photos without consent or posting the same story over and over again to different friends’ Walls.
“In the past year, we’ve noticed that a number of applications aren’t using the permission in a way that is consistent with product intent,” wrote Facebook developer liaison Jessica Lee in a blog post.
Today the company is introducing a number of policy changes. Apps can’t use a friend selector that defaults to choosing multiple people for publishing items to news feed. Users have to do their own photo-tagging and have to click a button or check a box every time a piece of content is published to their feed. Facebook is also discouraging apps from tagging products or using photo tagging for marketing, which might stand in the way of some startups like Udorse or Uppy Media.
Here are the policy changes:
- “You must not provide users with the option to publish the same Feed story to more than one friend’s Wall at a time.” (DPP VI.A.2)
- “You can tag a photo only with the express consent of the user on whose behalf you are doing the tagging, and must only tag images when the tag accurately labels what is depicted in the image.” (DPP V.13)
- “You must not publish a Feed story unless a user has explicitly indicated an intention to share that content, by clicking a button or checking a box that clearly explains their content will be shared.” (DPP VI.A.1)
Companies: Facebook
People: Jessica Lee
Tips for crafting a great workplace IT security awareness program
Selling information security awareness to employees can be like "pushing the Queen Mary up Mt. Everest on the best of days," says Jay Carter, director of information security for the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard University. But that hasn't stopped him from trying over the years, and he has success stories to share.
He did so at the SecureWorld Boston conference Wednesday, alongside co-panelist Michael Ste. Marie, information security analyst for Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.
Carter says he has established an advisory council with faculty and staff at Harvard to ensure end users' concerns are addressed in establishing security policies. "I can't overstate the importance of establishing a two-way dialogue with your community," he says.
Also read: How to stop P2P data breaches
Carter schedules regular meetings to update end users on security policy issues and to re-emphasize major points. He has also printed up Information Security 101 brochures featuring a custom logo featuring Harvard's emblem secured with a lock and key, which he says is part of a consistent branding effort.
Posters, customized screen savers with security messages and other communications mechanisms can also be used to spread the word. In a past job, he bought information videos and the staff printed out movie tickets and provided pizza, then popcorn, for those who attended.
"It's an opportunity to be creative," he says. Plus, he adds, offering food always gets people's attention.
Carter advises that when writing a security policy, general titles and a common phone number/email address should be used rather than individuals' names and numbers given that IT security staff come and go.
Also read Scott Bradner's regular ‘Net Insider column for more from Harvard's IT security team
Carter, who also implemented security awareness education programs at other organizations before coming to Harvard, says that that when a breach does occur or a malware infection takes place, the IT security department should use the event as an opportunity to stress the reality of security threats and the importance of adhering to best practices. "If management doesn't know you're facing challenges they'll wonder why they need an info security department," he says.
"Transparency is the best tool to promote information security," Carter says.
FHLB's Ste. Marie says getting and keeping employees interested in information security is the big challenge since "it's not going to happen overnight – it's a cultural change."
He engaged employees by holding sessions with them about topics that might appeal to their personal lives as well, such as wireless router security, identity theft/phishing and monitoring kids online. He also passed along news articles of interest on such topics, and the result was two-way conversation.
"It worked. People are talking to me all the time," he said.
Follow Bob Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/alphadoggs
Read more about wide area network in Network World's Wide Area Network section.
A glimpse at some iPad games
The iPad is just a week away, and game developers are starting to reveal what their titles will look like on the device. It's already clear that we'll be seeing a lot more detail in games, and hopefully more in-depth experiences to match.
A number of developers have announced their plans for iPad games, with studios like Freeverse, Gameloft, 10tons, Critical Thought Games, Firemint, and ngmoco making commitments for titles that will be available at, or close to launch. Confirmed titles include Flight Control HD, We Rule, Warp Gate, N.O.V.A. and geoDefense 2. Sadly there aren't yet any screen shots of these particular games, but this week, a number of images of other titles have started to find their way online to serve as a tease for what's ahead.
New Aegis Padlock Pro hard drive supports encryption
Apricorn on Wednesday released the Aegis Padlock Pro, a portable storage device with security features to keep your data secure.
The drive supports hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption. All data saved to the drive in encrypted, even if the hard drive mechanism is removed from the Aegis Padlock Pro case. The Aegis Padlock Pro also has support for personal identification number (PIN) access; you must enter a PIN before you can use the drive.
The Aegis Padlock Pro comes with a USB 2.0 port and an eSATA port. The drive can use bus power via USB, if the USB port on your Mac provides enough power. If you want to use eSATA, Apricorn includes a USB power cable, so you can draw power from the USB port while benefiting from the data transfer speeds of eSATA. A power adapter is also included.
The Aegis Padlock Pro is available with a hard disk drive mechanism or a solid-state drive (SSD). The hard drive versions are available in 250GB ($129), 500GB ($169), or 640GB ($199) capacities. The SDD version is available in 128GB ($419) and 256GB ($799) capacities. All drives have a three-year warranty.
Google fixes bug affecting Apps sync tool for Outlook
Google has found a fix for a bug that affected Google Apps' Sync for Microsoft Outlook by preventing some e-mails from being downloaded from Gmail servers to the Outlook program on end-users' PCs.
Since users were unaware that not all their e-mail messages were being replicated to Outlook, they often failed to respond in a timely manner to affected messages, according to problem reports posted to the Google Apps discussion forum.
Once aware of the bug, the affected users typically got into the habit of checking Gmail's Web interface periodically to see if all inbound messages had reached their Outlook application.
Google started rolling out a patch to fix the problem Wednesday afternoon and expects to finish in the coming days, a Google spokeswoman said. "Once the rollout is complete, we will re-download any missing messages to affected users," she said via e-mail. "As we noted in the help center, the bug only affected a small number of messages for a very small number of users."
Since the patch will be applied to Google's Gmail servers, neither Apps administrators nor end-users need to take any action.
Google acknowledged the bug in the Google Apps discussion forum on March 12 and had promised a fix for early last week. In the forum, a Google representative said the bug was introduced via a software upgrade earlier in March, but some Apps administrators posted messages saying they've had the problem for longer.
According to Wesley's post, the bug "primarily" affects end-users who haven't downloaded messages to Outlook for several days straight, although some Apps administrators wrote in the forum that the bug has hit end-users who haven't let messages accumulate in Gmail.
Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a free Outlook plug-in launched in June 2009, lets users of the Apps Premier and Education editions use Outlook as a front end to the server-side Gmail and Calendar components of the suite. The Premier edition costs US$50 per user per year, while the Education edition is free.
At the launch of Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, Google positioned it as a key element for smoothing the migration of organizations from Exchange to Gmail by giving users the option of using Outlook if they prefer it to the Gmail Web interface.
Dell aims new PowerEdge servers at the cloud
Dell hopes to grab a bigger slice of the cloud infrastructure market with a new line of PowerEdge servers that the company announced on Wednesday.
The new PowerEdge C servers are aimed at service providers running busy Web sites and public cloud computing services, as well as enterprises building "private clouds" to deliver on-demand application services internally.
Dell said it would "take the guesswork" out of building public and private clouds by selling the servers in "turnkey cloud solutions" that include packages of hardware, software and implementation services.
The servers are an outgrowth of Dell's Data Center Solutions division, which works closely with Web giants like Microsoft and Facebook to build custom servers for their online operations. The division designed some of the servers running Microsoft's Azure platform, for example.
The DCS group works only with very large customers that buy tens of thousands of servers. To reach a wider audience, Dell created a few servers similar to the designs it built for those customers and is offering them for the first time as standard, listed products in the form of the C servers launched Wednesday.
It announced three PowerEdge C servers initially: the C1100, for high-memory configurations, the C2100, for data analytics and storage, and the C6100, a "four-node cloud and cluster optimized shared infrastructure server." They are 1u and 2u rackmount servers based on four- and six-core Intel Xeon 5500/5600 processors.
The systems are not like typical servers and won't appeal to all customers. They strip out some features, like redundant power supplies, to make the servers more energy efficient, but that also makes them less reliable. They are designed to run in specialized cloud environments with software that can route around hardware failures and keep applications running.
That means selling them will require education for both Dell's sales teams and its customers. But they could help Dell to compete better with rival cloud offerings like HP's Extreme Scale-Out systems, IBM's iDataPlex servers and power-optimized cloud products from SGI and others.
"We're going to be very clear to our sales force and our customers that these are for those rarefied environments where you have this type of software infrastructure," Barton George, Dell's cloud evangelist, said in an interview last month. "If you were to run SAP or a database or a file server on one of these systems it would be a disaster. It wouldn't work."
Dell's first turnkey cloud package is a platform-as-a-service offering that addresses "the key issues around Web application development and deployment," which Dell says are unpredictable traffic, the fear of under-provisioning, and migration from development to production. The package bundles Dell's C servers with cloud software from Joyent and some implementation and support services.
Within a couple of months it will offer C servers configured with Canonical's Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud software, and with data warehousing and analytics tools from Aster Data and Greenplum. Systems with Microsoft and VMware software will follow late this summer, said Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of Dell's server platforms group.
Dell is offering workshops and services to help companies design and deploy a cloud infrastructure, as well as technical support. It expects the servers to be used for running newer, Web-based applications written in PHP and Ruby on Rails, rather than for legacy applications, Norrad said.
They are intended for companies that will buy "a few racks, or a few hundred servers" at a time, he said -- in other words, smaller customers than the DCS unit has dealt with in the past, but still of a reasonable size. They are also targeted at high-performance computing customers.
Images and specifications for the C servers are posted here on Dell's Web site.
Sprint, Clearwire warm up to LTE
The CEOs of both Sprint Nextel and its WiMax partner, Clearwire, signaled on Wednesday that they might move to LTE (Long-Term Evolution) in the future.
Since Sprint and Clearwire separately embraced WiMax and then formed their joint venture in 2008, LTE has emerged as the 4G (fourth-generation) system most likely to dominate the mobile world. In keynote appearances at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas, the Sprint and Clearwire chiefs played up the fact that Clearwire is live in 27 markets while LTE hasn't yet launched commercially in the U.S. But they clearly left the door open to adopting LTE themselves depending on how the market shapes up. The large amount of radio spectrum Clearwire controls gives it the flexibility to do so, they said.
"Because we consider ourselves technology agnostic ... we'll give our customers just exactly what they want," said Bill Morrow, CEO of Clearwire. "They want to get access to the network, high speed, low cost, lots of capacity, low latency. Either one of these technologies can deliver those."
"The architecture of our network is designed to be able to add on LTE should we need to," Morrow said. "We can sunset one technology going forward if we need to in the future."
Morrow has called Clearwire technology-agnostic in the past, but Wednesday's comments were the strongest yet indicating the venture might ultimately abandon the technology that gave it birth. However, neither he nor Sprint CEO Dan Hesse exactly waved a white flag of surrender in the competition between WiMax and LTE.
Morrow called for convergence between networks using the two 4G technologies. He said service providers should allow for roaming between LTE and WiMax networks, using devices that can connect to both. Carriers in the U.S. in particular have an opportunity to do this, he said. Morrow pointed out that chip maker Beceem Communications announced a chip last month that includes both WiMax and LTE capability.
Still, Morrow said WiMax is far from dead. He said 600 million people around the world are within reach of a WiMax network and 1 billion will be by the end of this year. "That's a market that's big enough to be around for a long time," he said.
Sprint's Hesse appeared just before Morrow and also cited the possibility of adding LTE. In an on-stage interview at the keynote session, CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent asked Hesse why his predecessors at Sprint had chosen WiMax in the first place. "It was time to market," Hesse said.
"Because of our spectrum position ... we have enough that we can always add other technologies later, but it lets us get in the market quickly," Hesse said. Highlighting that competitive advantage, Hesse added, "If you're interested in 4G, you have one choice."
The real benefit of WiMax comes with the economics of the technology, according to both Hesse and Morrow. Echoing predictions by other carrier executives, Hesse estimated that in two years, plan pricing will be based mostly on the number of gigabytes the subscriber gets each month. That gives WiMax providers an advantage because it's less expensive to deliver bits of data on that technology, he said.
Morrow put that advantage in more concrete terms. Research shows most mobile operators can't make a profit delivering more than 3G bytes or 4G bytes per month to a subscriber, he said. Meanwhile, the average Clearwire subscriber uses 7G bytes per month, and the company could make a profit even with twice that traffic, he estimated.
"We have customers who use a terabyte of data per month," Morrow said.
Ex-IBM exec heads to court in insider trading case
IBM's former server chief, Robert Moffat, is heading to court on Monday after he agreed to waive his right to a grand jury in a case related to the Galleon Group insider-training scandal, according to court documents.
The waiver sets the stage for Moffat to enter a plea in the case relating to his involvement in an insider-trading scheme that netted some stock traders millions of dollars in illicit profits.
A hearing about the waiver will be presented in front of a judge on Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday. Typically when a defendant agrees to waive the right of grand-jury indictment, the next step is waiving the right in front of a judge.
Moffat's lawyer, Kerry Lawrence, on Wednesday confirmed his client had waived his right for grand-jury indictment, but declined to comment on whether Moffat would plead guilty. The DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment further on the case before Monday's hearing.
The DOJ on Tuesday filed a notice of intent to bring criminal charges in the case. The charges being brought against Moffat include securities fraud and insider trading. Ten others involved in the case have already pleaded guilty for their involvement in the alleged scam.
Moffat, formerly senior vice president at IBM, was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in October with conspiracy to commit securities fraud along with other technology-company executives and traders. In the wake of the SEC investigation, the DOJ has taken over prosecution of the case.
Moffat allegedly provided insider information when IBM was considering acquiring Sun Microsystems to Danielle Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New York-based New Castle Funds. Chiesi allegedly made trades on behalf of New Castle Funds based on the tips and generated about US$1 million in illegal profits.
The SEC also filed charges in the case against Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager with hedge fund Galleon Group, who gained close to $25 million in illegal profit. Chiesi and Rajaratnam allegedly committed securities fraud jointly, according to the SEC. Both of them tapped into a network of high-ranking corporate executives and insiders to obtain confidential details about quarterly earnings and takeover activity.
The SEC also charged other technology executives including Rajiv Goel, who was Intel treasury's managing director of investments. Goel last month pled guilty in association with the case.
Yahoo iPhone apps hint at what's to come
Yahoo introduced two iPhone applications this week, including one that lets users draw a circle on a map to look for restaurants within a specific area.
When users launch the Sketch-a-Search app, they immediately see a map centered on their location using GPS. Users can then draw a circle around an area as wide as they want. The application displays push pins for each restaurant within that area and lists them below the map.
Clicking on a restaurant from the list leads to a page with information collected by Yahoo, such as user reviews and photographs. From there, a user can click to call the restaurant or get directions.
Instead of a circle, a user can draw a line along a road to find restaurants just along that street. Shaking the phone erases the search.
The idea behind the application was to offer a better way to do local searches, said David Katz, vice president of Yahoo Mobile's Americas region, during an interview at the CTIA conference in Las Vegas. Typically, local search apps use GPS, zip codes or even a neighborhood name to locate shops in the area. "Most people have a physical area in mind" that might not correspond to any of those, he said.
For now, Sketch-a-Search is available only in the U.S. and displays only restaurants. In the future, however, Yahoo sees potential to extend the service to other kinds of listings, like real estate.
Yahoo also introduced a search application for the iPhone. It lets people search by voice command and is smarter about displaying pertinent information, Katz said. For instance, if a user searches for "Shrek," Yahoo recognizes that as a movie search and first displays some facts about the movie, such as show times and reviews. Users can shake the phone to clear those results, too. That application is available in 22 countries.
Despite Yahoo's search agreement with Microsoft, Yahoo will continue to work on its own search applications like Sketch-a-Search. "What we want to do going forward is focus on the user interface and experience. A product like Sketch-a-Search is an example of what that means in practice," said Katz.
Yahoo faces tough competition from Google and now also from Bing to form search deals with mobile operators. Those deals typically involve the operator preloading a search bar from their preferred partner on a smartphone's home screen.
While Yahoo recently lost a search deal with T-Mobile to Google, it has also won new deals. "The initial arrival of Android created a lot of churn in the market but over time, as the AT&T Backflip example illustrates, we think we will continue to be able to distribute search effectively," Katz said.
AT&T recently decided to use Yahoo search on the Android Backflip. While AT&T has a search agreement with Yahoo, it was not required to use Yahoo on the Backflip, Katz said.
"Our view is it will continue to be this back and forth and give and take, and Bing will be a factor too," he said.
SmartSynch lands deal with Itron to provide public network access
There’s a battle being waged in the Smart Grid world. One camp is arguing that private networks are the best way to transmit data between smart meters and utilities, and the other endorses public networks. Today, SmartSynch scored a win for the latter, partnering up with major meter maker Itron to provide wireless communications on public networks.
SmartSynch, which struck a deal with AT&T last year to use its public networks for Smart Grid applications, argues that public is the way to go because those networks are faster, better maintained, broadly available, and less expensive to operate. Its opponents, including Trilliant and Silver Spring Networks, counter that private networks, which they provide, are more secure and customizable for utilities’ needs. There’s no clear winner yet — it’s essentially a race to see who can land deals with the most utilities.
By teaming up with SmartSynch, Itron is getting access to use a range of public networks, including general packet radio service (GPRS). It will integrate SmartSynch’s communications modules into its OpenWay smart meters to transmit energy consumption data between homes, businesses and utilities, and to run demand-response programs, redistributing energy between buildings when peak demand gets too high and threatens to destablize the grid.
The combined SmartSynch-Itron technology will be deployed first by DTE Energy, a utility operating in the Detroit-Metro area rolling out 2.6 million smart electricity meters and 700,000 smart natural gas meters. Eventually, the same integration could be used to facilitate communication between appliances (refrigerators, clothes dryers and more) and meters.
This is the second such deal Itron has announced this week. Earlier, it announced it is joining forces with Tropos Networks, which will allow Itron to work hand-in-hand with utilities to use privately-owned broadband networks for Smart Grid applications. Tropos emphasizes grid and data security.
So, clearly, Itron is playing on both sides of the fence — offering public network access where it’s most needed, namely in areas lacking local area networks for energy data transmission, as well as private networks for utilities that are more concerned about security and privacy.
But stay tuned. Because if Silver Spring Systems ends up going public, as many analysts predict it will — particularly after the company tapped several underwriters last month — its preference for private wireless networks could take the market in that direction.
Companies: itron, Silver Spring Networks, Smartsynch, Trilliant
Macs at Work: Five Little Known Surprises
More and more employees wish their companies would give them Macs. After all, Macs are powerful, sleek-looking machines that also run iTunes and Guitar Hero.
Yet Macs at work have their own quirks. Just ask Tom Kelly of Healthcare IP Partners, a 60-employee technology service provider for hospitals. He led a sweeping effort to bring Macs into a Windows-only enterprise a couple of years ago.
Healthcare IP Partners began moving toward cloud services like NetSuite, which made the company less dependent on a single desktop operating system. Kelly, who wears two hats--CFO and CIO--at the company, saw the potential for Macs to relieve desktop-support management headaches and cut support costs.
Kelly contracted with a nearby Apple reseller and Apple support outsourcer. He adopted Fusion, a desktop virtualization machine, to let Mac users run Windows. Then he gave employees the option to work on a Mac or a PC.
Mac adoption in the enterprise skyrocketed. In only two years, eight out of 10 Healthcare IP Partners employees moved to a Mac. Kelly figures all of his company's employees will be on Macs this year, and he'll be able to dramatically reduce internal desktop support.
Kelly says the Mac experience has gone exceptionally smooth. However, there were a few surprises. Here are his top five:
1. A Mac Delayed
When employees learn they're getting a Mac, they often become giddy and want it right now. New employees are especially anxious. Yet too often a new Mac doesn't arrive in time for the new employee's first day, Kelly says. "It's probably the biggest gotcha."
Kelly orders a Mac from a reseller five miles away from Healthcare IP Partners' headquarters in Minneapolis, Minn. The order specifies Mac hardware configurations, while Kelly's team loads software. Many times, though, the reseller doesn't have the right equipment in stock.
The delay may just be a couple of days, Kelly says, which isn't a big deal. For new employees excited on their first day, however, "it's just a bad start," he says.
2. Remember the Apps
Mac users tend to use Firefox for most of their browsing, but they can also fire up Internet Explorer on Windows via Fusion. The browser options can confuse end-users, however. They forget which cloud-based apps work better on one browser vs. another.
"Not all of these cloud apps will even run on Chrome or Firefox, only Internet Explorer," Kelly says. "On the other hand, NetSuite works a little faster on the Mac."
Another problem is that Mac and Windows versions of critical worker-productivity software, namely Microsoft Office, aren't exactly the same. Features work slightly differently. Keystrokes might not be the same. Until Outlook for Mac arrives later this year, Mac users will have to get used to Entourage.
It's a serious gotcha: Four of the last five new employees at Healthcare IP Partners chose a Mac, but none was a heavy Mac user; they were all used to PCs. "There's a little bit of a learning curve going from Office for Windows to Office for the Mac," Kelly says. "Power users may get a little frustrated at first."
Why not run Office for Windows over Fusion? "That would defeat the purpose of using a Mac as the key tool," Kelly says. "It's a money thing, too. I personally don't want to buy two versions of Office."
3. Self-Support
When PCs go haywire, users immediately call the helpdesk, which is usually on speed dial. But Mac users are being asked to weigh a few options.
At Healthcare IP Partners, Mac users can call up the company's third-party support outsourcer, which may decide to dispatch an expert to fix the ailing machine. Or Mac users can head to one of three Apple Stores in the Minneapolis area. Mac users can even call Apple's help line.
Another option: turn to Mac user groups for answers and troubleshoot the problem yourself.
Healthcare IP Partners, of course, would like to wean Mac users off of internal support. On the other hand, Kelly believes Mac users will eventually prefer having these options--that is, they give users some control. "When you hand over your computer to IT, then you wait," he says.
4. Careful Out There
Healthcare IP Partners deploys security measures on all its computers in case they're lost or stolen. With Macs and iPhones (Healthcare IP Partners also issues iPhones), the odds of a theft increase. Kelly says he makes sure new Mac users are aware of this heightened risk.
It's not just lip service, either. San Francisco police, for instance, issued a public warning this week about a rash of daytime iPhone robberies. In one case, three teens saw a man talking on his iPhone, held him up at gunpoint and stole his phone.
5. Some Apps Just Don't Work
A CIO of a Silicon Valley law firm, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CIO.com that some Windows apps run faster over a virtual machine on a Mac than on a PC. On the other hand, says Kelly, some Windows apps with Mac versions don't run well on a Mac.
Kelly is talking about WebEx, a web conferencing tool acquired by Cisco. Kelly had been using GoToMeeting, a rival product, when WebEx came out with a great deal. And so Healthcare IP Partners began using WebEx--and it would regularly hang up on the Mac when hosting a conference.
"It was amazing to me how screwed up WebEx was on a Mac," Kelly says. "We went back to GoToMeeting."
For employees, moving to the Mac also may mean certain apps are no longer available.
Tom Kaneshige is a senior writer for CIO.com in Silicon Valley. Send him an email at tkaneshige@cio.com. Or follow him on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline.
Lab Notes: WorldBench Clock Problem? Not Any More
Editor's Note: Lab Notes is a weekly GeekTech feature written by Patrick Waters, a member of the PCWorld Labs crew, where he'll take you through some of the goings-on from the Lab, and some of the weird glitches they encounter. Do you have any questions for Patrick? Leave a comment!
This week, I sat down and reminisced with our in-house developer James Motch about his brainchild WorldBench 6, and an error that gave us a headache for 3 solid weeks.
We had received an Acer desktop on January 29th of this year, and our usual preparation methods went off without a hitch. After installing and starting WorldBench, the first sets of tests ran smoothly for a short while, but were halted by an unusual--and rare--error.
"The date 2/14/10 is invalid, and WorldBench cannot continue"
February 14th? It was February 1st when we ran into this error, and I was not in love with the situation. We began troubleshooting by changing the date through Windows and the BIOS, but neither fixed the problem. After throwing away 2 hours on the machine, I asked our developer James what he thought. The look plastered across his face was of astounding bewilderment, and remained that way for about half an hour.
After determining that this error had no effect on the testing results--and that this was the first time this error had occurred--we then spent two and half weeks trying figure out what was happening and why. We restored the computer's factory settings thrice, we crawled through the WorldBench setup process several times and then we took turns brooding and trawling the internet for an answer. Three weeks later, James found the solution.
James had discovered two other PC users--one from New Zealand and one from the UK--each who had come across the same error, but in different programs. It would seem that we all forgot that not all English-speaking nations read the time and date the same. These two users had installed programs that used the default American time/date formatting (MM/DD/YYYY), and their Windows installation (which was geographically localized) failed to understand that, for example, 3/2/2010 equaled March 2nd (US standard), and not February 3rd (UK standard) .
Seems simple right? Just change the date/time format in the Windows clock and run WorldBench, right?
Nope.
James discovered that, in order for WorldBench to properly register the time and date from Windows, he needed to change the regional setting to literally any other locale, click Apply, then OK to dismiss the Windows Date and Time control panel, open it up again and then finally set it to the American formatting.
We think that this whole procedure completely flushed the registry strings that store the settings regarding how Windows sees the time/date format; without selecting another locale and applying/ok'ing it first, Windows will hang onto the registry strings and WorldBench will pick up on those.
After sending the news of this fix to New Zealand and the UK, we subsequently received no news on their behalf. James swears by the adage of "no news is good news" and he is pleased with his findings. Coincidently, a laptop passed through with the same error, and the same fix corrected it, no problem. -P
Nikon D5000 DSLR Camera
For a great bargain on a digital SLR, check out the Nikon D5000 DSLR camera. The big camera store Abe's of Maine has it on sale for $697, but a $57 discount available at checkout drops the price to $640. That's a total of $110 off the original list price of $750.
The Nikon D5000 has a 2.7-inch tilt-and-swivel LCD screen to give the photographer a wide array of creativity in angles and shots. It supports AF-S mount lenses, and you can expect the battery to last for about 500 shots. The Nikon D5000 has some great features, but we rated its auto-mode images as below par, so you may want to think again on this model if this is your first DSLR.
This deal includes an 18-55mm VR lens, a Nikon gadget bag, and a how-to DVD about using your new DSLR.
Lenovo G530 Laptop
Newegg knocks down the price of the practical, no-nonsense Lenovo G530 Notebook to $400 (it typically retails around $450). It has a 15.4-inch screen and a 160GB hard drive, and it comes with Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit).
The G530 is a basic business laptop designed to maximize value and utility, but it hit our Laptop Sweet Spot by falling in between a low-powered netbook and a premium laptop.
Sceptre 46-Inch HDTV
Walmart.com has the Sceptre X46BV on sale for $598 (with free shipping to a local store). Newegg has the same model marked down to the same price, $598, plus $50 shipping. Either way, that's a substantial discount from the current regular price of about $730. The 46-inch LCD HDTV has a 1080p resolution, a 60Hz refresh rate, and a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.
AT&T MicroCell to be available mid-April
If you often find that when you're at home your iPhone is constantly dropping calls or suffering from generally poor reception, AT&T's offering a remedy for your network signal blues. The company announced on Wednesday that it will begin rolling out its AT&T MicroCell nationwide in mid-April.
The MicroCell is a bit like a wireless router for your cell phone. You plug it into your network and it generates a miniature cell signal that should cover your home, improving your signal strength and ensuring an end to reception problems. Finally, you can make calls without fear of repeatedly having to ask your conversation partner "are you still there?"
You can also lock down the MicroCell so that only phones you approve--up to ten different lines, and up to four at the same time--can make calls from it. Minutes are deducted from the plans of the phones using the MicroCell. While most standard 3G voice and data features should work fine on the MicroCell, AT&T does note that certain location-based services may not function correctly at this time.
In addition, if you want to pay a little extra, you can shell out $20 per month for Unlimited MicroCell calling--that's free domestic calls in the U.S. as long as you're on your MicroCell. On the upside, AT&T is offering rebates on the MicroCell's price if you sign up for a MicroCell calling plan or AT&T broadband service.
However, the MicroCell does have its downsides. For one thing, the price: it's $150 to buy one of the devices, which you're paying for on top of your existing service. For another, it requires you to have an existing broadband Internet connection. For those hoping that the MicroCell means they can get AT&T service out in the boonies, keep in mind that a satellite Internet connection won't cut it: you'll need something of the DSL or cable caliber. Also, while you can start a call on your MicroCell and then leave your house, you can't do the same in reverse--AT&T's cell towers won't hand off calls to the MicroCell. There are a few additional caveats as well, so it's worth reading AT&T's FAQ on the MicroCell if you're considering investing.
Many iPhone users have been battling poor coverage and reception issues on AT&T's network for some time now. Will the MicroCell do much to change that? For some users, perhaps, though for many others it's going to be a hard sell to give yet more money to AT&T to fix the company's lousy service.
French police make arrest in hijacking of Obama's Twitter account
An unemployed Frenchman who used the online handle Hacker Croll has been arrested by French police for hijacking President Obama's Twitter account, and that of numerous others, according to news service Agence-France Presse .
The arrest, in France's Puy-de-Dome region, came after a monthslong joint investigation by the FBI and French law enforcement authorities, the report said.
The 25-year-old hacker, who was in custody in the city of Clermont-Ferrand, was previously known to local police for "minor scams" totaling about $20,000. He was scheduled to appear in court June 24, the AFP said.
Hacker Croll's attacks on Twitter and other targets such as Facebook and Google e-mail accounts, however, don't appear to be financially motivated, the report said. The hacker's arrest stemmed from an FBI tip alerting local police to his presence in France last year, AFP said.
The attacks on Obama's Twitter account and those belonging to more than 30 other celebrities and organizations took place last January . Among those whose Twitter accounts were hijacked were Britney Spears and CNN reporter Rick Sanchez.
In a blog post following the attacks, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said 33 accounts had been broken into by someone who had "hacked" Twitter's own support tools. The hijacked accounts were then used to send mostly offensive messages that purported to come from those users.
Hacker Croll < a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135591/Hacker_break_in_of_Twitter_e_mail_yields_secret_docs?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1">again made the news last July after he broke into a Gmail account belonging to an administrative assistant of Twitter's Stone. The hacker then used that account to access the employee's Google Apps account and steal hundreds of pages of Twitter internal documents including sensitive financial projections. The illegally accessed documents were then forwarded to numerous Web sites, some of which later published the documents.
Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld . Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com .
Read more about security in Computerworld's Security Knowledge Center.
CTIA wrap-up: Giant cellphone trade show bores outsiders
A day after the opening of the world’s largest mobile gadget show, from the organization so big it runs CTIA ads on CNN, even the gadget blogs are calling the 2010 show so-so.
But be careful. Googling “Gizmodo CTIA” will get you links to awesome displays on the Las Vegas show floor that turn out to be from last year. Same for Engadget.
Here are the high points from this year’s CTIA.
(One more thing: I’ve been trained by the PR industry not to ask what CTIA stands for unless I want to interview its founder and/or CEO, but you can read about CTIA on Wikipedia.
CTIA wants you to think of CTIA as The Wireless Association. Cheap advice for CTIA: The longest word in your name is “association.” It should be “wireless.” On the Internet, saying association makes bloggers think of the Associated Press, which they hate for not hiring them.)
“Introducing America’s first 4G phone” — Sprint, who’ve promised to start selling the HTC Evo 4G, pictured above, this summer. Summer probably means September 21, by which time we’ll be sick of Sprint’s pop-up ads all over the Internet. I swear one just popped up in my WordPress window.
On the show floor in Las Vegas, Sprint’s 4G phone is on display behind glass in booth 1054. You can’t try it. There’s a sign that says “Experience 4G,” but you can’t actually experience 4G on an Evo at CTIA. No wonder the pro journalists have already flown out.
“Verizon’s LTE 4G Expansion Plans: One-Third of Americans Covered This Year” — Engadget. Further proof that this year’s CTIA theme is “4G: Coming Soon.”
“Brew MP Ecosystem Sees Continued Proliferation of Devices, New Network Operators and Growing Participation in Qualcomm’s 3Pre Software Pre-Load Program” — Qualcomm press release. VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi says the momentum around Brew is important to entrepreneurs looking for business opportunities.
“Nokia’s latest attempt to regain its footing in America is the T-Mobile Nokia 5230 Nuron, an affordable touchscreen model T-Mobile will sell for $69.99 with a two-year plan. Nokia calls it ‘a smartphone for the masses.’” That was me on VentureBeat, three weeks ago.
We didn’t send anyone to CTIA this year. Too bad, because the hottest way to sell new features like 4G is to wrap them in a new phone. And you really need to handle a phone to know if it’s a winner or not. I’m sure Nokia expected me to show up and test the Nuron. Here’s to outsourcing: Go to booth 2536 to test-drive the Nuron. Post your comments below or email them to paul@venturebeat.com.
(Yes, I know Apple didn’t let the masses handle an iPhone on the day Steve Jobs unveiled it. But they wisely gave New York Times gadget guy David Pogue an hour with the thing. Pogue’s writeup basically said: Awesome phone, iffy keyboard. Shouldn’t it take me less than an hour to stop making typos? This is why gadget companies hate reviewers.)
Oracle looks to keep Java interesting and attract young developers
Java will need to be kept interesting if it is to maintain its prominence as the top programming language, an Oracle official stressed Wednesday during a Silicon Valley technical conference.
To that end, features like closures are being added to the platform with version 7, said Jeet Kaul, vice president of the client software division at Oracle. In addition to the Java language, the Java development platform also includes the Java Virtual Machine, offering hardware and OS agnosticism on platforms accommodating the JVM.
[ Is it too late to the game for the JavaFX technology Oracle inherited from Sun to succeed? See InfoWorld's report. ]
"There's all kinds of new things that are happening and Java needs to adapt to that," said Kaul, amidst a question-and-answer session at the EclipseCon 2010 conference in Santa Clara, Calif.
Closures, or first-class functions and lambda expressions, make it easier to write applications for multi-core programming. Also needed are changes to bolster generics support and more accommodation for other languages, Kaul said. Multi-language support is a focus of the upcoming Java Development Kit 7.
"We need to get the younger generation interested and excited [about Java] just like I was," Kaul said.
"I would like to see people with piercings doing Java programming," he said.
With the January closing of its acquisition of Java founder Sun Microsystems, Oracle now is the steward of numerous Java innovations and processes. Oracle officials at the conference Wednesday fielded questions on a variety of issues pertaining to Java, including the direction of the much-maligned JCP (Java Community Process) for amending official Java specifications. A day earlier at EclipseCon, two of the panelists, Kaul and Oracle Vice President Steve Harris, plotted a modular future for Java and charted goals for the Java community.
With the JCP, Oracle officials pledged a new approach.
"The JCP and Java overall, we feel needs to move faster, be more agile, be more flexible," Harris said. "To the extent the JCP has been the primary vehicle to standardize Java and move it forward, I think it needs to move forward more quickly."
The community and structure around the JCP must "be tweaked and pushed to enable that to happen" and Oracle is committed to doing this, Harris said.
He also offered perspectives on the GlassFish application server Oracle acquired with Sun. GlassFish, Harris said, brings a set of developers, a methodology and an approach to development for Oracle to absorb into its DNA, Harris said. Oracle has positioned GlassFish as a departmental application server while the former BEA WebLogic application server is the company's primary enterprise application server. But that has not stopped Oracle's James Gosling, CTO for the company's client software group and a former Sun official, from lauding GlassFish as a key cog in data centers, as he did last week.
Oracle officials Wednesday also committed to supporting three separate IDEs: JDeveloper, which the company already has owned; Eclipse, developed by the Oracle-backed Eclipse Foundation, and newly acquired NetBeans IDE that came over in the Sun buy.
"We understand there is a bit of religion," around IDEs, said Dennis Leung, Oracle vice president of software development. "People are religious, very passionate about the IDEs they use. We're not here to convert people."
Leung also said Oracle has been the second-most active participant in the Eclipse community for a number of years. The most active participant is Eclipse founder IBM, according to the foundation.
This story, "Oracle looks to keep Java interesting and attract young developers," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in software development at InfoWorld.com.
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