Die EU Kommission hat eine Studie über die "Breitbandabdeckung in Europa 2012" publiziert. Die Schweiz steht in allen Kantonen und insbesondere auch in den ländlichen Gebieten betreffend Hochbreitbandabdeckung sehr gut da, beim Glasfaserausbau erreicht sie im Ranking momentan einen Platz im Mittelfeld. Dies sollte sich mit den grossen Investitionen in die Infrastruktur der Zukunft schon bald ändern.
Laut einem Bericht der „Financial Times“ hat Washington erfolgreich gegen eine Massnahme lobbyiert, die verhindert hätte, dass US-Geheimdienste EU-Bürger über das Internet ausspähen, wie es jetzt über das Prism-Programm geschehen ist.
Die nach ihrem Börsenwert grössten Unternehmen der Welt kommen fast ausnahmslos aus den USA. In einem veröffentlichten Ranking der Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) befinden sich unter den zehn wertvollsten Unternehmen acht US-Konzerne.
China hat demonstrativ auf Kritik an den USA wegen der jüngsten Bespitzelungs- und Hacker-Vorwürfe verzichtet. Man habe von den Vorwürfen Kenntnis, äussere sich aber nicht dazu, sagte eine Sprecherin des chinesischen Aussenministeriums am Donnerstag.
Die US-Bundespolizei FBI hat strafrechtliche Ermittlungen gegen den in Hongkong untergetauchten Enthüller des US-Spähprogramms „Prism“, Edward Snowden, eingeleitet. Die Behörden würden „alle notwendigen Schritte“ unternehmen, um Snowden zur Verantwortung zu ziehen, sagte FBI-Chef Robert Mueller heute bei einer Anhörung im Kongress in Washington.
Der US-Konzern Apple erwägt Kreisen zufolge, im kommenden Jahr ein neues iPhone mit grösserem Bildschirm und einige preiswertere Modelle des Verkaufsschlagers auf dem Markt bringen. Im Gespräch seien iPhones mit einem 4,7 Zoll und einem 5,7 Zoll großen Display, hieß es in Zuliefererkreisen am Donnerstag. Außerdem seien billigere Versionen des Mobiltelefons mit einem Plastikgehäuse in fünf bis sechs verschiedenen Farben geplant.
Die Hälfte der EU-Bürger kennt sich laut einer Umfrage kaum oder überhaupt nicht mit Computern aus. Das geht aus dem jährlichen Bericht der EU-Kommission zur Entwicklung des Internets in Europa hervor, den die Behörde am Mittwoch in Brüssel veröffentlichte.
Im hohen Norden Schwedens hat das soziale Netzwerk Facebook am Mittwoch sein erstes Datenzentrum außerhalb der USA eröffnet. Den Standort in der schwedischen Stadt Lulea nahe am Polarkreis wählte das Unternehmen wegen des kalten Klimas.
Heute, Donnerstag, feiert man beim neu entstehenden Swisscom-Rechenzentrum in Wankdorf die Aufrichte. Die Inbetriebnahme beginnt laut Mitteilung Mitte 2014, der produktive Betrieb durch Swisscom IT Services ist für Oktober im nächsten Jahr geplant.
Die auf BI-Lösungen (Business Intelligence) fokussierte Arcplan hat den 44-jährigen Jan Panthel mit der Position des Vice President Sales für Europa, den Mittleren Osten und Afrika (Emea-Region) betraut. Bisher verantwortete er diese Region als Director of Strategic Alliances & Business Development Emea.
Data encryption could help enterprises protect their sensitive information against mass surveillance by governments, as well as guard against unauthorized access by ill-intended third parties, but the correct implementation and use of data encryption technologies is not an easy task, according to security experts. Encryption could limit the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access data without the knowledge of its owner as it travels over the public Internet or by forcing third-party service providers like hosting or cloud vendors to hand it over under a gag order. However, in order for this to work the data needs to be encrypted at all times, while in transit, while in use and while at rest on servers. The recent media reports about the electronic surveillance programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) have raised privacy concerns among Internet users, civil rights activists and politicians not only in the U.S., but also in Europe, Australia and elsewhere. , the information leaked to the media suggests that electronic communications have been gathered en masse for years from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, AOL, Facebook, PalTalk, Skype, Apple and YouTube.
Medical device makers should take new steps to protect their products from malware and cyberattacks or face the possibility that U.S. Food and Drug Administration won’t approve their devices for use, the FDA said. The FDA issued new cybersecurity recommendations for medical devices on Thursday, following reports that some devices have been compromised. Recent vulnerabilities involving Philips fetal monitors and in Oracle software used in body fluid analysis machines are among the incidents that prompted the FDA to issue the recommendations, a spokeswoman for the agency said. In one case reported in October, malware slowed down fetal monitors used on women with high-risk pregnancies at a Boston hospital, and in another case, the FDA in January issued a warning about Oracle software that could allow remote access to the databases of Roche Cobra analysis devices, she said.
The theme of Microsoft’s latest ads is “Windows Everywhere”—and if you visit a Best Buy store in the near future, you’ll certainly understand why. Best Buy will be partnering with the software giant to add stores-within-a-store to 500 selected locations within the United States, plus another 100 more within Future Shop and Best Buy locations in Canada. And the size will be in your face as well: 1,500 square feet to 2,200 square feet, on par with the size of the homes into which those PCs will be installed. Inside each “store” will be a mixture of Microsoft devices: Windows-based tablets and PCs, Windows Phones, Microsoft Office, the Xbox console, and more. Microsoft said that each space will also include examples of how Windows services straddle those devices, and showcase the latest ultramobile Windows-based PCs, both from third parties as well as its own Surface. The Best Buy stores will be installed from late June through September. The idea is to put Windows back in front of shoppers’ faces in time for the preview and eventual (re)launch of Windows, with Windows 8.1. Microsoft is rolling out the preview release of Windows 8.1, sometimes known as “Windows Blue,” on June 26, at its BUILD conference in San Francisco. But it’s also been on a media blitz of sorts, spacing out the new features of Windows 8.1 in a bid to attract media attention, launching ads, and generally promising to meet nonplussed consumers halfway.
Starting in October 2015, all new cars in the European Union would have to be fitted with an eCall device, according to new draft legislation announced Thursday. ECall technology installed in a car automatically dials 112—Europe’s single emergency number—when it detects a serious accident. It then sends information about the accident to rescue services, including the time of incident, the accurate position of the crashed vehicle and the direction of travel. But the Commission was keen to reassure citizens that there would be no risk of data monitoring. “For liability reasons, the emergency call centres will store the data related to the eCall for a determined period of time, in accordance with national regulations and with Data Protection Directive,” said the Commission in a statement. But the eCall is a dormant system, only triggered when an accident occurs or by the driver pushing a button manually in the car. “It is not traceable and when there is no emergency (its normal operational status) it is not subject to any constant tracking. As it is not permanently connected to mobile networks, hackers cannot take control of it,” according to the Commission.
The European Commission on Thursday strenuously denied watering down its proposals for data protection laws as a result of United States lobbying. The Commission’s justice spokeswoman, Mina Andreeva, called the allegations, which appeared in the Financial Times, “a strange story with strange timing.” “We are surprised by the very one-sided account of events that took place in the run up to the presentation of the Data Protection Regulation. While it is no secret that there was immense lobbying on this issue, including from the U.S. authorities, the Commission stood firm,” she said. The reaction from lobbyists since the presentation of the proposed law in January 2012 shows that they did not “get what they wanted,” she added.
Even before bombshell disclosures of the U.S. government’s massive collection of Internet and cellphone data, many U.S. residents were very concerned about privacy violations. In a survey conducted just days before reports surfaced about widespread data collection by the U.S. National Security Agency, 85 percent of U.S. residents said they were worried about unauthorized access by the government and corporations to personal information like phone records, emails and Web activity. Two thirds of them feel that they have little or no control over the type of information that is collected and used by those organizations and almost 60 percent said that they are unable to correct inaccurate personal information, according to the 17th Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll that Thursday. The survey was conducted between May 29 and June 2 and reveals that more than 20,000 U.S. residents interviewed are anxious about their privacy.
. . Unlike its kin, the S4 Active will have enhanced protection features to make it less vulnerable to the elements. The IP67 international standard dictates that it will be completely dustproof and be able withstand being submerged in up to one meter of water without incurring damage. processor and include an 8 MP camera. . The latest rumors indicate that its initial release will offer two color options. The first, “Urban Gray,” triggers a notion of military brawn, while the second, “Dive Blue,” has a more direct link to the S4 Active’s differentiating features.
When you delete a file, it doesn't actually go away--even after you've emptied the Recycle Bin. The actual bits remain written on the drive until some other disk activity writes over them. Even when you format a drive, the files are still there for those who want and know how to read them. If you want to truly and securely delete a file, or the contents of an entire drive, you need software that will overwrite the space where the file(s) once sat. Fortunately, several free programs can do this.
Software AG is building out its portfolio of CEP (complex-event processing) software with the acquisition of Apama from Progress Software, in the second CEP-related deal this week. Terms of the deal, which was announced Thursday, were not disclosed. Apama and other CEP products ingest and analyze streams of data, looking for patterns and correlations, and are used widely in areas such as financial trading and fraud detection. Software AG already had a CEP product called But it plans to continue marketing Apama under the same name due to its “high brand recognition,” according to a statement. “We are making this acquisition because, as companies focus on becoming truly digital enterprises and addressing the four megatrends of cloud, mobile, social and big data, we see an increasing demand for CEP based solutions,” Software AG chief marketing officer Ivo Totev said in a “CEP is an important capability helping customers detect important events and information that are critical to fast and accurate business decisions.”
Microsoft is upping the security on Azure with Active Authentication, a new service now in preview which allows enterprises to secure access to hosted applications such as Office 365 with two-factor authentication. Active Authentication enables two-factor authentication for users stored on the Azure-based version Active Directory, and helps secure access to Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, Dynamics CRM Online as well as other apps that are integrated with the hosted directory service. Developers can also use the Active Authentication development kit to build two-factor authentication into their custom applications and directories.
Apple has posted to its Belgian website a new policy stating that its warranty period is now two years, up from the previous one year, but a local consumer group suing the company over the issue is withholding judgment for now. for allegedly presenting consumers with misleading information about warranties. by the Belgian news site Apple Nieuws Vlaanderen. By law, Belgian sellers must provide a two-year warranty on products. During the first six months a seller must repair or replace a faulty product without the consumer needing to prove that the manufacturer was at fault. After this six-month period, the consumer has to prove problems are the manufacturer’s fault.
Though Computex happens across the Pacific Ocean from E3, it’s a great show for PC lovers to keep an eye on. During the annual trade show in Taiwan, PC makers such as Acer and Asus keep it real by trotting out their latest laptops, tablets, and hybrids—many of which will be available soon. Check out our roundup of .
Yahoo moved to strengthen the mobile portion of its revamped Flickr photo sharing service, acquiring the developer behind a popular photo editing app. The company said Wednesday it had purchased GhostBird Software, the company behind the PhotoForge mobile photo editor and Kitcam camera app. Yahoo made it clear the apps would be integrated into Flickr, which received a major upgrade last month and now comes with a free terabyte of storage. to its Twitter account.
Yahoo is resetting email accounts that have not been used for at least 12 months and issuing them to other users. The company said in a blog post that it was freeing up the dormant email IDs to give its current and new users the opportunity to sign up for “the Yahoo! ID they’ve always wanted.” “If you’re like me, you want a Yahoo! ID that’s short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com,” wrote Jay Rossiter, Yahoo’s senior vice president for platforms, in a Wednesday. By mid-July, users will get to apply for IDs of their choice, and will find out which one they have got by mid-August.
Google has detected large-scale phishing attacks targeting users in Iran, ahead of presidential elections in the country. The company has detected and disrupted for almost three weeks email-based phishing campaigns that are aimed at compromising the accounts of tens of thousands of Iranian users, Eric Grosse, Google’s vice president for security engineering wrote in Wednesday. Phishing emails, claim to be from legitimate sources, and steal information often by directing users to a fraudulent website where they are required to fill in their personal or financial information. Google has also a drop in connectivity to Gmail in the country ahead of the election on Friday. Iran, which has talked about launching a local “national Internet”, has a history of blocking access to Internet services and websites considered offensive by the regime.
U.S. federal prosecutors charged eight people on Wednesday in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud that siphoned money from hacked accounts at banks and financial institutions, laundered it and sent it overseas. Four of the eight have been arrested by authorities, one as he arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Tuesday afternoon, while four remain at large. Prosecutors unsealed details of the case on Wednesday. According to the Department of Justice, the scheme started in 2011 when hackers began gaining access to accounts at 15 financial institutions. They included well-known names such as Citibank, E-Trade, JP Morgan Chase, PayPal and TD Ameritrade, payroll processor Automated Data Processing (ADP), and niche organizations including the U.S. military’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Once inside the accounts, hackers attempted to send money to pre-paid debit cards that they controlled. In the case of ADP, about $4 million was sent from 130 compromised accounts to a series of cards held by one of the defendants, Oleksiy Sharapka, according to the government’s complaint.
Gliffy, the web-based diagram creation and editing utility, has been rewritten in HTML5, allowing its developer to add a slew of new features, including support for Microsoft Visio as well as Google Drive cloud storage. Chris Kohlhardt, chief executive of Gliffy, said the shift from Flash to HTML5 was "highly risky," but something that the developers have seen as necessary for the last two years to improve performance. Gliffy is actually live in both Flash as well as HTML5, but given the large number of HTML5-compliant browsers available, the Flash version is quickly losing relevance. Rewriting Gliffy in HTML5 aligned the online utility with modern standards, Kohlhardt said. Customers who have signed up for Gliffy Online, its software-as-a-service platform, can now store their files inside Google Drive, using a variety of formats, including SVG, GXML, and JPEG. Gliffy is one of a small ecosystem of app providers working within collaboration platforms like Atlassian and Microsoft Office. The company provides tools to quickly create diagrams and flowcharts that can be added to wikis and other documents. Gliffy makes money by convincing customers, such as those who write manuals and other documentation, to store diagrams online and create embeddable diagrams within electronic documents that can be dynamically updated.
The performance of your smartphone is influenced by many factors, including the operating system, manufacturer, and wireless carrier. But there’s one essential and often-overlooked element that’s largely responsible for the speed, efficiency, and battery life of your smartphone—the processor. Here’s a simple guide to how it works, and what makes an all-in-one processor so powerful. The processor is the central hub of your smartphone. It receives and executes every command, performing billions of calculations per second. The effectiveness of the processor directly affects every application you run, whether it’s the camera, the music player, or just a simple email program. Pick the wrong one and you could experience sluggish, stuttering apps and limited network performance, regardless of carrier, manufacturer, or operating system. When you swipe your way down a web page, you’re commanding the processor to make billions of simultaneous and instantaneous interactions. When you do something more complex, like playing an online multiplayer game with 3D –intensive graphics or capturing 1080p video, the load put on a processor can be quite immense. The ability of the processor to coordinate efficient communication between the wireless data, graphics, and memory is essential to smooth operation. The CPU, GPU, audio and video engine, connectivity features (GPS, WiFi, FM), and 3G/4G modem are the major components of a processor that control the operation of your smartphone. Let’s take a look at what they do, and how they work together with the processor to make every action so seamless.
The way we use and interact with technology has changed dramatically in recent years. The days of working 9-to-5 tethered to a desktop PC in an office are virtually extinct. Now, we live in an increasingly wireless, mobile, connected world, where people get things done virtually anywhere, and everywhere. Smartphones and tablets have been a significant catalyst for the mobile revolution, but they offer a limited experience and pose challenges of their own. What users really need is an actual computer designed for a mobile world. What people need is an Ultrabook™. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have a number of unique advantages. They’re smaller, thinner, and lighter even than the most svelte Ultrabook systems available and they have exceptional battery life. The fact remains, though, that a smartphone or tablet is not a PC. They can perform many very useful tasks, but tViziohere’s also a lot they can’t do. Many of the tasks that can be done from a mobile device require finding tools that are compatible with the applications you use on your computer, and creative solutions to sync data or make sure you have access to the data on your PC from the smartphone or tablet.
in Las Vegas, HP Cloud OS “will provide the foundation for our common architecture for the HP converged cloud,” said Saar Gillai, HP senior vice president and general manager of the converged cloud, referring to the company’s strategy of unifying its on-premises cloud software and cloud services under the same architecture so customers will have little difficulty moving their workloads between the two. “We’re bridging between private cloud and public cloud,” he said. Research commissioned by HP estimates that 75 percent of enterprise workloads will run across hybrid cloud, or a combination of on-premises cloud systems and public hosted services. open-source suite of infrastructure hosting software. But it will also come with a number of features not found, or not well-supported yet, by OpenStack.
Apple on Monday, almost as an afterthought, announced it was working on browser-based versions of its , a move one analyst said challenged Microsoft’s Office behemoth. For a few minutes during Monday’s keynote of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Roger Rosner, who heads iWork development, spun through a quick demonstration of iWork for iCloud, a second attempt by Apple to move its Pages word processor, Numbers spreadsheet, and Keynote presentation maker into the Internet age. That first attempt, dubbed iWork.com, ended miserably last July, more than three years after its launch, when Apple pulled the plug. iWork.com was intended to complement the locally installed suite by the same name, but offered no Web-based document creation or editing, and instead made do with document viewing, downloading, and commenting. iWork for iCloud, on the other hand, is to be a full-featured trio of applications that run in a browser on either OS X or Windows, and allow document creation and editing on all a user’s devices. They are, essentially, Pages, Numbers and Keynote ported to the Web.
Smartphone and tablet chips are now making their way into high-performance computers, providing an energy-efficient alternative to the power-hungry server chips used in the world’s fastest supercomputers. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has built a prototype supercomputer running on ARM processors that will be deployed in July, the research center said in a statement Wednesday. The high-performance computer is being announced ahead of the International Supercomputing Conference, which will take place next week in Leipzig, Germany. ARM processors are used in most of the world’s smartphones and tablets, while more than 400 of the fastest supercomputers on the Top500 list are based on x86 server processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices. Interest in plugging smartphone processors into servers is growing as companies look to reduce power bills, and ARM processors have been considered for use in servers processing Web-based workloads. Supercomputing performance is doubling every two years, but power consumption is going up too. BSC has been researching low-power ARM processor use in supercomputers as a way to boost performance while dropping power consumption. BSC that cheaper ARM processors could ultimately overtake the more power hungry and expensive x86 server chips, much like x86 nudged out IBM’s Power and other RISC processors in the past.
SAP has received a ruling that sets a legal landmark in patent law and could also prove favorable to its defense in a long-running intellectual-property dispute with Versata. In September, SAP filed a petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal board, arguing that five patent claims by Versata were unpatentable. The board agreed with SAP in a decision released Tuesday, saying the claims in question “recite unpatentable abstract ideas” and “do not provide enough significant meaningful limitations to transform these abstract ideas into patent-eligible applications of these abstractions.” SAP’s petition was made possible as part of the America Invents Act, legislation that went into effect on Sept. 16. The act allows the USPTO to review the validity of “business method” patents like the one at issue in the SAP-Versata matter. But Versata still has an option, according to one legal expert.
On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard and Google debuted an IT solution for small- and medium-size businesses that are looking to eliminate complexity and cut costs. The new offering bundles HP's PC hardware with Google's Google Apps services. It's so simple, the companies said, that HP is calling it "HP SMB IT in a Box," combining PCs and printers with the Google Apps suite of productivity services. It's all tied up with a thin layer of HP management software, designed to virtually eliminate oversight, and help keep setup to a minimum. The new program will roll out in July via HP's reseller network, HP said. . this past spring for $330, but also followed it up recently with the Pavilion 14, a $299 version that reinforces the company's commitment to Google's services.
Access to Google’s Gmail service appears to be disrupted in Iran just days before the country’s presidential election. Google said it has noticed a drop in connectivity to Gmail from the country. The connectivity drop appears to fall short of a complete block of Gmail services, but there may be significant disruptions for users in Iran, Google said. On Tuesday, a group called “Iran News Update” said on Twitter that Gmail had been blocked in the country and VPN (virtual private network) connections were being disrupted. Iranians are scheduled to go to the polls on Friday for the first round of the country’s presidential election. A second round will be held on June 21 should no candidate succeed in getting more than 50 percent of the first-round vote. Six candidates are competing to replace President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is stepping down because he has reached the limit of his presidential term.
Picture this: You own a small retail shop. Maybe a restaurant. An angry woman comes into your store and begins complaining—loudly and profanely—about bad service she says she received the prior day. She demands satisfaction—free stuff, mainly—and she's filming all of this on her cell phone. Compounding the problem, you're not actually at the store. There's just a lone, underpaid employee to deal with the increasingly crazy demands of a borderline lunatic ranting about something he wasn't even involved with originally. It's hard to imagine dealing with such a challenge, but this exact scenario played out in a Florida Dunkin' Donuts over the weekend. One . [Warning: Considerable profanity.] In a normal universe — or at least the one in which we seem to reside — this all would have quickly escalated, probably ending in a brawl once Chapman started hurling racial epithets and branding Dunkin' Donuts as a pariah in the world of chain restaurants. Instead, Dunkin' Donuts has come out completely unscathed, now being held up as an example of corporate responsibility and smart employee training, thanks to the double edge of social media and the grace under pressure exhibited by employee Abid Adar, an 18-year-old who took the verbal abuse, tried to make good on Chapman's request, and didn't fight back at all.
Duplicate file finders can strip your hard drive of unnecessary clutter. In recent months, I've tested several duplicate file finders, including the free . The free AllDup is yet another way to get this task done, and according to its website, is a flexible and quick to do so. According to my tests, AllDup 3.4.18 truly is quick: It scanned my entire hard drive in well under a minute, finding 316GB of duplicates of all kinds. Althhough my current hard drive only contains around 50GB of data, the scan time was still impressive. Naturally, scan results depend on your chosen scan settings, and there are many to choose from with AllDup. The product's interface includes buttons such as File Filter, Search Criteria, Search Options, and Source Folders, each offering a different set of scan preferences you can control. Scan settings for AllDup are very flexible: You can scan for duplicates by name, extension, size, content, creation date, and other criteria, filter the scan by file type, search inside archive files such as ZIP and RAR, and exclude files of a certain size, to only name a few. Having included so many different settings to play with, AllDup takes into account the fact that you might not want to set all these very often. The Profiles button lets you create and save different scan profiles, so you can easily switch between your different scan settings. Before we get into the most interesting part, the scan results, there are several more features worth mentioning. You can set AllDup to log any and all activities, in case you want to go back and remember what you found, what actions you took, and what errors the program returned. You can also set up an external comparison program to compare the contents of files, or set Microsoft Word to compare the contents of DOC, DOCX, RTF, and TXT files. It's also possible to add AllDup to the Windows Explorer context menu, for a quick duplicate scan inside a specific folder.
Reader Larry wrote me regarding his new Asus machine, which came without any kind of recovery disks (which would be used to restore Windows in the event of a major system meltdown). That's not uncommon these days. Even on systems that have optical drives (which are increasingly rare), computer vendors opt to save money by skipping the Windows restore/recover disks that were once common. , that can help overcome the kinds of problems that would normally require recovery media. Refresh effectively reinstalls Windows while retaining all your programs, settings, and data—a great way to troubleshoot a system that's gone flaky on you. Reset, on the other hand, does a system wipe and reinstall, giving you the equivalent of a factory-new installation. Neither option requires any kind extra media.