Abseits von der Regulierung durch Zentralbanken und dem Einfluss von Regierungen sollte die Internetwährung Bitcoin eine Alternative zu den Weltwährungen darstellen. Bisher frönte sie aber lediglich ein Nischendasein. Dies soll sich nun ändern.
Compliance-Massnahmen erfahren von der IT-Seite her immer noch zu wenig Unterstützung. In vielen Unternehmen werden diese Prozesse noch immer manuell bearbeitet. Dabei kann ein Learning Management System den administrativen Aufwand erheblich verringern und Arbeitsschritte gezielt bündeln. Christian Wachter, Managing Director der IMC, erläutert im Interview, worauf es bei Compliance-Schulungen ankommt.
Der bisherige Xbox Chef Don Mattrick, der Microsoft den Rücken kehrt, um künftig als CEO von Zynga das Zepter zu schwingen und den trudelnden Spielehersteller aus der Misere zu führen, wird bei Microsoft nicht sofort ersetzt werden.
Die Enthüllungsplattform Wikileaks will nach einem Bericht des „Guardian“ in Australien zur Parlamentswahl antreten. Wikileaks-Gründer Julian Assange, der seit mehr als einem Jahr in der ecuadorianischen Botschaft in London festsitzt, sei bisher der einzige Kandidat für die Wahl in seinem Heimatland.
Google und Apple bekommen mit ihren Smartphones und Betriebssystemen in Europa neue Konkurrenz: Der Konzern Telefónica startete am Dienstag in Spanien erstmals den Verkauf von Multifunktionshandys mit dem Betriebssystem Firefox OS, entwickelt von der Mozilla-Stiftung.
Die Schweiz hat keine Kenntnis von einem Asylantrag des US-Informanten Edward Snowden. Zuvor hatte die Enthüllungsplattform Wikileaks berichtet, der ehemalige US-Geheimdienstmitarbeiter habe in insgesamt 21 Ländern - darunter der Schweiz - politisches Asyl beantragt.
Hiobsbotschaft für Sprint Nextel: Der Mobilfunknetzbetreiber muss sich vor Gericht wegen angeblicher Steuerhinterziehung behaupten. Der Zeitraum, in dem Sprint Nextel die fehlenden Zahlungen vorgeworfen werden, erstreckt sich nach Angaben der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters über sieben Jahre.
Die Herstellerin der In-Memory-Datenbank Exasolution, Exasol, kann mit dem Schweizer Kreditkartenanbieter UBS Card Center eine weitere Grösse aus der Finanzbranche als Auftraggeber an Land ziehen. Das UBS Card Center ersetzt damit das bislang genutzte Oracle Data Warehouse.
Das Weiterbildungszentrum FHS St.Gallen führt im Rahmen der beiden Weiterbildungsmaster Business Process Engineering und Business Information Management am 3. Juli von 8.30 bis 17 Uhr bereits zum zweiten Mal ein eintägiges Management-Forum durch.
Wenn das kein gutes Geschäft ist: Fünf Jahre nach dem Verkauf des Online-Netzwerks Bebo für 850 Millionen Dollar holt sich Gründer Michael Birch die Website für eine Million zurück. Was genau damit passieren soll, ist allerdings noch unklar.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has approved for public use a Google database that shows so-called spectrum white spaces available for mobile broadband devices. is designed to track what unused, or white spaces, spectrum in the television bands is available for new Wi-Fi-like uses. of Google’s white spaces database in March. FCC rules require that databases be used to protect TV signals, commercial mobile radio services, and other services from interference by white spaces devices.
Microsoft’s new “smart search” technology will come with a price: ads, a consequence of the search function’s expansion to add the Web to its results. . It’s important to note that the ads are not a future capability that Microsoft will add to the OS; they’re already there. A search for “State Farm,” for example, showed the ad as the first result, followed by a Bing Maps link to nearby offices, and then the homepage of State Farm Insurance. The third result, possibly the most relevant, was viewable without sliding or scrolling the screen horizontally. .
If you’ve been waiting for prices to drop before jumping into the 802.11ac wireless router pool, Netgear’s new R6100 will soon be available for just $100. But don’t expect to get the gigabit wireless speeds that reviewers have been raving about. This model is equipped with only two transmitters and receivers, so it will be capable of delivering a maximum 802.11ac link rate of 867 mbps. The R6100 is a dual-band model, so it will be capable of running a simultaneous 802.11n network with a maximum link rate of 300 mbps on the 2.4GHz frequency band. This is what the industry has decided to classify an AC1200 router (using slightly fuzzy math, since 867 + 300 = 1167). The new router will be outfitted with one USB 2.0 port, to enable either printer or storage sharing, and it has a four-port 10/100 ethernet switch (higher-end models have two USB ports and gigabit ethernet switches). Netgear’s , on the other hand, is currently compatible only with Windows. Although Netgear’s press release indicates that the R6100 is “currently available,” the on Netgear’s site were ghosted and non-functional at press time.
today. After early details were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the new operating system began to generate serious buzz. Mozilla partnered with Telefonica for the initial release, which is currently in Spain only. ZTE and Alcatel provided the design for the first two phones to carry the new Firefox HTML open source OS, each sporting slim touchscreen designs and very affordable price points. Both the ZTE Open and Alcatel One Touch Fire come standard with all of the normal smartphone amenities, including email, phone calls, text messaging, maps, camera (3.15 and 3.2 MP respectively), and naturally, Web browsing with Firefox. Users can also download apps, although they may not get too far on the internal memory. Fortunately, both phones have expandable MicroSD memory as well. processors. . It was developed using HTML5, the language of the Web, which Mozilla hopes will make it easier for third party developers to produce apps. With HTML5 integrated onto an open source operating system, there's definitely a possibility that Firefox could catch on with that crowd, although it remains to be seen if the software has the performance or longevity to make a splash.
Razer’s second-generation Blade is an ultraportable, high-performance Windows 8 laptop packed into a slim body that any Apple engineer would envy. It’s better than the original Blade in just about every respect: It’s sleeker, lighter, and more powerful, thanks to a fourth-generation Core processor. And it loses the obtuse Switchblade LCD touchpad that made the old Blade—now rechristened the Blade Pro—so quirky. The Blade is two-thirds of an inch thick and weighs roughly 4.25 pounds. Toss it in your bag along with its diminutive power adapter and the whole package tops out at just over five pounds. Although the Blade is a pound and a half heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Air, it is thinner than the Air by 0.02 inches at its thickest point. In practice, however, Apple’s ultraportable feels skinnier because of the way its unibody chassis tapers down to such a knife edge—a design that leaves me with the irrational feeling that I’m going to cut myself. Razer’s emerald-and-black design aesthetic is in full effect here, with a green-backlit keyboard sitting atop a matte black aluminum chassis. Inside this literally hot piece of hardware is a quad-core Intel Core i7-4702MQ processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M GPU, and 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory. The chassis gets very warm when the GPU kicks in, despite the best efforts of an intake fan on the bottom of the unit that exhausts heat through vents near the sturdy display hinges. Still, you’ll want to keep your fingers off the aluminum strip between the keyboard and screen while playing StarCraft II. We applaud the inclusion of a 256GB SSD, HDMI output, and three USB 3.0 ports (we’ll even forgive their garish pigment), but the absence of hardwired ethernet means you’ll be downloading all your software via Wi-Fi. That will be no fun considering that many modern PC games push 10 to 20GB.
A large coalition of civil rights and privacy groups and potentially thousands of websites will stage protests on the Fourth of July to protest surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency. plan to display a protest of NSA surveillance and the text of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Websites participating include Reddit, where Restore the Fourth originated, WordPress, 4chan, Mozilla, Fark, and Cheezburger.com. Organizers of Restore the Fourth are also planning live protests in dozens of U.S. cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta.
Children have a way of growing up fast, and the new kid on the app-store block certainly hasn’t bucked that trend. Late on Tuesday, Microsoft announced that the Windows Store has crossed the 100,000 app threshold, mere days after the company’s big Build conference and a scant eight months after the launch of Windows 8. Sure, the store didn’t hit that mark in shortly after the holidays, it’s no small accomplishment for the Windows Store to hit 100,000 apps so soon after its conception. Over 100,000 apps now in the Store! — Windows (@Windows) The Windows Store isn’t complete despite hitting the lofty number. There’s still . Read: A lot of those apps are pretty spammy, or rip-offs playing off the name of more established software and services.
A U.S. regulatory filing for a Bitcoin investment trust from the Winklevoss twins said they will protect the virtual currency like gold bars—in vaults. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous for their early association with Facebook, are selling the trust as a way for institutional and retail investors to invest in bitcoins without dealing with the hassle of exchanges and the thorny security problems around storing bitcoins. The goal of the fund centers on an anticipated appreciation if bitcoins become more widely used as a means for exchange. Some businesses are using bitcoins, but volatile exchange rates and regulatory issues remain a concern. filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the twins write they will use a network of secure vaults around the U.S. to store their investors' bitcoins.
Applications for asylum or asylum assistance were submitted on behalf of former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to a number of countries including China, Russia, and India, whistle-blower site WikiLeaks said Tuesday. Snowden, who leaked information about NSA surveillance programs, was charged by the U.S. in a federal court for theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person. The complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia was filed on June 14. . .
Gartner has lowered its expectations for growth this year in global IT spending, saying it will rise 2 percent to $3.7 trillion. Earlier this year, the analyst firm predicted 2013 growth of 4.1 percent. The reduction "mainly reflects the impact of recent fluctuations in U.S. dollar exchange rates," Gartner said Tuesday. Predicted weaker sales for devices played another role in Gartner's downgrade, analyst and managing vice president Richard Gordon said in a statement. Gartner had previously forecast 7.9 percent growth in device revenue, but has now dropped that estimate to 2.8 percent due to continued decline in PC sales. "While new devices are set to hit the market in the second half of 2013, they will fail to compensate for the underlying weakness of the traditional PC market," Gartner said in a statement.
Microsoft is preparing to launch a new version of its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) software that will include improved mobile applications and integrations with Yammer, Skype and the company's MarketingPilot marketing automation software. The Dynamics CRM 2013 release, which encompasses both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, is set for the fourth quarter, according to a Microsoft representative. MarketingPilot is used to develop and manage advertising campaigns on multiple channels, as well as keep track of spending. Microsoft purchased the company in response to industry trends, said Fred Studer, general manager of Dynamics product marketing. "We think marketing and sales have both evolved and become more blurred with regard to how they work together," he said. in the marketing automation arena.
A 30-year-old Bulgarian was extradited to the U.S. from Paraguay in order to face charges related to his alleged involvement in Shadowcrew, a large cybercrime forum that was dismantled by U.S. authorities in 2004. Aleksi Kolarov is charged with one count each of conspiracy, transferring false identification documents and offering access devices without authorization. He is one of 19 indicted for their roles in the operation of Shadowcrew, which with around 4,000 members was the largest cybercrime forum of its time. Three of those charged remain at large. , Kolarov used the online alias APK and was a Shadowcrew "vendor"—a member that sold illicit merchandise including stolen credit card, debit card and bank account information, as well as counterfeit passports, drivers' licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards and other identification documents.
For the latest update of Oracle Enterprise Manager, the company has taken additional steps to help organizations set up their own private clouds, using Oracle systems, software and even non-Oracle products. "Our goal is to is to allow enterprises to take any [Oracle] platform and offer it as a service," said Sushil Kumar, vice president of product strategy and business development. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 3, released Tuesday, comes with new workflow capabilities and new connectors for managing additional Oracle products and systems. Oracle Enterprise Manager was originally created to deploy and manage groups of Oracle databases. Over the years, Oracle has extended the software to manage the Oracle Application Server and third-party software packages from Microsoft and others, through the use of plug-ins and connectors. Today, the Oracle Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, a sort of app store for the software, offers more than 135 add-ons for third-party programs.
India launched the first of seven navigation satellites intended to deliver a regional positioning system on Tuesday. The system will be similar to the Global Positioning System owned by the U.S. IRNSS-1A, the first of the seven satellites in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) was launched into space aboard PSLV-C22, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle of the Indian Space Research Organization. IRNSS is designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 kilometers around the Indian mainland, ISRO said. It will offer standard positioning services to all users, and encrypted restricted services to authorized users.
in future revisions. But we haven’t yet presented a final verdict on the new OS, and what Microsoft really accomplished during its Build 2013 developer’s conference. Well, here it is: In a single word, Windows 8.1 can be summed up as a success. It’s not a stunning success, granted, but the system update definitely can’t be considered a disappointment like the original Windows 8. Windows 8.1 is a solid effort—and with the public-preview release of Windows 8.1, Microsoft has shored up the foundation of its entire ecosystem, allowing developers to build their apps on top of what was once shaky ground. had run aground, but now there’s a palpable sense of positive momentum. Here’s where Microsoft succeeded.
The HP ElitePad 900 is a tough son of a tablet. Designed for business or outdoor use, it is built to survive being dropped, dinged, dusted, and handled roughly enough to make an iPad cry. HP has tested it to the military MIL-STD810G standard for dust, vibration, temperatures high and low, humidity, altitude, and drop-proofing for heights of up to 30 inches. Most uber-durable devices end up looking like the back end of a tank, but the ElitePad 900 is quite attractive. Just 9.2mm thick and weighing less than 1.4 pounds, with a CNC-milled aluminum back (CNC refers to computer numerical control in manufacturing), a front that's covered in Gorilla Glass 2, and rounded corners, this tablet is small and sleek enough not to look out of place in the office. While it is rugged, it’s no speed demon: With just a 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760 single-core processor and only 2GB of RAM, the ElitePad 900 managed a teeth-grindingly low Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 43. That’s the lowest score we’ve seen with our updated test suite, and is less than half of the mark on our reference device, the . Some will argue that a tablet shouldn’t be compared to a notebook, but the two kinds of hardware really aren’t all that different. Essentially, one has a physical keyboard and the other typically doesn’t. In this case, much of the ElitePad 900’s performance shortcomings come from its reliance on Intel’s Atom processor (and its integrated GPU), and a paucity of RAM (which the CPU and the integrated GPU must share). This rendered the ElitePad incapable of running any of our game benchmarks.
Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader has dominated the competition in Japan since its launch last year, according to new research, showing the company's low pricing and powerful brand may have overcome its late entrance into the market. The Kindle accounted for 38.3 percent of the e-reader market in Japan in the 12-month period through March, market data firm MM Research said. That compared to a 33 percent share for Rakuten's Kobo and a 25.5 percent share for Sony's Reader device. The Kindle was officially launched in November of last year, meaning the figures represent only its first five months of sales. By contrast, Rakuten acquired Kobo and launched in Japan from July, while Sony launched its first model in 2004. The Kindle launch was seen in Japan as the official start of the long-stagnant electronic book market in the country. Amazon is a household name among consumers in Japan, especially for books, and negotiations with publishers before the launch were closely followed.
Alcatel-Lucent and Telekom Austria have completed the world’s first trial of G.fast with vectoring, a combination of technologies enabling gigabit broadband over existing copper networks. To help keep DSL a relevant option for the last part of a broadband connection, the so-called “last mile,” vendors are working on a number of technologies to increase the broadband speeds that can be delivered over old telephone lines. However, calling G.fast a last-mile technology is somewhat misleading, because the technology is only intended for distances up to 100 meters or 0.06 miles. But at that distance and less it helps copper keep up with fiber. The trial achieved a maximum speed of 1.1Gbps over 70 meters and 800Mbps over 100 meters over a single, good-quality cable, according to Alcatel-Lucent. On older, unshielded cables the trial managed 500Mbps over 100 meters on a single line, it said. With the help of vectoring, G.fast also works over multiple copper lines at the same time. Vectoring already improves the performance of VDSL2 to 100Mbps over existing copper connections at up to 400 meters by removing crosstalk interference. It works by continuously analyzing the noise conditions on copper lines, and then creates a new anti-noise signal to cancel it out, much like noise-canceling headphones.
Apple is appealing a $368 million award granted to patent holding company VirnetX by a federal court in Texas. The company gave notice Monday that it was appealing the judgement of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler division in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, according to court records. After a jury trial last year, the Texas court ordered in February that Apple pay $368 million in damages to VirnetX for its infringement of claims relating to four patents, besides pre-judgment interest, post-judgment interest, and post-verdict damages. The court also denied last month a motion by Apple to alter or amend the judgment, including a decision by the court to severe VirnetX's claim for an ongoing royalty into a separate action and order the parties to attempt to negotiate a license for a post-verdict royalty without the court's intervention.
Microsoft’s TechNet subscription service wasn’t a free lunch, but it was about the closest thing to it for IT pros and Microsoft enthusiasts, and soon it’ll be gone. Microsoft announced Monday that it as it phases in a set of free services that won’t be quite as sweet as the TechNet deal. Microsoft says the TechNet site will not go away, just the subscription service for software. TechNet subscriptions were an incredibly inexpensive way for IT professionals to get free access to a very long list of Microsoft software for evaluation purposes. Other Microsoft fans, and more than a few software pirates, also enjoyed the product keys and other benefits the subscription provided.
Mozilla says a tablet PC based on its new Firefox operating system is coming soon, although it won’t say just how soon that could be. The this week, and with that launch some attention at Mozilla is now turning to a tablet, said Brendan Eich, chief technology officer for Mozilla. Eich created the JavaScript programming language and is a proponent of open Web technologies on which Firefox OS is built.
Monday morning, Microsoft announced that a plethora of new channel partners will . Mere hours later, one of the new resellers—CDW—was caught offering a previously unannounced variant of the Surface Pro, which will be aimed squarely at businesses and other organizations. So much for basking in the afterglow! The , reveals a $1200 Surface Pro with a 256GB solid state drive. Currently, Microsoft only officially offers Surface Pro tablets with either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage, at $900 and $1000, respectively. Aside from the increased storage capacity, the 256GB Surface Pro mirrors the hardware of its siblings. Here’s what a Microsoft representative had to say about the new hardware: Yes, there will be limited availability of a 256GB version of Surface Pro in the U.S. exclusively through the commercial channel and authorized Surface resellers. We’re excited about the resellers we’ve named in today’s announcement because they are so well equipped and experienced to work with their customers to develop the precise/best solutions for their unique needs.
, and enhancing the capabilities of OneNote to deliver a more consistent, and powerful platform for business users. Metro interface. Today’s update makes the cross-platform functionality more reliable and consistent. The various OneNote applications have been re-architected for more reliable syncing. The retooling will also make it easier for Microsoft to update the apps in the future—part of that “rapid release” mantra Ballmer was preaching last week at Microsoft’s BUILD developer conference.I’ve been a fan of OneNote for some time, but I did abandon it for a while after getting frustrated that changes I made on one device were not being reflected elsewhere. The syncing often seemed to be broken. The value of having OneNote available on disparate operating systems and devices is greatly diminished when the data doesn’t sync up properly, or when OneNote looks and acts differently from one device to the next.
Some websites and mobile app developers are confused about how to comply with revised rules governing the online collection of personal information from children that took effect in the U.S. Monday, critics said. , the Federal Trade Commission is restricting targeted advertising aimed at children and requiring that websites and mobile apps take extra care when handling children’s cookies, geolocation information, photos, and other identifying information. The FTC last about complying with the new rule just weeks ago, said Morgan Reed, executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), a trade group that represents mobile app developers. App developers continue to have questions about how to comply with the revised rules, he said.
Ah, Mondays. Wonder why your employees are all yawning and glassy-eyed today? It may be easy to blame it on the hot weather or overindulgences over the weekend, but researchers are pointing fingers at another potential culprit that is increasingly interfering with our ability to get a good night's sleep: Smartphones and tablet PCs. that researchers are particularly interested in. Here's why it's a problem. Right before bedtime, bright lights are the enemy, inhibiting the production of melatonin, which helps you fall (and stay) asleep. Smart phones and tablets have the advantage of being small, but because they are so bright and so close to your face, the overall impact is similar to being in a fairly well-lighted room. (The light from your phone alone is equal to about half that of "ordinary room light.") Making things even worse, short-wavelength light in the blue portion of the spectrum is the most disruptive to sleep patterns, and that's the type of light that is typically over-produced by modern LCD screens. Poor sleep, it should go without saying, is a factor in all kinds of problems, ranging from low productivity at work to increased traffic accidents to diseases like diabetes and cancer. for late-night bathroom runs in order to minimize sleep disruptions—as a way to keep exposure to that blue wavelength light to a minimum.The problems are compounded over time, so the more you use your phone or tablet at night, the worse it gets. Since more and more consumers are using these devices in bed—to send emails, watch movies, read books, play games, and more—the problem is becoming nearly universal. It's especially problematic with younger users, who habitually use their portable devices in bed every night.
A U.S. court has decided that the class-action designation of the copyright lawsuit brought against Google by the Authors Guild over the company’s book-scanning project was “premature,” and has returned the suit to a lower court for consideration of fair use issues. The Authors Guild filed its suit in 2005, arguing that Google’s book-scanning project, which lets users search for and read the text of certain books online, has of authors whose works have been digitized. Judge Denny Chin, formerly of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, allowed the class-action lawsuit to move forward last year. But in a ruling filed Monday by three circuit judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, it was decided that Judge Chin erred in assigning class-action status to the case and that the merits of Google’s fair use defense need further consideration. Google maintains that it is not violating copyright law, and that the “fair use” principle, which allows for reproduction of limited copyrighted material without permission, protects its actions.
While the PC gaming world waits for Steam to kick off its annual summer games sale, Amazon gets an early jump with some deals of its own. , which typically rotates through various deals as its sale period progresses, Amazon lists all of its discounts up front, so you can peruse the store and purchase at your leisure. ] .