Apple muss sich auf hohe Schadenersatzzahlungen einstellen: Eine US-Richterin hat entschieden, dass der Technologiekonzern auf illegale Weise Preise auf dem US-amerikanischen E-Book-Markt abgesprochen hat. Neben Schadenersatz droht Apple auch eine empfindliche Strafe.
Mit dem mexikanischen Parlament kann die Basler App-Spezialisint Terria Mobile einen weiteren internationalen Kunden für ihre App-Management Plattform Launchbase an Land ziehen. Die Parlamentarier des mexikanischen Kongresses sowie deren Mitarbeiter erhalten über eine iPad-Informationsplattform mobilen Zugang zu allen relevanten und notwendigen Informationen, die für einen reibungslosen Parlamentsbetrieb notwendig sind.
Der mit Absatzproblemen kämpfende Smartphone-Pionier Blackberry plant laut einem Zeitungsbericht den nächsten Stellenabbau. Davon sollen unter anderem das mittlere Management sowie der Verkaufsbereich betroffen sein, berichtete das „Wall Street Journal“ heute.
Avaloq gibt die Inbetriebnahme ihres Banking Systems bei der marokkanischen Investmentbank CFG Group in Marokko bekannt. Zwanzig Monate nach dem Entscheid der CFG Group für Avaloq sei die Implementierung abgeschlossen, heisst es in einem Communiqué dazu. Neben Avaloq und der CFG arbeiteten auch Orbium und Swisscom IT Services an diesem Projekt mit.
Schweizer Unternehmen könnten mehr aus Social Media machen. Zu diesem Schluss kommt eine im Frühling durchgeführte Studie der Unternehmensberatung Capgemini. Auch bei den mobilen Applikationen bestehe Nachholbedarf.
Am Strand liegen und einfach mal abschalten: Diese Vorstellung von Ferien haben offenbar nur noch wenige Schweizer Arbeitnehmende. 56 Prozent aller berufstätigen Personen bleiben nämlich auf Dauerempfang für den Chef und Kollegen - entweder telefonisch oder per E-Mail.
Der US-Internetriese Google hat eine neue Version seines Browsers Chrome zum Download freigegeben, wie das Unternehmen im Google Chrome Blog mitteilt. Chrome 28 verfügt über verbesserte Benachrichtungen (rich notifications), in denen Nachrichten aus Apps und Browsererweiterungen aufscheinen.
Ist heutzutage die Rede von einem Cloudspeicher für die Hinterlegung von Dateien und Dokumenten zwecks globalem Zugriff, fällt unweigerlich irgendwann der Name "Dropbox". Das Unternehmen und sein gleichnamiger Dienst sind zum Synonym für diese Dienstleistung geworden. Nun ruft man zur ersten eigenen Entwicklerkonferenz in San Francisco, wo man 500 Programmierer als Gäste erwartet.
Der zweite Dienstag im Monat ist üblicherweise Patchday bei Microsoft - und da bildet auch der Juli keine Ausnahmen. Sieben Security Bulletins, die insgesamt 34 Sicherheitslücken in Microsoft-Produkten betreffen, hat das Unternehmen vor kurzem samt der zugehörigen Updates veröffentlicht.
Dass in Zürich ansässige System- und Beratungshaus Fritz & Macziol holt sich Verstärkung für den Sales-Bereich im IBM-Umfeld. Die Limmatstädter konnten laut Communiqué drei Vertriebsprofis verpflichten, die von IBM kommen und über langjährige Erfahrung im Lösungsverkauf verfügen.
Microsoft said Wednesday that it planned to release an “enterprise feature pack” for corporations who wish to adopt Windows Phone, while extending the support lifecycle for Windows Phone 8 to 36 months, through 2016. on Wednesday. The real question, however, is whether Microsoft’s carrier partners will allow the feature pack to be pushed to their customer’s phones—or, at least, that was what virtually every commenter on Microsoft’s post had in mind. Carriers typically review, test, and deploy new OS upgrades over a matter of months, with no guarantee that updates will actually be pushed to consumers. , to boot.)
Windows 8, Windows 8.1, the Xbox One, Office 365, Windows Server, and more—if you thought that was a lot for Microsoft to deliver, hold onto your hats. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner promised Wednesday that Microsoft’s fiscal 2014 would be its biggest year of innovation ever. Turner, who took the stage at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in full cheerleader mode, presented a summary slide of what the company hoped to accomplish in its next fiscal year, which begins this month. Those innovations include large meetings and Office integration for Skype; updates to both the Surface RT and Surface Pro, plus new accessories; and quarterly Office 365 updates, among others. It was Turner’s job to close out the WPC, which ran the past three days and gathered Microsoft's top partners in Houston, Texas, to encourage them to keep promoting Microsoft’s devices and services. The WPC tends to focus on the enterprise, and Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new program called CityNext, where Microsoft will work with large cities to design packages of hardware, software, and cloud services to make the city’s own services and data more accessible to its citizens. ”The reality is that this is about accelerating growth together,” Turner said.
As every hapless teenager stranded in a dank cabin in the psychopath-ridden woods can tell you, your cell phone is useless if you don't have a signal. For business users, the stakes are just as high: Travel to a farflung corner of the world to meet with clients and "zero bars" is a distinct possibility. And God help you if you have to take a plane ride anywhere and aren't lucky enough to get on the handful of jets with onboard Wi-Fi. While being unable to make calls, send emails, or check the news is certainly an inconvenience, the problem is compounded if you rely on cloud services to actually get work done. Storing data online and running apps that rely on a live Internet connection mean you can abruptly turn into an unproductive layabout when wireless service isn't available. has been leading the charge. Files stored via Dropbox are automatically stored both in the cloud and on your local machine. Changes made to one file are copied in the background when a connection is available, and synced up with all devices running the Dropbox software. Google Drive, SugarSync, and many other cloud storage services work about the same way. That's a start, but it only addresses the very beginning of the problem. A growing number of services are designed to work exclusively over the Web, and if you're not connected, they simply don't run at all. (Think Facebook.) Well then, why not enable these apps and services to work in offline, hybrid mode, the way Dropbox works? Evernote does it. So does Gmail; it doesn't include all its features from top to bottom, but what it offers is good enough for most users.
Old habits die hard. For example, many of us still insist on syncing our smartphones to our PCs, even though it's hardly necessary anymore. (Android, iOS, and Windows phones can automatically sync to the cloud.) Likewise, many users still take the old-school approach when it comes to ordering prints of the photos they've snapped: They copy (or even email) them to a PC, then upload them to a printing service. right from your smartphone—no PC required. The app debuted last year for iOS but is now available for Android and Windows Phone as well. All you do is choose the photos you want, crop them as needed, then decide on sizes.
Richer notifications are now available in the latest stable version of Chrome for Windows, version 28. lets developers of Chrome apps and extensions send interactive pop-up notifications to your desktop. Hangouts could, for example, send you a chat pop-up notification with options to reply, email, or call the person you’re chatting with. to Chrome for Windows, which allows you to get updates on the desktop from online services—even when the full Chrome browser isn’t running. Although richer notifications and the notification center are activated by default, you won’t see anything new unless you’re using a Chrome app or extension that has enabled the feature.
In a new effort to boost Europe’s electronics manufacturing capabilities, the European Commission on Wednesday proposed €4.8 billion (US$6.2 billion) in funding for research and innovation partnerships with the private sector and European Union countries. The Commission hopes the public-private partnerships under the planned Joint Technology Initiative (JTI) will reverse the decline of the E.U.’s global share in the electronic components and systems market. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes wants to double Europe’s chip production by 2020 and overtake the U.S. The plans should also help meet the E.U. target of 20 percent of GDP coming from manufacturing by 2020, particularly through work in areas such as embedded systems, semiconductor equipment and materials supply and the design of complex electronic systems. After a competitive call, the best projects will be selected for funding through peer review. The JTI will set out seven-year commitments and establish a strategic research and innovation agenda for all those involved—companies, universities, research laboratories, innovative small and medium businesses or other groups.
Google is making good on its promise to bring back free voice calls in Gmail, after temporarily removing them a couple months ago. Voice calls disappeared from Gmail in May, when the company with a new feature called Hangouts. While Hangouts still allowed users to make video calls and receive calls to their Google Voice numbers, the ability to make outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones was missing, at least for a little while. Over the next few days, Google will roll out an updated version of Hangouts, restoring outbound voice calls and adding new features to the service. Users can now create a group call by adding multiple phone numbers, and can have mixed calls with some recipients on voice and others on video. Google's also throwing in some silly effects, such as applause and laughter, through the Google Effects app.
A password manager is a must. Unless you're using the same password for everything (not recommended) or have a truly phenomenal memory, your productivity can benefit from a place to store all your passwords and easily use them whenever necessary. There are several strong players in this field, such as . Dashlane (free for basic version, $20/year for Premium) aims to take on both. Dashlane is a robust password manager with additional room for your various IDs, credit cards and other payment methods, receipts, and notes. It comes with an auto-fill feature for online forms to which you can add different addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information you're tired of typing repeatedly. There are two features that make Dashlane stand out when compared to both LastPass and KeePass: Its beautiful and easy-to-use interface, and its optional cloud syncing.
Paying rewards to independent security researchers for finding software problems is a vastly better investment than hiring employees to do the same work, according to researchers from the University of California Berkeley. looked at vulnerability reward programs (VRPs) run by Google and Mozilla for the Chrome and Firefox web browsers. Over the last three years, Google has paid $580,000 in rewards, and Mozilla has paid $570,000. In the course of those programs, hundreds of vulnerabilities have been fixed in the widely used products. The programs are very cost effective. Since a North American developer’s salary will cost a company about $100,000 with a 50 percent overhead, “we see that the cost of either of these VRPs is comparable to the cost of just one member of the browser security team,” the researchers wrote.
Enterprises are gaining the ability to turn existing storage platforms over to flash even as solid-state media remains mostly a tool for caching and for applications with special requirements. the 3Par StoreServ 7450 Storage system less than a month ago. from its Virtual Storage Platform and offering it for the HUS VM, a midrange array designed for smaller enterprises with less need for scale. The new, flash-optimized software included in Wednesday’s announcement will roughly double the potential throughput of the system, and another software release later this year will double it again to 1 million IOPS (I/O operations per second), the company said.
There's no point to drowning in PDF features you don't want (and really, really don't want to pay for) when you can stock your toolbox with exactly what you require. These five freebies push the boundaries of what you can do with a PDF file. Whether you long to edit, watermark, or otherwise tweak your PDF; add a Creative Commons license, or just cut your PDF down to size, one of these can make your PDFs what you want them to be...for free. This portable app's website says "Bright Snippet Sire," but everybody calls it Briss. An open-source favorite, Briss crops a section of a PDF file and creates another PDF file of the cropped area. It's easy to use, and it's awfully handy. E-bookworms with e-readers have a particular need for Briss. To read a PDF on an e-reader, you normally have to format and convert it, and traditional ebook converters (such as ePub converters) frequently make a hash of PDF conversion. Briss converts two-column pages into single-column pages, cuts out the unnecessary margins, and automatically removes unwanted fluff, such as page numbers and chapter headings. You can successfully pass the resulting clean PDF through an ePub converter.
Game maker Konami said one of its online portals has been hit by a mass of illicit login attempts, with attackers gaining access to over 35,000 accounts, just days after Nintendo revealed a similar attack on one of its sites. Konami said that on Monday it noticed a large surge in access errors to its “Konami ID” website, which customers use to create and manage login accounts for other online services run by the company. The game maker said an investigation revealed that from July 13 to June 7, nearly 4 million login attempts were made to the site, with 35,252 successful.
Nonny de la Peña is a journalist, but she doesn’t report tragedies. She helps you . More than mere words, her works are a punch in the gut. Annette Mossel is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the Interactive Media Systems Group at Vienna University of Technology, but her interest in virtual worlds delivers tangible benefits. One IMSG project trains amputees to use their new muscle-sensing —months before the complex device is actually manufactured. More than mere theory, her VR work helps people regain control of their physical capabilities much faster than was previously possible. There’s no doubt about it: Virtual reality has the potential to profoundly alter our lives. So far, though, its reach has rarely extended beyond well-funded institutes and government agencies. That could soon change, however—thanks in large measure to PC gaming accessories like the Oculus Rift, a gaming-focused VR headset “designed for immersive games” but capable of so, so much more. Mere toys? Ha. These devices could be the keys that unlock the future.
Microsoft is planning an overhaul of our Office documents, weaving live data into the once-static fabric of our Word files and Excel spreadsheets. It’s a bold experiment that could kill the very definition of an Office “document”—but it could also spell the rebirth of Microsoft’s productivity suite in the age of cloud-driven collaboration. At its , can import data from both public and private sources to provide more up-to-date context in documents. Both developments reveal a sea change in the way we’ll interact with Microsoft Office in the future. In the current regime, you create an Office document, save it, and then email it to a colleague, who quite likely prints it out. Indeed, the documents we create today represent just a slice of information within a brief snapshot of time. But all this can change once Office begins hooking into living data. Office docs won’t simply document the past: They’ll also accurately reflect the ever-changing present.
With a new set of hardware and software releases, EMC is promising to simplify its customers’ storage infrastructure by combining different types of operation into a single EMC system. “We see this convergence of storage with modern systems, where you can think about backup, archiving and disaster recovery as an integrated process, rather than three separate processes,” said David Goulden, president and chief operating officer of EMC. On Wednesday, the company will unveil a new midrange tier of Data Domain storage systems, updates to its Avamar and NetWorker backup software, and an update to its Mozy data storage service. The updates are part of a new approach to storage EMC is developing, one it says will allow its customers to use their primary storage systems to execute backup, archiving and disaster recovery functions as well. “You can’t just keep backing up data the way you did before. You need more intelligence in the backup system,” Goulden said. “Backup software is moving up a level, and is becoming more of a catalogue and journaling of all the things in the protection storage tier.”
When you’re putting big projects together, megabytes can turn into gigabytes and even terabytes before you know it, especially if you’re studying a visual arts field like filmmaking, animation, or photography. Many newer laptops limit internal storage space in favor of an ultra-portable design, assuming you’ll turn to external resources to store large files. Cloud storage is a great option, but it relies on Internet connectivity, which isn’t always available when you need it, and can be expensive for storing large amounts of data. The solution? An external hard drive. These affordable devices are becoming an increasingly popular way to keep your work safely stored and available anytime you need it. Generally speaking, external hard drives come in two flavors -- desktop and laptop –- and both have their strengths. Desktop-class drives need to be plugged into the wall to run, tend to have a larger capacity than laptop drives, and are usually somewhat cheaper. But they’re not very portable, and when you’re running from dorm room to classroom to deliver your latest animation, packing it up and then plugging it in is not very convenient.
In a bid to purge insecure software from the Windows Store, Microsoft Tuesday announced that it would remove apps that it deems to have critical vulnerabilities. Within 180 days, Microsoft said, those apps must either be patched or they will be removed. And if an insecure app is being exploited in the wild, it risks getting pulled even sooner, executives said. The policy will also be extended to apps found in the Windows Phone Store, Office Store, and Azure Marketplace. Microsoft outlines the vulnerabilities found within its own software, publishing the a list on the second Tuesday of each month, when it issues patches. But with the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT, the Windows Store has become an important clearinghouse for distributing apps, and Microsoft has become more of a gatekeeper. “We want our customers to know that, if there’s a problem, we’ll be working on a solution,” wrote Dustin Childs, the Group Manager for Response Communications for Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, a blog post . “But there are some things that can affect your computing experience that I can’t directly control. For example, we can’t directly update third-party apps that you install from the Windows Store if they have a problem. But we can influence when they get updated.”
A U.S. government board focused on privacy and civil rights should push Congress to rein in the National Security Agency’s mass collection of telephone records and Internet communications, privacy advocates said Tuesday. The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, established by Congress in 2004 to be a watchdog of government antiterrorism efforts, should also demand that the NSA and other government agencies be more transparent about the data they collect, said privacy advocates speaking at a board meeting in Washington, D.C. While two former government officials defended the NSA’s collection of U.S. phone records and overseas Internet communications, other speakers told the board the agency has exceeded its legal authority, particularly when collecting U.S. records. Recent revelations about NSA data collection and surveillance show a lack of congressional and court oversight, said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. Congress needs to limit what information the NSA and law enforcement agencies collect because internal privacy safeguards won’t work, Jaffer said. “You don’t know what the privacy safeguards are going to look like three years from now, five years from now” when there may be another terrorist attack, he said.
—along with their accompanying patches—as well as a new policy that affects both third-party apps and those developed by Microsoft itself. Of the seven security bulletins, six of them are rated Critical, while the remaining one is ranked as Important. The Critical security bulletins affect Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Silverlight, and more. The Important security bulletin addresses a privilege elevation flaw in the Windows Defender security software, so that definitely shouldn’t be ignored. , stressed this isn't your typical Patch Tuesday announcement. “Basically everything in the core Microsoft world is affected by one or more of these; every supported OS, every version of MS Office, Lync, Silverlight, Visual Studio and .NET. It’s going to be a busy time for security teams everywhere.” , said it can be difficult to prioritize patch deployment when almost all of them are Critical. “Luckily, there's safety in the known, so customers should patch Internet Explorer first, a common theme for Microsoft patch drops.”
After leaving his post as CEO of SAP’s Business Objects division about three years ago, John Schwarz had a revelation. Before him, Schwarz said in a recent interview, was an opportunity to “redo BI from a clean sheet of paper.” That thought led to the formation of Visier, an analytics software provider where Schwarz serves as CEO. While Schwarz was at Business Objects, customer satisfaction surveys found that the vendor’s BI software was well-liked among IT users, “but you talk to the actual business users and the results were far less satisfactory,” he said. “IT could get the tools up and running, but then they flipped it over to the end user and they said, ‘it’s too difficult.’” Visier’s approach from the beginning was to “throw the whole BI technology idea out and start at the other end of the spectrum,” Schwarz said. “Start with the user and go back to the data. As long as you can start up a browser, you can use our application.”
Images reported to be taken by the by Microsoft Windows Phone Manager Joe Belfiore in advance of Nokia’s upcoming launch event on Thursday. The Lumia 1020, previously codenamed the EOS, is getting a lot of attention for its impressive 41 MP camera. The number of megapixels isn’t the only thing that’s getting Lumia 1020 this much buzz. After all, the Lumia 808 also comes with a 41 MP sensor. Additional features and advanced software on the 1020 are making it sound more like a camera-smartphone hybrid than a smartphone with a killer camera. One rumored feature on the 1020 is the ability to snap 5 MP and 32 MP shots simultaneously: the former for immediate sharing and the latter for printing or saving. Plus, Belfiore’s leaked photos showed up at different sizes (2947x1658 and 2352x1568), suggesting that you can adjust the resolution of your images. This would be a welcome feature for many photographers who frequently fill up their internal memory snapping pictures of kittens. Additionally, the Lumia 1020 will use Nokia’s Pureview sensor (also featured on the 920 and 808) to take high quality images in low light situations. The 1020’s camera is also expected to include sophisticated (if not new) like: Optic Image Stabilization, LED and Xenon flash, a “lossless zoom” feature, and settings for ISO, white balance, manual focus, and shutter speed.
Reports of an imminent and broad Microsoft business reorganization keep mounting, including an anonymously sourced article from The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD blog that says CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil the plan on Thursday. Microsoft critics have pointed out for years that the company has a product lineup that is too big and too varied, and that it could make sense to split up the house that Bill Gates built into more independent subsidiaries or even spin off some units entirely. This, observers have said, could bring more agility and innovation to the different teams by streamlining the decision-making process both at the product development and business strategy levels. Currently, Microsoft has products as disparate as the Xbox gaming console, the Bing search engine, and the SQL Server enterprise database.
A good pair of headphones is every student’s best friend. Whether you’re seeking inspiration or tuning out the crowds, headphones help you focus, put you in a good mood, and transform your boring trek across campus into a tuneful experience. Since so many people want, use, and lose headphones, electronics makers crank them out by the million in a bewildering array of styles and models. Since you’ll be wearing them a lot, you want them to look good and feel good. Here are some tips that will help you buy the headphones that are right for you. Earbuds are everywhere. Many come equipped with rubber nubs that slip on for comfort and stability. These are great if you’re going to be exercising with your earbuds in, because you can pull off and wash or replace those nubs when they get grimy. You can also opt for a washable or waterproof set, if you’re willing to shell out the extra cash. Buying earbuds can often be a guess-and-check process, because you never know what’s going to fit best in your ear. It tends to be worthwhile to spend a little extra money, because cheap earbuds are quick to disintegrate. Unless you’re on an extremely tight budget, be wary of spending less than $20 on any pair.
Two French Internet watchdogs have lost their teeth following a change in the law on Tuesday and a ruling by the Constitutional Court last week. Those accused by the High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet (Hadopi) of illegally downloading copyright works in France no longer risk losing their Internet access, following a change in the law promulgated Tuesday, although it will now be easier to fine them. And it will take another change in the law before network operators need fear the French telecommunications regulator, Arcep, which last week lost the power to impose penalties on companies breaking its rules. France was one of the first countries to introduce a so-called “three strikes” law to discourage the unauthorized downloading of copyright works. Internet subscribers who failed to secure their connection, allowing it to be used for illegal downloads, were warned, first by email, then by registered letter and finally with a convocation to be interviewed by Hadopi. If illegal downloads continued, a court could suspend subscribers’ Internet connections and fine them up to €1,500 (US$2,000). Now they face only a fine.
to communicate with a Fitbit, sort through an iTunes music library, and pay for in-app purchases via Google Wallet. Google recently announced a slew of updates and additions to the APIs (application programming interfaces) available to developers making packaged apps for Google’s browser. You may not have heard of packaged apps, as they're currently still in the development stages. Packaged apps are built on top of Chrome using Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The big difference between packaged apps and regular Chrome apps is that packaged apps are standalone programs that operate in a separate window and can—crucially—run offline. They are also stripped of all the typical browser “chrome” such as the URL address bar and tabs, to more closely resemble a typical PC application. with its own selection of Chrome-based apps that aren’t dependent specifically on Linux, OS X, or Windows. Google has been steadily working on improving the functionality of packaged apps as it gets the feature ready for a primetime release. Some of big new features tipped by Google on Monday include the ability for packaged apps to communicate with Bluetooth devices using the 4.0 spec. Chrome’s new Bluetooth support includes the ability to talk to low energy devices like fitness bands and heart rate sensors.