Während Medien gemeinhin als das wichtigstes Kontrollorgan für Politik und Wirtschaft gelten, rückt die Frage nach dem Umgang mit Missständen innerhalb der Medienbranche selbst immer weiter in den Brennpunkt des öffentlichen Interesses. Mithilfe der neu geschaffenen Möglichkeiten in der Welt des Web 2.0 und seinen partizipativen Elementen schlüpfen zunehmend Bürger in die Rolle der "fünften Gewalt" und klopfen der Presse bei Intransparenz und Versagen auf die Finger.
Facebook will seinen Usern den WLAN-Zugang an öffentlichen Plätzen künftig mittels des eigenen Accounts erleichtern. Am Ende sollen alle Beteiligten - Nutzer, WLAN-Betreiber und Facebook - davon profitieren. Meistens müssen Nutzer in Cafés oder Flughäfen Passwörter erfragen und diese dann auf eigenen Login-Seiten eintippen - oder man wird aufgefordert sich einen komplett neuen Account anzulegen. Das möchte Facebook nun ändern.
Der Cloud-Hoster Rackspace Hosting hat im vergangenen dritten Quartal 2013 seinen Umsatz zwar deutlich steigern können, der Nettogewinn brach aber um 40 Prozent ein. Rackspace-Aktien gaben am Dienstag um mehr als sechs Prozent nach.
HP bringt sein neues Chromebook 11 Mitte November auf den deutschen Markt. Die Besonderheit: Das Elf-Zoll-Notebook wird per Micro-USB-Adapter aufgeladen. Das ist der gleiche Anschluss wie bei Smartphones und Tablets. Das Chromebook 11 verfügt über einen Micro-USB-Adapter. Da dieser Anschluss auch für Smartphones und Tablets passt, können diese mobilen Geräte mit dem mitgelieferten Netzteil geladen werden.
Anlässlich der 10. Techdays-Konferenz hat Microsoft Schweiz heute Vormittag in Basel zwei herausragende Projekte ausgezeichnet: Der erste Technology Innovation Award geht an den CRM Connector von Officeatwork CRM Connector, der auf einer Cloud-Architektur basiert. Den zweiten Award erhält das Treasury Management Dashbord von Temenos. Dabei handelt es sich um eine Windows 8 App, die Managern und Finanzverantwortlichen via Tablet einen mobilen Zugang zu geschäftskritischen Informationen in Echtzeit ermöglichen soll.
Die beiden Rechenzentren Albis und Hagenholz der Stadt Zürich, die von der Organisation und Informatik der Stadt Zürich (OIZ) betrieben werden, sind nach den Richtlinien der renommierten TÜV Informationstechnik (Member of TÜV Nord Group) mit dem Zertifikat «Trusted Site Infrastructure TSI V3.1 Level 3» zertifiziert worden.
Der UCC-Spezialist Mitel mit Hauptsitz in Ottawa will sich den Konkurrenten Aastra einverleiben. Das gaben die beiden kanadischen Unternehmen heute bekannt. Mitel will mit dem Kauf vor allem seine Marktposition in Westeuropa stärken. In der Schweiz hat Aastra gerade das 10. Bestandsjahr gefeiert.
Die Schweizer Niederlassung des IT-Systemhauses Fritz & Macziol wird neu gemeinsam von CEO Burim Mirakaj und Sales Director Norbert Kähler geleitet, welcher neu in die Geschäftsleitung berufen wurde. Roger Eder, welcher die Schweizer Niederlassung seit 2007 leitete, verantwortet neu als CEO die Geschäftsstelle Singapur.
Der Aromen- und Duftstoffe-Hersteller Givaudan mit Hauptsitz in Vernier verlängert seinen Vertrag über Netzwerk Services mit Orange Business Services um weitere fünf Jahre verlängert. Zudem werde der Outsourcing-Vertrag um Cloud-basierte Audio- und Web-Konferenzdienste erweitert, heisst es in einem heute verschickten Communiqué dazu.
Der deutsche Chiphersteller Infineon traut sich nach dem versöhnlichen Ende eines durchwachsenen Jahres wieder eine optimistische Prognose zu. Im gerade begonnenen Geschäftsjahr 2013/14 will der Konzern seinen Umsatz um 7 bis 11 Prozent steigern und auch beim operativen Ergebnis deutlich zulegen.
Airbnb has given its mobile app an overhaul to help hosts manage their bookings on the go, and launched new tools to help them connect with each other through the site. The company Tuesday launched Host Home, as part of a larger redesign of its mobile app that’s intended to make it easier for hosts—and travelers—to use the Airbnb site on their mobile devices. The new Airbnb app is available for iOS and Android-based devices, and was announced at Airbnb’s headquarters in San Francisco. The new app provides a range of tools that previously were either hard to access on mobile or not available at all, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said during the unveiling in front of an audience of hosts. “The world is becoming more mobile, and we found the most successful hosts are mobile,” he said. Airbnb’s service provides an online marketplace where users can list, find and book a variety of accommodations, like rooms and apartments, from the Web or their mobile devices.
Black Friday may be more than two weeks away, but retailers are already out of the gate en masse with their promotional information and sales circulars, so shoppers can start getting prepared for the biggest shopping day of the year. A number of those deals will give shoppers access to Android-based devices at unheard-of prices. . Many major retailers, including Walmart and Target, are opening for business on Thanksgiving evening. You won't even have time to digest your holiday feast before hauling yourself to the store... but given how incredible some of these deals are, you may not have a choice. Here's a look at where the very best deals -- at least the ones that have been announced so far -- and where they can be found. , which is giving it away for free (with a two-year service plan). That even includes the Best Buy-exclusive blue version. Sales begin on Thanksgiving at 6pm.
After updating the Surface Pro 2 to increase battery life last month, Microsoft how spreads the love to Surface 2 owners. lists a half-dozen changes for the Windows RT-based tablet, including improved battery life. It’s not clear from the update notes how much of a battery boost we’re talking, or under what conditions the battery will last longer. in PCWorld’s video rundown test. Still, any improvement is welcome, especially if it helps with mixed-use scenarios where the Surface 2 doesn’t last as long. Along with better battery life, the update should help with performance and stability, and fixes an audio issue related to speaker playback after disconnecting a headset. The update also includes unspecified camera improvements and driver updates for Wi-FI and Bluetooth that should improve Miracast performance. All of the Type Covers and Touch Covers should get performance enhancements through the update as well.
Somewhere, among the dozens of tabs opened within your browser, is playing an annoying advertisement. Google has just made it easier to find which one. Google’s latest Chrome beta adds a few icons to tabs, to quickly identify which tabs are either playing back music, using your Webcam, or else broadcasting to your TV. That’s in addition to the added to the earlier version of Chrome, which supplement the “Safe Browsing” feature that warns you of websites with unsavory reputations for harboring malware. By default, users are signed up for the final or “stable” version of the Chrome browser. Users can also manually opt to use the beta or even the alpha or developer channel, also known as the “Canary” build, for earlier access to new features. However, the alpha and beta channels usually contain more bugs, too. What we know, however, is that Google progressively rolls features from the alpha to the beta to the stable channel—meaning that such capabilities will probably arrive in the final version of Chrome within a month or two.
Unity has finally added integrated support for developing 2D games with the availability of version 4.3 of its toolset. Unity’s cross-platform development tools can be used to simultaneously create games for a multitude of different platforms, including smartphones, PCs, and Web. Until now Unity has focused on 3D game development, but that changes in version 4.3, which was released on Tuesday. For more than a year the company has been working on an integrated physics engine and making it easier for developers to import, manipulate, and work with 2D objects. Users will also be able to mix 2D and 3D as they see fit, according to Unity. To help users understand the development process, Unity has created a demo 2D game level. A shows developers how to set up a 2D project and how to build a game layer by layer.
more buttons to let people perform common actions without having to open messages. The new batch of “quick-action buttons,” as Google calls them, let users rate restaurants they ordered food from using Seamless, change restaurant reservations made with OpenTable, open Dropbox folders, and launch Google Docs files. Google already offered buttons for rating restaurants, viewing flight information, renewing magazine subscriptions, and responding to event invitations. how they can add these and other action buttons to the emails they send to Gmail users.
from Trend Micro. The security vendor said it counted more than 200,000 new infections from July through September, the highest number it has recorded in a three-month period in 11 years. Between April and June, Trend counted 146,000 infections. The infections were less concentrated in Europe and the Americas and were more distributed throughout the globe, indicating that cybercriminals are diversifying the banking customers they target. The most affected countries were the U.S., which made up 23 percent of the new infections, followed by Brazil at 16 percent and Japan at 12 percent.
Facebook locked some users out of their accounts after determining that their log-in credentials were exposed as a result of a security breach at Adobe.
, but with video sites turning into top destinations for free music listening, Microsoft's Bing wants to be a go-to source for your tunage searches. Bing recently introduced a refreshed layout for music video searches that lets you quickly find popular videos, and related, songs, artists and albums, complete with hover-over previews directly within the Bing search results themselves. If you search for music on the front page of Bing you won't notice any overt changes. As usual, you'll see a selection of videos related to your search at the top of your results page, followed by a series of links. Hovering your mouse cursor over those results, however, causes a pop-up preview box to appear and start playing the video. The videos come from YouTube, Vimeo, MTV, Artist Direct and other sources—basically anybody who's anybody in online music video. Clicking on a preview brings you to the full page for the song.
Few things in computing are as vital as the lowly hard drive. If your memory goes bad or your processor blows, it’s easy enough to switch out; when a hard drive gives up the ghost, your precious files expire along with it. All of which begs the question: Just how long do hard drives last? on the lifespan of those drives over a four year period. Hard (drive) data, here we come! Let’s get the big reveal out of the way first: Only 26 percent of BackBlaze’s drives failed during the four year testing period. That’s not too shabby for a component frequently plagued by anecdotal tales of woe.
The Moto G smartphone expected from Motorola on Wednesday will likely be available outside the U.S., but competing in the increasingly tough mid-range segment globally won't be easy. The existing Moto X only sells in North America. to sign up for the live online announcement has an international feel with what looks like a stylized globe and Nov. 13 is written in multiple languages. Motorola is also organizing launch events in London, Mexico City, São Paulo and Toronto.
OK Glass, what song is this?
Vodafone now plans to invest £7 billion ($11.1 billion) in network and service improvements to turn around its sagging service revenue in Europe, the mobile operator said as it announced its results for six months to Sept. 30. Vodafone's group revenue for the six months to Sept. 30 was £22 billion, down 3.2 percent year on year excluding the effects of acquisitions, discontinued operations and exchange rate fluctuations. Net income was £18 billion, thanks in large part to a £14.2 billion income tax credit. For the corresponding period a year earlier, Vodafone reported a £2 billion net loss. In general, Vodafone performed well in emerging countries, driven a higher smartphone penetration and data usage, but the situation in Europe remained very tough, it said in a statement. For example, Vodafone's service revenue in Italy dropped by 16.7 percent excluding acquisitions, discontinued operations and exchange rate fluctuations, and in Spain it dropped by 13.4 percent on the same basis, while the service revenue in India grew by 13.5 percent. However, Vodafone was encouraged by an expected return to economic growth in Europe over the next two years. The economic outlook for Europe, coupled with the transition to 4G, makes this the right time for Vodafone to pursue further development and differentiation, it said.
SugarCRM is hoping to gain inroads against its much larger rival Salesforce.com with a revamped user interface it says places emphasis on the needs of individual users, not business managers seeking a wide view of sales activity in their company. This "user-first" design approach includes a few pages from Salesforce.com's playbook, however, such as collaborative activity streams that seem close in purpose to Salesforce.com's Chatter, which was announced in November 2009. SugarCRM is also building in what it calls "contextual intelligence" about objects in the CRM system. For example, if a user is examining a particular company's customer record, the system might pull in a news article about a recent acquisition the customer made. It will be possible for SugarCRM users to integrate data from internal ERP systems, social networks and information services such as Dun & Bradstreet. From a pure productivity standpoint, the new SugarCRM features inline editing, "streamlined visual forecasting" and a common experience for desktop and mobile devices.
Western Digital’s My Cloud network-attached storage unit earned four stars when in October. I praised it for its performance and its user-friendly features. But 3TB is the maximum capacity that WD can deliver in that product, and since it’s a single-bay device it can’t provide the reassuring redundancy of RAID. The company’s announcement of the My Cloud EX4 today erases those limitations and adds a raft of other features. Speed isn’t one of them, however. Because performance takes a backseat to features in this unit, I’ll cover that aspect of the My Cloud EX4 later. The EX4 offers all of the user-friendly features of the original My Cloud, packed in a metal four-bay enclosure that boasts a number of high-end perks the My Cloud does not. First and foremost among them is RAID support, specifically RAID 5 if you purchase the device prepopulated with drives. In addition to RAID 5, the EX4 supports RAID 0 (maximum performance, but no redundancy), RAID 1 (two disks mirrored), RAID 5+Hot Spare (same as RAID 5, but with a spare drive installed and ready to become operational in the event of a drive failure), and RAID 10 (nested RAID). The unit we tested came from the factory with four 2TB drives in RAID 5, which means any one of the four drives could fail and you would still be able to recover all your data (2TB is reserved for parity, leaving 6TB of usable storage). Because the drives are hot-swappable, you can yank out the failed drive and replace it with a new one, and the EX4 will automatically rebuild the array without any downtime. The balance of the EX4’s feature set will appeal to consumer and business users alike. Consumers will appreciate its friendly, dashboard-like user interface, its DLNA server and iTunes support, and its built-in torrent downloader. Business users will value its dual gigabit ethernet ports, with support for both link bonding (so you can pool the bandwidth of two broadband connections) and automatic failover (if one connection fails, the EX4 automatically switches to the other). Dual power connections deliver similar functionality: If one power supply fails, the EX4 can automatically switch to the other (though you must purchase the second one). Active directory support enables you to connect an EX4 to your company’s domain, and volume encryption means the box won’t boot without a password.
Meetings suck because we let them. Every day, we huddle in conference rooms for team updates, strategy sessions, or old-school brainstorming. But if we don’t take our meetings seriously—if we ignore what participants ask or say, fail to document the meeting’s takeaways, or forget to follow up afterward—they might as well not have happened. It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s how the right tech—and the right strategies—can make meetings matter again. Your goal as a note-taker for yourself or for the group as a whole is to distill the content of a meeting down to its essentials. Focus on what needs to happen after the meeting is over. Treat meeting notes as a to-do list, and include all the information you’ll need to get started on a project once you return to your desk.
In a surprise move, Apple began selling its new iPad mini model on Tuesday, previously promised as coming "later in November," with estimated ship times of five to 10 days.
Google has made its app translation service available to all Android developers to enable them to offer their apps in different languages. The service, first previewed in May at Google I/O, allows developers to purchase professional app translations through the Google Play Developer Console from third-party service providers at prices ranging on an average from $75 for a small app to $150 for a large app per language. Google ran a pilot service of the program before making it generally available. It is part of a toolbox offered by Google to developers so that they can distribute their apps around the world through its Google Play store. Monday on its Android Developers Blog.
Advanced Micro Devices will ship its next-generation Kaveri architecture by January, executives said Monday evening. Specifically, desktop availability will take place on January 14, executives said at AMD’s APU13 conferences on Monday. Chips for notebooks, servers, and embedded systems will follow later in the year, executives said. AMD executives also announced the performance of the Kaveri—856 gigaflops. A diagram displayed by AMD appears to show two “Steamroller” CPU cores and eight Radeon graphics cores. AMD executives did not formerly disclose how fast the chips would run, nor how much they would cost. But a footnote on a presentation slide appears to show the Kaveri’s product name (the AMD A10-7850K) with a note that that figure assumes four 3.7GHz CPU cores, as well as 512 GPUs running at 720MHz. While AMD and its much larger rival Intel are constantly seeking ways to constantly improve the performance of their chips, both companies have begun taking somewhat divergent paths toward the same goal. Both now use multicore approaches, where four, eight, or even more processor cores are laid out in parallel and divvy up the processor tasks.
figure {border-bottom:1px dotted #ccc;margin-bottom:30px;} PCWorld is hosting a giveaway for two Lenovo products. That's right: You'll have a chance to win a new Lenovo tablet or convertible PC. For your chance to win, please fill out the brief list of questions on the left side of this page. (function() { var o = window; var guid = "6c2ba99d-eb8b-49a2-83ef-a90bc08dd318"; o.FLITE=o.FLITE || {}; o.FLITE.config = o.FLITE.config || {}; o.FLITE.config[guid] = o.FLITE.config[guid] || {}; o.FLITE.config[guid].ts = (+ new Date()); })(); : Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8 and case, Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro Convertible Ultrabook.
An audible vroom at lower speeds will keep this car from surprising pedestrians and bicyclists.
Such a tattoo could include an embedded microphone as well as a transceiver for enabling wireless communications with a nearby smartphone.
This small touchpad could be less distracting because of the natural movements you use with it, and it even buzzes back at you.
Size matters in the unified communications business, according to Mitel Networks and Aastra Technologies, two Canadian vendors that plan to merge early next year. Mitel will pay about $392 million Canadian (US$374 million) for all of Aastra’s outstanding shares under a deal approved by both boards of directors, the companies announced Monday. The transaction is subject to regulatory and other approvals and is expected to close in the first quarter of next year. Business communication and collaboration have expanded beyond dedicated PBXes (private branch exchanges) and room-based videoconferencing systems to include platforms that can reach mobile users through software and cloud services. Large competitors have consolidated and formed partnerships in recent years, with Cisco Systems LifeSize, among other deals. “We believe that small competitors with narrow focus and limited global reach will quickly be marginalized,” Mitel President and CEO Richard McBee said in a press release. The companies were also motivated by a mass migration to cloud-based services, he said.
Microsoft appears to be getting a handle on Windows 8.1’s gaming problems, releasing a fix for mouse-pointer issues in certain games. A software update is now for both x86- and x64-based versions of Windows 8.1, along with Windows Server 2012 R2. Users had previously reported with mouse input while playing games in Windows 8.1. Microsoft’s support document says the problems stemmed from “changes to mouse-input processing for low-latency interaction scenarios” in Windows 8.1. Unfortunately, the fix may not work on all affected games. Microsoft’s support page to which the update applies, including six games in Activision’s Call of Duty series, including Call of Duty: Ghosts (shown above). Other games on the list include Counter-Strike, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman Absolution, Hitman Sniper Challenge, Half-Life 2, Metro 2033, Portal, and Tomb Raider.
A new Trojan has turned up on the Internet. It exploits a flaw in Internet Explorer, and you won't find it by scanning your hard drive because it's not on the drive. The good news: Booting your PC will flush out the Trojan. Besides, the people behind the malware probably aren't going after you. on the new IE zero-day exploit. "Specifically, the attackers inserted this zero-day exploit into a strategically important website, known to draw visitors that are likely interested in national and international security policy." The nature of the Web site, whose name and URL FireEye did not identify, suggests that the perpetrators are going after specific people, or at least people in a specific industry. In fact, it suggests that government espionage could likely be behind the attack, although which government is difficult to ascertain.
Xerox now offer managed service tools for businesses that want to reduce the costs of remote printing. Xerox has added features to its Mobile Print app and bundled more security and audit tools so the app can be easily incorporated within existing managed print services in enterprises, the company said Monday. From PCs or mobile devices, users will be able to print documents at remote locations, but the cost and volume of the printing will be monitored by managed-print service administrators. The features and tools are part of Xerox’s “next-generation managed printing services strategy,” said Mike Feldman, president of Large Enterprise Operations at Xerox. The strategy revolves around improving print security, reducing costs, and better utilizing printing and imaging devices in an infrastructure. Enterprises will be able to track, report,and manage documents printed at public locations such as UPS stores, Feldman said. It’s more expensive to print documents at public locations, but companies will be able to better assess costs and negotiate better contracts on such services, Feldman said.
When gamers open up their new Xbox One game console on November 22, they’ll discover a new “app channel” treatment that places their photos and videos alongside traditional channels like ABC and Fox. Microsoft disclosed some of its plans last Friday, when it provided a partial list of the entertainment apps that will appear on its game console over the coming months. On Monday, however, the company delved further into how that experience will work. Microsoft’s made it pretty clear that the Xbox One will blur the lines between a traditional set-top box and game console when it . In addition to PC-like apps like Skype and Internet Explorer, the One will include the OneGuide, which looks like a traditional grid of channels and TV shows. But a separate layer will add “app channels,” which will place highlighted content into a similar, traditional grid, and add Xbox “achievements,” such as those provide by Amazon, above. To get there, just say “Xbox: Bing SkyDrive,” and you can get started, Microsoft said.