Die immense Verbreitung mobiler Endgeräte wie Smartphones und Tablets führt in der Schweiz bis anhin nicht zu einer Verdrängung von Desktop-Computern und Laptops. Stattdessen werden beide Gerätegenerationen in Abhängigkeit vom jeweiligen Kontext und Verwendungszweck komplementär zueinander genutzt.
Der designierte Economiesuisse-Direktor Jean-Marc Hensch kann sein neues Amt aus gesundheitlichen Gründen doch nicht antreten. Hensch müsse wegen einer Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankung, die bei ihm vor wenigen Tagen aufgetreten sei, sein Arbeitspensum stark reduzieren. Dies sei mit der Funktion als Direktor von Economiesuisse nicht vereinbar, schreibt dazu der Wirtschaftsverband.
Microsoft wird auch in Zukunft Standorte in Hamburg, Böblingen und Bad Homburg haben. Die eigentlich geplante Schließung der drei Büros wurde abgesagt, bestätigte Microsoft-Sprecher Thomas Mickeleit Spiegel Online. "Wir hatten ein flexibles Konzept mit Heimarbeit geprüft. Nach Gesprächen mit Mitarbeitern und Betriebsräten hat sich gezeigt, dass wir das nicht vernünftig hinkriegen"
Der Bezahldienst Paypal hat ein System entwickelt, mit dem Kunden über ihr Smartphone automatisch in Geschäften erkannt werden können. Sie können dann vom Händler persönlich betreut werden und auch über ihr Telefon bezahlen. Paypal will die Technik mit dem Namen "Beacon" Anfang kommenden Jahres zunächst in den USA einführen, sagte Firmenchef David Marcus. Vom zweiten Halbjahr 2014 an soll das System auch in Europa vertrieben werden.
Mehr als 500 Schriftsteller aus aller Welt prostieren mit einem öffentlichen Aufruf gegen die Massenüberwachung durch Regierungen und Unternehmen. "Ein Mensch unter Beobachtung ist niemals frei; und eine Gesellschaft unter ständiger Beobachtung ist keine Demokratie mehr", heisst es in dem Schreiben, das unter anderem die "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" am Dienstag veröffentlichte.
Orange und EWZ wollen bei der Glasfaseranbindung von vorerst 130 4G-Antennen in der Stadt Zürich zusammenarbeiten. EWZ ist dabei verantwortlich für den Bau und den Betrieb dieser Glasfaseranschlüsse. Daneben stellt EWZ Orange teilweise auch neue Standorte für zusätzliche Antennen zur Verfügung, wie es in einem gemeinsamen Communiqué dazu heisst.
Die Marktforschungsunternehmen IDC und Gartner haben neue Erkenntnisse zur Entwicklung des Servermarktes veröffentlicht. Je nach Einschätzung ist der Hardwareumsatz im dritten Quartal 2013 im Vorjahresvergleich um 2,1 bis 3,7 Prozent gesunken, der Gesamtumsatz liegt nun zwischen 12,1 und 12,3 Milliarden.
Das IT-Aus- und Weiterbildungshaus Digicomp baut seine Partnerschaft mit Swiss Q weiter aus und bietet ab sofort gemeinsam mit Swiss Q Lehrgänge zu Software Testing und Requirements Engineering ein. Wobei das Portfolio laut Mitteilung durchgängig vom Foundation- bis zum Advanced-Level im Bereich Software Testing reiche.
Derzeit werden geschätzte 7.000 verschiedene Sprachen auf der Welt gesprochen, aber nur weniger als fünf Prozent davon sind auch online in Gebrauch. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt die in der Fachzeitschrift "Plos One" veröffentlichte Studie "Digital Language Death" des Linguisten András Kornai und prophezeit ein Massensterben bedrohter Sprachen durch das Internet.
Mit der Übernahme von 66,7 Prozent Anteilen an der DL Groupe GMG SA (DL Groupe) will Swisscom ihre Kompetenzen im Bereich IP-basierter Managed Unified Communication & Collaboration-Dienstleistungen in der Westschweiz erweitern. Das 1990 in Genf gegründete Unternehmen hat sich in der Westschweiz als Anbieter von Microsoft-, Virtualisierungs- sowie Datensicherungs- und Speicherlösungen etabliert.
The latest round of monthly patches from Microsoft illustrates the need for organizations to move from older versions of Microsoft software if they haven’t done so already. ”The load of the risk is on older software versions,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer for security firm Qualys, about this round of Microsoft software patches. Overall, Microsoft Patch Tuesday for December a total of 24 vulnerabilities with 11 security bulletins. The bulletins cover Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Exchange, Office365, Visual Studio, and SharePoint. Microsoft rated five of these bulletins as critical, meaning that the patches they contain should be applied as soon as possible.
The $130 HP Envy 5530 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction (copy/print/scan), will cover a low volume of home use nicely. It's exceptionally easy to use, surprisingly capable, and produces impressive output. On the downside are its lack of speed and pricey inks, but HP’s new Instant Ink program might help that somewhat. Svelte design with some surprising features The HP Envy 5530 is rather compact for a multifunction printer. The scanner lid is so thin that at first glance, you might not recognize it as such. However, there’s an A4/letter-sized scanner on-board, and it produces good-looking copies and scans. You can even push-scan to a PC across the network—not a feature you see in every printer at this price point. The Envy 5530 offers automatic duplexing, which isn’t a guarantee in this price range. Everything else about the paper handling is pretty modest: just 100 sheets (input) and 30 sheets (output)—if having printed pages fall right on top of blank pages counts as an output area. If you print any more than 200 pages per month, you should be looking at a more robust machine. Setting up the HP Envy 5530 is easy whether you use USB or Wi-Fi, and thanks to a 2.65-inch touchscreen and exceptionally well thought out menus, so is operation. The display and all the controls are on the top left of the unit, and intuitively arranged. The only other feature worth mentioning is the SD card slot for direct printing and off-loading scans.
If you’re still in the market for a Windows 7 PC, you can breathe a sigh of relief. They’re still available. At the end of October, . But the software giant also posted a notice that sales of PCs with Windows 7 installed also ended on that date. And that, Microsoft said recently, was a mistake. ”We have yet to determine the end of sales date for PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled,” . “The October 30, 2014 date that posted to the Windows Lifecycle page globally last week was done so in error.” So far, Microsoft hasn’t said when it will cut off Windows 7 PC sales, leaving the issue unresolved with a “to be determined” tag. Microsoft’s latest end-of-life dates.
It's still unclear when Google will open the door to more third-party apps for Chromecast by releasing public software-developer tools.
By now, stitching together photographs to create a panorama or 3D image bubble is old hat. But the new Photosynth formats that Microsoft has developed and published fuse information and art—so much so that serious photobugs should check them out. Historically, Microsoft’s Photosynths were based on photos stitched together to form an image. With the new version of Photosynth Microsoft is rolling out, the company has expanded the types of formats: the traditional panorama, a “spin” around a fixed object or point, a “walk,” and a “wall.” It’s the latter two that offer the most artistic possibilities, and a complement to the that Microsoft recently rolled out. Probably the most compelling argument to use the new Photosynth tools is simply to show them off, as in this Photosynth “walk” of Edinburgh Castle:
BMC Software has set up a private-label marketplace service that will allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and other organizations to run their own online app stores. ”It is sort of like an Amazon-like marketplace for enterprise customers or ISVs,” said Jason Frye, senior director in the office of the BMC Chief Technology Officer, referring to the popular Amazon online store. An app store can be set up within a few weeks, potentially cutting the time needed to set up a deployment from scratch, he said. The service provides the templates and tools needed for organizations to set up their own customized online app stores where they can sell their own software and services as well products from their partners. BMC Marketplace can sell all sorts of software programs—enterprise applications, desktop programs and mobile device apps—as well as cloud services. The company is pitching the service to its enterprise customers, telecommunications providers, and ISVs.
Qualcomm and competitor MediaTek are working on chipsets that will open the door for LTE in low-cost smartphones and tablets, allowing people all over the world to benefit from the higher speeds it offers. The smartphone market is going through several changes as the primary driver behind smartphone growth in the years ahead will be low-cost devices. The chip vendors are now battling over who will get to power this next generation of smartphones and tablets. On Monday, , which will power smartphones released during the second half of next year and priced under $150 without a contract, according to the chip vendor. The announcement is significant and will have a very big impact on the popularity of LTE, according to Alan Hadden, president at industry organization GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association). But Qualcomm isn’t the only vendor that aims to cut the cost of LTE. Competitor MediaTek is getting ready to launch its first SoCs (system-on-a-chips) with LTE. The company will push LTE as hard as it can, according to Johan Lodenius , chief marketing officer at MediaTek. For a technology to become truly widespread, there must be products that are priced reasonably, he said in a recent interview.
Huddle’s enterprise content collaboration suite now has a native component for creating, editing and sharing documents, an attempt by the company to reduce its customers’ usage of Microsoft’s Word and OneNote applications. Huddle Note, as the new application is called, is designed for quick, ad-hoc taking and sharing of notes within the cloud suite’s interface, a more convenient option, the company hopes, to using third-party word processors and note-taking apps. ”We wanted to let users create lightweight content within Huddle, and not have to go elsewhere to do it, and share the documents right from there,” said Alastair Mitchell, Huddle’s CEO. “It’s very natural for us to build a tool like this.” Huddle’s suite, which is cloud-based, competes against Microsoft’s SharePoint server in areas like file sharing, document management, building intranets and extranets, and content collaboration. Thus, cutting into its customers’ use of Word and OneNote is right in line with Huddle’s overall strategy to position itself as an alternative to SharePoint.
Socl is still under-the-radar, but apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone prime the network to go mainstream.
Google wants people around the world to harness the power of their Android phones to create —360-degree panoramic images taken with your Android Phone or DSLR camera—to Street View. Google already lets you share photo spheres on Google Maps to provide a Street View-like experience. The only difference between a photo sphere and official Street View images is that photo spheres root you to one spot, while Street View lets you move around and navigate to nearby locations on the map. But as of Monday you can connect multiple photo spheres into a complete Street View experience, as you can experience in the Street View below, by Google's Evan Rapoport.. You could use the new feature, for example, to capture nearby scenic views at different times throughout the year. If you wind up taking a vacation in an exotic or hard to reach locale, you could also add multiple panoramic images to Street View. Or maybe you simply want to capture your local town square decked out in Christmas lights.
A workers’ rights group is demanding Apple investigate the recent deaths of several workers at an iPhone factory in China, one of whom was a 15-year-old who died of pneumonia after working at the facility for a month. The factory, located in Shanghai, is run by Taiwanese manufacturing firm Pegatron, a listed Apple supplier. In recent months, several workers at the facility have died of different illnesses, a Pegatron spokeswoman said on Tuesday, declining to specify the exact number of deaths. The employees, however, all worked in different factory departments. ”We are paying attention to the working conditions,” the spokeswoman said. The factory and local authorities have found no problems with the working or living conditions, she added. 15-year-old Shi Zhaokun was among the workers who died, according to New York-based China Labor Watch. On Tuesday, the workers’ rights group said it was concerned that poor working conditions at the factory may have caused the deaths.