News Desk

US Start-Up Born to Make War on Junk Mail

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:28:00 EST

Just when the US Postal Service looks down for the count, a self-funded Seattle start-up called PaperKarma figures its destiny is to suppress junk mail on which the post office depends. The company was started by Sean Mortazavi, who hasn’t given up his day job at Microsoft yet, and PaperKarma’s sole employee Brendan Ribera. The pair has developed a free multi-platform mobile app that lets junk mail-inundated protesters take a picture of the junk mail flooding their mailbox, hit an “Unsubscribe” button and send it to PaperKarma. The start-up will automatically pass it on to the mailer with Federal Trade Commission-enforced instructions that the recipient be dropped from its mailing list. Mortazavi and Ribera reportedly spent a year collecting the names of the appropriate people at 10,000 of the biggest junk mailers such as the so-called privacy officers or customer advocates responsible for deleting names from mailing lists and its system automatically matches them to the e-mailed suppression request. It’s a system that’s constantly being updated and expanded.

Microsoft Slashes Price of Its Cloud Database

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:06:00 EST

As a result, it said, of “customer feedback and evolving usage patterns,” Microsoft cut the price of its cloud-ified SQL Azure database 48%–75% for databases larger than 1GB and introduced a new entry-level 100MB model. It blogged that it’s noticed that many projects start small but need to grow quickly so now as the user’s database grows the price per GB will decline significantly. It also said that many cloud adopters and customers with smaller workloads want an inexpensive option so that’s where the 100MB option comes from. Amazon may have made them do it.

Cloud Expo New York: Copyright and the Cloud

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST

Wide and cheap availability of cloud-based media services is upon us. With the transformations these services are already bringing to the consumption of music, video and interactive media, change has likewise come to professional workflows. Documents in 2012 are read, written, collaborated on, and distributed anywhere an Internet-enabled device can reach – which is to say, everywhere. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Christopher Kenneally, Director of Business Development at Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), will discuss how among research institutions and other knowledge-intensive enterprises (e.g., R&D units, medical research teams), widespread adoption of this new cloud functionality will bring dramatic changes in the ecology and characteristics of content use and re-use. Repertory-style licensing is already an important component to facilitate this shift in knowledge workers’ and researchers’ workflows. Indeed, as cloud-based content usage increases, repertory-style licensing will likely become an ever more critical and indispensable part of the toolkit for collaboration and content-sharing.

Mobile Devices Get Active Directory Protection

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:47:00 EST

Centrify is going into the mobile business in support of iOS and Android phones and tablets. The move involves putting its multi-platform support for Microsoft’s Active Directory on its own cloud so companies can protect the increasing ubiquitous BYOD they need to control and secure whether they’re on the corporate network or not. It promises an organization can re-use its Active Directory investment without deploying a complex new infrastructure or dealing with yet another “pane of glass” in the form of another standalone management console. Its new enterprise-scale subscription-based cloud service is called DirectControl for Mobile and harnesses a company’s existing on-premise Active Directory infrastructure, skill sets, familiar processes, and group policy-based management tools to enforce and update mobile security settings, lock or remotely wipe devices, automate the configuration of each user’s authentication credentials, e-mail, Wi-Fi and VPN settings and reduce helpdesk traffic.

Apple Starts Unleashing Mountain Lion

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:26:00 EST

Sooner than expected, Apple Thursday started previewing a developer-directed beta of Mountain Lion, its next-generation Mac OS X 10.8, due out late this summer. It’s borrowed some more features from iOS like the popular and unlimited iChat-replacing iMessages IM as well as Notes, Games Center and Reminders and changed the names of Mac’s Address Book to Contacts and iCalc to Calendar, making the two operating systems more alike – you can see where this is going, right? Mountain Lion also integrates with Twitter and Apple’s own iCloud. Documents created on Macs will be available and synced with iPhone and iPad. There’s a Gatekeeper system to vet software, a way to use Apple TV as a screen, and it adds features for the Chinese market in support of Chinese web sites like Baidu. All told there are reportedly 100 new features.

Enterprise Transformation Using Cloud and Cloud Platforms at Cloud Expo NY

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:58:00 EST

Cloud is a shift from the focus on underlying technology implementation to leveraging existing implementations and further building upon them. Cloud orchestration or a network of clouds is the wave of the future where these clouds can operate with elasticity, scalability, and efficiency. Effective service management is an important aspect of managing such networks. The transition to the cloud will enable the further aggregation of composite web services and enhanced business-to-business capabilities for integrating processes and applications. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Ajay Budhraja, CTO at the Department of Justice, will discuss how, for example, the requirement to access multiple clouds will cause a shift toward utilizing identity management services and single sign-on capabilities. With cloud services, a traditional project that just obtained survey information from customers and provided reports was transitioned to leverage an authentication service, cloud customer information service, cloud reporting service and other cloud services to provide a scalable, highly integrated solution quickly.

Citrix Floats CloudStack 3

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:18:00 EST

Citrix has opened up a beta of its CloudStack 3, the first release of the open source cloud platform under the Citrix brand. Citrix acquired the Java-based cloud management last year when it bought Cloud.com. A full production version of the branded stuff is supposed to be available later this quarter. Citrix said CloudStack is already handling over $1 billion in revenue for more than 85 large-scale production clouds, including Zynga, IDC Frontier and Nokia Research. CloudStack 3 is supposed to be for any size customer that wants to transform virtualized datacenter resources into automated, elastic, self-service clouds in the IaaS fashion of Amazon.

Atos, EMC, VMware Start Cloud Company

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:37:00 EST

EMC and VMware are going into the cloud business with Atos, the big, publicly owned, Paris-based global IT services firm, intending to take an equity position in Canopy, an end-to-end cloud company Atos is setting up using EMC and VMware technology. The companies said Wednesday when Canopy was announced that their shareholder agreement wasn’t set in stone yet and wouldn’t be until early Q2 but the Americans are talking about kicking in tens of millions of dollars. At least EMC is. The object of the game is to cash in on what is projected to be a $267 billion cloud market by 2020, up from $59 billion this year.

Apple Gets Injunction Against MMI in Germany

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

A Munich court Thursday found Motorola Mobility guilty of infringing an Apple patent and handed Apple a permanent injunction against two Android smartphones. Apple can enforce the injunction after posting a bond lest MMI succeed in invalidating the slide-to-unlock patent (EP1964022) that opens a device with a gesture on an unlock image. Patent watcher Florian Mueller, who was in court for the trial in December and again on Thursday when the decision came down, apparently expected the court to stay its hand pending a decision on the patent’s validity but evidently Apple’s post-trial pleadings persuaded Judge Peter Guntz that the patent would ultimately stand. Guntz only upheld Apple’s complaints against MMI’s phones, not its complaint against MMI’s Xoom tablet.

Oracle Wheels Out Its Big Data Appliance Ahead of Schedule

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST

In a surprise move on Tuesday, January 10, Oracle wheeled out its Big Data Appliance. That’s the one it said in October would be ready sometime in the first half. Only nobody believed it meant early in the first half. Heck, it’s not even clear anybody thought Oracle could make the first half at all and it probably couldn’t have met so early a date if it hadn’t been secretly closeted for months with Cloudera. It’s using Cloudera’s version of Hadoop in the thing rather than lose time dicking around rolling its own. Cloudera is the oldest, most established of the Hadoop start-ups whose ranks now include MapR (tight with EMC, its Greenplum database and the EMC Data Computing Appliance) and Hortonworks (buddies with Microsoft and SQL Server 2012) and it’s assumed to have more customers and more experience than anybody else. Observers say Oracle’s use of Cloudera shows it’s serious. Big Data is supposed to be a $70 billion industry growing at maybe 20% a year and Oracle wants more than its fair share so it’s not letting any grass grow under its feet. To prove it’s serious, Oracle is low-balling the highly engineered system. Rather than charge millions like it does for its Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics appliances, Oracle’s Big Data Appliance will go for a mere $450,000 a rack with maintenance on both the hardware and software running only 12% a year. The price is a third less than expected. For the money customers will get a full rack of 18 Sun Fire x86 servers with 216 CPU cores, 864GB main memory, 648TB of raw disk storage, 40 Gb/s InfiniBand internal connectivity and 10 Gb/s Ethernet connectivity, perfectly sized for the greatest number of customers. Users also get Cloudera’s open source Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH) and Cloudera Manager software, Cloudera’s Google Big Table-ish HBase, an open source distribution of R, the programming language, the Community Edition of Oracle’s NoSQL Database, Oracle’s HotSpot Java Virtual Machine and Oracle Linux, the Oracle fork of Red Hat. The widgetry can be used in multiple ways. Oracle and Cloudera are going to split support, with Cloudera getting the hard software questions. Oracle’s also got a bunch of separately priced connectors so users can integrate data stored in the CDH Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) or Oracle NoSQL Database with Oracle Database 11g. The four connectors cost $2,000 per server processor. Betcha Oracle figures it can up-sell Big Data Appliance users on Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics since everything’s tightly integrated. It’s also possible that Oracle might want to buy Cloudera eventually depending on how things go and how its vision of itself as a database company morphs. Currently they’re bound together by a non-exclusive multi-year alliance. A huge win for Cloudera, the start-up is reveling in the validation it’s getting from Oracle and all the feet Oracle can put on the street. It can probably anticipate an uptick in its consulting and training business. It also figures the Oracle ecosystem will produce new tools, applications, systems and services in support the CDH platform.

Chinese Company Wants China’s iPad Exports Halted

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

The Chinese company that claims it owns the iPad trademark says it plans to seek a ban on iPad exports out of China, threatening global supplies. According to what a lawyer for Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Co Ltd told Reuters, the firm is petitioning Chinese customs to stop shipments of the tablet in and out of China. Customs has reportedly not responded to the request. A Chinese court last year found Proview owned the trademark. Apple, which claims it bought global rights to the name from Proview a few years ago, appealed and a final hearing is now set for February 29, Reuters said. Apple says a Hong Kong court supported its position, but that apparently doesn’t mean much.

Cisco Challenges EC’s OK of Microsoft’s Skype Acquisition

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:45:00 EST

Cisco Wednesday filed suit in the European Union’s second-highest court, the General Court in Luxembourg, challenging the European Commission’s rubber stamp last October of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. Cisco says it isn’t opposed to the merger, but figures the EC should have put strings on its unconditional approval to ensure Skype’s standards-based interoperability with other systems like its own videoconferencing widgetry “to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications.” Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined Cisco in the appeal. The EC is expected to defend its decision and not give ground.

Cloud Expo New York: Mobilizing Enterprise Applications for the Cloud

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:30:00 EST

2011 was a year of rapid adoption for public and private cloud services. Instant and on-demand server provisioning was the driving force behind the massive growth. On top, cloud server templates and script automation simplified application installation for simple and pre-defined application stacks, but have not targeted more complex enterprise application environments. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, John Yung, CEO of Appcara, will discuss how 2012 will be the year for application integration and dependency management technologies to take center stage and accelerate enterprise application workloads into the cloud with single pane-of-glass view and control.

Cloud Expo New York: Big Data, Colocation and the Cloud

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:45:00 EST

As more enterprises are adopting clouds, the nature of cloud computing is changing. Previously, clouds were used to test applications or for non-mission critical applications. Today, enterprises are using clouds for cost-saving advantages and launching more mission critical applications that have defined performance needs. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Shepcaro, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Telx, will discuss how distributed computing has many advantages. It would allow organizations to have a cloud at various data centers instead of one cloud at one datacenter. Costs are reduced significantly since one big Internet pipe is not needed.

Cloud Expo New York: Cloud Architectures Require Scale-out Storage

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:30:00 EST

Building a cloud computing environment with on-demand access to compute, network, and storage resources requires an elastic infrastructure at multiple levels. Virtualization combined with x86 servers has transformed the way we scale out compute resources. Unfortunately, legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage architectures are rooted in rigid mainframe-era designs, and are fundamentally mismatched with the dynamic, shared modern data center. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Kevin Brown, CEO of Coraid, will discuss how Ethernet SAN architectures leverage off-the-shelf hardware, standard Ethernet, and distributed storage processing to enable a building block approach to scalability – no forklift upgrades required. With Ethernet SAN, capacity and performance both scale linearly with user demand without forcing users into a complex tiered storage environment to deal with price-performance tradeoffs. Now the same storage building blocks can be configured for backup or production, virtualization or database, enabling a flexible one-tier-for-all architecture. Learn how organizations today are already leveraging Ethernet SAN as the storage backbone of their dynamic public and private cloud architectures.

Compuware Supports IBM WebSphere Environments with dynaTrace 4.1

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:15:00 EST

Compuware on Monday released Compuware dynaTrace 4.1, an application performance management (APM) solution to provide full support for IBM WebSphere Message Broker. dynaTrace 4.1 also adds to its User Experience Management (UEM) capabilities, enhances visualization and integrates with Compuware Gomez Real-User Monitoring - Data Center. dynaTrace 4.1 provides broad support of IBM WebSphere and brings cutting-edge APM to IBM WebSphere environments including WebSphere Message Broker, Application Servers and Portal Servers. dynaTrace advanced end-to-end transaction tracing and UEM combine to provide development, test and operational insight into WebSphere infrastructures. "Customers across industries and around the world rely on the IBM WebSphere stack and WebSphere Message Broker to conduct tens of millions critical business transactions a day, and now they enjoy unprecedented visibility into those transactions from the world's leading APM solution," said John Van Siclen, General Manager of Compuware's APM business unit. "The end result is significantly improved time-to-value and faster ROI for WebSphere deployments and updates. Development, test and production costs are all slashed by reducing the time it takes to create, debug and finalize production releases."

Bringing Cloud to the Business at Cloud Expo New York

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST

Can you bring services from the cloud to your customers faster and have them adopt it with ease of use or bring the power of bundled services to the fingertips of your clients without creating new rigid ‘apps stove pipes'? Do you want to prevent your business running away to public and unmanageably immature cloud services? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Hans van de Koppel, Sr. Enterprise Architect at Capgemini, will take Cloud Expo delegates to the developing world of cloud services brokerages and cloud orchestration. He will analyze challenges and presents practical results. Finally he will present his view on the practical implementation of cloud orchestration combined with event processing and maybe even “learning agents.”

Cloud Expo New York: The Compliant Cloud

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

Many organizations have embraced, or are considering, the benefits of cloud computing – speed, flexibility, increased expertise, shared workload, reduced costs, etc. The benefits are many – but so are the risks. What are the threats to cloud security? Which parties assume responsibility for securing the environment? What about the data? Which type of cloud deployment offers superior security benefits? In her session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Kristin Lovejoy, Vice President of Information Technology Risk for IBM, will examine cloud computing from a security and compliance perspective.

HP Announced a New Generation of Automated and Efficient Hardware

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

HP on Monday took direct aim at the ever-increasing costs of data centers and managing an explosion of data by announcing a new generation of automated and efficient hardware. The new generation of ProLiant servers includes better internal management, powerful automation features, and improved energy conservation. The ProLiant Gen8 servers are part HP's Converged Infrastructure strategy, and represent the first step in the company's Project Voyager, a two-year, $300-million effort to redefine the economics of the data center. At the heart of the new generation of servers is ProActive Insight architecture, which includes integrated lifecycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration, automated energy optimization, and proactive service and support. Data has become a differentiator in business, and with an ever-expanding growth in storage needs, enterprises are feeling the pinch in personnel costs, energy, and facilities. Supporting data as a lifecycle may be IT's fastest growing cost worldwide.

HP’s Voyager Project Bears Fruit

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

HP Monday claimed to have the most self-sufficient line of servers, the x86-based HP ProLiant Generation 8, the first fruits of a two-year Project Voyager meant to eliminate error-prone, downtime-creating manual tasks and cut data center costs. HP says it’s spent $300 million on Gen8, managing to automate 50% of a data center’s manual operations such as server administration, application deployment, and power and cooling management. On average that means it can save a 10,000-square-foot data center an estimated $20 million a year. It says the Gen8 servers, previewed late last year, adapt to their environment in real-time and by continuously analyzing thousands of system parameters, they optimize application performance and proactively improve uptime. Naturally the automation increases productivity, reduces errors, and simplifies operations for virtualized, cloud, and other dynamic computing models. (HP’s just gotta pray customers don’t forsake the bulk of their big on-premise boxes for the public cloud.)

SoftLayer Introduces Searchable Object Storage

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

SoftLayer Technologies on Tuesday announced the immediate worldwide availability of SoftLayer Object Storage, a redundant and highly scalable cloud storage service that allows users to easily store, search and retrieve data across the Internet, with optional CDN connectivity, or across SoftLayer’s global private network. According to Marc Jones, director of product innovation for SoftLayer, “Object Storage gives our users an easy, scalable way to store and retrieve data. With our search functionality, SoftLayer Object Storage customers can efficiently find and retrieve objects from the store based on user-definable tags, extending their data management capabilities beyond traditional object storage services.”

Yahoo-Alibaba Talks Reportedly Collapse

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Yahoo’s critical negotiations with Alibaba to sell part of its stake in Alibaba back to the Chinese company have collapsed according to All Things Digital, a report later confirmed by CNBC. Apparently the collapse includes Yahoo’s parallel and intertwined negotiations with Softbank to dispose of Yahoo’s piece of Yahoo Japan. Yahoo’s position in the two operations is valued at around $17 billion. Yahoo’s stock dropped 6.5% on the news. CNBC said it heard Yahoo lacked the resolve to get the complex deal done, impeded perhaps by fears the IRS would ultimately shoot it down. It was trying to cut a tax-free deal that would save it $4 billion in US taxes by trading operating assets as well as cash.

Apple Testing Smaller iPad: WSJ

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

Contrary to Steve Jobs’ dictum that the 9.7-inch iPad is as small as a tablet can get, Apple is testing a widget that’s around eight inches and has gotten as far as qualifying suppliers for it, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s supposed to be working with screen makers AU Optronics of Taiwan and LG Display of South Korea. The device would reportedly have the same resolution as the current iPad. Apple is expected to unveil an iPad 3 next month with heightened resolution that can also run on Verizon and AT&T’s faster 4G LTE networks. A smaller iPad suggests that Apple may try to broaden its worldwide market share, which stood at 60% in Q3, particularly in developing markets like China and India, and take on competition from the Android mob, which is selling smaller tablets like the seven-inch Amazon Kindle Fire, the 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note and the seven- and 8.9-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab.

More Mobile Devices than People Soon: Cisco

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

The Internet highway may start looking like a proverbial New York traffic jam at rush hour soon. Feel free to substitute any town you like because Cisco says there’s going to be a faster-than-expected 18x surge in worldwide mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016. That’s when mobile cloud traffic should account for 71% of total data traffic, or 10.3 exabytes a month, up from a mere 269 petabytes a month now, outgrowing global fixed data traffic by 3x. That’s like 33 billion DVDs or 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files. There are supposed to be an estimated 10 billion mobile connections by 2016 – more than the 7.3 billion people on earth by then – or more than eight billion handheld or personal mobile-ready devices and nearly two billion machine-to-machine connections, such as GPS systems in cars, asset tracking systems in shipping and manufacturing and medical applications for making patient records more available.

OCZ Launches Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCI Express

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

OCZ Technology Group, a provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, on Tuesday announced the Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCI Express (PCIe) flash storage solution, designed to accelerate cloud computing applications and reduce operating expenses in the data center. The new Z-Drive R4 CloudServ features monumental data throughput, and raises the bar in performance and capacity. Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology, notes that "the Z-Drive R4 CloudServ PCIe solid state drive delivers game-changing performance and enables clients to process massive data-sets with up to 16TB of storage capacity on a single, easy-to-deploy card." With increasing emphasis on cloud computing and the sheer growth in data, PCIe-based flash storage systems have the ability to bypass traditional storage overhead by reducing latencies, increasing throughput, and enabling efficient processing of massive quantities of data. The Z-Drive R4 CloudServ is capable of transferring multiple gigabytes per second and delivering over a million IOPS with a level of concentrated performance that enables system architects to design more productive infrastructures while lowering costs associated with hardware failure, maintenance, structural footprint, and energy consumption.

Cloud Expo New York: Clouds Are All About APIs

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

Why are APIs so important in clouds? Do APIs have to be open? How fast or slow will standardization in the cloud be? Why is ensuring high availability for the cloud service critical? In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mårten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, will answer these questions and address cloud standards, APIs and the critical question: Will we end up with one, two or more competing cloud standards? And, how will this affect the evolution and adoption of cloud computing? Mårten Mickos is CEO of Eucalyptus Systems. From 2001-8 he was CEO of MySQL AB, which was then bought by Sun. In September 2009 he became Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. He joined Eucalyptus as CEO in March 2010.

Crash Course in Open Source Cloud Computing at Cloud Expo New York

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST

Very few trends in IT have generated as much buzz as cloud computing. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Mark Hinkle, Director, Cloud Computing Community at Citrix, will cut through the hype and quickly clarify the ontology for cloud computing. The bulk of the conversation will focus on the open source software that can be used to build compute clouds (infrastructure-as-a-service) and the complementary open source management tools that can be combined to automate the management of cloud computing environments. The session will appeal to anyone who has a good grasp of traditional data center infrastructure but is struggling with the benefits and migration path to a cloud computing environment. Systems administrators and IT generalists will leave the discussion with a general overview of the options at their disposal to effectively build and manage their own cloud computing environments using free and open source software.

Cloud Expo: Why Cloud Is the Answer to the World’s DNA Big Data Challenge

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

Hardware and chemistry improvements will make the $1,000 human genome a reality soon. While the massive amount of genomics data that will be generated represents a huge opportunity to advance personal medicine, it also presents an enormous big data challenge. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Dr Andreas Sundquist, CEO of DNAnexus, will discuss how the cloud will address these issues by enabling the management, storage, sharing and analysis of the world’s DNA data and how it will impact healthcare across the globe.

EC Clears Googlorola Merger But Antitrust Probe Could Follow

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

The European Commission late Monday cleared Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility but it also issued a simultaneous warning that the companies could be charged with antitrust violations for abusing the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms of MMI’s standard-essential 3G patents. Google is buying MMI for its huge patent portfolio. Antitrust czar Joaquín Almunia issued an unusual statement separate from the merger go-ahead saying, “Today’s decision does not mean that the merger clearance blesses all actions by Motorola in the past or all future action by Google with regard to the use of these standard essential patents. Our decision today is without prejudice to the legality under EU antitrust law of Motorola’s past and Google’s future actions. However, the question whether Motorola’s or Google’s conduct is compliant with EU antitrust law cannot be dealt with in the context of the merger procedure.”

Apple Wants Samsung Galaxy Nexus Banned in America

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

Apple wants the Ice Cream-bearing Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone that Samsung worked on with Google banned from the United States because it allegedly infringes four strong Apple technical patents – none of this squishy design stuff like before. Apple quietly asked a district court in California for the preliminary injunction last Thursday as part of a new lawsuit. Patent watcher Florian Mueller calls the patents the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” In Florian’s metaphor, they might to unleash pestilence, war, famine and death on Android 4.0 as it comes from Google – no Samsung features have been added to the so-called stock Android – giving the suit a potentially more crippling arc that implicates all Ice Cream Sandwich widgets. It’s the closest Apple has gotten to taking on Google directly and if Google removes any of the challenged features it’s as good as an admission of an infringement taint, Florian observes.

Apache Hadoop: Now, Next, and Beyond at Cloud Expo New York

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

In 2011, Apache Hadoop received tremendous attention for helping organizations cost-effectively capitalize on their big data. Hadoop is now disrupting the business of analyzing data. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Eric Baldeschwieler, Co-Founder & CEO of Hortonworks, will look at the current state of the Hadoop project, lessons learned by deploying it at scale, and the roadmap for its future. Big Data Track attendees will learn about the exciting developments that have happened recently with the Apache Hadoop project, what is has already accomplished (including real-world examples), and what it is going to make possible in the future.

Embedded Cloud Enablement Services at Cloud Expo New York

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:06:00 EST

The proliferation of device connectivity is redefining the functionality requirements and capabilities of many embedded systems as more and more of these devices look to leverage the “Cloud.” While many commercial software and hardware component vendors have begun to realign their value propositions to satisfy growing demand, commercial-off-the-shelf products (COTS) alone cannot meet every OEM’s needs. As a result, the Embedded Cloud has injected a new level of uncertainty and a new competitive dynamic within the embedded ecosystem. In his session at the 10th International Cloud Expo, Chris Rommel, VP Embedded Practices at VDC Research Group, will discuss the key question: What companies or even types of companies (hardware, software, or third-party engineering vendors) will emerge as the primary providers of professional services to supplement the COTS components and enable this next level of system connectivity and functionality?

Apple Hits $500

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:44:00 EST

Within seconds of Wall Street opening Monday morning Apple tore through the $500-a-share barrier for the first time, a little over six months after hitting $400. The talking heads on CNBC say the company has added the value of a Facebook since its legendary founder Steve Jobs died in October. Up $9.44 to $502.86, its market cap was $460 billion.

Symantec Confirms Blackmail Attempt

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST

Starting last month an unidentified hacker – or maybe it’s hackers – called Yamatough and believed to be part of a group called Lords of Dharmaraja and affiliated with Anonymous – from the looks of it not a native English speaker – or else a semi-literate – demanded $50,000 in blackmail from Symantec. The entry point was apparently servers run by Indian military intelligence. Yamatough threatened to expose stolen Norton antivirus and PCAnywhere source code. Symantec, which secretly called the cops, told CNET it agreed to pay the extortion as part of a sting operation that failed. The PCAnywhere code was posted Tuesday. The go-between was a fictional Symantec employee named Sam Thomas, who offered Yamatough incremental payments of $2,500 a month for three months until the Symantec was confident the code was destroyed. Sam was actually law enforcement.

To ARMs! To ARMs! Win 8 for ARM to Go to Developers

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST

Microsoft is about to release a limited number of ARM-based widgets running Windows 8 to developers so when the operating system hits GA it can compete against the iPad, according to what Windows president Steven Sinofsky told Bloomberg and others Thursday. The system, which can’t run legacy programs, will need brand new apps. The object of the game is to put out the x86 and ARM OS (now styled WOA) at the same time. Microsoft will reportedly hand out test PCs based on ARM chips from Qualcomm, TI and Nvidia, all running the same binaries. Developers have only gotten Windows 8 for the x86 before. They should get the ARM machines around February 29, when Microsoft means to release an x86-only Consumer Preview of Windows 8.

Cloud Expo New York: The Java EE 7 Platform - Developing for the Cloud

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The focus of Java EE 7 is on the cloud, and specifically it aims to bring Platform-as-a-Service providers and application developers together so that portable applications can be deployed on any cloud infrastructure and reap all its benefits in terms of scalability, elasticity, multitenancy, etc. The existing specifications in the platform such as JPA, Servlets, EJB, and others will be updated to meet these requirements. Java EE 7 continues the ease of development push that characterized prior releases by bringing further simplification to enterprise development. It also adds new, important APIs such as the REST client API in JAX-RS 2.0 and the long awaited Concurrency Utilities for Java EE API. Expression Language 3.0 and Java Message Service 2.0 will undergo an extreme makeover to align with the improvements in the Java language. There are plenty of improvements to several other components. Newer web standards like HTML 5 and Web Sockets will be embraced to build modern web applications.

EquaShip Sinks at Launch; Puts into Dry Dock for Repairs

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

EquaShip, the ambitious start-up that wants to be the fourth US parcel carrier after UPS, FedEx and the USPS, has suspended its weeks-old service to regroup after it couldn’t get packages where they were going in a few days time. CEO Ron Wiener said it could take a year to fix the problem. Its failure to deliver within a closing time window put eBay and Amazon shippers’ critical performance scores at risk. The start-up has been courting the small and medium-sized B2C e-commerce merchants on Amazon and eBay that don’t qualify for FedEx and UPS discounts and are basically stuck subsidizing the unprofitable volumes of the FedEx and UPS mega-shippers. EquaShip’s low rates were supposed to make the discount-disenfranchised competitive so they could blithely offer the free delivery imperative to Internet sales these days without losing their shirt.

New York Drops Intel Antitrust Case

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:30:00 EST

Intel has finally seen the back of that 2009 antitrust suit that New York State’s attorney general brought against it that was pretty much a case of New York copying over the charges AMD had made in its massive but now long-settled suit. See, AMD was building a big state-of-art chip plant upstate New York, a project that Globalfoundries inherited when it bought AMD’s factories, and New York figured it could get some easy money. Its mistake was in thinking that cases like AMD’s actually go to a jury – like Intel would ever let that happen – and not realizing that AMD needed the money and would take a settlement and run. When it did, New York was left in district court in Delaware, where it had piggybacked on AMD’s suit, with no home court advantage.

Eolas Patents Found Invalid

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:15:00 EST

After hearing testimony from World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, Netscape co-founder Eroc Bina, HTML embedded tag inventor David Raggetr and prior art inventor Pei-Yuan Wei, who wrote the Viola browser back in 1991, two years before Eolas, and demo’d it to Sun in ’93, a Texas federal jury Thursday – in a district notorious for looking kindly on patent holders – found the patents held by Eolas Technologies, which once nailed Microsoft for a $565 million infringement decision, invalid. The patents claim that Eolas invented the idea of a web browser that supports plug-ins and AJAX development techniques. Eolas was suing YouTube, Adobe, Amazon, JC Penney’s, Staples, CDW and Yahoo before moving on to almost anybody with a web site. Oracle, eBay, Apple, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Playboy and TI previously settled. Eolas could appeal. It’s “evaluating its options.” The University of California co-owns the Eolas patents.

iPad 3 Next Month: AllThingsDigital

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST

Apple is going to launch the iPad 3, or whatever they call it, the first week of March at a special event in San Francisco according to AllThingsD, a prophecy the punters regarded as being as good as a statement from the company. As a result Apple Thursday hit an all-time high, teasing the magic $500 number, with a closing price of $493.17, up from $315 last June, after seeing $496.75 during the day. The blog figures street availability a week or so later. The dingus, the same size as the iPad 2, will reportedly be built on a way faster chip with improved graphics and a 2048×1536 Retina Display – “or something close to it,” the blog said.