Iron Mountain going back to roots in storage services
A week after Iron Mountain announced that it had replaced its CEO, the company said it's considering selling its archiving, e-discovery, and online backup and recovery business to return to its roots in document and tape storage services.
"There's no guarantee a deal will get done, because we're still early in the process, but we have good interest. And as you can imagine, these processes take a matter of a few months before we know it will unwind itself," said Richard Reese, who abruptly took over as CEO on April 14. Read more...
Too-high Android tablet prices spook developers
While developer interest in Apple's mobile devices remains solid, interest in Android has stalled among programmers disappointed with tablet prices and pressed by Android fragmentation, a survey published today showed.
"Interest in Android on tablets has stalled, or plateaued, however you want to put it," said Scott Schwartzhoff, vice president of marketing at Mountain View, Calif.-based Appcelerator.
The poll, conducted two weeks ago by Appcelerator and research firm IDC, polled more than 2,700 developers who use Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform compiler to produce mobile applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
The numbers reflect a growing frustration that Android tablets don't stack up against Apple's iPad, and that their biggest weapon -- lower prices -- has not been used. Read more...
Sony warns users of data loss from PlayStation network hack
It's been six days and the PlayStation Network is still offline, and now Sony has acknowledged that the problem involved a security breach.
The online multiplayer gaming site, along with Qriocity, Sony's cloud music subscription service, went down last Wednesday and may not be back for another week.
After the outage, Sony told users their sites had been hacked, prompting PlayStation engineers to take them offline to investigate.
Today, the company posted information online admitting that the hack had breached users' account information, including name, address, birth date, purchase history and online ID.
Patrick Seybold, a senior director at Sony, also noted in the blog post that there's no evidence users' credit card information was stolen. However, he added that "out of an abundance of caution," Sony is advising users that their credit card number and expiration date may have been obtained. Read more...
MIPS Porting Google’s Android 3.0 OS for Its Processors
MIPS Technologies on Tuesday said it was porting Google's Android 3.0 operating system, code-named Honeycomb, to work with its microprocessors.
The port could lead to the faster release of Honeycomb tablets running on MIPS processors, said Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development at MIPS. Customers asked for Honeycomb support, and porting the OS could speed up tablet development, Swift said. Read more...
Android Devices Popular, But Developer Interest Is Falling
Nielsen reports that consumer interest in smartphones running Google's Android is rising in the U.S., with slightly more prospective buyers looking to buy an Android handset than Apple's iPhone. According to its latest survey, 31 percent of consumers who plan to get a new smartphone indicated Android as their preferred operating system, while 30 percent favored Apple's iPhone and 11 percent favored a Research In Motion BlackBerry.
By contrast, during the same period last year, 33 percent of respondents wanted an iPhone, 26 percent favored Android, and 13 percent a BlackBerry. Moreover, Android's rise in popularity became even clearer when Nielsen surveyed consumers who purchased a smartphone recently. Read more...
Customer Fights Subpoena in Oracle-Rimini Suit
Oracle has subpoenaed scores of Rimini Street customers in connection with its intellectual property suit against the third-party software maintenance provider, but at least one has no interest in complying with its demands.
The subpoena issued to Petroleum Geo-Services seeks a wide range of information pertaining to Rimini Street's development of software and services for Oracle products, as well as regarding the use of "crawlers, robots, indexing tools, or automated methods of downloading" to obtain support materials, according to a motion filed Friday by PGS in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Read more...
Software helps parents oversee children on Facebook
Internet security firm Check Point on Tuesday launched software that lets parents watch over offspring on Facebook without being "friends" at the online social network.
ZoneAlarm SocialGuard alerts parents to signs of trouble in a child's Facebook account without them being privy to all posts, comments, pictures, videos or other digital content shared between friends at the website.
The program scans Facebook profiles, communications and "friend" requests and uses algorithms to identify potential bullying, sexual overtures, or talk of drugs, violence or suicide. Read more...
Nokia axes 7,000 jobs to slash costs
Nokia will axe 7,000 jobs and outsource its legacy Symbian software to slash 1 billion euros ($1.46 billion) of costs as it struggles to compete in the fierce smartphone market.
Nokia, the world's largest phone maker by volume, on Wednesday detailed an overhaul of its phone business following its decision to start using Microsoft software instead of its own Symbian platform.
The move includes laying off 4,000 staff and transferring another 3,000 to services firm Accenture - a total 12 percent of its phone unit workforce.
Accenture will take over Nokia's legacy Symbian software activities and support future smartphones, including those running on Microsoft's Windows platform. Read more...
Is it risky to relly on WebM?
WebM Community Cross-License Initiative introduced to safeguard WebM against patent problems
In the ongoing spat regarding web video, Microsoft asked earlier this year "Who bears the liability and risk for consumers, businesses, and developers until the legal system resolves the intellectual property issues?" As far as H.264 rival WebM goes, that's now seemingly the organisations behind the new WebM Community Cross-License Administration. The CCL has 17 founder members, including Google, Opera, Mozilla, Samsung and Cisco, and Google is inviting further organisations to join, as long as they "agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL". Read more...