Google: Changes coming to Google+ this week
It looks like Google will be making some changes to Google+ this week.
In a post on Google+, Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president of engineering at Google, told his followers that users have been providing a lot of positive and negative feedback about Google's new social network, and that the company plans to respond to some of them this week.
"Lots of criticism for Google+," Gundotra wrote at about 2:05 a.m. EDT today. "We are listening and working to address. Stay tuned for changes this week."
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said it's pretty clever for Google to fess up to the many complaints it's received about Google+. Read more...
Courts OK $4.5B Nortel patent buyout
U.S. and Canadian courts have approved the sale of thousands of patents from bankrupt Nortel Networks to a consortium including Apple and Microsoft for about $4.5 billion.
The purchasing group, which also included EMC, Ericsson, Research In Motion, and Sony, won an auction for the patents on June 30. On Monday, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved the deal at a joint hearing. Nortel is based in Mississauga, Ontario. Read more...
Unix still data center darling, says survey
Updated Unix systems may not be all the rage that they were two decades ago, but in nearly eight out of 10 data centers based on them, their use is either holding steady or increasing.
That's the assessment of a recent survey of the HP, IBM, and Oracle Unix customer bases by Gabriel Consulting Group, which has just finished up its fifth annual slicing and dicing of Unix customer sentiments.
Unix systems have successfully colonized their neighborhoods in the data centers of the world, and are resisting the onslaught of Windows and Linux on those systems' relatively inexpensive x64 iron. The Unix colonists are also resisting all of the marketing muscle and money that is dedicated to evicting them. Read more...
Ballmer begs partners to love Microsoft clouds
Steve Ballmer wants to rally business partners around Microsoft's flagship internet and mobile initiatives, but in the process, he reveals just how far Microsoft has to go and how much the company relies on decision-makers outside of its control.
Opening Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles on Monday, Ballmer enthused about the growing market share of Microsoft's Bing search engine, about Boeing and American Airlines using Windows Azure, and about Nokia embracing Windows Phone.
Ballmer insisted that Microsoft has also stitched together a "much more" coherent and complete public- and private-cloud strategy during the last year, one that combines existing enterprise products such as System Center, Visual Studio, and Active Directory, and lets you take private apps to the public Azure cloud. Read more...
Mac OS X surges in business, thanks to the iPad
Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry is not known for mincing words -- or holding back his opinion. For example, back in March, he lambasted the weak sales of the Motorola Xoom tablet and called the Google Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" OS a "mess" at a time when most analysts were being circumspect.
Now Chowdhry says his research shows that Apple is growing significantly in the enterprise as more companies offer it as an option to employees -- and as most employees take up the offer: "Probably about 35 percent of Fortune 500 companies are giving Apple as a choice to its employees, and the majority are preferring Apple over Windows."
It's a sign of the BYOD (bring your own device) times -- or at least the employee-choice times -- that the iPhone and now iPad have engendered. Read more...
HP appoints new leader for WebOS group
Hewlett-Packard appointed a new executive on Monday to lead the development of its WebOS software, with former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein taking on a broader role in the HP group that makes PCs, tablets, and handhelds.
The changes come a week after HP's first TouchPad tablet, which runs the WebOS, went on sale in the U.S. The operating system is also used in HP's smartphones, and will make its way into PCs, printers and other products, HP has said. The company aims to put the software in a range of products to enable easier sharing of documents and other data. It wants developers to write applications for the software as it tries to expand its use. Read more...
Android update tackles app resizing for tablets
Google is working on an update to its Android "Honeycomb" mobile platform that would help applications resize to the tablet screens becoming more prominent lately.
In a post to the Android Developers blog on Monday, Scott Main, lead tech writer for developer.android.com, said the update would accommodate applications that do not resize well on tablets.
"To keep the few apps that don't resize well from frustrating users with awkward-looking apps on their tablets, a near-future release of Honeycomb is introducing a new screen compatibility mode to make these apps more usable on tablets," Main said. Read more...
Ballmer’s new chant: Numbers, numbers, numbers
Microsoft lost its title as the world's biggest tech company this year with Apple surging ahead in market cap, profit and revenue.
Yet Microsoft still has ammo in the numbers department to take shots at its biggest rival, and many others, besides.
CEO Steve Ballmer focused heavily on numbers proving rapid adoption of Microsoft technology -- with the exception of Windows Phone 7 -- on Monday as the company's Worldwide Partner Conference kicked off in Los Angeles.
Windows 7 has sold 400 million licenses in less than two years, Office 2010 has sold more than 100 million licenses, 50,000 businesses have trialed Office 365 since the cloud service's launch two weeks ago, Windows Server locked up 75% of quarterly hardware shipments, and usage of the Bing search engine has tripled in the past year. Read more...
Anonymous hacks Booz Allen, posts 90K military email addresses and passwords
The Anonymous hacking group said Monday it had broken into military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton's network and posted 90,000 military e-mail addresses and passwords online.
Booz Allen isn't commenting. "As part of @BoozAllen security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems," the company said via its Twitter feed.
In addition to the e-mail addresses, which Anonymous suggests expose members of the intelligence community, the group also posted other data it said could potentially offer access to other government agencies and contractors. Read more...