Apple issues Lion disk disaster recovery tool
Apple on Monday released a utility that builds a Lion recovery disk on a USB flash drive, giving users a way to restore their Macs if the machine's hard drive fails completely.
The Lion Recovery Disk Assistant is a free download, and requires a flash or "thumb" drive of 1GB or more, or an external drive connected to the Mac via a USB cable and port.
"This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed," Apple explained in an accompanying support document. Read more...
Three technology trends your company can’t ignore
Technology is evolving -- fast. And though it might not be easy to keep up with it all, your company cannot just focus on the changes that are happening today. You need to look beyond, to the technological trends that are emerging to shape the future of your organization and your industry. Why? Because the more anticipatory you can be in regard to technology, the more creatively you can use it to gain competitive advantage.
As someone who has been accurately predicting the future of technology for over 25 years, I urge all leaders to focus on the following three emerging trends that will reshape the business landscape as we know it.
1. Just-in-time training
Thanks to cloud-based technology, we're on the brink of a revolution in just-in-time training. This will enable people to use their laptops, smartphones and tablet computers as tools to receive training precisely when they need it. In the current training model used by many organizations, people receive training for a variety of things before they actually need the expertise. This takes the people away from their jobs and costs the company a lot of money. With just-in-time training, companies can keep people in the field, forgoing training that might be needed someday. Then, when an employee needs a certain skill set to complete a job or do a task, he or she can receive the training for it in real time via cloud-based technology. Read more...
Facebook gets creative with mobile phone data harvesting app
Facebook wants to hook into mobile phone users who don't necessarily have a profile set up on the dominant social network.
Yesterday the company launched a service in the US that's a separate app linking messages in Facebook with texts, chats and emails on a mobile phone.
In effect, the Web2.0 outfit has tapped into the SMS market by fanning out its existing messaging service to a mobile phone app that's available on Google's Android and Apple's iPhone, but, somewhat surprisingly, not on the Windows Phone. Read more...
SQL survives murder attempt by mutant stepchild
Silicon Valley likes nothing more than to fetish the Next Big Technology Trend, be it cloud or NoSQL or scripting languages. The problem is that the real world moves much more slowly, and has very different considerations fueling its technology decisions. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the technology media's infatuation with NoSQL, even as the world plods along with SQL.
I was reminded of this by Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady, who nicely shows that far from rendering SQL obsolete, the NoSQL crowd actually finds itself adopting SQL's query languages. As O'Grady notes: "The category might self-identify with its explicit rejection of the industry’s original query language, but the next step in NoSQL’s evolution will be driven in part by furious implementations of SQL’s children." Read more...
German court’s ruling may pose long-term concerns over Android
A German court's ruling on Monday that bars distribution of Samsung's Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 in most of Europe shocked many. It also raises some long-term licensing worries for Android globally, some believe.
Samsung is expected to appeal the preliminary injunction in Germany over what Apple called a design infringement -- an imitation -- by the Galaxy Tab of its iPad. Still, Samsung and other Android device makers face patent and design infringement lawsuits from Apple in the U.S., Australia, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
It's unclear whether Apple eventually will win its battle in the courts to ban sales of competing tablets and smartphones or perhaps settle with some Android makers, such as Samsung or HTC, and grant them design or patent licenses that could raise the cost of their products. Read more...
When a cloud service vanishes: How to protect your data
More and more, we rely on Web services as a matter of course. The key word is rely: We assume that the data we upload to, say, a photo-hosting account or blog service today will still be there tomorrow. In large part, that's because we assume the services themselves will still be there tomorrow.
But over the past few years, we've seen plenty of examples of sites that are here today and all-too-gone tomorrow -- for example, Friendster (which dumped user data for a redesign in May) and GeoCities (which shut down in 2009).
In other words, nothing lasts forever. The Web services that we entrust with our data can -- and do -- vanish. And when that happens, you need to have a plan. In the following pages, I'll take a look at some cases where user data was lost or endangered, how the companies (and their users) handled the situation, and what you can do to keep your own information safe. Read more...
China hit by 480,000 Trojan horse attacks in 2010
China said it saw close to 480,000 Trojan horse attacks in 2010, with almost half originating from outside the country, according to a government security agency.
China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) released some of the figures Tuesday from an upcoming annual report. Of the 221,000 attacks that originated outside of China, 14.7% came from the U.S., while another 8.8% came from India. Read more...
Wall Street: Software more valuable than oil
The tech industry's answer to this week's stock market roller coaster was delivered on Tuesday by the mighty Apple Inc.
Apple saw its stock price rise enough -- gaining more than 5 percent -- that it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil, as the most valuable company in the U.S., according to an Associated Press analysis of its market cap. (Exxon Mobile wound up the day slightly ahead of Apple.)
Most of the other major tech companies -- Intel, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard -- all finished in positive territory yesterday, as markets made up ground lost in the big sell-off on Monday that also hit oil prices and other commodities. Read more...
Gartner: 94 percent of new PCs will ship with Windows 7 in 2011
The Apple Mac is steadily grabbing market share, but Windows-based systems continue to dominate the worldwide personal computer market, according to a new Gartner study.
The report is good news for Microsoft, which has taken its licks lately in the mobile computing market. Redmond's well-received but slow-selling Windows Phone 7 OS has yet to catch on among consumers, who are snapping up Apple iOS and Google Android handsets like crazy.
Windows 7 has proven a big hit on the desktop, however: 42 percent of PCs worldwide will run Win 7 by the end of 2011, Gartner reports. And nearly 635 million new PCs are expected to ship with the OS by the end of the year. Read more...
Microsoft’s BlueHat bounty aims to kill bugs dead
Bug bounty programs are designed to reward security researchers for finding flaws in a vendor's product that have made it past their own quality processes. Some organizations, such as Google and Mozilla, have had bug bounty programs in place for a time, while social networking site Facebook just announced a bug bounty program with a base reward of $500.
Microsoft, however, isn't interested in paying for help for one-off software vulnerabilities. The software vendor instead is swinging for the fence: Getting help from the security research community in exterminating entire classes of bugs. That was the message at the Black Hat security conference last week, with its announcement of the "BlueHat" Prize. The contest promises a first-place award of $200,000 to security researchers who come up with "a novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities." Second prize will win $50,000. Read more...