With Bartz out, Yahoo must refocus or die
With Yahoo languishing in the face of competition from the likes of Google and Facebook, the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz gives the company a chance to refocus and reinvigorate itself.
Yahoo announced late on Tuesday that Bartz, who had been with the company for just under three years , had been fired. Tim Morse, Yahoo's chief financial officer, has stepped into the top seat until a permanent CEO can be found.
Under Bartz's stewardship Yahoo has continued to falter. Once an Internet pioneer and online giant, the company has struggled financially. And at a share holder meeting in June, one investor blasted Bartz for the company's limp stock price and her market strategy, and even called for her departure.
During that conference call, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock defended Bartz, saying she had made "demonstrable progress" and adding that she had the confidence of the board of directors. Read more...
Online crime costs more than drugs – but the real losses go beyond dollars
Online crime is now costing more than the global drugs trade, according to some new research, which puts the amount stolen by online criminals - plus the cost of putting things right again - at about $114bn annually.
Adding in the value victims surveyed placed on time lost due to online crime, this figure hits $388bn - significantly more than the global black market in drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and heroin.
Getting down to some UK specifics, every second 19 people fall victim to some form of online crime, with viruses, credit card fraud and social network hacking the most common forms of abuse, according to the Norton Cybercrime Report in the UK.
As a result, online crime is costing the UK about £474m a year. Add the value of time wasted and the overall cost passes the £1bn mark. Read more...
Nvidia boss: Windows 8 will run Windows Phone 7 apps
Nvidia has been outlining a future that sees a Qualcomm/Nvidia duopoly providing processors for every computing platform, which will share apps as well as chips.
Nvidia's CEO has been briefing journalists, including C-Net's Roger Cheng, pointing out that the company's Tegra chipsets are already powering half of the Android smartphones, and 70 per cent of tablets, and are looking forward to getting radio signal processing integrated too. But the CEO also made clear his belief that applications developed for Windows Phone 7 would find themselves happy running on Windows Desktop 8. Read more...
Survey: Value of the cloud, telecommuting overstated
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Cisco, take notice: Despite the near-constant hype about cloud computing services, most mid-market companies are still viewing cloud as a complement, not a replacement.
SWC Technology Partners surveyed 210 mid-market IT and business leaders and found that cloud computing, at least for the mid-market and even more so in the enterprise, is still very early in its evolution. The survey also revealed a few surprises about the acceptance of telecommuting in the mid-market.
The disconnect between the hype of cloud computing and the actual implementation of cloud computing reared its head in the SWC survey. Only 3.7 percent of respondents said that their company has adopted a cloud computing solution for the entire company. And, over half (54.2 percent) of the respondents indicate that their company is not pursuing a single cloud computing initiative. Privacy and security (20.9 percent) were listed as the biggest concern when considering the cloud, followed by cost (9.8 percent). Read more...
Researcher raps Apple for not blocking stolen SSL certificates
A security researcher criticized Apple for what he called "foot dragging" over the DigiNotar certificate fiasco, and urged the company to quickly update Mac OS X to protect users.
"We're looking at some very serious issues [about trust on the Web] and it doesn't help matters when Apple is dragging its feet," said Paul Henry, a security and forensics analyst with Arizona-based Lumension.
Unlike Microsoft, which updated Windows Tuesday to block all SSL (secure socket layer) certificates issued by DigiNotar, Apple has not updated Mac OS X to do the same. Read more...
YouTube’s Content-ID Piracy Filter Wreaks Havoc
YouTube describes its Content-ID anti-piracy filter as a state-of-the-art technology, but those who look closely can see that in some cases it creates a huge mess. The system invites swindlers to claim copyright on other people’s videos and make money off them through ads. It automatically assigns thousands of videos to people who don’t hold the copyrights, and its take-down process appears to be hugely biased towards copyright holders.
In recent years Google and YouTube have gone to extremes to protect copyright holders. Perhaps the greatest achievement thus far is their state-of-the-art Content-ID system.
Content-ID allows rightsholders to upload the videos and music they own to a central ‘fingerprint’ database. YouTube will then scan their site for full or partial matches, and if there is a hit the copyright holder can automatically take it down, or decide to put their ads on it.
Although the above sounds like a fair and honest solution, not everything Content-ID does goes to plan. Of course some errors are expected when pioneering a new system, but the problems are more severe than that. Welcome to the world of YouTube swindlers, mass misattribution of copyrights and an unfair bias towards stubborn copyright holders. Read more...
Romney sees tech skills shortage, and H-1B visa need
Mitt Romney, a top candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has released an economic plan that would make it easier for foreign college graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering to work in the U.S.
Romney's plan, unveiled this week, includes a proposal "to raise the ceiling" on visas for holders of advanced degrees in math, science "who have job offers in those fields from U.S. companies."
"These workers would not displace unemployed Americans. Rather, they would fill high-skill job openings for which there is currently an acute shortage of labor," wrote Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, in his plan. Read more...
Pirate Bay Movie Leaks Traced Back To Swedish Film Institute
After several Swedish movies ended up on The Pirate Bay, an anti-piracy tracking company says it has found the source of the leaks. But in surprise twist, rather than pointing the finger at the usual suspects, the company says the movies came from a most unlikely location – the servers of the Swedish Film Institute.
“The Swedish Film Institute’s goal is to support the production, distribution and display of valuable films, to preserve and make accessible Swedish film heritage and to represent Swedish cinema internationally,” says a notice on the Institute’s site.
But in a bizarre turn of events, the Institute appears to have achieved their mission to promote Swedish films by a most unusual and controversial route. Read more...
New iPad Rental Service Targets Travelers
The Internet makes it easy to rent books, movies, high fashion, kid stuff and pretty much anything. But most iPad rental services don't rent to individuals. Unless you own a business, it's still easier to rent a speedboat than an iPad.
Flying Connected, an electronics rental site that launched in New York City last month, aims to make it easy for individuals to rent electronic companions for their trips.
Rental prices on the site vary depending on the renters' choice of insurance package, accessories and pre-loaded media. The company's most popular item, the iPad 2, can be rented for $18 to $28 per day. For a small fee, it will deliver a device to an airport or hotel in New York City. Read more...
Shop til your wallet drops with these iPhone deal apps
September means a lot of things to a lot of different people. For kids it’s back to school time. For football fanatics, it means the start of about five months of lost weekends. For me? The fall is my shopping season. It starts to get too rainy or cold to go out and I sit around and I look for deals. Why yes, I am an old maid, thanks for asking. But this old maid will save you some money with these five deal-friendly apps.
inoDeals ($1.99)
This app is no joke when it comes to savings. It aggregates 19 different deal websites into one app, so if there’s a deal or coupon on some product you’re looking for, it’ll likely be in this app. Search by product, or just look at the most recent coupons available, and of course, you can also save your deals for later. Stop clipping coupons and grab inoDeals immediately. Read more...