Up-and-coming tech jobs — and how to land one
Forecasts for IT hiring are almost universally predicting that project managers and business analysts will be in demand in 2012, but what about cloud transformation officers?
With big data, mobile computing, social media, cloud computing and the consumerization of IT all converging on IT in 2012, some new -- and intriguing -- job titles are beginning to emerge.
Computerworld went digging and unearthed a handful of positions you can expect to see popping up more and more -- along with details on what you'll need to land one of them. Read on, future chief agile officers. Read more...
Users desert Windows XP in near-record numbers
Microsoft's Windows XP shed a large amount of usage share again last month as users continued to desert the decade-old operating system for Windows 7.
Windows XP lost 2.4 percentage points of share to post a December average of 46.5%, a new low for the aged OS in the tracking of Web metrics firm Net Applications. The month's fall nearly matched the record 2.5-point drop of October.
In the four months from September to December, XP jettisoned more than 11% of its share as of Sept. 1, falling by nearly six percentage points during the period.
The four months prior to that -- May through August -- XP lost only 3.4 points, or about 8.5% of the share it owned as of May 1. Read more...
Mozilla persuades Firefox 3.6 users to dump old browser
Mozilla's upgrade call last month pushed more Firefox 3.6 users to grab a newer edition than any month since June 2011, a Web metrics company said over the weekend.
According to Net Applications, Firefox 3.6's share of all browsers used in December fell by nearly a full percentage point, ending the month with an average of 4.4%, down from November's 5.3%.
Mozilla began urging Firefox 3.6 users to upgrade in early December after twice postponing the offer. The upgrade pitch prompted users to move to Firefox 8, the most recent "rapid release" edition at the time. Since then, Mozilla has launched Firefox 9. Read more...
HP Unveils Two New Desktop PCs: The Omni All-In-One And The HPE h9 Phoenix
Ultrabooks are all the rage for 2012, and we’ll probably see quite a few of them at CES next week. But there are still some of us who prefer a more robust computing experience, which is why HP has today announced the Omni 27-inch all-in-one and the Pavilion HPE h9 Phoenix, the most powerful Pavilion model to date.
I actually was lucky enough to get hands-on with these puppies a few weeks ago, and the 27-inch Omni is a sight to behold. It’s sleek, seemingly well-constructed, and speaks to the minimalist in me. The PC hosts all the ports you’d expect out of an all-in-one, including HDMI-in, Blu-Ray disc drive, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, and an ethernet jack. Read more...
Hackers disclose Israelis’ credit card information
Hackers claiming to be Saudis posted credit card information of thousands of Israelis on the Internet, credit card companies said Tuesday, in what appeared to be a politically motivated attack. One expert played down its scope.
The Israeli Ynet news website said the hackers, identifying themselves as Group-XP, called the cyber attack a "gift to the world for the New Year" that they hoped "would hurt the Zionist pocket."
They claimed to have compromised 400,000 credit-card holders, but Israel's central bank said only about 15,000 active cards were affected.
"Group-XP is a known Saudi hacking group that seeks to propagate Wahhabism," the strict form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, said Gadi Aviran of Terrogence Ltd., an Israeli web intelligence company. Read more...
Wikipedia gets $20M in annual fundraising drive
Wikipedia has raised $20 million in its annual plea for donations to help expand and improve the Internet's leading encyclopedia.
More than 1 million people throughout the world contributed the money during a 46-day fundraising drive, which concluded Sunday. The amount pledged to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that oversees the volunteer-driven Wikipedia, is a third more than the $15 million donated during the previous year's fundraising campaign.
The year-end financial push accounts for most of Wikimedia's revenue. The foundation also gets money from grants and other donations spread throughout the year. Read more...
Google bans Siri knockoff from Android Market, but legit competitors persist
Apple didn’t invent voice control when it rolled out its Siri personal assistant software with the iPhone 4S, but it definitely has garnered a lot of attention for the software. More than one Android developer is trying to get in on that popularity, some less legitimately than others.
Devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system have had voice control capabilities for a while now, but the thing about Siri is that it takes existing technology (voice-to-text and voice command tech have been around for years) and has found a way to make it work better than most people are used to. While I’ve watched my Android-owning friends repeatedly trying to use their voice control apps to find an address or call a loved one, often repeating themselves once or twice just to get the software on the same page, Siri is billed as being a lot more responsive and being able to understand a lot more speech more intuitively. Read more...
Christmas downloads for Angry Birds: 6.5 million
The mobile gaming phenomenon that is Angry Birds showed no signs of slowing down over the holidays, with Rovio’s Ville Heijari telling the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog the series racked up 6.5 million downloads on Christmas Day alone.
The number, which includes paid and free downloads of the original "Angry Birds" as well as sequels "Angry Birds Rio" and "Angry Birds Seasons," is well above the 1 million download a day average Rovio reported in June, but just a drop in the bucket compared to over 500 million total downloads for the series since the first game was released just over two years ago. Read more...
Turn Any WordPress Site Into A BitTorrent Tracker
A new plugin for WordPress allows anyone to set up a fully functioning BitTorrent site in just a few minutes. Whether it’s a totally public torrent index or a private torrent tracker with strict ratio enforcement, WP-Trader supports it. The project was born when the developers recognized a huge demand for a simple script that even relative tech novices can set up.
With WordPress pretty much anyone can set up a personal blog or small website in a few minutes, and thanks to the new WP-Trader plugin it becomes just as easy to start a fully operational torrent site.
The levels of work and expertise required to run a large torrent site shouldn’t be underestimated of course, but there are also hundreds of hobbyists out there who have the desire to set up a small torrent site of their own. WP-Trader is aimed at the latter, and it has a wide range of features that support the needs of every self-aspiring torrent site admin.
WP-Trader developer Andrew Walker told TorrentFreak that he saw the need for an ultra-simple torrent script through his half-decade long involvement in the forums of the popular Torrent Trader script. Read more...
How SOPA Can Kill Reddit and Many Other US Sites
Supporters of SOPA and PIPA, two bills that aim to deter piracy, claim that they will only affect foreign sites and businesses. However, this view is not shared by a wide range of opponents, including the people behind the popular Reddit community. But how exactly can SOPA and PIPA threaten sites like Reddit? Leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert Marvin Ammori explains.
In recent weeks, protests against the pending SOPA and PIPA bills have dominated the tech press. Most opponents are not that worried about losing access to their favorite file-sharing sites, but they fear that the broader implications of the bills will seriously hurt the livelihoods of both existing and future Internet-based ventures.
One of the most prominent sites that has rallied against the bills is the largest online community Reddit. The site’s users have organized various successful protests, which led domain registrar GoDaddy to drop its support for the bill. But the site itself also actively encouraged its users to speak out against SOPA and PIPA on several occasions. Read more...