Panasonic Eluga is a lightweight, waterproof, and oddly-named Android smartphone
Back in December, Panasonic announced that it was preparing a full-on global assault on the smartphone market. Up first is Europe, where the company’s opening salvo will be fired in a 4.3″ shell. That phone has now gotten official as the Panasonic Eluga.
An interesting choice in names, to be sure, but it probably has something to do with the phone’s aquatic exploits (like the whale that rhymes with Eluga). It joins the ever-increasing list of waterproof and dustproof phones, though it’s anything but whale-like in terms of weight at just 103g. That makes it lighter than even the waifish NEC Medias N-04C. Hardware details are very thin at this point, but Panasonic has revealed that the Eluga’s 4.3-inch display packs 540 x 960 pixels — no word on whether it uses an OLED panel as previously rumored. Read more...
G-Cloud app store is launched
The government has launched its G-Cloud application procurement site, CloudStore, giving small businesses across the UK a chance to compete with large IT companies for public-sector contracts.
CloudStore opened on Sunday, with services from 257 companies offered to public-sector organisations in a browsable, GCHQ-vetted catalogue of cloud services, ranging from rentable infrastructure, applications and platforms to consultancy. Read more...
CIOs: Your next hire might not be an IT pro
In 2012 a preferred IT candidate might be someone with a background in business rather than technology, who has sought supplementary tech certifications. How can this be? As Forrester analyst Stephanie Moore recently stated: "To build technology solutions that drive the business, as opposed to just enable the business, technologists need to have more contextual understanding -- so they understand, intuitively in some cases, what the business wants without the business having to specify it." It's tough to tailor a solution to your sales department's needs, for example, if you don't understand pipeline management. Read more...
Antenna Software launches cloud-based mobile app service
Antenna Software today unveiled cloud-based software called AMPchroma for designing, testing and managing mobile apps and mobile websites.
Sold as a managed service, AMPchroma will give companies access to their apps and mobile sites from a single Web-based console that can be shared by work groups and IT workers, said Jim Somers, chief marketing and strategy officer for Antenna.
Somers said part of the value of AMPchroma is to help large companies centrally manage an array of mobile-related projects. Forrester Research recently reported that some companies have dozens of mobile projects under way at any one time, including designing of custom mobile apps. Read more...
Anonymous threatens to DDOS root Internet servers
An upcoming campaign announced by the hacking group Anonymous directed against the Internet's core address lookup system is unlikely to cause much damage, according to one security expert.
In a warning on Pastebin, Anonymous said last Thursday it would launch an action on March 31 as part of "Operation Global Blackout" that would target the root Domain Name System (DNS) servers.
Anonymous said the attack has been planned as a protest against "our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun".
The DNS translates a Web site name, such as www.idg.com, into a numerical IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is used by computers to find the Web site. Read more...
Security biz scoffs at Apple’s anti-Trojan Gatekeeper
Security watchers are expressing reservations about whitelisting security that Apple plans to integrate with OS X Mountain Lion this summer.
The security feature, dubbed Gatekeeper, restricts the installation of downloaded applications based on their source. Users can choose to accept apps from anywhere (as now) but by default Gatekeeper only lets users install programs downloaded from the Mac App Store or those digitally signed by a registered developer. More cautious users can decide to accept only applications downloaded from the Mac App Store.
The technology is designed to make it harder to trick Mac fans into installing Trojans. Apple is essentially acting to nip the problem of scareware scams and the like on Macs in the bud, before Apple-targeting malware gets out of control.
From a system security perspective that's a laudable aim but there may be less palatable consequences. Read more...
Microsoft holds peace talks after Hyper-V booted from OpenStack
Microsoft is in talks for its Windows hypervisor to be readmitted to the Linux-for-the-cloud project OpenStack.
Rackspace, one of the prime movers behind OpenStack, said the cloud team is working with Redmond after Hyper-V was removed from the project's code because nobody was maintaining or updating it. Microsoft's software, branded "dead wood", was kicked out for the upcoming release of OpenStack called Essex at the start of this month.
Mark Collier, OpenStack founder and vice-president of business development and marketing at Rackspace, told The Reg: "We have spoken to them [Microsoft], they are interested." Read more...
Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too
Microsoft has released data showing that Google has been bypassing the user-defined privacy settings in Internet Explorer by using incorrect P3P identification terms.
“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Dean Hachamovitch, VP of Internet Explorer wrote in a blog post. “We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.” Read more...
ITC rules in Apple’s favor in HTC mobile patent dispute
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday issued a final determination that Apple doesn't infringe certain HTC patents related to smartphones. HTC makes devices based on Google's Android mobile operating system that compete with Apple's iPhone.
The ruling was made on a complaint that HTC filed with the ITC following a complaint lodged by Apple last year. HTC accused Apple of selling products that violate its patents relating to power-management methods and phone-number directories. Read more...
Oracle extends Java SE 6 end-of-life date by four months
Oracle has extended by four months the end-of-life (EOL) time for Java Development Kit 6 to November 2012, the company said in a blog post this week.
JDK 6 is based on Java Platform, Standard Edition 6. The Java SE support road map reflects the updated timeline, according to the blog post, which was authored by someone identified as "Henrik (JRockit PM)." The EOL date, he said, "has been extended from July 2012 to November 2012, to allow some more time for the transition to JDK 7. We have also updated the EOL policy to clarify our intent for this, and future major releases." Read more...
Comment 4 inShare154 Yandex, Google’s Russian Rival, Is Twitter’s New Real-Time Search Partner
A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.
The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement.
The agreement with Yandex will see Twitter’s data firehose appear both in Yandex’s blog search, as well as through a dedicated URL, twitter.yandex.ru. Read more...
The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend
Microsoft and Apple should hate one another right now. I mean, really hate each other. After decades of domination, Microsoft has watched their rival move from death’s door to become the most valuable company in the world — over $200 billion more valuable than Microsoft itself. And it was Microsoft who helped get Apple there, remember, with a timely cash infusion in 1997.
Steve Ballmer laughed off the iPhone, which eventually helped kill off Windows Mobile — and it’s now bigger than all of Microsoft’s businesses combined. And the company shrugged off the iPad, even as it established a category, tablets, which Microsoft itself had been trying to establish for years. Read more...
A little bird told me your teen is on Twitter
While many parents are trying to keep up with Facebook’s ever-changing privacy policies, their kids are quietly taking their private conversations to Twitter. They are using multiple and anonymous accounts to communicate unobserved.
Teenagers are increasingly using Twitter because, according to my own teenage son, “Adults aren’t on it.” A survey conducted in July 2011 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which explores the impact of the internet on families and civic life, found that the number of 12- to 17-year olds on Twitter doubled from 2008 to 2010. Read more...
Students gain credit for stealing 30 laptops from university staff
Stealing someone’s laptop could land you in jail. Stealing 30 of them would certainly earn you a longer sentence. But if you attend the University of Twente in the Netherlands, it may instead count as credit towards your degree.
Students did manage to steal 30 laptops from the Twente university campus, but no arrests were made because the whole thing was an experiment. It was setup by Trajce Dimkov, a PhD student and researcher in the Distributed and Embedded Security Group at the university. He wanted to find out how much human behavior factored into the security of an organization, specifically when viewed in isolation from the security practices in place there. Read more...
iPhone 5 will reportedly launch this Fall
After Apple broke from its typical summer cycle and released the iPhone 4S in October, many wondered whether the company was making an exception, or establishing a new rule. Would the next iPhone go back to the standard June/July slot, or would new iPhones arrive every fall?
According to Japanese blog Macotakara, we have an answer. A story cites a “reliable source” as saying that the iPhone 5 will arrive this Fall, and that the Fall slot will now be the iPhone’s standard release slot. Read more...