Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 blocked from sale in the US
A federal court in California has blocked the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the U.S. in a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung.
Samsung intends to appeal.
In an order on Tuesday granting the preliminary injunction, Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division has enjoined Samsung and its U.S. subsidiaries from importing or selling within the U.S. the tablet or any "product that is no more than colorably different from this specified product and embodies any design contained in U.S. Design Patent No. D504,889." Read more...
Android Firefox: Screaming, awesome, you’ll go blind etc
Mozilla has galloped a new version of Firefox for Android out of the gates just ahead of the expected full launch of Chrome on mobes later this week.
The open-source firm has had a version of its popular browser on little green phones since 2010, but it hasn't lit many Google-mobe-lovers' fires so far.
Chrome has been available in beta since February, but only on Android mobes running Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0). Read more...
Gunmen drive into Microsoft’s Greece headquarters, set van on fire
Armed men drove a stolen van loaded with gas canisters into the Microsoft Greece headquarters in Athens on Wednesday and set it on fire, causing damage to the building.
"Early in the morning of Wednesday, June 27, the Microsoft building in Athens, Greece, was attacked by assailants who drove a van through the entrance to the building, ushered the two security personnel out of the building and then set the van on fire," a Microsoft spokeswoman said via email. Read more...
IBM, lab join hands to boost U.S. competitiveness
IBM is joining hands with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop new technology, products and processes critical to the U.S. infrastructure in an effort to boost the global competitiveness of the country.
LLNL, which is in Livermore, California, and IBM's research unit will work together and provide researchers and high-performance computing resources to solve complex technical problems facing businesses in the U.S. today. The goal is to make "wholesale" changes to business processes and execution, and also to make U.S. companies competitive on a global stage, said Frederick Streitz, the director of the Livermore HPC innovation center, in a video posted on YouTube regarding the project. Read more...
Google launches Nexus 7 tablet, Jelly Bean and spherical Nexus Q device for home use
As expected, Google on Wednesday announced a $199, 7-in. tablet called Nexus 7 that will run on Android 4.1, dubbed Jelly Bean.
Built with Asus, the tablet can be ordered starting today on Google Play, and will ship in the U.S. and three other countries in mid-July, Google said.
Google described the tablet as principally a conduit for Google Play, its cloud-based repository for Google apps and movies, books and other content. Nexus 7 is "built for Google Play," said Hugo Barra, product management director for Android at Google. Read more...
Where’s IE10 for Windows 7?
While Microsoft has regularly touted the improvements in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, the company has said next to nothing about the browser and Windows 7, the operating system that powers 44% of all Windows PCs.
Last year, when Microsoft first introduced Internet Explorer 10 (IE10), it promised that the new browser would run on not only the new Windows 8's desktop mode, but also on 2009's Windows 7.
Even though the company has updated the previews of IE10 for Windows 8 six times, most recently May 31 when it shipped Windows 8 Release Preview, it stopped serving sneak peeks for Windows 7 more than a year ago.
The last preview capable of running on Windows 7 was issued June 29, 2011. Read more...
Custom-designed malware a growing market
Cyber criminals are selling made-to-order malware plug-ins to steal personal information from online banking customers, a reflection of a maturing black market in which the best developers can demand the highest prices, security vendor Trusteer says.
Depending on the sophistication, the Web-inject plug-ins cost as much as $2,000 and support several malware platforms, such as SpyEye, Zeus, and Ice IX, Trusteer says. More generic Web injects sell for as little as $50. Read more...
Facebook: We need to create our own dev and management tools
With nearly 1 billion users worldwide and 500 million people visiting its social network every day, Facebook has its work cut out for it in managing its systems. To help do that, the company has been developing its own management and development tools tuned to its specific needs, rather than relying on commercial offerings.
Tools in use include Perflab, for testing site changes committed by engineers; Gatekeeper, for advanced A/B testing of code changes; and Claspin, providing a high-density heat map for viewing a large set of servers. "We spent a lot of time building up the internal tool stack," said Jay Parikh, Facebook vice president of infrastructure engineering, at the O'Reilly Velocity conference Tuesday in Santa Clara, Calif. The conference is focused on Web performance and operations, with Facebook serving as a prime example of the demands being made on the Web. Read more...
HP reports ‘higher than expected’ failures of some desktop PC motherboards
Hewlett-Packard has identified a high rate of logic board failures in its popular Pavilion line of desktop PCs, and has offered customers a one-year warranty extension to cover possible repairs, Computerworld has learned.
The problem with numerous models in its Pavilion line, said HP in an email to owners today, is that they "have system boards with a slightly higher than expected failure rate."
Pavilion Elite HPE-4xx, Pavilion P66xx and Pavilion Slimline S5660f desktops built in June and July 2010 may have flakey motherboards. "[These] computers may experience no video at start up and stop responding," said HP in its email. Read more...
Oracle: Partners with specializations are much more successful
Oracle's partner community had a "phenomenal" fiscal 2012, but those who achieved official specializations did far better than ones who didn't, a top Oracle executive said during an event on Tuesday.
Specialized partners closed three times as many deals as non-specialized ones, and those transactions are 50 percent larger, said Judson Althoff, senior vice president of worldwide alliances, channels and embedded sales. Althoff revealed those details during Oracle's fiscal 2013 partner kickoff event, which was webcast.
"We're focusing on specialization because we think it makes you sell better," Althoff said. Of course, Oracle also generates revenue from specializations, which are offered in silver, gold, platinum and diamond tiers, with fees rising accordingly. Read more...
Splunk search extended to Microsoft Active Directory
Through a new plug-in, Splunk has extended the capabilities of its namesake machine data search engine so it can mine operational information about Microsoft Active Directory deployments.
"There are a lot of challenges in managing an Active Directory infrastructure. We meet customers who have large Active Directory environments and they want to know what is happening before their users call in and complain they can't log in," said Manish Kalra, Splunk director of product marketing. "By getting all the log files and event logs from the Active Directory, we can see problems as they are happening."
With the Splunk App for Active Directory, administrators will be able to monitor Active directory operations, diagnose problems, and anticipate upcoming issues. Splunk is demonstrating the application at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012, being held this week in Amsterdam. It builds upon a similar tool the company released for Microsoft Exchange last year, Kalra said. Read more...