IT offshoring: Romney vs. Obama
Offshore outsourcing, from the manufacturing to call center industries, has become a major issue in the 2012 presidential race.
Less clear is what these two candidates would do, if anything, about the offshoring of jobs that are among the most critical to the future of the U.S. economy -- IT positions and other highly-skilled, knowledge-based occupations.
IT offshore outsourcing has rarely been raised specifically to date by either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
But both presidential candidates, through their records and actions, appear to have deep knowledge about offshore outsourcing.
Here's how they stand based on their words and actions. Read more...
Online dating site dumps Amazon cloud services
Online dating site WhatsYourPrice.com has kissed Amazon Web Services goodbye after severe East Coast thunderstorms knocked out one of Amazon's data centers last weekend causing a services outage.
The service interruption, which began last Friday and continued through Saturday before being fixed, was the second Amazon Web Services outage since mid-June.
WhatsYourPrice.com, where members bid for first dates, said in a statement that the Amazon services outages "produce a lot of unhappy customers." Read more...
RIM’s dual challenge: Build quality smartphones while boosting management software
BlackBerry 10 smartphones, delayed until early 2013, will have the "best browsers in the industry" and will come in touchscreen-only models as well as those with traditional physical keyboards, a Research in Motion executive said Thursday.
RIM's BlackBerry 10 devices, announced in May, will have an overall focus on communications that "drives efficient communications to a new level," said Peter Devenyi, senior vice president of enterprise software at RIM.
"We must build devices that appeal to everybody -- workers and consumers. That's what BlackBerry 10 is about, to be the most appealing smartphone that also works effectively and seamlessly in a person's work life," Devenyi said in a telephone interview. Read more...
Total bankers: Twitter and LinkedIn’s cynical API play
In tech today, it has become a truism that "if you're not paying for it, you're the product". Somehow we have applied this wisdom to consumers without recognising that the same principle applies to enterprises and their developers. Recently, however, Netflix and LinkedIn have reminded us just how precarious it is to build on someone else's platform - or API.
Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator, has described APIs as "self-serve [business development]". It's a great story: open and document your API and watch a thousand businesses bloom, bringing you cash and legitimacy. All of which may be true, if done correctly. Read more...
Used software firms win small victory in shrinking on-premises world
Software-makers were caught off guard by a July judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union on the UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp case.
The court ruled that “An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licenses allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet”.
“The Court of Justice interprets EU law to make sure it is applied in the same way in all EU countries. It also settles legal disputes between EU governments and EU institutions. Individuals, companies or organisations can also bring cases before the Court if they feel their rights have been infringed by an EU institution.” Read more...
Google makes Opera bloggers an offer they can’t refuse: Use Chrome
Google is warning Opera web browser users they must switch to Chrome in order to use Blogger.com, the search giant's blog-hosting service. No technical incompatibilities have been found to justify the alarm.
After a reader tip-off, El Reg created a Google blog using Opera 12.0 for Mac this morning, and received this message:
Blog off, Google
The site continues to operate just fine and dandy using Opera. However, the Blogger warning message is persistent: dismiss it, and it reappears. The alert box is banished if Opera changes its user-agent string - the line of text the browser sends to a server to identify itself - and pretends to be a build of Chrome. Read more...
‘Drop dead’ date looms for DNSChanger Trojan fix
If it is July 9 and you don't know where your Internet went, you might want to get in touch with the DNSChanger Working Group (DCWG).
Monday is the "drop dead" date for people whose computers are still infected with the DNSChanger Trojan to get rid of it. Those who haven't may not lose Internet access entirely, but Paul Vixie, of the nonprofit Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), said, "some of them will lose the ability to look up domain names, which will stop their Internet access in most cases. Others will see significant slowdowns." Read more...
Watch out, Google: Apple gets patent for wearable device
Google is already getting some stiff competition in the race to develop a wearable computer. Apple on Tuesday was awarded a U.S. patent for a head-mounted display device that's designed to project an image in front of a user's eyes, creating an "enhanced viewing experience." The Apple patent notes that the device could focus on "augmented reality" by using a see-through image imposed upon a real-world view.
That sounds a lot like a feature Google is touting in its new computerized glasses technology, dubbed Google Glass. At Google's annual Google I/O developer conference last week, Sergey Brin, a company co-founder, showed off a prototype of the Android-based glasses, which are designed to have a processor, memory, GPS sensor, cameras, microphone and speaker. Brin pointed out that the Google glasses are expected to have a display screen that sits just above one of the user's eyes so it doesn't impede his vision. Read more...
Oracle close to phasing out Flash support portal
Oracle may soon fully transition away from the much-maligned, Flash-based version of its support portal over to a new HTML edition next week, according to an official blog post on Thursday.
Next Friday, July 13, the vendor will upgrade the HTML version of My Oracle Support "with additional functionality that will allow those users remaining on the Flash-based user interface to switch over to the HTML version," the post states. "Our goal is to provide a single-online support portal so that all My Oracle Support users can benefit from the same features and functionality." Read more...
Apple’s popularity boosts Objective-C language past C++
Thanks to the popularity of Apple's iPad and iPhone mobile devices, the Objective-C language has overtaken C++ in Tiobe's monthly assessment of programming language popularity.
Objective-C, the language used for developing applications to run on Apple's mobile devices, was ranked the third most-popular language in the July edition of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, followed by C++ in fourth place. Released this week, the index has Objective-C used by 9.335 percent of developers and C++ used by 9.118 percent. The two languages swap rankings from last month, when C++ was used by 9.358 percent of developers and Objective-C by 9.094 percent. Read more...