Megaupload founder offers deal to the US
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has offered to do a deal with U.S. prosecutors, who are seeking his extradition from New Zealand to the U.S.
"Hey DOJ, we will go to the US. No need for extradition. We want bail, funds unfrozen for lawyers & living expenses," Dotcom said in a message on Twitter on Tuesday.
A District Court at North Shore in Auckland, New Zealand has rescheduled tentatively to March 25 next year the hearing on the extradition. It was earlier scheduled to commence on Aug. 6.
Dotcom has used his Twitter account frequently to mock the U.S. Read more...
Google to pull Chrome plug on OS X Leopard
Google will pull the plug for Chrome running on OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, after it releases version 21, which is currently in beta and will reach the browser's "stable" channel sometime next month, the company has announced.
Chrome 22, the browser that just landed in the "dev" channel -- Google maintains three primary builds for its browser, with the dev line the roughest-edged -- will not run on OS X 10.5.
"Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will stop receiving any updates following Chrome 21," Google said on its support site. "This includes new features, security fixes and stability updates."
Leopard was launched by Apple in October 2007, and according to Web measurement firm Net Applications, accounted for 11.6% of all versions of Apple's OS-powered machines that went online in June.
OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard, and 10.7, better known as Lion, have a combined share of 84.4%, Net Applications said earlier this month. Read more...
Tech hotshots: The rise of the IT business analyst
The hottest job in IT right now might be the least "T" of them all: business analyst.
Tech purists may shudder -- is it the revenge of the suits? -- but 23% of the IT executive respondents to Computerworld's Forecast 2012 survey said they planned to hire for business analytics skills in the next 12 months, up from 13% in the previous year's survey.
"IT business analyst" was also rated one of the country's top 12 jobs to pursue last year by Money Magazine, which listed median pay for that position at $83,100. Computerworld's Salary Survey 2012 listed an average total compensation for IT technology/business system analysts at $84,376, up 1.4% from 2011. Read more...
IBM database strategy chief on DB2: Devs are people too
Developers are exerting greater influence on new versions of IBM’s DB2 database, according to one of Big Blue's information management strategy chiefs.
Bernie Spang, director of strategy and marketing for database software and systems, said while IBM has historically consulted DBAs on new features they’d like in IBM’s mighty database, that has changed.
In an interview with El Reg, Spang said IBM is now taking a more balanced approach. “It’s not shifted from one to the other, it’s got to be both,” he told us.
Driving the change is a need to make DB2 more comfortable for developers building web and big data apps that suck on the DB2 data store.
One recent consequence of the shifting approach was the addition of tripled graph-store capabilities for graph analytics in DB2 10.1, which was released in April.
Graph stores find connections between data, so you don’t have to search through piles of relational tables or raw info using Hadoop. Graphs are popular with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn trying to establish connections between individuals on their sites. Read more...
Microsoft promises resellers bumper 2013 with total line-up refresh
Microsoft closed down its Worldwide Partners Conference in Toronto with a promise that the coming year will provide the best year yet for its resellers, with a complete refresh of its ecosystem to restore Redmond's future.
"For the very first time, every single product in our portfolio is getting refreshed and relaunched in a 12 month cycle - that's unprecedented," said COO Kevin Turner. "It's the largest release cycle in our history and the energy and the momentum from that is unbelievable."
Microsoft as investing in improved partner rebates and rewards he said, as well as increasing the amount of training on offer, particularly for cloud technology.
Redmond's also spending $9.3bn in R&D, over $3bn more than its nearest technology rival, Turner claimed. This investment started in the recession year of 2008 and the result was a whole new lineup that was going to provide Microsoft's most important year since 1995. Read more...
Kindle Fire adds APIs for cloudy gaming features
Amazon has beefed up gaming on its Android-based Kindle Fire platform, in hopes that adding cloudy goodness will help bolster the device in the upcoming fondleslab wars.
The online retailer's new set of services, collectively called GameCircle, allow games to store various kinds of data in Amazon's cloud, where it can be accessed and shared by multiple players and devices. The three services Amazon is offering so far include Achievements, Leaderboards, and Sync.
Achievements allow game players to earn trophies, treasures, awards, and other prizes, and to maintain a list of the prizes they've won and ones they have yet to earn. Leaderboards allow players to track their high scores in games and rank their scores against those of other players. Sync automatically saves game state to Amazon's cloud, allowing players to pick up where they left off when they restore a deleted game or switch to a different device. Read more...
Facebook launches malware checkpoints for users with infected computers
Facebook on Tuesday launched a feature that allows users to lock down their Facebook accounts and perform malware scans if they suspect that their computers might be infected.
Facebook already uses internal scanners to detect spam and malicious messages that might have been sent from user accounts hijacked by malware.
When found, such accounts are temporarily locked down and their owners are asked to go through a multi-step account recovery process that involves downloading and running a malware scanner called McAfee Scan and Repair.
The new "malware checkpoints" feature will allow users who believe their computers might be infected with malware to initiate the account lockdown procedure themselves and perform an antivirus scan for free. Read more...
Dropbox doubles down on storage
If you have a paid Dropbox account, you just received an unexpected bonus: twice as much storage at no extra cost.
Cloud storage provider Dropbox last night doubled the amount of storage that Pro subscribers receive, increasing its Pro 50GB and 100GB packages to 100GB and 200GB, respectively. The larger storage allowances have already taken effect.
The official Dropbox announcement makes it sound like the cloud storage company doubled its paid allotments as a customer service: "We've heard from architects with giant drafting files and photographers with huge portfolios, but mostly we hear from families who have more than 100GB of photos, docs and videos." Read more...
IDC: Analytics software market will remain strong
The global market for business analytics software grew roughly 14 percent in 2011, fueled by pervasive hype about "big data" as well as new technological innovations, according to a report unveiled by analyst firm IDC on Wednesday.
Between now and 2016, the business analytics market will have a compound annual growth rate of 9.8 percent, reaching $50.7 billion, IDC said.
Economic uncertainties persist throughout the world, and other analyst reports have predicted slower growth for IT spending, particularly in Europe.
Still, analytics will remain in demand due to a number of factors, according to IDC. "Compliance, security, fraud detection, and risk management requirements are driving demand for software ranging from reporting tools to analytic applications," the report states. Read more...
Motorola, Microsoft suspend some patent disputes until trial
Motorola Mobility and Microsoft have agreed to suspend their patent claims against each other in three U.S. cases until a November trial on Microsoft claims that Motorola has not lived up to promises to license some video and Wi-Fi patents on RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.
The two companies, involved in three patent lawsuits in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, agreed to stay their lawsuits against each other while the two sides concentrate on the RAND license issues to be addressed in Nov. 13 trial, according to court documents. On Tuesday, the two companies filed a joint motion to stay all patent infringement claims. Read more...