Best browser: which should you be using?
Competition among browsers is more fierce than ever. Chrome and Firefox release 72 new versions every week, Microsoft has redesigned Internet Explorer to make it finger-friendly, and as we all race to tablets and smartphones we're being tempted with all kinds of alternatives to systems' stock browsers.
But which is the best browser for you and your hardware? Let's find out.
We tested the latest official releases of the big browsers - Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 19, Safari 5, Chrome 25 and Opera 12 - on a Core i5 PC running Windows 8 Pro. It's worth noting that Safari on Macs running OS X Mountain Lion is at version 6, but the PC version and older Mac versions are one behind. Read more...
Google+ gets Facebook-like app Sign-In, promises ‘simplicity and security’
Google announced on Tuesday that users of its social network, Google+, are now able to sign in to third party apps using their Google+ credentials.
Similar functionality has existed in rival social network Facebook for years, and Google+ finds itself once again playing catch-up, fledgling venture that it is.
Google's touting a number of improvements over Facebook's app sign-in functionality, without specifically calling its rival out by name.
But when Google's director of product management for Google+, Seth Sternberg, promised not to let apps "spray updates" all over the place in a Tuesday Google Blog post, we all knew who he was referring to. Read more...
The 2013 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders
"You have to show the business the possibilities," says Steelcase CIO Bob Krestakos, who with another colleague holds the patent for the HD video technology. "One of the big insights IT was able to bring [to product development] is the power of video in sharing data and collaboration." Read more...
Who owns that Twitter account?
Noah Kravitz built up quite a following at PhoneDog, a mobile-phone news and reviews website. By late 2010 his @PhoneDog_Noah Twitter account had amassed more than 17,000 followers. That was all well and good, until Kravitz resigned and went to work for a competitor.
Kravitz took his followers with him, changing the name on his account to @noahkravitz. And that's when PhoneDog, which was unwilling to let 17,000 fans go that easily, filed a lawsuit against him.
The question of who owns an employee's social networking account when it's used for work-related posts is a legal grey area, as more companies are discovering when they wind up in court trying to keep readers, business contacts and other social connections within the fold. Read more...
Iceotope names first customer for immersively cooled servers
Iceotope's immersively cooled server racks are now in production, and the company has named its first customer. The University of Leeds, in the north of England, has been using an Iceotope server since December to run computational fluid dynamics models -- and to warm the radiators in one of its laboratories.
The company showed off prototypes of its unusual liquid-cooled system at the Cebit trade show in Germany last March, but took another few months to figure out how to mass-produce the aluminum server modules, which are filled with Novec, an inert coolant liquid from 3M. Read more...
Intel releases Hadoop distribution primed for its own chips
Intel has released its own Hadoop distribution in a move intended to accelerate adoption of the big data platform while ensuring more of those workloads run on Intel's own Xeon processors.
The Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop includes core pieces of the data analysis platform that Intel is releasing as open-source software, as well as deployment and tuning tools that Intel developed itself and which are not open source.
Organizations will be more willing to expand their investments in Hadoop if they know there's a consistent distribution backed by a big, stable vendor like Intel, said Boyd Davis, general manager of Intel's data center software division, at a launch event in San Francisco Tuesday. Read more...
HP faces shareholder revolt over Autonomy purchase
An investor advisor group is asking shareholders of Hewlett-Packard not to re-elect two long-standing board members and to oppose the ratification of the company's audit firm in connection with the continuing controversy over the company's purchase of Autonomy.
HP met with shareholder groups this week, though it is not clear whether there has been a resolution on the issues, a source said.
The company said in November it was taking a $8.8 billion charge as a result of what it called serious accounting improprieties at U.K. software company Autonomy before it acquired the firm in 2011. Read more...
Google Chrome feature helps you silence noisy tabs
Google has helped lower the blood pressure of internet users across the world with an experimental Chrome feature that makes it easy to identify which of your open tabs is blaring out noise.
The feature, which is available in Chromium and the bleeding edge "this might crash horribly" Canary build of Chrome, puts a little visual indicator in tabs that are playing noise.
The technology lays a six-frame bitmap of a throbbing EQ over the website's favicon, making it a lot easier to find tabs that are playing music. Read more...
Microsoft finally ships Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7
Following a protracted development process, Microsoft has at last shipped the release version of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7, with the new browser due to begin rolling out to customers via Windows Update within the next few weeks.
In the meantime, customers who can't wait for the automatic update to arrive can download IE10 from Microsoft's website.
El Reg first got wind that Redmond was planning a "late February/early March" ship date for the Windows 7 version of its latest browser earlier this month, with sources attributing the accelerated schedule to the fact that the IE team could finally concentrate once all the Windows 8 hullabaloo died down. Read more...
Apple patents situational awareness for oblivious fanbois
Maintaining an awareness of sensory cues in the vicinity has just been patented by Apple – for portable electronic devices, anyway.
The technology outlined in Apple's new Patent 8,385,039, which the US Patent and Trademark Office granted on Tuesday, would make iPhones, iPads, and a potential iWatch capable of sensing certain cues in the environment and adjusting the devices' performance accordingly. The idea is that the devices could predict or anticipate users' desires, given what's going on around them.
An environmentally-aware mobile device would use sensors to monitor a variety of factors – including temperature, ambient light, motion, vibration, pressure, touch, noise, orientation, and time – and then use the sensory cues to choose one operational mode over another. Read more...
A new way to sell used IT equipment
The buying and selling of used IT equipment is not a trivial market, but it doesn't get enormous attention. In many cases, enterprises unload used equipment as a trade-in or at bargain price to a wholesaler because they just want the equipment off the floor.
A new Chicago-based startup says it has developed a system to help enterprises get as much value out of their old IT equipment as possible.
The company, MarkITx, is running an online system for selling equipment, but it's not a new version of an eBay-like system. The seller and buyer remain invisible to each other, the money goes in escrow, and the transaction may even involve third-party vendors to refurbish equipment. Read more...
AT&T to wirelessly connect most GM vehicles over LTE in 2014
AT&T Monday said it will supply LTE wireless services to most General Motors vehicles starting in 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.
A multi-year agreement between AT&T and GM subsidiary OnStar calls for vehicles to continue getting OnStar's safety and security services while adding information and entertainment services for backseat drivers, AT&T said.
Millions of vehicles will be affected, as AT&T rolls out LTE to reach 300 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2014.
The AT&T-GM announcement is part of an explosion in the number of devices connected to the Internet, many of them wirelessly, in what some have termed the "Internet of Things." Read more...
Samsung bolsters BYOD management with a Fort Knox approach
Samsung Monday announced an improved version of its SAFE management and security system for popular Samsung-branded Android smartphones and tablets.
Samsung dubbed the updated tool set Knox, after the famous Fort Knox in Kentucky where much of the U.S. gold reserves are stored.
The Knox technology, to be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress here this week, means that Samsung smartphone and tablet users will soon be able to take advantage of a dual persona or containerization approach, where corporate and personal data are kept in separate spaces on the Android OS. Read more...
HP unveils big data security strategy
HP today took the wraps off its Big Data Security strategy, describing how combining the enterprise search and knowledge management resources from its Autonomy subsidiary with its ArcSight security-event and information management (SIEM) can yield new ways to detect cyber attacks or rogue-employee behavior.
HP's approach, like that of rivals IBM and RSA, calls for use of SIEM tools as a foundation for so-called Big Data Security. The concept of Big Data Security presumes that artful analysis of massive amounts of data content, in addition to the traditional security-related event information that's collected through a SIEM, can produce a better way to quickly pinpoint security problems. Read more...
With Windows ‘Blue’ rumored, the Windows 8 fire sale begins
The mainstream media has picked up Mary Jo Foley's report about a public preview of Windows "Blue" -- the next version of Windows -- arriving soon. Foley quotes the Chinese-language Win8China site (which has consistently provided good insider information about Windows 8), saying RTM for Windows Blue is planned for June 7, with retail availability in August. She also quotes the site as saying the next Windows Blue milestone will include a public preview -- "MP" for Milestone Preview -- in the coming months. Read more...