China’s Tencent To Restructure Into Six Groups, Here’s Why
China’s Internet juggernaut Tencent announced today that it would undergo a restructuring of its business units into six groups. Ren Yuxin was also named as the new chief operating officer and will head up the media and social-networking groups.
The six groups include:
TEG – Technology & Engineering Group, comprised of Tencent Research and operating divisions.
SNG – Social Networking Group, comprised of its Internet business lines and some divisions from Tencent Research.
CBG – Creative Business Group, formed by Tencent Guangdong R&D Center and its corporate development arm. Read more...
Windows 8 ARM tablets suffering pricing problems due to Microsoft fees, report claims
According to Digitimes, original equipment manufacturers are having a hard time meeting price targets for tablets that will run Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 RT operating system, which is coded for touch input.
This is no small matter. TNW has written on topic a host of times, fretting publicly that Windows 8 devices may be too expensive, and thus price themselves out of contention for mass market consumer dollars.
However, Digitimes has some encouraging figures, and some that sting. From its report [Edited and condensed by TNW]:
“[The tablets], based on estimated general BOM costs of US$300-350 for 10-inch tablet PCs and US$150-200 for 7-inch models, are struggling to meet vendors’ price targets [...] because of the additional US$90-100 fee for Windows 8.” Read more...
Verizon fumbles on “kill unlimited data plans” damage control
Yesterday, at the J.P. Morgan 40th Annual Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, Verizon EVP and CFO Frank Shammo mentioned that his company would be forcing customers away from their grandfathered unlimited data plans. The decision is purely financial: "A lot of our 3G base is unlimited. As they start to migrate into 4G, they will have to come off of unlimited and go into the data share plan. And that is beneficial for us for many reasons, obviously. So as you pick what tier you want to be and we think that there will be some price up in those tiers." Read more...
Mozilla product director says Firefox on Window RT ‘probably not worth it’
A Mozilla product director yesterday said that unless Microsoft allows other browser makers to call important APIs in Windows RT, it is "probably not worth it to even bother" building a version of Firefox for the new operating system.
In a Wednesday post to his personal blog, Asa Dotzler, product director of Firefox, again slammed Microsoft for not allowing third-party browsers access to Win32 APIs, or application programming interfaces, in the upcoming Windows RT.
Windows RT, once called Windows on ARM, or WOA, is the operating system Microsoft is developing for devices -- tablets primarily, but also lightweight laptops -- that rely on processors designed for the ARM architecture. Read more...
VMware puts on new vFabric suite, takes your database on a date
VMware pretty much owns the virtualization layer on X86 iron inside of enterprises, but it has a long way to go to get the same kind of uptake for its vFabric application framework.
Just as it did when it turned the bare-metal ESX Server hypervisor into a server virtualization stack and then a cloudy infrastructure ubertool, the company is transforming the Spring framework it acquired three years ago by rolling all kinds of components into it – to create the vFabric Suite.
The Spring framework is an open-source platform for running Java applications that VMware is beefing up, and it is not to be confused with Cloud Foundry, an open-source platform cloud that mixes up the RabbitMQ messaging service with MySQL, Redis, and MongoDB data services and frameworks for Java and Ruby applications. Read more...
Apache details OpenOffice 3.4 security fixes
Following the release of Apache OpenOffice 3.4.0 last week, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has now detailed the security fixes included in the new version of the open source productivity suite. According to the ASF, the first stable release of OpenOffice under its governance addresses a total of three security vulnerabilities, all of which are rated as "important". Read more...
As Facebook grows, millions say, ‘no, thanks’
Don't try to friend MaLi Arwood on Facebook. You won't find her there.
You won't find Thomas Chin, either. Or Kariann Goldschmitt. Or Jake Edelstein.
More than 900 million people worldwide check their Facebook accounts at least once a month, but millions more are Facebook holdouts.
They say they don't want Facebook. They insist they don't need Facebook. They say they're living life just fine without the long-forgotten acquaintances that the world's largest social network sometimes resurrects. Read more...
Microsoft anti-bloatware service to apply to Windows 8 PCs, too
A Microsoft in-store program that scrubs "bloatware" from Windows PCs will also be offered when Windows 8 machines reach the market later this year, a company representative said Wednesday.
The service, which is offered only in Microsoft's small chain of retail stores -- it now has 21 operating or in the works -- is dubbed "Signature Upgrade," and costs $99.
"We take off all the bloatware on the PC," said a Microsoft store employee Wednesday when asked about the service.
On Microsoft's website, the company described the Signature Upgrade this way: "We'll install everything you need and remove the things you don't, for a faster, more efficient, and secure PC experience." Read more...
Russia’s Twitter rival Futubra unleashes mobile apps
The Russian answer to Twitter, Futubra, just stepped up its game with the release of apps for iOS, Windows Phone and Android.
Using Futubra without being able to read Cyrillic is a bit tricky. On a desktop or laptop browser, you can rely on Google translate in chrome to help you along, on the mobile this won’t work. So, for now, best for those who can read the content to enjoy the mobile apps.
The interface for the apps is still nice and bright, with neon coloured icons show you where to upload images or follow updates. Read more...
TNW Pick of the Day: PowerSketch transforms your iPhone snaps and videos into artwork
I don’t know about you, but I’ve just about had my fill of so-called Instagram alternatives, though I do still occasionally bust out Instagram itself if I’m looking to taint some snaps with a pseudo 1960s feel.
But what about apps that transform snaps into sketches? Well, PowerSketch for iOS has you covered there.
As with retro photo apps, there are already a slew of photo-to-sketch apps out there, such as My Sketch and Sketch Me. But PowerSketch is a worthy addition to the family offering a simple, streamlined way to quickly turn your images into artwork. Oh, and PowerSketch also lets you create arty videos based on the exact same effects available for your photos. Read more...
Red Hat preps RHEL 7 for second half of 2013
The next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), version 7, is targeted for release in the second half of 2013, Red Hat said on Tuesday, as it also celebrated the 10th anniversary of its enterprise OS.
Red Hat aims to release a major new version of its OS every three years and updates about every six months, according to Jim Totten, vice president and general manager at Red Hat's Platform business unit.
"While we are not at a place where we are making announcements ... our general target is the second half of 2013 to see RHEL 7 enter the marketplace," Totten said in a webcast.
Red Hat is keeping details of the release close to its chest, but Totten said the OS will have improvements across its more than 2,000 packages and that key focus areas are supporting new hardware, file systems, security and performance, he said. Read more...
Fraunhofer Institute finds security vulnerabilites in cloud storage services
The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technologoy (SIT) has tested seven cloud storage service providers and published its results in a freely available report
. The authors of the report found vulnerabilities affecting registration and login, encryption and shared access to data for several of the services.
The study looked at CloudMe, CrashPlan, Dropbox, Mozy, TeamDrive, Ubuntu One and Wuala. Each of these services can be accessed directly by means of client software installed on a user's system; the researchers did not look at services such as Amazon's S3 which are only accessible via an API. In response to enquiries by The H's associates at heise Security, a spokesperson confirmed that a follow-up study to look at other major providers is being planned. Read more...
Flashback removal tool arrives for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Apple has announced the release of a standalone Flashback malware removal tool for computers running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, even though the operating system is no longer officially supported. Like the security updates for 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion, the 1.23MB tool removes "most common variants of the Flashback malware", which reportedly infected more than 600,000 systems, exploiting flaws in earlier versions of Java. Read more...
IP-Address Can’t Even Identify a State, BitTorrent Judge Rules
The mass-BitTorrent lawsuits that are sweeping the United States are in a heap of trouble. After a Florida judge ruled that an IP-address is not a person, a Californian colleague has gone even further in protecting the First Amendment rights of BitTorrent users. The judge in question points out that geolocation tools are far from accurate and that it’s therefore uncertain that his court has jurisdiction over cases involving alleged BitTorrent pirates. As a result, 15 of these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits were dismissed.
In recent years more than a quarter million people have been accused of sharing copyrighted works in the United States.
Copyright holders generally sue dozens, hundreds or sometimes even thousands of people at once, hoping to extract cash settlements from the alleged downloaders. The evidence they present to the court is usually an IP-address and a timestamp marking when the alleged infringement took place. Read more...
Facebook raises IPO price as offering nears
Already expected to be the largest-ever initial public offering for an Internet company, Facebook is making its IPO even bigger.
The world's largest online social network on Tuesday increased the planned price range for its stock to $34 to $38 per share in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's up from its previous range of $28 to $35. At the upper limit of $38, the sale would raise about $12.8 billion. Read more...