8 February 2006 Technology News

last SG · 2006-02-09T09:55:45+00:00

Lost an IPod or Wallet? Look for It Online BOSTON - Maureen Silliman felt her empty pocket and gulped: Her new $300 iPod must have bounced out as she ran t...

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"Baywatch" washing up on DVD

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Beach-and-babes TV series "Baywatch" is finally headed to DVD.

A late-summer best-of set, with episodes chosen by star Pamela Anderson, will be the initial release, followed by complete series sets.

"Baywatch," which aired from 1989-2001, is again making headlines, with a big-budget movie in the works from director Eli Roth ("Hostel," "Cabin Fever" ).

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Gaming industry gets trade group

SAN FRANCISCO (Hollywood Reporter) - In the wake of a high-profile lawsuit against video game giant Electronic Arts, an alliance of the interactive entertainment industry's leading recruitment firms has announced the formation of trade group Professional Electronic Entertainment Recruiters (PEER).

The trade association's goal is to establish and maintain ethical work standards and optimum recruiting services for game industry developers, publishers and related industry companies.

The organization said last week that with an aging work force of video game creators, the game industry is going through growing pains similar to what Hollywood once experienced. Today there are more programmers, artists and producers in their 30s, 40s and 50s, many with families, who are looking for better pay, fewer work hours and improved benefits. PEER focuses on representing these experienced game makers.

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Video game awards show to debut in 2007

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The Academy of Interactive Arts and Science has unveiled a new annual television event, a co-venture with Dick Clark Prods. designed to showcase the year's best video games and the creative teams that made them possible.

The announcement came last week during the nonprofit organization's DICE 2006 Summit in Las Vegas.

"The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Presents: The Year in Games" is set to debut in first-quarter 2007.

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Vodafone, Microsoft launch European e-mail service

LONDON (Reuters) - Cell phone giant Vodafone Group Plc said on Monday it had launched a European mobile e-mail facility with Microsoft Corp., marking the latest move by mobile service providers to make it easier for customers to get messages on the move.

The collaboration also highlights the increasing competition as competitors work to muscle into the wireless e-mail market dominated by Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail service.

Vodafone said from March it will deploy Windows Mobile 5.0-powered devices to corporate and small and medium sized business customers in France, Germany and the UK.

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Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes

BARCELONA, Spain - Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file.

The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail technologies, analysts say.

Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging without the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments.

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3G mobile mania arrives in Spain

MADRID (AFP) - Mobile mania comes to Spain for four days from Monday, when telecoms companies will vie for the attention of visitors to this year's 3GSM World Congress, the globe's self-styled "premier mobile event".

With around 50,000 visitors expected to throng the gates of Barcelona's Fira venue hall, organisers said on February 10 that 962 companies had signed up to exhibit their dinkiest gear. That's 40 percent more than last year's fair, which drew 34,000 people from 171 countries.

Since then, technological advances have continued apace. They show no sign of stopping either, so the latest must-have kit available in Europe will doubtless look a little less glossy by the time the "3GSM Asia" trade fare opens its doors in Singapore, come mid-October.

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Hi-Tech, Tradition Create Romance in China

BEIJING - The gateway to marital bliss has a frosted glass door emblazoned with two candy-apple red hearts and lots of computers. Introducing the Beijing Military and Civilian Matchmaking Service, one of a growing number of Chinese companies that are marrying high technology and low-tech tradition to spawn romantic unions.

Romance and marriage have changed drastically in China after 25 years of breakneck economic growth and looser social controls. In a country now wide open to Western influences, even Valentine's Day is making inroads, with chocolates, dinner dates, flowers and cards all becoming popular expressions of affection on the occasion dubbed Qing Ren Jie, or Lovers' Day.

For centuries, families relied on village matchmakers. Then came communist-era unions, sanctioned and sometimes arranged by government companies for their employees.

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JBoss Boss Mum as Buyout Talk Grows Louder

BURLINGTON, Mass.The buzz is growing: Middleware maker JBoss is for sale and is about to be acquired, possibly as early as the week of Feb. 13, for hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a Feb. 11 keynote address at an event hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, JBoss founder and CEO Marc Fleury deflected questions about reports of his company's acquisition by Oracle Corp.

But offstage, Fleury's reticence didn't slow talk of Oracle's buyout plans among attendees familiar with terms of the deal and the open-source middleware developer's efforts to find a buyer.

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MySQL lands $18.5 million in third round

Open-source database company MySQL said it has secured $18.5 million in series C funding, a round led by Institutional Venture Partners. The total venture investment in the company, which has operations in Sweden and Cupertino, Calif., is about $39 million.

The money will be used to fund the company's growth, product development and expanded marketing and sales operations, MySQL said. Also participating in the round were Intel Capital, Red Hat, SAP Ventures and Presidio STV, the venture investment subsidiary of Sumitomo. "With the release of MySQL 5.0, the company is offering deep functionality at a fraction of the cost of the competition, prompting many CIOs to reconsider their database strategy," said Steve Harrick, managing director and general partner of Institutional Venture Partners.

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HP extends Oracle pact to cover middleware

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday said that it will provide consulting services for Oracle's suite of Java server software.

The company said that it will train its consultants and offer implementation services for the Oracle Fusion Middleware suite to corporate customers who are investing in a modular application design called a service-oriented architecture. HP already provides services for Oracle's database as well as competitive middleware offerings from BEA Systems, Jboss, SAP and Microsoft's .Net software. "Our goal is to give customers choice," said Terri Schoenrock, program director for enterprise application services at HP's services arm. As part of the Oracle partnership, HP will resell the Oracle Fusion Middleware, company executives said.

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Open source: The newest competitive tool

A few years ago, releasing once-secret source code to the public would have been a highly unusual first move for a company with a newly acquired software product line.

But that's exactly what Integrated Computer Solutions is announcing this week with the Project.net project management software it bought Jan. 1. And it's a move that today is downright ordinary. Open-source software has become not only increasingly mainstream, but it's also often a way for a company to gain advantage over a proprietary rival with a close guard over its software's underlying instructions.

"It's the only way to go now. It's the future of software. It's inevitable," said John Newton, who in 1990 founded a company called Documentum with proprietary software to help customers manage their digital documentation. Newton now is chief technology officer of Alfresco, a 20-person London start-up doing the same thing but this time with open-source software.

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Software vendors face rising offshore costs

The majority of software companies now do offshore software development, but rising prices and managing far-flung teams is posing new challenges, a study has found.

Consulting company Sand Hill Group last year surveyed executives from about 50 software companies and found that offshore software development has become standard practice. Eighty-four percent of companies said they use offshore developers, an increase from about 63 percent two years earlier.

"Core software development is done offshore, not just maintenance and testing," said M.R. Rangaswami, co-founder of Sand Hill Group. "These executives said they are more reliant on offshore development than ever before."

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Microsoft faces next deadline in EU antitrust case

Microsoft must explain this week why the European Commission should not fine it up to $2.4 million a day for failing to comply with an antitrust order.

Last year, the European antitrust regulator set a Dec. 15, 2005, deadline for Microsoft to comply with its 2004 order, but found the company's reply inadequate. The Commission started wheels turning to fine the company, and Wednesday is the deadline for its confidential reply.

But Microsoft has already gone public with a new proposal to permit some of its licensees to take a look at portions of its source code, although the Commission has indicated little interest. Last month Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith outlined the proposal to reporters even though it will not submit a formal, detailed version to the Commission until this week.

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Intel's mantra: Let's make a deal

Would you avoid buying a PC with an Advanced Micro Devices chip inside because it wouldn't let you host an Internet conference call with six of your friends?

Chip giant Intel is betting that at least some people would. Last week, Intel cut a deal with voice over Internet Protocol provider Skype that calls for the VoIP company to provide advanced conference-calling features exclusively on PCs that run Intel chips. As long as the deal is in place, it could effectively keep customers who want to take advantage of multiperson conference calls from going with AMD-based machines.

Though few would argue that a niche feature like that is going to be a deal breaker for most PC buyers, the importance of the Skype-Intel alliance goes well beyond VoIP conferencing. Indeed, it's the latest, and certainly most prominent, example of Intel's new take on marketing: Lock in software partners as well as the PC makers.

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Symantec taps ex-airline exec as CFO

Symantec has filled another vacancy in its executive ranks. The Cupertino, Calif., company on Monday announced that James Beer, former chief financial officer at AMR and American Airlines, has been appointed to that position at Symantec. Beer succeeds Greg Myers, whose departure was announced last November. As CFO, Beer will lead Symantecs worldwide finance organization and be responsible for accounting, strategic planning, and analysis, treasury, tax, and audit, Symantec said. He will also lead the corporate development, facilities and operations teams, the company said.

The CFO swap is the latest in a series of executive changes at Symantec. The company recently changed chief information officers and last month said its president and vice chairman, Gary Bloom, will leave before the end of March. The departure of Myers came just months after the resignation of former President and Chief Operating Officer John Schwarz, now the chief executive at Business Objects.

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Microsoft flagged Symantec software as spyware

Microsoft has corrected a mistake in its anti-spyware product that flagged some Symantec security tools as malicious software.

The problem occurred after Microsoft pushed out an update for Windows AntiSpyware last Thursday night. The updated software identified a Windows registry key set by the Symantec products as belonging to password stealing malicious software known as Bancos, Microsoft and Symantec said in a joint statement Monday.

On detection of the registry keys, Windows AntiSpyware alerted the user and suggested deletion of the keys. "The deletion of these registry keys will cause all versions of the SAV (Symantec AntiVirus) and SCS (Symantec Client Security) software to stop operating correctly," Microsoft and Symantec said in the statement.

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Banks scramble on debit card theft

FAQ: Several large banks and credit unions have replaced about 200,000 debit cards in the wake of a security breach at an unidentified retail chain and Sam's Stores, owned by Wal-Mart Stores.

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Cisco readies security updates

Cisco Systems unveiled on Monday several changes to its security lineup that are designed to bolster its management offerings and ability to secure applications that reside on the network.

Cisco, as part of its adaptive security efforts to monitor and secure access to applications on the network, debuted its Content Security and Control Security Services Module. This module, designed for the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) 5500 series, aims to deliver Anti-X services that combine antivirus, anti-spyware, file blocking, antispam, URL blocking and content filtering.

Cisco also unveiled a software upgrade for the ASA 5500 series. The Cisco ASA 5500 series 7.1 software, in conjunction with the appliances, aims to allow up to 5,000 concurrent SSL VPN sessions per device, providing remote and mobile workers the ability to access applications and network resources securely.

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U.S. charges man in botnet case

A California man has been indicted on federal charges of creating a network of hijacked computers that helped him and two others bring in $100,000 for installing unwanted ad software.

The indictment on Friday from a federal grand jury in Seattle also accuses Christopher Maxwell, 20, and two unidentified conspirators of crippling Seattle's Northwest Hospital with a botnet attack in January 2005.

Authorities say the hospital attack caused $150,000 in damages, shut down the intensive care unit and disabled doctors' pagers.

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RSA confab: Boom times for security

The security industry converges at the annual RSA Conference this week, an event that's moved far beyond its origins as a get-together for cryptogeeks and other insiders.

Though still organized by RSA Security, a company with its roots in cryptography, the confab has developed into a showcase for security companies and an annual gathering for IT professionals. This year is the 15th anniversary of the event.

"There has been significant growth," said Ray Wagner, an analyst with Gartner. "The RSA Conference four, five years ago was much more of a technician conference."

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