Sci-Tech Today

Marketplace for Google Apps Targets Microsoft Office

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:54:27 -0500

With its mind in the clouds and an eye on rival Microsoft, Google on Tuesday launched an online application store for third-party programs that can be integrated with its online Google Apps office suite, with a single log-in and Google's universal navigation. The programs can sync with Gmail and Google's calendar, and use document-sharing features.

With 25 million application users and services for two million businesses, Google clearly hopes to reduce Microsoft's dominance in business-productivity software. Some 50 companies are offering applications in the initial Google Apps Marketplace inventory.

Early Arrivals

A random sampling on the marketplace Wednesday included EZAsset, a business asset-management tool; Manymoon for social productivity, project management, and task management; Fresh Books, a billing and bookkeeping utility; and eFax, an Internet fax service.

Google reportedly charges developers $100 for a listing, then takes 20 percent of sales.

The marketplace is intended for companies with their own domain, and Google Apps membership is required. A premier membership is $50, with an unlimited number of users per account. To lure customers away from the competition, the marketplace offers a tutorial on importing data from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.

Suite Deal

The Mountain View, Calif.-based Google previously had a solutions marketplace offering add-ons for programs. But Google Apps Marketplace will allow the company to generate revenue while also driving more interest in its online suite.

Google has increasingly battled for turf with Microsoft, recently introducing the Chrome operating system to challenge the dominant Windows. The software giant has taken the fight to Google's front door with its Bing search engine, which it hopes will soon be the default search window on Apple's iPhone.

Microsoft has announced cloud partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and Chunghwa Telecom and has other cloud projects in the works. The HP deal is a three-year, $250 million project to integrate Microsoft programs and HP hardware.

Cloud-computing...

Bing Bangs Out More Market Share at Yahoo's Expense

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:47:59 -0500

The search-engine wars are alive and well -- and Bing is the beneficiary again. Microsoft's so-called decision engine grabbed 11.5 percent of the U.S. search market in February, according to comScore.

Although that's only a slight increase over January, when Bing boasted 11.3 percent of the search market, it's an incremental improvement Microsoft is glad to see for its less-than-a-year-old engine.

But it's not all good news for Microsoft, if it cares anything about its newly approved partner's standings. Yahoo's bleeding led to Bing's gains. Yahoo's U.S. search market share dipped from 17 percent in January to 16.8 percent in February, comScore reported.

Bad for Bing?

Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, parsed the data. He noted that Bing continues to grow its user base, although it seems to have slowed a bit. Meanwhile, Google is unaffected.

"Those feeling the competitive pinch of Bing appear to be Microsoft partner Yahoo and the two smaller major search providers, Ask and AOL. The irony of Bing's success, partly at Yahoo's expense, is that Microsoft hasn't seen any growth in the combined share of Bing and Yahoo, which has remained largely flat," Sterling said. "The Yahoo search slide has now been going on roughly a year, and it has to be a matter of concern to the company. However, it's not immediately clear what they can do to arrest it."

Jeffries & Co. analyst Youssef Squali also noted the shifting fortunes between Bing and Yahoo. In a research note dated March 10, Squali noted how Bing has added 350 basis points of growth since its June 2009 launch. Meanwhile, Yahoo has shed about 330 basis points since May 2009.

"While the share losses have been exacerbated by the ongoing rollover of tool-bar partnerships (with HP and Adobe), we continue to believe that it is critical for Yahoo to...

Apple's App Store Terms Are Stiff, But Does Anyone Care?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:46:08 -0500

Apple tightly controls not only the approval of third-party applications for its App Store but also its developers. Apple's developer agreement says "Public statements regarding this agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties" require Apple's written approval.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation made the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement public. EFF obtained the agreement via a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA, which recently released an app for the iPhone.

As Apple readies its iPad for release -- at the same time a rash of competing tablets are expected -- the question of how much control Apple should have over developers is "particularly relevant," EFF Senior Counsel Fred von Lohmann said. He detailed several "troubling highlights."

Restrictions, Restrictions

Developers are banned from speaking about the terms of the agreement, even though the terms aren't defined as trade secrets. Apple imposes a gag order on developers apart from any trade-secret issues.

By using Apple's software development kit, developers agree to distribute their creations only through Apple's App Store. Apple can reject an application for any reason, even if it meets all the formal requirements set up by Apple.

Thus developers can sink hundreds of hours of development time into an app, have it rejected by Apple, and have no choice but to toss that work out. "So if you use the SDK and your app is rejected by Apple, you're prohibited from distributing it through competing app stores like�Cydia�or�Rock Your Phone," von Lohmann said.

The EFF also complained that Apple bans reverse engineering -- "including the kinds of reverse engineering for interoperability that courts have recognized as a fair use under copyright law." Apple even outlaws "enabl(ing) others" to reverse-engineer the SDK or iPhone OS.

The SDK also appears to include a complete ban on tinkering with any Apple products -- not just jailbreaking...

Google Maps Gives Biking Directions, But No Mobile App Yet

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:43:15 -0500

Google Maps unveiled the addition of biking directions Wednesday at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. The new beta offering is being launched in partnership with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy -- a nonprofit organization that has already built a database for locating more than 1,600 rail trails and connecting corridors available for free public use.

Google Maps now includes data on bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the United States, noted Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps. "Bikers all over the country now will be able to explore new trails or find specific directions in their local community with just a few clicks of their mouse," he said.

Customized Routes

Guymon noted that biking has been the most requested addition for Google Maps. "If you're one of the 57 million Americans who ride a bike, mapping your daily commute, exploring new trails, and planning recreational rides just became a little bit easier," he wrote in a blog.

Currently Google Maps only provides step-by-step bicycling directions on desktop PCs and notebooks, though the company said a mobile version of the service is also in the works. To get started, simply enter a start point and destination and select Bicycling from the drop-down menu.

"You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible," Guymon explained.

The proposed route for the ride is presented on top of the city map as a blue line overlay. Bikers can further customize the route to include nearby sites by clicking on the blue line and dragging it to include a local landmark. "Just like Google pioneered with driving directions, you can click and drag your route to customize it as you'd like," Guymon observed.

Google Maps also will estimate the amount...

MySpace Revamp Aims To Reverse User Exodus

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:34:43 -0500

MySpace is attempting to bring back old users and attract new ones with a complete revamp of the social network. The plans to change come after the social network has lost market share against its rivals.

Once considered the household name for social-networking web sites, MySpace lost its top position in the market once Facebook began to attract new users at high rate.

Expected changes include a cleanup of the cluttered layout and faster page loads. The bigger changes include a focus on music. These features will be made available in the next few months, according to MySpace, with users able to share music playlists with other users.

MySpace executives have been talking about the changes in recent weeks. The revamp is because MySpace "really wanted to show the crowd how MySpace is thinking different about the advertiser experience," said MySpace's Nada Stirratt, chief revenue officer, in a post.

Focusing on Youth

This lets MySpace hone in on a core user base of music-oriented fans and young people seeking self-expression, according to Ray Valdes, a Gartner analyst.

MySpace's focus on a younger audiences makes sense since adults favor Facebook, according to recent data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A total of 73 percent of all adults 18 and older who use social-networking sites have a Facebook account. Seventy-one percent of those adults are between the ages of 18-29.

"These changes are welcome and necessary, but by themselves cannot reverse powerful market trends," Valdes said.

But many observers question if these changes will be enough to attract new users. In January, MySpace had 119 million unique visitors, a 7.4 percent decrease from the same month in 2009, according to ComScore, a provider of online traffic reports. MySpace executives, however, expect that number to grow to 200 million or 300 million. While the number...

Patches Highlight Problems in Maintaining Older Software

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:51:32 -0500

Microsoft on Tuesday released two security bulletins to fix eight bugs in its Windows and Microsoft Office software. Both bulletins are rated important, but analysts said many of the vulnerabilities could potentially be more severe if exploited.

Joshua Talbot, security intelligence manager at Symantec Security Response, is concerned that in many enterprise environments, Windows XP is still common, and these vulnerabilities are more serious on XP and older systems.

"Since Windows 7, Microsoft has seemed to downgrade file-based vulnerabilities," Talbot said. "In the past, I think many of the vulnerabilities patched this month could have been rated critical, but with protections like DEP and ASLR, these types of vulnerabilities are less of an issue for Windows 7."

A Patch Roller Coaster

Andrew Storms, director of Security operations for nCircle, said IT security teams have been on a Microsoft roller coaster so far in 2010 in regards to bulletins. He pointed to January, which produced two bulletins, including the out-of-band emergency release for Internet Explorer. That was followed by a monster patch of 13 bulletins in February. March will go down in history as a light Patch Tuesday with only two important bulletins.

"Unfortunately, this was the first patch for the newer, safer Office 2007 file format. File-format attacks continue to be a favorite attack vector for earlier versions of Office, especially 2003," Storms said. "Since releasing Office 2007 three years ago, Microsoft hasn't had to patch a single bug in this file format, something I'm sure they are pretty proud of. IT security teams everywhere will be keeping their fingers crossed, hoping that this isn't the beginning of a new streak of vulnerabilities in Office."

For the second time in three months, Microsoft has also issued a warning about a new IE zero-day bug. Like the IE zero-day bug from January that got a lot of...

HP Turns Steve Jobs' Flash Snub Against Apple's iPad

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:12:09 -0500

No watered-down Internet. No sacrifices. That's the promise Hewlett-Packard Vice President and CTO Phil McKinney offered consumers in a blog post about the PC giant's upcoming tablet computer. HP's iPad competitor, he promised, will offer a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand.

McKinney's blog even posted a demo of HP's upcoming tablet computer running Adobe System's Flash player and its Air application that lets Flash run outside of a browser. The video doesn't compare to the polished Apple commercial showcasing the iPad during the Oscars, but it does offer a sneak peak of what consumers can expect later this year -- including Flash capabilities.

HP's partnership with Adobe on the tablet flies on the face of Apple's iPad strategy. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs decided not to include Flash support in the iPad, insulting Adobe and opening the door for the software maker to find partners to rival Apple in tablets.

A Flashy Tablet Argument

"Flash performance, while critical to vast number of web sites, is not typically a subject whose interest extends much beyond concerned developers and their beleaguered spouses," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "But given the enormous interest generated by the iPad, the issue became something of a cause c�l�bre among Apple's fans and foes, Adobe's buddies and enemies, and nondenominational Internet aficionados."

No matter what one thinks of Flash, King said it seems odd to close the iPad, a device designed largely for media consumption, to some of the Internet's best-known media sites. However, Jobs doesn't have a reputation for suffering fools gladly, even when the fools are asking perfectly reasonable questions, King said.

"Beyond whatever Jobs might have hoped to achieve with his comments, we doubt that Phil McKinney's blog post was among his goals. In essence, Jobs' blanket...

Web Standards Group Gets a New Leader

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:17:45 -0500

A former executive with IBM and other tech companies has been named the new CEO of an organization in charge of coordinating the technical specifications behind the World Wide Web.

The Web's inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, is remaining the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, and Jeffrey Jaffe, 55, will work under him as its CEO. Jaffe replaces Steve Bratt, 53, who left the position in mid-2009 to run a Web foundation also started by Berners-Lee.

Jaffe brings both business and technical expertise. He has been vice president of technology at IBM Corp. and most recently chief technology officer at Novell Inc. He also was an executive at Bell Labs.

"Just as the Web is constantly growing and changing, so is the community around it and so is the consortium," Berners-Lee said in a statement. "Jeff's broad experience gives him a deep understanding of many different types of organizations, which will be invaluable in managing W3C's evolution."

The consortium, known as W3C, writes the technical rules designed to ensure that Web pages can work using different software, different computers and different languages. For example, it created guidelines on how to format Web pages so that they work more easily with software designed for the blind. It also crafts the basic commands for HTML, the Web's main programming language.

W3C's members include such leading tech companies as Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. and institutions such as universities and the Library of Congress. Its main offices are in Cambridge, Mass., Tokyo and the Sophia Antipolis science and tech center near Nice, France.

China Gives Microblogging a Whirl at Political Event

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:53:18 -0500

So this is how you get through China's biggest political event of the year: "Sit still, stare toward the front, pretend like you're looking but you're really not, pretend like you're listening but you're really not ... make your brain blank."

As delegates to the National People's Congress dip into the world of Twitter-like microblogging, the Chinese public is getting a rare glimpse inside the workings, and nonworkings, of power.

For the first time, some of the almost 3,000 delegates are posting brief online messages from behind the scenes as they shuttle between vast, largely immobile meetings and their hotels, sealed off from the public with police tape.

China's political workings are so controlled and opaque that some Chinese don't know who their delegates are. But some representatives are now being scrutinized, sucked into chats with netizens and even breaking news on the social network, where anyone can post notes of up to 140 characters and choose which people to "follow," or get updates from.

"Beauty Fashion" magazine publisher Zhang Xiaomei is a member of the NPC's sister advisory congress, also now meeting in Beijing. People digging into her microblog posts before the session started discovered her advice, above, on surviving meetings.

"When people in the meeting talk on and on, you can take the chance to make your mind and body more healthy," she wrote. "The longer the meeting is, the more you benefit."

But Zhang also posted a tidbit that Chinese state media picked up and shot through the online world.

"When delegates show up, they get a laptop computer. What's different this year is that they don't have to be returned when we're done," she wrote.

The offhand comment quickly turned into an investigation. Media and netizens estimated that free laptops for Zhang and her more than 2,000 colleagues would cost Chinese taxpayers about 10...

Web-Connected TV: A Distant Dream for App Developers

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:59:18 -0500

Last year, Mark Phillip unveiled Are You Watching This?!, a tool for mobile phones that alerts sports fans to can't-miss, in-progress games, such as baseball no-hitters. Thousands of users have bought the 99-cent application and downloaded it to their Apple iPhones and other handsets. Phillip also wants to create a version of Are You Watching This?! for Web-connected TVs, which he calls the "Holy Grail" for this type of content, but that's been a struggle. "It's a tough platform to build on," says Phillip, a resident of Austin, Tex.

By the end of 2010, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs, which let users access online services such as Twitter and Pandora with the same remote control they use to switch channels. Yet while developers have managed to create a wide range of apps for mobile phones, they're daunted by the prospect of building software tools for TVs. There's no easy way to create an app that can run on the wide range of sets, says Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "Nobody wants to get in the business of developing separate widgets for Samsung, LG, Vizio, and Sony," he says.

In addition to all those TVs, there's a growing range of set-top boxes, each with its own software. There's Roku and its Channel Store, which bundles movie-streaming services from Netflix and others with handy tools, like a Facebook photo viewer. Vudu, recently acquired by Wal-Mart, plans an Apps platform for watching video podcasts such as Diggnation. This summer, the Boxee Box by D-Link will bid to become the first hardware of its kind to let developers charge for programs through the TV.

To companies such as Internet music provider Pandora, each new outlet for TV applications presents a further opportunity to reach a fresh audience. The Oakland [Calif.]-based company...