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Gary Edwards

Adeptol Offers Cloud and Mobile Document Viewing - 0 views

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    Essentially, what CloudConnect does is to enable users to view documents that are stored in the cloud without having to upload them, while giving document providers complete control over the document. What this means is that no matter who views the document, it won't ever be uploaded on Adeptol servers. An additional feature is that document creators can create documents in any format they want and deliver them to users in the format that they can best view it in. New features include: ..... AJAX document viewer with support for more than 300 file formats ..... Mobile Viewer license that enables users to view documents on iPhone/iPad and Android with enhanced loading times .....Built in AES encryption that can be turned on at will. Encrypts not only document content but document URL too .... Advanced caching enabling users access static documents directly from the cache Adeptol viewing technology is based on the adoption of HTML 5 technology that enables viewing across a wide range of mobile devices including iPad, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. 300+ file formats available in the viewer
Gary Edwards

MWC 2010: The Year of the Android | Gadget Lab | Wired.com - 1 views

  • Forget about the iPhone. Microsoft is in a death-match with Google and its free OS.
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    ARCELONA - This year at the Mobile World Congress is the year of Android. Google's operating system debuted here two years ago. Last year we expected a slew of handsets, and saw just a trickle. This year, Android is everywhere, on handsets from HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and even Garmin-Asus. If this were the world of computers, Android would be in a similar position to Windows: Pretty much every manufacturer puts it on its machines. This is great news for us, the consumer. Android is stable, powerful and now it even runs Flash (I got a sneak peek of Flash running on a Motorola handset here at the show. It crashed). It's even better for the manufacturers, as - unlike Windows Mobile - Android is free. It's also open, so the phone makers can tweak it and trick it out as much as they like. And they do like. Most of the Android phones here at Mobile World Congress are running custom versions of Android, which differentiates them and, in theory at least, makes them easier to use, hiding the complexities of a proper multitasking OS from the user.
Gary Edwards

Office to finally fully support ODF, Open XML, and PDF formats | ZDNet - 0 views

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    The king of clicks returns!  No doubt there was a time when the mere mention of ODF and the now legendary XML "document" format wars with Microsoft could drive click counts into the statisphere.  Sorry to say though, those times are long gone. It's still a good story though.  Even if the fate of mankind and the future of the Internet no longer hinges on the outcome.  There is that question that continues defy answer; "Did Microsoft win or lose?"  So the mere announcement of supported formats in MSOffice XX is guaranteed to rev the clicks somewhat. Veteran ODF clickmeister SVN does make an interesting observation though: "The ironic thing is that, while this was as hotly debated am issue in the mid-2000s as are mobile patents and cloud implementation is today, this news was barely noticed. That's a mistake. Updegrove points out, "document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage." He concluded, "Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed on an ongoing basis will competition in the present be preserved, and the availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured. Without robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals will be impossible to attain." Updegrove's right of course. Don't believe me? Go into your office's archives and try to bring up documents your wrote in the 90s in WordPerfect or papers your staff created in the 80s with WordStar. If you don't want to lose your institutional memory, open document standards support is more important than ever. "....................................... Sorry but Updegrove is wrong.  Woefully wrong. The Web is the future.  Sure interoperability matters, but only as far as the Web and the future of Cloud Computing is concerned.  Sadly neither ODF or Open XML are Web ready.  The language of the Web is famously HTML, now HTML5+
Gary Edwards

In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It. - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

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    I disagree with the authors conclusions here.  He misses some very significant developments.  Particularly around Google, WebKit, and WebKit-HTML5. For instance, there is this article out today; "Google Really is Giving Away Free Nexus One and Droid Handsets to Developers".  Also, Palm is working on a WiMAX/WiFi version of their WebOS (WebKit) smartphone for Sprint.  Sprint and ClearWire are pushing forward with a very aggressive WiMAX rollout in the USA.  San Francisco should go on line this year!   One of the more interesting things about the Sprint WiMAX plan is that they have a set fee of $69.00 per month that covers EVERYTHING; cellphone, WiMAX Web browsing, video, and data connectivity, texting (SMS) and VOIP.  Major Sprint competitors, Verizon, AT&T and TMobile charge $69 per month, but it only covers cellphone access.  Everything else is extra adn also at low speed/ low bandwidth.  3G at best.  WiMAX however is a 4G screamer.  It's also an open standard.  (Verizon FIOS and LTE are comparable and said to be coming soon, but they are proprietary technologies).   The Cable guys are itneresting in that they are major backers of WiMAX, but also have a bandwidth explosive technology called Docsis. There is an interesting article at TechCrunch, "In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It."  I disagree entirely with the authors conclusion.  WebKit is capable of providing a universal HTML5 application developers layer for mobile and desktop browser computing.  It's supported by Apple, Google, Palm (WebOS), Nokia, RiMM (Blackberry) and others to such an extent that 85% of all smartphones shipped this year will either ship with WebKit or, an Opera browser compatible with the WebKit HTML5 document layout/rendering model.   I would even go as far as to say that WebKit-HTML5 owns the Web's document model and application layer for the future.  Excepting for Silverlight, which features the OOXML document model with over 500 million desktop develop
Gary Edwards

9 Ways Content Management is Going Mobile : FierceContentManagement.com - 0 views

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    Excellent review of 9 CMS solutions going mobile.  Fascinating
Paul Merrell

European Lawmakers Demand Answers on Phone Key Theft - The Intercept - 0 views

  • European officials are demanding answers and investigations into a joint U.S. and U.K. hack of the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile SIM cards, following a report published by The Intercept Thursday. The report, based on leaked documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealed the U.S. spy agency and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, hacked the Franco-Dutch digital security giant Gemalto in a sophisticated heist of encrypted cell-phone keys. The European Parliament’s chief negotiator on the European Union’s data protection law, Jan Philipp Albrecht, said the hack was “obviously based on some illegal activities.” “Member states like the U.K. are frankly not respecting the [law of the] Netherlands and partner states,” Albrecht told the Wall Street Journal. Sophie in ’t Veld, an EU parliamentarian with D66, the Netherlands’ largest opposition party, added, “Year after year we have heard about cowboy practices of secret services, but governments did nothing and kept quiet […] In fact, those very same governments push for ever-more surveillance capabilities, while it remains unclear how effective these practices are.”
  • “If the average IT whizzkid breaks into a company system, he’ll end up behind bars,” In ’t Veld added in a tweet Friday. The EU itself is barred from undertaking such investigations, leaving individual countries responsible for looking into cases that impact their national security matters. “We even get letters from the U.K. government saying we shouldn’t deal with these issues because it’s their own issue of national security,” Albrecht said. Still, lawmakers in the Netherlands are seeking investigations. Gerard Schouw, a Dutch member of parliament, also with the D66 party, has called on Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister of the interior, to answer questions before parliament. On Tuesday, the Dutch parliament will debate Schouw’s request. Additionally, European legal experts tell The Intercept, public prosecutors in EU member states that are both party to the Cybercrime Convention, which prohibits computer hacking, and home to Gemalto subsidiaries could pursue investigations into the breach of the company’s systems.
  • According to secret documents from 2010 and 2011, a joint NSA-GCHQ unit penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks and infiltrated the private communications of its employees in order to steal encryption keys, embedded on tiny SIM cards, which are used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the world. Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. The company’s clients include AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers. “[We] believe we have their entire network,” GCHQ boasted in a leaked slide, referring to the Gemalto heist.
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  • While Gemalto was indeed another casualty in Western governments’ sweeping effort to gather as much global intelligence advantage as possible, the leaked documents make clear that the company was specifically targeted. According to the materials published Thursday, GCHQ used a specific codename — DAPINO GAMMA — to refer to the operations against Gemalto. The spies also actively penetrated the email and social media accounts of Gemalto employees across the world in an effort to steal the company’s encryption keys. Evidence of the Gemalto breach rattled the digital security community. “Almost everyone in the world carries cell phones and this is an unprecedented mass attack on the privacy of citizens worldwide,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a non-profit that advocates for digital privacy and free online expression. “While there is certainly value in targeted surveillance of cell phone communications, this coordinated subversion of the trusted technical security infrastructure of cell phones means the US and British governments now have easy access to our mobile communications.”
  • For Gemalto, evidence that their vaunted security systems and the privacy of customers had been compromised by the world’s top spy agencies made an immediate financial impact. The company’s shares took a dive on the Paris bourse Friday, falling $500 million. In the U.S., Gemalto’s shares fell as much 10 percent Friday morning. They had recovered somewhat — down 4 percent — by the close of trading on the Euronext stock exchange. Analysts at Dutch financial services company Rabobank speculated in a research note that Gemalto could be forced to recall “a large number” of SIM cards. The French daily L’Express noted today that Gemalto board member Alex Mandl was a founding trustee of the CIA-funded venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Mandl resigned from In-Q-Tel’s board in 2002, when he was appointed CEO of Gemplus, which later merged with another company to become Gemalto. But the CIA connection still dogged Mandl, with the French press regularly insinuating that American spies could infiltrate the company. In 2003, a group of French lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to create a commission to investigate Gemplus’s ties to the CIA and its implications for the security of SIM cards. Mandl, an Austrian-American businessman who was once a top executive at AT&T, has denied that he had any relationship with the CIA beyond In-Q-Tel. In 2002, he said he did not even have a security clearance.
  • AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon could not be reached for comment Friday. Sprint declined to comment. Vodafone, the world’s second largest telecom provider by subscribers and a customer of Gemalto, said in a statement, “[W]e have no further details of these allegations which are industrywide in nature and are not focused on any one mobile operator. We will support industry bodies and Gemalto in their investigations.” Deutsche Telekom AG, a German company, said it has changed encryption algorithms in its Gemalto SIM cards. “We currently have no knowledge that this additional protection mechanism has been compromised,” the company said in a statement. “However, we cannot rule out this completely.”
  • Update: Asked about the SIM card heist, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he did not expect the news would hurt relations with the tech industry: “It’s hard for me to imagine that there are a lot of technology executives that are out there that are in a position of saying that they hope that people who wish harm to this country will be able to use their technology to do so. So, I do think in fact that there are opportunities for the private sector and the federal government to coordinate and to cooperate on these efforts, both to keep the country safe, but also to protect our civil liberties.”
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    Watch for massive class action product defect litigation to be filed against the phone companies.and mobile device manufacturers.  In most U.S. jurisdictions, proof that the vendors/manufacturers  knew of the product defect is not required, only proof of the defect. Also, this is a golden opportunity for anyone who wants to get out of a pricey cellphone contract, since providing a compromised cellphone is a material breach of warranty, whether explicit or implied..   
Gary Edwards

WAN governance and network unification make or break successful cloud and hybrid comput... - 0 views

  • As soon as you start using multiple networks, you’re in the cloud, because now you’re making use of resources that are outside the control of your own IT organization and your service provider. Whether people think about it or not, just by adding a second network, they’re taking their first steps into the cloud. Anybody who carries a smartphone is experiencing the personal, private, public boundary of operations themselves. But what seems natural to somebody carrying an iPhone or Blackberry is a tremendous challenge to the traditional models of IT.
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    With the increased interest in cloud, software as a service (SaaS), and mobile computing, applications are jockeying across multiple networks, both in terms of how services are assembled, as well in how users in different environments access and respond to these critical applications. Indeed, cloud computing forces a collapse in the gaps between the former silos of private, public, and personal networking domains. Since the network management and governance tasks have changed and continue to evolve rapidly, so too must the ways in which solutions and technologies address the tangled networks environment we all now live and work in.
Paul Merrell

The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle - 0 views

  • AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data. The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania. In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
  • With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
  • Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment. “Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”
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  • According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access. We “believe we have their entire network,” the slide’s author boasted about the operation against Gemalto. Additionally, the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companies’ core networks, giving it access to “sales staff machines for customer information and network engineers machines for network maps.” GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate the billing servers of cell companies to “suppress” charges in an effort to conceal the spy agency’s secret actions against an individual’s phone. Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and [was] working through the vast quantity of product.”
  • The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”
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    Remember all those NSA claims that no evidence of their misbehavior has emerged? That one should never take wing again. Monitoring call content without the involvement of any court? Without a warrant? Without probable cause?  Was there even any Congressional authorization?  Wiretapping unequivocally requires a judicially-approved search warrant. It's going to be very interesting to learn the government's argument for this misconduct's legality. 
Gary Edwards

Google's Enterprise Vision: Mobile First, In the Cloud - 0 views

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    Google "Innovation Nation" Conference in Washington, DC had an interesting conversation thread; that the move to Cloud Computing embraces a move for individual productivity to group productivity.  Not sure i agree with that.  The Windows Desktop-WorkGroup Productivity environment has dominated business since 1992.  Maybe Google might instead focus on the limited access of desktop workgroups and the fact that productivity was horribly crippled by the the PC's lack of communication.  The Web/Cloud magically combines and integrates communication with content and computation.  This is what makes cloud collaboration a genuine leap in productivity - no matter what the discipline.  Here's a question for Google: What's the productivity difference between desktop collaboration and cloud-collaboration? excerpt:  The meeting is the staple of corporate life. The whole day revolves around when a meeting will be, who will be there and what needs to be discussed. Yet, is this rote practice may have become counter-productive in today's world of the always on, always connected workplace. Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Take all those individuals, put their output together and have a meeting to sort it all out. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission. A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result. "The main message is that to be an effective [enterprise], we need to change from individual productivity to group productivity,"
Paul Merrell

Leaked docs show spyware used to snoop on US computers | Ars Technica - 0 views

  • Software created by the controversial UK-based Gamma Group International was used to spy on computers that appear to be located in the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Bahrain, according to a leaked trove of documents analyzed by ProPublica. It's not clear whether the surveillance was conducted by governments or private entities. Customer e-mail addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company, an independent consultant in Dubai, the Bosnian and Hungarian Intelligence services, a Dutch law enforcement officer, and the Qatari government.
  • The leaked files—which were posted online by hackers—are the latest in a series of revelations about how state actors including repressive regimes have used Gamma's software to spy on dissidents, journalists, and activist groups. The documents, leaked last Saturday, could not be readily verified, but experts told ProPublica they believed them to be genuine. "I think it's highly unlikely that it's a fake," said Morgan Marquis-Bore, a security researcher who while at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto had analyzed Gamma Group's software and who authored an article about the leak on Thursday. The documents confirm many details that have already been reported about Gamma, such as that its tools were used to spy on Bahraini activists. Some documents in the trove contain metadata tied to e-mail addresses of several Gamma employees. Bill Marczak, another Gamma Group expert at the Citizen Lab, said that several dates in the documents correspond to publicly known events—such as the day that a particular Bahraini activist was hacked.
  • The leaked files contain more than 40 gigabytes of confidential technical material, including software code, internal memos, strategy reports, and user guides on how to use Gamma Group software suite called FinFisher. FinFisher enables customers to monitor secure Web traffic, Skype calls, webcams, and personal files. It is installed as malware on targets' computers and cell phones. A price list included in the trove lists a license of the software at almost $4 million. The documents reveal that Gamma uses technology from a French company called Vupen Security that sells so-called computer "exploits." Exploits include techniques called "zero days" for "popular software like Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and many more." Zero days are exploits that have not yet been detected by the software maker and therefore are not blocked.
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  • Many of Gamma's product brochures have previously been published by the Wall Street Journal and Wikileaks, but the latest trove shows how the products are getting more sophisticated. In one document, engineers at Gamma tested a product called FinSpy, which inserts malware onto a user's machine, and found that it could not be blocked by most antivirus software. Documents also reveal that Gamma had been working to bypass encryption tools including a mobile phone encryption app, Silent Circle, and were able to bypass the protection given by hard-drive encryption products TrueCrypt and Microsoft's Bitlocker.
  • The documents also describe a "country-wide" surveillance product called FinFly ISP which promises customers the ability to intercept Internet traffic and masquerade as ordinary websites in order to install malware on a target's computer. The most recent date-stamp found in the documents is August 2, coincidung with the first tweet by a parody Twitter account, @GammaGroupPR, which first announced the hack and may be run by the hacker or hackers responsible for the leak. On Reddit, a user called PhineasFisher claimed responsibility for the leak. "Two years ago their software was found being widely used by governments in the middle east, especially Bahrain, to hack and spy on the computers and phones of journalists and dissidents," the user wrote. The name on the @GammaGroupPR Twitter account is also "Phineas Fisher." GammaGroup, the surveillance company whose documents were released, is no stranger to the spotlight. The security firm F-Secure first reported the purchase of FinFisher software by the Egyptian State Security agency in 2011. In 2012, Bloomberg News and The Citizen Lab showed how the company's malware was used to target activists in Bahrain. In 2013, the software company Mozilla sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company after a report by The Citizen Lab showed that a spyware-infected version of the Firefox browser manufactured by Gamma was being used to spy on Malaysian activists.
Gary Edwards

Six big trends to watch in 2011 | ZDNet - 0 views

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    These contrasting cross-currents are going to make 2011 a fascinating and turbulent year, one in which SaaS enters the tornado and mobile enters the bowling alley at the very same time as cloud trips over the chasm. I've decided to highlight six trends in enterprise computing for the coming year, but here's a seventh prediction: middle-of-the-road analysts and pundits will find it even harder than ever to make any sense of everything that's going on right now.
Gary Edwards

As Microsoft's monopoly crumbles, its mobile future is crucial | ZDNet - 1 views

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    Good charts based on Net Market Share Stats.... excerpt: After nearly a decade, Microsoft's reign as a monopoly is over. The consent decree in U.S. v. Microsoft expired last month, officially removing Microsoft from antitrust scrutiny by the United States Department of Justice. And the latest real-world data on web usage confirms that Microsoft's once-dominant position in the world of personal computing is crumbling. For the past four years, I've collected semi-annual snapshots of web usage from Net Market Share. The data for the first half of 2011 tell an ominous story for Microsoft. See for yourself:
Gary Edwards

2012 Survey Shows SMBs Increasingly Moving to Cloud Services [Infographic] - 0 views

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    Nice infographic!  Shows that great transition from Windows desktop client/server to Cloud Computing is well underway.  I've tried RingCentral, and it's very good.  But i much prefer Google Voice - especially since i have an HTC Android.  RingCentral only offers one advantage over gVoice; they have integrated fax.  Everything else about RingCentral seemed like a throwback to DOS applications.   gVoice is slowly evolving.  Seems like it's taking forever to complete the integration with gMail, gSearch, and gDocs.  But i can see the incredible potential of Cloud integrated communications, content and collaborative computing.  gVoice has a potential like no one else. excerpt: The results are in from our annual smartphone survey! We polled 300 RingCentral SMB customers about their mobile device adoption and cloud use. The key takeaway: 57% of business owners said the majority of their business-critical applications currently run in the cloud.
Gary Edwards

The Cloud Rises to Top of 2011 CIO Priorities - 0 views

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    For those that needed just a little more proof, Gartner (news, site) has confirmed cloud computing is hot. In fact, cloud technology is so hot that it topped Gartner's 2011 CIO Agenda. Even if you managed to resist the siren of prime time TV beckoning, "To the cloud!", it's unlikely you'll want to ignore the voices of over 2,000 CIOs . The Cloud Gartner released its survey of 2,014 CIOs representing more than US$ 160 billion in spending across 50 countries and 38 industries. Cloud computing, virtualization and mobile led the list of technical priorities.
Gary Edwards

Mobile Opportunity: Windows 8 - The Beginning of the End of Windows - 0 views

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    Michael Mace provides the best analysis and insight yet concerning Windows 8 and what it means to Microsoft, Windows, and Future of the Web.  Not sure i agree with the MSOffice future, but this is excellent thinking.  Glad i stumbled on Micheal Mace! excerpt: I've got to say, this is the first time in years that I've been deeply intrigued by something Microsoft announced.  Not just because it looks cool (it does), but because I think it shows clever business strategy on Microsoft's part.  And I can't even remember the last time I used the phrase "clever business strategy" and Microsoft in the same sentence. The announcement also has immense implications for the rest of the industry.  Whether or not Windows 8 is a financial success for Microsoft, we've now crossed a critical threshold. The old Windows of mice and icons is officially obsolete. That resets the playing field for everybody in computing. The slow death of Windows When Netscape first made the web important in personal computing, Microsoft responded by rapidly evolving Internet Explorer.  That response was broadly viewed as successful, but in retrospect maybe it was too successful for Microsoft's good.  It let the company go back to harvesting money from its Windows + Office monopoly, feeling pretty secure from potential challengers. Meanwhile, the focus of application innovation slipped away from Windows, toward web apps.  New software was developed first on the Internet, rather than on Windows.  Over time, Windows became more and more a legacy thing we kept because we needed backward compatibility, rather than a part of the next generation of computing. Windows was our past, the web was our future
Gary Edwards

Why Google Android is winning | The Open Road - CNET News - 0 views

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    Nice article from Matt Asay, who is now the COO at Canonical, the company behind Linux Ubuntu and Google's Chrome OS. excerpt:  As ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn remarks, "Just as the Internet takes friction out of the distribution and development process, open source for Google removes friction from the business process." In Android land, this means making it easy for device manufacturers and wireless telecoms to evaluate, develop on, and ship Android-based devices. And ship them they are, to the tune of 60,000 Android devices per day. As Wired noted after the recent Mobile World Congress: This year at the Mobile World Congress is the year of Android. Google's operating system debuted here two years ago....This year, Android is everywhere, on handsets from HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and even Garmin-Asus. If this were the world of computers, Android would be in a similar position to Windows: Pretty much every manufacturer puts it on its machines. There is one key distinction, though: Android is open source. It makes all the difference.
Gary Edwards

Road Warrior Gadgets - Business Insider - 0 views

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    Excellent list of the top ten gadgets for mobile computing. "Whether they're waiting at the airport, on an airplane, or driving on the open road, road warriors need to be able to stay connected and on top of their game. There are several options when it comes to gadgets, but here are the ones that every road warrior should have. "
Paul Merrell

How To Keep NSA Computers From Turning Your Phone Conversations Into Searchable Text - ... - 0 views

  • As soon as my article about how NSA computers can now turn phone conversations into searchable text came out on Tuesday, people started asking me: What should I do if I don’t want them doing that to mine? The solution, as it is to so many other outrageously invasive U.S. government tactics exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is, of course, Congressional legislation. I kid, I kid. No, the real solution is end-to-end encryption, preferably of the unbreakable kind. And as luck would have it, you can have exactly that on your mobile phone, for the price of zero dollars and zero cents.
  • The Intercept’s Micah Lee wrote about this in March, in an article titled: “You Should Really Consider Installing Signal, an Encrypted Messaging App for iPhone.” (Signal is for iPhone and iPads, and encrypts both voice and texts; RedPhone is the Android version of the voice product; TextSecure is the Android version of the text product.) As Lee explains, the open source software group known as Open Whisper Systems, which makes all three, is gaining a reputation for combining trustworthy encryption with ease of use and mobile convenience. Nobody – not your mobile provider, your ISP or the phone manufacturer — can promise you that your phone conversations won’t be intercepted in transit. That leaves end-to-end encryption – using a trustworthy app whose makers themselves literally cannot break the encryption — your best play.
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

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    Prepare to be blown away. I viewed a demo of Numecent today and then did some research. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the end of the shrink wrapped- Microsoft business model. It's also perhaps the end of software application design and construction as we know it. Mobile apps in particular will get blasted by the Numecent "Cloud - Paging" concept. Extraordinary stuff. I'll leave a few useful links on Diigo "Open Web". "Numecent, a company that has a new kind of cloud computing technology that could potentially completely reorganize the way software is delivered and handled - upending the business as we know it - has another big feather in its cap. The company is showing how enterprises can use this technology to instantly put all of their enterprise software in the cloud, without renegotiating contracts and licenses with their software vendors. It signed $3 billion engineering construction company Parsons as a customer. Parsons is using Numecent's tech to deliver 4 million huge computer-aided design (CAD) files to its nearly 12,000 employees around the world. CAD drawings are bigger than video files and they can only be opened and edited by specific CAD apps like AutoCAD. Numecent offers a tech called "cloud paging" which instantly "cloudifies" any Windows app. Instead of being installed on a PC, the enterprise setup can deliver the app over the cloud. Unlike similar cloud technologies (called virtualization), this makes the app run faster and continue working even when the Internet connection goes down. "It's offers a 95% reduction in download times and 95% in download network usage," CEO Osman Kent told Business Insider. "It makes 8G of memory work like 800G." It also lets enterprises check in and check out software, like a library book, so more PCs can legally share software without violating licensing terms, saving money on software license fees, Kent says. Parson is using it to let employees share over 700 huge applications such as Au
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    Sounds like Microsoft must-buy-or-kill technology.
Gary Edwards

Long Live the Web: Tim Berners-Lee at Scientific American - 0 views

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    Lengthy article written by Tim Berners-Lee describes his concerns for the future of the Open Web.  Tim details the history of the Web, describing the principles that made the Web an Open Platform of universal access, exchange and collaborative computing.   excerpt: Universality Is the Foundation Several principles are key to assuring that the Web becomes ever more valuable. The primary design principle underlying the Web's usefulness and growth is universality. When you make a link, you can link to anything. That means people must be able to put anything on the Web, no matter what computer they have, software they use or human language they speak and regardless of whether they have a wired or wireless Internet connection. The Web should be usable by people with disabilities. It must work with any form of information, be it a document or a point of data, and information of any quality-from a silly tweet to a scholarly paper. And it should be accessible from any kind of hardware that can connect to the Internet: stationary or mobile, small screen or large.
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