Tech News

PC World - Anyone with the remotest interest in ICT development will have noticed the battle raging at the "bottom of the pyramid," where... Tags: development

You might have thought Windows Vista was a finished product. But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week described his company's newest operating system as "a work in progress."

According to a report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Ballmer told a professional gathering in that city that the product has gotten "a lot of things right," but "we have a lot of things we need to learn from." While acknowledging complaints about the new OS, Ballmer also said the company has a fair share of satisfied users.

Never Again

One of those lessons to be learned, he said, is not to go five years between releases of an OS -- the time from the release of Windows XP to Vista. "We can't ever let that happen again," he said. Earlier this month, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made a point of noting during a conference that Vista's successor, currently called Windows 7, will be completed within a year.

This admission of less than completeness comes at a difficult time for Vista, which was first released in January 2007. Earlier this month, analysts from industry research firm Gartner said the Windows franchise and Vista in particular were in danger of collapsing.

Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver, speaking at a conference, echoed many of the complaints Microsoft has been hearing from consumers and businesses. They cited development times for Windows releases that were too long, especially in relation to the innovation delivered, and the failure to deliver a consistent experience between platforms.

MacDonald and Silver also cited compatibility issues and the substantial hardware requirements to run Vista. And they predicted that, by 2011, there will be more operating system-agnostic applications in the market, notably those hosted on the Internet. This will diminish the dominant position Windows has held for decades, they said.

'Got That Right'

Some consumers... Tags: development, mac, microsoft, research

Apple's MacBook Air laptop features a solid-state drive (SSD). So does HP's new Mini-Note. While still a tiny part of the market, SSDs are starting to worry traditional hard-drive manufacturers. A lot.

In a sign of the showdown between old and new storage technologies, Seagate, the market leader in traditional hard drives, filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, claiming that SSD manufacturer STEC has violated four of its patents covering the interface between storage and computer.

Seagate CEO William D. Watkins said SSDs don't yet present "a big financial issue, because the market is just taking off. But that's why we want to set things straight now." The patents at issue appear to be rather recent. Watkins told the New York Times that Seagate spent $7 billion over the last year on the technology at the heart of the suit.

But STEC says the lawsuit is meritless and is "primarily motivated by competitive concerns rather than a desire to protect [Seagate's] intellectual property." Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC, said the lawsuit is a case of Seagate "defending its turf," and is a sign that the company is threatened by the emerging technology. Wilkison said Seagate lawyers never contacted his company before filing the lawsuit.

Attack on SSDs?

Manouch Moshayedi, STEC's chief executive, said his company has been "entirely respectful of the intellectual property that has been developed by others." He said SSD technologies simply pose a competitive threat to the hard disk drive industry, and that Seagate is trying to "slow down the growth that STEC's SSD business is experiencing, particularly in the enterprise segment. We have a high degree of confidence in STEC's intellectual property portfolio."

In particular, STEC believes its technology predates Seagate's patents -- by more than a decade. According to the company, "STEC was... Tags: development, mac, technology

Kyocera said yesterday that it has completed its $375M acquisition of Sanyo's global mobile phone business, and created a new U.S. mobile phone unit headquartered in Chatsworth. Kyocera, which also owns San Diego-based Kyocera Wireless Corp., said that it has carved out Sanyo's U.S. mobile phone business into a new company, Kyocera Sanyo Telecom, Inc. (KSTI). The new company focuses on development, sales, marketing, and service of Sanyo mobile phones in North America. The Chatsworth-based firm's customers include Spring and Qwest, and the unit is headed by Atsushi "Andy" Kodera. Kyocera said the deal included assets relating to research and development, design, materials procurement, manufacture, sales and marketing of CDMA handsets; PHS handsets and base stations, and other technology related to wireless communications. Tags: design, development, research, technology

A consortium of mobile communications giants has released the first version of a Linux-based mobile platform for next-generation smartphones and handsets. The LiMo platform is a plug-in, hardware-independent architecture constructed around open-source standards. It features a secure runtime environment for application downloads.

The technology has been commercially deployed and proven in handsets already on the market, and it is expected to be in more devices later this year, said LiMo Foundation Executive Director Morgan Gillis.

"With Release 1 of the LiMo platform now completed, LiMo Foundation has established a scalable and sustainable mobile-device platform that will spur rapid innovation and contributions from all LiMo members," Gillis said.

Embracing Linux

In the battle for smartphone platforms, LiMo will be going head-to-head with Google's Android and Apple's new iPhone software development kit (SDK). However, the LiMo Foundation, which was founded in January 2007, remains optimistic that its open-source underpinnings will help its platform gain traction.

"The mobile industry is embracing Linux and openness as the key enablers of lower device-development costs, increased flexibility and quicker time to market for innovative services of all kinds," said LiMo Foundation Chairman Kiyohito Nagata, who also represents Japan-based network operator NTT DoCoMo. "LiMo Foundation is driving these trends."

Third-party developers will use LiMo's application-programming interface specifications to field next-generation applications across a global base of mobile devices. Moreover, software designers will be able to implement middleware components for the LiMo platform by drawing on their C or C++ programming skills.

SDKs for Native, Webkit and Java operating environments are scheduled in the second half of this year, the fledgling nonprofit organization said. The consortium is already working on Release 2, slated for introduction by year's end.

TI Weighs In

In slightly more than one year, the LiMo Foundation has consistently rolled out its deliverables on schedule, Gillis noted. And... Tags: design, development, linux, programming, software, technology

Adobe Systems has announced a prerelease alpha of its Adobe AIR software for the Linux operating system. Version 1.0 of AIR for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X was launched last year.

The move provides additional tools for Linux developers to build rich Internet applications, and RIAs created for Mac and Windows users can now be extended to Linux users without additional platform-specific code.

Joining the Linux Foundation

Adobe also announced that it is joining the Linux Foundation to boost the growth of Linux-based RIA technologies, and that it is making an update to the alpha version of Flex Builder 3 for Linux available. Recently, Adobe released as open source the software development kit for the Flex framework and for BlazeDS, which supports data-intensive RIAs. The company also said it continues to contribute to the open-source Tamarin virtual machine, the core of its Flash player.

David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe's platform business unit, said these releases "provide a first-class application runtime and RIA-creation tool to the Linux community."

Flex is a free, open-source framework for building RIAs that can run on the desktop with AIR or in a browser with Adobe's Flash Player. On the desktop, RIAs can have access to offline data that has been constantly updated via the computer's network connection. In the browser, they can operate with the responsiveness more common to desktop applications.

Adobe Versus Microsoft

Al Hilwa, program director at industry research firm IDC, said these moves help Adobe secure additional credibility in the open-source community. "Open-source developers look at all large vendors with a suspicious eye," he noted, "but Adobe's done much more with the open-source community than, say, Microsoft -- relative to its size."

Hilwa pointed out that Adobe "is trying hard to cozy up to that community," in large part because of its ongoing battle against Microsoft's... Tags: adobe, development, linux, mac, microsoft, research, software, tools

Red Hat Inc. said its fourth-quarter profit rose 7 percent as the software distributor worked to expand the footprint of its open source products with costly internal investments.

New CEO James Whitehurst believes Red Hat is now ready to continue rapid growth through an economic downturn as the Raleigh-based company pitches its free software to organizations looking to cut their tech budgets.

"It's my hypothesis for why we continue to see robust demand while others seem to be having issues," Whitehurst said in an interview. "We're known for value, and when you're looking to cut budgets, we're a logical name that comes to mind."

Unlike Microsoft Corp., Red Hat makes money from its Linux operating system and other software by selling subscriptions for service.

Red Hat said Thursday it earned $22 million, or 10 cents per share, in its first quarter under new CEO James Whitehurst, compared to $20.5 million, also 10 cents per share, a year earlier.

Red Hat said its revenue rose 27 percent to $141.5 million in the quarter ending Feb. 29.

The earnings report was in line with expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial, who on average predicted the company earned 10 cents per share on revenue of $141.1 million. Excluding one-time items, Red Hat said it earned $42.7 million, or 20 cents per share, while analysts expected earnings per share of 19 cents on the same basis.

In after-hours trading Thursday, Red Hat shares rose $1.29, or 7.4 percent, after closing the regular session at $17.53.

Rising subscriptions and revenue came at the expense of costly internal investments in engineering, sales and marketing. Sales and marketing expenses rose 31 percent to $52 million while research and development costs rose 32 percent to $26.3 million, Red Hat said.

Charlie Peters, Red Hat's executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the return on investments... Tags: development, linux, microsoft, research, software

Search - through services such as Google or Yahoo! - is undoubtedly the most important development in marketing in the last ten years, according to the overwhelming majority of 350 senior technology executives surveyed by Eurocom Worldwide, the Global PR Network, in association with UK member agency, Six Degrees.

Eurocom Worldwide’s Annual IT Confidence Survey shows that 4 out of 5 executives (79%) highlight the importance of search engines and their impact on corporate communications and marketing. This reflects the continuing importance of web search engine technologies in sorting and presenting increasing amounts of information to web users, regardless of whether they are professional users or consumers.

The survey also finds that 3 out of 5 executives (59%) expect the company they work for to increase expenditure on Internet advertising in 2008. Internet marketing is rated as the best value for money in the marketing communications mix (43% of respondents) just ahead of Public Relations (42%) and well ahead of traditional technology industry marketing methods such as trade shows and exhibitions (13%).

“The Eurocom Worldwide survey shows that corporations and businesses around the world are going through a fundamental shift towards embracing the Internet as an engine for marketing,” said Network Director Mads Christensen, Eurocom Worldwide. “This applies across all sectors from business-to-consumer (B2C) to business-to-business (B2B).”

ATTITUDES TO BLOGGING
The Eurocom Worldwide Annual IT Confidence Survey also explored attitudes to blogging with over a quarter (28%) of respondents saying they or their company have a blog. Sixteen per cent expect to adopt one in the next year.

However, the survey findings highlight that nearly half of all respondents (47%) do not blog. Respondents’ main reasons for this are that they don’t see the value (42%) or it is too time consuming (32%). “The jury seems to be still out on the merits of corporate blogging as a tool,” commented Jennifer Janson, Managing Director at Six Degrees. The Eurocom Worldwide Survey finds that of those who blog, 50% do so to improve interaction with the public or with customers. Twenty-one per cent blog to participate in industry debate and issues. Nineteen per cent blog to raise their profile and 10% do so to boost Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

“Corporate blogging requires dedicating time and resource, as well as a commitment to transparency, which may not sit well with many traditional companies,” added Six Degrees’s Jennifer Janson. “However, its value in terms of search engine optimisation and interaction with the public is potentially enormous.” Tags: blog, development, technology

Search - through services such as Google or Yahoo! - is undoubtedly the most important development in marketing in the last ten years, according to the overwhelming majority of 350 senior technology executives surveyed by Eurocom Worldwide, the Global PR Network, in association with UK member agency, Six Degrees.

Eurocom Worldwide’s Annual IT Confidence Survey shows that 4 out of 5 executives (79%) highlight the importance of search engines and their impact on corporate communications and marketing. This reflects the continuing importance of web search engine technologies in sorting and presenting increasing amounts of information to web users, regardless of whether they are professional users or consumers.

The survey also finds that 3 out of 5 executives (59%) expect the company they work for to increase expenditure on Internet advertising in 2008. Internet marketing is rated as the best value for money in the marketing communications mix (43% of respondents) just ahead of Public Relations (42%) and well ahead of traditional technology industry marketing methods such as trade shows and exhibitions (13%).

“The Eurocom Worldwide survey shows that corporations and businesses around the world are going through a fundamental shift towards embracing the Internet as an engine for marketing,” said Network Director Mads Christensen, Eurocom Worldwide. “This applies across all sectors from business-to-consumer (B2C) to business-to-business (B2B).”

ATTITUDES TO BLOGGING
The Eurocom Worldwide Annual IT Confidence Survey also explored attitudes to blogging with over a quarter (28%) of respondents saying they or their company have a blog. Sixteen per cent expect to adopt one in the next year.

However, the survey findings highlight that nearly half of all respondents (47%) do not blog. Respondents’ main reasons for this are that they don’t see the value (42%) or it is too time consuming (32%). “The jury seems to be still out on the merits of corporate blogging as a tool,” commented Jennifer Janson, Managing Director at Six Degrees. The Eurocom Worldwide Survey finds that of those who blog, 50% do so to improve interaction with the public or with customers. Twenty-one per cent blog to participate in industry debate and issues. Nineteen per cent blog to raise their profile and 10% do so to boost Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

“Corporate blogging requires dedicating time and resource, as well as a commitment to transparency, which may not sit well with many traditional companies,” added Six Degrees’s Jennifer Janson. “However, its value in terms of search engine optimisation and interaction with the public is potentially enormous.” Tags: blog, development, technology

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