July 30, 2011

4 power tools for students

Filed Under Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Azure | Edit

Your kids can do a great job on even the toughest school projects with just a computer running the Windows operating system and the right information resources. Research no longer requires a trip to the neighborhood library, because a whole world of information—and the tools to put it all together—are right at home on your family computer.



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Here are four homework power tools that can turn your children’s ho-hum project into A+ work:

Microsoft Math 3.0

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft OneNote 2010

Microsoft Office.com images

Using these four tools can enrich your student’s learning experience and help them produce high-quality work.

You can find more tips for using these and many other tools for learning at Microsoft Education. Check out the Microsoft Student website for software offers and discounts, creative educational games and competitions, tips for staying organized, a student newsletter, lounge, and Facebook page, along with other resources to help students of all ages and abilities to make the most of their learning experience and to have fun doing it.

Microsoft Math
If your middle-school or high-school student is looking for just one resource to help them save time and complete high-quality math and science homework, Microsoft Math is it. From basic math to precalculus to physics, Microsoft Math helps students visualize and see mathematical and scientific concepts as they’ve never seen them before. It gives them step-by-step instructions to help them tackle even the most difficult problems, while gaining a deeper understanding of fundamental concepts.

Microsoft Math includes:

Step-by-step instructions to help solve difficult math problems with the Step-by-Step Equation Solver.

A full-featured graphing calculator, with large two-dimensional (2-D) and enhanced three-dimensional (3-D) color graphs to better illustrate problems and concepts.

The Formulas and Equations Library—a resource with more than 100 commonly used equations and formulas to help you identify and apply the right one for your problem.

The Triangle Solver—a graphing tool that helps you explore and better understand triangles and their parts.

The Unit Conversion Tool—a handy tool that quickly and easily converts units of measure, including length, area, volume, weight, temperature, pressure, energy, power, velocity, and time.

Ink Handwriting Support that recognizes handwritten problems and works with Tablet PCs and ultra-mobile PCs.
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Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
PowerPoint 2010 can help your kids put all the information they gather together into a dazzling presentation that their classmates and teachers will appreciate.

An easy-to-use but sophisticated program, PowerPoint 2010 includes dozens of ready-made slide templates to choose from in many categories, such as academic (now including Spanish class presentations), animals, nature, astronomy, conservation, and world culture. Your students can simply choose a design template, plug in their information, select the slide transitions they want, and be ready to give their presentation to the class. It also allows students to design their own look and feel for their slide presentations.

PowerPoint 2010 includes many new and improved features, many of which students will especially appreciate. For example, you can now automatically save versions of presentations, embed, edit, and play videos in presentations, use transitions with 3-D motion graphics effects, and turn your presentation into a video. For students on the go (and who isn’t these days?), the new PowerPoint Web App is a great advantage. They can store their presentation on a web server and work on it from anywhere, just by opening the presentation in their web browser. That means they can work even when they’re away from home, and they can easily collaborate with other students on group projects, even if their schedules and locations don’t overlap. All Office Web Apps are available by signing in to Windows Live.

If you’re switching from an earlier version of PowerPoint and you want to get up to speed fast, visit the PowerPoint Getting Started site to learn the basics, find the commands on the new ribbon, or take a brief introductory training course.
In Editing view, in PowerPoint Web App, you can add and delete content and format text. You can also add, delete, duplicate, and hide slides.

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Microsoft OneNote 2010
Students have to gather and organize data from multiple sources, in addition to working on group projects with classmates and juggling classes, meetings, volunteer work, and social activities. OneNote 2010, a note-taking program that makes it easy to take, organize, manage, and share notes, can help simplify all these tasks.

Unlike paper systems or word processing applications, OneNote 2010 combines the ability to capture typed and handwritten text, diagrams, drawings, webpage content, and audio notes in one place, with the flexibility to organize and reuse them any way you want. There are many ways OneNote 2010 can help your kids in their studies. Kids can use it to record lectures, create outlines, take notes when they do research online, and organize their notes by page and section. After they’ve done their research, they can quickly create To Do lists and summaries of other tasks from the note tags. OneNote 2010 has many new features that students will love, including the familiar Office ribbon for commands, the ability to create and display equations, touch support, a mini translator, and automatic linking to the notes you’re taking, so they’ll never lose a reference. OneNote 2010 Web App is also new. Students can use it to sync their notebooks to the cloud using Windows Live and then read and edit them anywhere from any computer, using a web browser.

With OneNote, your kids can’t lose their notes or notebooks, they don’t have to carry heavy backpacks, and they can easily share notebooks with their classmates or teachers. Read Top reasons to use OneNote 2010 in the classroom.
You can capture many different kinds of sources in OneNote and keep all related information together on one page. Note tags help you keep track of your To Do list, questions, definitions, and much more.

Whether you’re new to OneNote or you’re switching from an earlier version, you may want to visit the Getting Started page to help you learn basics fast, find commands on the new ribbon, or take a short training on the new features.
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Microsoft Office.com images
No presentation would be complete without some kind of art—a photo, drawing, cartoon, or media clip.

Your students can search for and insert clip art right from PowerPoint 2010. If they want even more choices, they can access more than 150,000 pieces of art, photos, sounds, and animation on the Microsoft Office.com images site download what they want, and then insert it.

To access clip art and other images from PowerPoint:On the Insert tab, in the Images group, click Clip Art.

In the clip art pane, in the Search box, type what you are searching for.

In the Results should be box, select the check box for the kind of media you’re looking for—Illustrations, Photographs, Videos, Audio, or All Media Types.

Click Go.

Browse the images, and double-click the one that you want. PowerPoint immediately inserts it in your presentation.

Note: If you don’t see what you want and you want to search for more images on the Office.com site, all you have to do is click the Find more at Office.com link at the bottom of the clip art pane.

To download free clip art and other images from Office.com:Go to the Office.com images site.

Search the clip art categories for something you like.

Double-click the image. On the new page that opens, you can click Copy to clipboard to paste it in the board on the left while you continue to browse, or you can click Download if you want to use the image. If an image is close to but not exactly what you’re looking for, click More in This Category, or click See Similar Images to view a one-screen collage of similar images that you can browse. Double-click any thumbnail to add it to the clipboard on the left.

In the File Download dialog box, click Save. Navigate to where you want to save the image on your computer, and then click Save.

To insert the image in your presentation, on the Insert tab, in the Images group, click Picture. In the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the image, and then double-click it to insert it in your presentation.

PowerPoint 2010 gives you even more creative choices for using clip art in your presentations than previous versions—your kids can apply artistic textures and effects to the clip art and other images in their presentations, and they can copy and paste animated effects from one shape to another.

Each of these four tools makes it easy for your student to research and create high-quality school projects. But even more important, these homework power tools can open your children’s minds to a world of curiosity, ideas, inspiration, and creativity.

July 27, 2011

Here's how Microsoft games the patent system to get Android licensing fees

In the last several weeks, a host of makers of Android devices have agreed to pay Microsoft fees for alleging using Microsoft patents when deploying Android on their devices. Why is that happening? It appears that Microsoft may have found a way to legally game the patent system.



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Quite a few phone makers have agreed to pay the fees. Last year, HTC agree to pay royalties for the patents. Then in the last week in June, two more manufacturers inked a deal with Microsoft. Velocity Micro signed a deal for for its Android-based Cruz table, and General Dynamics Itronix signed a deal for a small Android GPS device that can be worn on the wrist.

More recently, Onkyo signed a similar deal, as did Wistron, for smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

Why are these companies agreeing to pay up? Timothy Lee in his blog on Forbes, lays out the most logical and compelling reasons I've yet heard.

Lee notes that Microsoft has been stockpiling patents for many years, and that it currently has about 18,000 patents in its portfolio. Google, by way of contrast, has been granted only 700. This isn't because Microsoft is more innovative than Google, he argues. It's because Microsoft has instilled the idea of trying to grab any patent it can, no matter how far-fetched, into its culture. Google hasn't done the same.

What does this have to do with Android device makers agreeing to pay for Microsoft patents? Plenty. Lee says that Android has approximately 10 million lines of code in it, and then says:

Auditing 10 million lines of code for compliance with 18,000 patents is an impossible task—especially because the meaning of a patent's claims are often not clear until after they have been litigated. Most Silicon Valley companies don't even try to avoid infringing patents. They just ignore them and hope they'll be able to afford good lawyers when the inevitable lawsuits arrive.

Microsoft has a substantial budget for its legal staff, and can easily afford to sue as many manufacturers as it wants. Those manufacturers, though, typically don't have big legal warchests. They simply find it easier and less expensive to pay Microsoft for the patents, even if they don't believe they are infringing.

July 26, 2011

French security firm bashes Microsoft for talking up Mac malware

Threat from Mac 'backdoor' just isn't credible enough to mention, says Intego

Computerworld - A Mac security firm today criticized Microsoft for warning Mac users of new malware, saying that the threat simply wasn't worth mentioning.



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Late Monday, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), the group that researches malware and crafts signatures for the company's antivirus products, alerted users of a new Mac "backdoor," a program that, once installed, downloads additional attack code or lets hackers steal files from the compromised computer.

In a blog post, Microsoft malware engineer Meths Ferrer said that MMPC had found the backdoor, dubbed "Backdoor:MacOS X/Olyx.A," in an archived file that also contained a Windows backdoor called "Wolyx.A."

According to Ferrer, Olyx.A disguises itself as a Google application support file when run by the user, then establishes a remote connection to an IP address hosted in Seoul, South Korea.

But Intego, a French antivirus company that focuses exclusively on the Mac, took exception to Ferrer's blog post.

"They're making it out like this is something serious, but it's not in the wild at all and not being installed," said Peter James, a spokesman for Intego. "This is no big deal."

A backdoor must either be manually installed by a user -- perhaps after being tricked into running the file -- or packaged with other malware that exploits a vulnerability or uses social engineering tricks to get the victim to run the program, said James.

There's no evidence that Olyx is in wide circulation or being used by other malware, such as Mac-specific "scareware," the phony antivirus software that fools people into installing it after faking security alerts.

"It could so stuff if it was in the wild, but it's not," argued James.

It's rare to see one antivirus firm bash another for issuing a warning or alerting customers to a possible threat. But that didn't stop Intego, which saw Ferrer's blog as counterproductive.

"We get criticized every time we issue a security alert," said James, adding that people accuse it of crying wolf about threats to the Mac, which has historically been relatively immune to attacks because of its small market share.

Cyber criminals with profit in mind are much more likely to target Windows simply because Microsoft's operating system powers nearly 90% of the world's personal computers.

"When something is a real threat, we'll say something," said James. "If it's not, we don't publicize [the malware] by issuing an alert. We've got other things to do."

Intego created an Olyx definition for its VirusBarrier product on June 30.

"It's kind of interesting that Microsoft took a month [to mention Olyx] after it started circulating," James said, taking another swipe at the Redmond, Wash developer. "Maybe this is a sign that they're going to be analyzing more Mac malware in the future."

Other security companies have also made mention of Olyx, including Kaspersky Lab, which highlighted the backdoor in a malware report for June 2011.

July 25, 2011

Microsoft pays customer $250K to aid in move to Office 365

Network World - The University of Nebraska is dumping Lotus Notes for Microsoft's Office 365, and getting $250,000 from Microsoft to help make the move.




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"Microsoft is providing $250,000 in Business Incentive Funds to help us migrate from Lotus Notes to Office 365," the school's website says in an explanation of why it is moving faculty and staff to Microsoft's cloud service. "That funding will pay for some consulting and licenses to convert a large percentage of our users from Lotus Notes to Office 365. We will also use that funding to pay for a Microsoft Premier Support agreement covering email and Microsoft Office applications for the entire University."

LIMITS: Office 365 apps for iPhone and Android not coming anytime soon

Clearly, customers buying in bulk have some leverage in negotiating contracts with Microsoft, and education customers typically get better deals to begin with. For example, the Google Apps basic service for schools is free, with discounts for security and compliance software. But the scope of discounts provided by Microsoft isn't usually revealed in public.

"I don't know how common it is, but it certainly happens," Microsoft licensing analyst Paul DeGroot of Pica Communications tells Network World in an email. "In this case, you can see that it came down to a choice between Microsoft and Google, and Microsoft probably threw in $250,000 in BIFs [Business Incentive Funds] to cement the deal. This stuff generally isn't public, for good reason: customers might get the idea that if they're serious about Google, Microsoft may sweeten the pot to win the deal. Wouldn't want that to get out, would we?"

Nebraska will still be paying, though. The university's current costs are nearly $1 million per year, a number that apparently includes both software licenses and internal resources like hardware and staffing. That number will be cut to less than a half-million dollars per year.

"It is estimated that the annual operating costs associated with delivering an e-mail service can be reduced by more than 50% from the current cost, which is just under $1 million," the university says. "There will also be one-time upfront costs associated with migrating current Lotus Notes accounts to a new system, rewriting some applications and providing training, but significant savings will be realized over the long term." Nebraska will start the migration in the fall and finish by summer 2012.

Office 365 for educational customers includes Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Office Web Apps, and costs $10 per month for each faculty and staff member, but is free for students. Office desktop software can be purchased for another $14 per month for faculty and staff, or $2 for students.

July 23, 2011

Google buys facial recognition company PittPatt

IDG News Service - Google has acquired Pitts burgh Pattern Recognition, known as PittPatt, a company that develops technology for recognizing faces in images and video, according to PittPatt's website.




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Its founders began developing the technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in the 1990s and formed PittPatt in 2004 as a spin-off from the university, the website says.

"At Google, computer vision technology is already at the core of many existing products (such as Image Search, YouTube, Picasa, and Goggles), so it's a natural fit to join Google and bring the benefits of our research and technology to a wider audience," PittPatt said.

"We will continue to tap the potential of computer vision in applications that range from simple photo organization to complex video and mobile applications," the company said.

PittPatt's technology can do various types of facial recognition, including tracking faces in videos and sorting photos according to whose face appears in each photo, according to pages on its website that can still be found in Google's cache. It also makes a software development kit.

Terms were not disclosed and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

July 21, 2011

Hands on: Mac OS X, iOS morph into Lion

Apple goes all in on multi-touch gestures in its new OS

Computerworld - Apple has finally unleashed OS X 10.7 Lion, the revamped operating system for the company's desktops and laptops. Lion is the latest in a string of major OS revisions released over the past 11 years, and this newest cat borrows some tricks from Apple's mobile lineup.


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You can drag and drop all open windows across Spaces, so if you're browsing the Web and using iChat while working in iPhoto, you can drag the iPhoto window into its own Space and leave more distracting apps in another Space. (You add new Spaces by moving your cursor to the upper-left corner of the screen, prompting a slide-out window with a + sign in it to appear.) Using four fingers to swipe left or right will toggle through open Spaces, and swiping right eventually brings you to Dashboard.

Launchpad
Launchpad is similar to the home screen on the iPhone or iPad; it gives you quick access to all of your apps with one click or gesture. (See full visual tour.)

To make the different Spaces easier to discern, you can assign custom wallpapers to each by right-clicking the Desktop in whichever Space you're in and selecting Change Desktop Background. Apple has included new desktop pictures to get you started.

In Snow Leopard, I used Exposé all of the time, and since Mission Control essentially incorporates Exposé, I imagine I'll be using this new feature all the time. It's intuitive and easy to use. Most Lion users who've been accustomed to reaching for Exposé (through gestures, clicking a mouse button, clicking on the Dock icon or using the keyboard) will find Mission Control a welcome update.

Launchpad is Lion's new app organization scheme that mimics the one used in iOS 4, right down to the numeric badge notifications on app icons. Like the home screen on the iPhone and iPad, Launchpad arranges applications in a grid, but the Lion version supports up to 40 icons and folders on the screen. (You can have up to three screens of apps, with 40 in each one.)

The apps can be arranged through drag-and-drop, and you can move them to a different space by dragging them to the edge of the screen -- just as you move apps on the iPhone to a different screen. You can also create folders of similar apps à la iOS by dragging one app icon onto another. If you hold down the option key with Launchpad running, the icons jiggle, allowing apps that have been downloaded from the App Store to be deleted. And you can drag apps from the Launchpad to the Dock.

For many users, Launchpad may be more about eye candy than function. It's not that different from having a shortcut to your applications folder in the Dock. But if you have a trackpad, Launchpad is much more useful, since you can call it up with a five-finger "clench" gesture. That gesture offers a quick and easy way to access apps, and trumps navigating to the Dock because it saves you a couple of clicks. Considering how often power users go through the action of launching and relaunching apps, streamlining the launch process is a good thing.

In essence, what Apple has done is to build a redundant -- and eye-catching -- way to quickly access apps. As always, you can open a Finder window and navigate to them the old-fashioned way.
LaunchPad gives you immediate access to your applications. You can click on the LaunchPad icon in the Dock or use a gesture to activate this feature. Just as in iOS, apps can be grouped together and accessed by clicking on the app group's icon. You can also move apps to different windows by dragging them to the edge of the screen. Holding down the option key allows you to delete apps purchased through the Mac App Store, much as you can delete them in iOS.
Mail and Safari tweaks

Mail gets a fair number of upgrades, as does Safari, both of them gaining features from the mobile versions.

Mail 5.0 looks and operates suspiciously like its iOS cousin, and for good reason: The iPad version was the inspiration for Mail in Lion. Visually, the biggest change for Mail is that it's gone widescreen, and the interface is more streamlined. Just as on the iPad, emails in your in-box are listed on the left and message contents show up on the right. (If you like the old view, it is still there and can be activated by going to Mail > Preferences > Viewing and selecting "Classic view.")

There's a new Favorites bar below the Mail buttons where you can add shortcuts to various mailboxes, RSS feeds or other email-related items just by dragging them into place. (It's like the Bookmarks bar in Safari.) The Favorites bar has a Show/Hide button for the mailbox sidebar, which is hidden by default, as well as access to a unified Inbox, Drafts, Sent messages, Notes, and Flagged Items. Each has a drop-down menu that lets you navigate to your email accounts.

July 20, 2011

Apple patches 58 Safari bugs to deflect drive-by attacks

Safari 5.1, the browser bundled with Lion, also makes its way to Snow Leopard
Apple today updated Safari to version 5.1, patching 58 security vulnerabilities and adding several new features, including sandboxing on Mac OS X 10.7.




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Safari 5.1 is the browser bundled with Lion, the operating system Apple released earlier today, but it will also run on Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. A separate Safari update to version 5.0.6 was also issued today for users running Mac OS X 10.5, or Leopard.

The update patched a total of 58 flaws in Safari, 14 of them specific to the Windows edition, one that affected only the Mac version, and 44 that impact both platforms. Forty-seven of the 58 were accompanied by Apple's "arbitrary code execution" phrasing, indicating that the company considered them critical.

Unlike rival Microsoft, Apple does not tag vulnerabilities with threat-level labels.

Safari was last patched in April when Apple fixed two flaws. The month before that, however, Apple addressed 62 vulnerabilities in a massive security update.

The bulk of the bugs patched today -- 43 of the 58 -- were in WebKit, the open-source browser engine that powers Safari and also Google's Chrome.

Most of those were memory flaws.

"Multiple memory corruption issues existed in WebKit," said Apple in the security advisory that accompanied the Safari 5.1 update. "Visiting a maliciously-crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution."

Apple's description means that the vulnerabilities could be exploited via "drive-by" attacks that only require cyber criminals to trick victims into visiting a malware-serving URL.

Along with the patches, Apple also added new features to Safari 5.1, including Reading List, a feature inspired by the third-party program Instapaper, that eliminates Web ads on content marked for later viewing.

Safari 5.1 supports several Lion-only features as well, ranging from the operating system's multi-touch support and full-screen view to automatic resume and "sandboxing," an anti-exploit technology that isolates the browser from the rest of the machine.
Reading List
Safari 5.1 runs on Snow Leopard, but only some features -- like Reading List -- are available. The new browser runs best on Lion.

Like Chrome has done since its 2008 debut, Safari 5.1 insulates the operating system and other applications from any code executed in the browser, including attack code.

"If a website contains malicious code intended to capture personal data or take control of your computer, sandboxing automatically blocks it to keep your computer and your information safe," Apple claimed on its Safari 5.1 website today.

Chrome's sandbox has kept it more secure than other browsers from attacks, including those launched by top-notch researchers at the annual Pwn2Own challenge, where Google's browser has never been hacked.

Safari can be downloaded for Leopard or Snow Leopard on a Mac, and for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 on a PC, from Apple's website. Mac OS X users will be notified of the new version automatically, while Windows users already running Safari will be alerted by the Apple Software Update tool.

July 19, 2011

Microsoft beefs up Outlook-to-Hotmail security

Adds HTTPS support to Outlook Hotmail Connector tool for Windows

Computerworld - Microsoft on Thursday boosted the security of a tool that lets Outlook users send and receive messages through the company's Web-based Hotmail service.





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The new Outlook Hotmail Connector supports HTTPS, a protocol that encrypts all traffic between the email client and the Windows Live Hotmail service.

Microsoft added an all-HTTPS option to Hotmail in November 2010, in part as a reaction to Firesheep, a Firefox add-on released the month earlier that let anyone scan an unsecured Wi-Fi network and hijack others' access to Facebook, Twitter and a host of other services.

This week's update to Outlook Hotmail Connector is a follow-up to Microsoft's 2010 move.

"Using a connection with HTTPS helps you be even more confident that your account is safer from hijackers, and that your private information remains private," the Outlook team wrote on its official blog Thursday.

The new tool encrypts communication between Outlook and the Windows Live email, calendar and contacts services.

Google's Gmail beat Hotmail to the HTTPS punch by years.

Gmail users have had the option of encrypting all Gmail traffic since 2008, but in mid-January 2010, Google enabled HTTPS by default on the same day it accused Chinese hackers of breaking into its systems and trying to access the Gmail accounts of human rights activists who live in the country.

Microsoft has also updated the consumer-grade Windows Live Mail to support HTTPS. Unlike its Outlook Express predecessor, which was bundled with Windows XP, Windows Live Mail is an optional download for Vista and Windows 7.

Outlook Hotmail Connector can be downloaded in 32-bit and 64-bit versions for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 on Windows. There is no similar tool for Outlook 2011, the email program included with Office for Mac 2011.

The Windows Live Essentials update -- which includes the HTTPS-enabled Windows Live Mail -- is also available on Microsoft's download website.

July 18, 2011

Microsoft plans 22 patches for Windows, Office next week

Sole critical bulletin will fix flaws only in Vista and Windows 7
Computerworld - Microsoft today said it will issue four security updates next week, only one of which is pegged as critical, to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Visio 2003.




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Next Tuesday's patch lineup is smaller than June's, when Microsoft shipped 16 updates that fixed 34 flaws. The company typically delivers a lighter load in odd-numbered months. In May, for instance, Microsoft shipped just two updates -- the company calls them "bulletins" -- to patch only three vulnerabilities.

Of the four updates slated, one will be rated "critical," the highest threat label in Microsoft's four-step scoring system, while the other three will be marked "important," the second-most-dire ranking.

Next week's Patch Tuesday vulnerability count will be among the largest for the year, with its 22 bested only by April's 64 and June's 34, and tied with February's collection.

But the bugs-per-bulletins ratio is the highest for the year, observed Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, hinting of next week's releases.

"I think we'll see one bulletin with a very high number of vulnerabilities," said Storms. "We've seen that happen several times this year, most recently last month when it patched eight bugs in Excel with one update.

In April, Microsoft patched 30 vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel device driver with a single bulletin, a record for one update.

Storms said that the multi-bug update coming next Tuesday may fix numerous "elevation of privilege" vulnerabilities or a large number of "DDL load hijacking" flaws.

The former describes a bug attackers can use to gain complete administrative control of a system that they can already access, perhaps through an exploit of a separate vulnerability. DLL load hijacking, on the other hand, is the term used for attacks that rely on tricking applications or operating systems into loading a malicious file with the same name as a legitimate DLL, or dynamic link library.

Microsoft has issued more than a dozen DLL load hijacking updates since last November. In May, the Slovenian firm Acros Security announced that more DLL load hijacking updates were necessary to plug holes in Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). At the time, Microsoft said only that it was investigating the Acros report.

The sole critical update scheduled for next week affects Windows Vista and Windows 7, but does not impact the much older Windows XP or any of Microsoft's server operating systems.

Because Windows XP will be immune to the one or more vulnerabilities in that update, Storms said the bug had to be in code first used in Vista, then reused in Windows 7. He noted there are multiple candidates that fit the bill, including the security prompting component called UAC -- for "user account control" -- but said there wasn't sufficient information to take an educated guess.

July 17, 2011

Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet III

After using only Google's new social network for a week -- forsaking all others -- here's what I learned

Computerworld - On July 8, I went on the Google+ Diet, using Google's new social network for all my online communication. As part of the diet, I stopped using Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and several other services. I even stopped using e-mail.





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There's an "Incoming" option, for viewing the posts of people you have not put into any Circles, but who have Circled you.

It's a more complex, but friction-free, way to follow.

Google+ is still a work in progress

There's no search yet. Apple (as of late Friday) hasn't approved the iOS app. Google hasn't released an API for third-party companies to build on. Some of the best features of Google+ are still in the future.
Google Plus

* Elgan: What I lost on the Google+ Diet
* Visual tour: 8 Google+ add-ons, extensions, and downloads
* With 10M users, Google+ is becoming a social competitor
* Google races to create business version of Google+
* Privacy, contact updates added to Google+
* Can Facebook and Google+ coexist?
* Google+ fervor may be making Facebook nervous
* Google to developers: Stay tuned for Google+ tools
* Google+ hit with spam bug
* Visual tour: 10 Google+ tips for beginners

Continuing coverage: Google+

There are random glitches and minor problems that crop up here and there. Google keeps making changes.

If you don't want to use a beta service, you may want to wait on Google+. On the other hand, it's already more stable than Twitter.

Google+ is a platform for third-party innovation

Google+ is like Twitter in that other companies will be able to build tools and interfaces that enable you to customize your experience. Dozens of browser plug-ins have already emerged for this purpose. Within a year or two, there will probably be hundreds or thousands of these.

People go on diets to lose something. What have I lost on the Google+ Diet? For one thing, I've missed out on a lot of friend and family chatter on Facebook. I've probably also missed out on some content on Twitter, which still has far more users and far more going on in general because it's been around longer.

However, I've also lost the anxiety caused by having my social life spread out on so many social services. I've missed out on a lot of pointless e-mail and spam.

More important, I've gained a much better way to interact online, and gained a lot of new friends.

The Google+ Diet isn't for everybody. But I recommend that everybody at least try to consolidate disparate social media into as few as possible. And I can tell you, Google+ should be one of the few social sites you use -- if not the only one.

July 16, 2011

10 Secrets for Searching for a Job During a Recession

Focusing your efforts on jobs in growing industries and demonstrating how your work has generated revenue are just two simple ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the job seekers competing for positions in a down economy.




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CIO — With the U.S. economy inching closer to a recession, the job market is changing dramatically. Competition for jobs is heating up as an increasing number of skilled professionals, laid off from their companies, flood the market. Firms are reconsidering their hiring plans as they wait for the softening economy to firm up. And while the Internet has made it easier than ever for job seekers to post their resumes, that convenience has made it harder for candidates to stand out. Even the basics of a job search—resumes, cover letters, interviews and negotiations—have changed as a result of the economy. It's no longer an employee's market, and job seekers have to adapt accordingly—sometimes in radical ways that benefit employers more than job seekers.

If you're tired of struggling to find a job and don't want an economic slowdown to hurt your chances of landing a new one, follow the best practices outlined in this story for conducting a job search when times are tight.
MORE ON JOB SEARCHES
CIO Job Search: A Real Life Chronicle
How to Create and Execute an Employer-Centric Job Search Strategy
Searching the Hidden Job Market for Opportunities
Signs Your Job Search Isn't Working and Ways to Improve It
1. Forget the "shotgun" job search method.

Many people still use the "shotgun" method for conducting a job search. They read the Sunday job ads; they submit a standard resume to as many job boards as they can find; they call on a few friends. Then they submit their standard resume to either a handful of opportunities each week, or they submit to dozens of jobs with the same resume as long as the position sounds remotely interesting.

"As job seekers become more fearful of the economy, they fall back on the shotgun method because it feels like they're out there working it," says Phil Rosenberg, former division director of Robert Half International who's now CEO and founder of reCareered, a career counseling and resume writing firm.

The problem with the shotgun method is that it does not work, especially in a job market where employers have the pick of the litter. In fact, it does more harm than good. Recruiters are not likely to want to help you because you have given all potential hiring firms free access to your information, which negates the value they provide to their clients. Second, you commoditize yourself: By posting your resume everywhere, you become indistinguishable from a plethora of job seekers with similar skills. Consequently, hiring firms can immediately negotiate on price, driving your salary down or out. What's more, when you try to be all things to all prospective employers by sending a standard resume to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. Your resume won't get noticed because it doesn't stand out.
2. Start with a plan to find the right company first and the job second.

What the shotgun method lacks—and what every job seeker needs—is a specific idea of the job they want and a plan on how to get it. Yet few job seekers start with these ideas since both require thought and time. Pressed to quickly find a new source of income, most job seekers don't feel they can afford the time needed to create a big-picture strategy; they simply want to apply to as many positions as quickly as possible. They feel they need to act, not sit and think.

That mentality is born of shortsighted fear. It's not the mentality of a long-term, solutions-oriented leader. Keep in mind that hiring managers want leaders with demonstrated success in finding creative solutions to difficult problems. Business plans, project plans, budgets and presentations all take time to research and develop. So does differentiating your job search. By taking the time to zero in on a specific career goal and to plan an effective job search, you demonstrate to hiring managers your clarity and ability to manage projects. It's a strategy that's worked well for me. One of my own recent interviewers commented, "So very few candidates truly understand what they really want that it is an eye-opening 'ah-hah, this guy is different' moment when someone can confidently communicate that to (us)."

The amount of time this planning requires varies by person, but it can range from as little as a few minutes for job seekers who have already committed to specific industries and geographies to a few days for those who are less certain of their goals. Since I was originally looking to change industries, I spent more than two weeks researching the leading firms in the industry.

For information on how to create and manage a job search project plan see my blog entry on the topic, Using Project Planning Skills in a Job Search.
3. Focus on growth industries and specializations.

Picking an industry that is still growing or is predicted to grow during these difficult economic times increases your chances of landing a new job and decreases your chances of getting laid off again.

Most of the job search engines, career sites and economists agree that the top industries for 2008 include...

July 14, 2011

Microsoft COO Goes on Competitor-Bashing Spree

For his annual keynote at the Microsoft Wordwide Partner Conference, taking place this week in Los Angeles, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner wasted little time challenging Microsoft's many competitors. He flouted the supposed weaknesses of Cisco, IBM, Google, Oracle and others, letting attendees know that Microsoft is gunning for these companies' business.





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With VMware (VMW), he referred to something he called the "VMware tax," noting that Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization software offers the ability to run more virtual machines, after the first six, at no additional cost. "We caught VMware flat-footed because of the economics of the cloud," he said. "The more VMs you add, the more you save."

This is not the first year that Turner has bashed competitors. Last year at WPC, Turner mocked Apple (AAPL) for its problems with the then recently released iPhone 4, calling it Apple's Vista, referring to Microsoft's own less-than-enthusiastically received operating system.

Apple was not spared Turner 's mockery this year either. Comparing Apple's approach to its operating systems with Microsoft's, Turned mused that "your guess is as good as mine as to when [Apple will merge] the iOS and MacOS." Windows 8, in contrast, will be a single OS that will bridge a wide range of different devices, he noted.

Turner also took apparent delight in displaying photos of an unnamed authorized Apple reseller store in Latin America that was selling Apple desktops and Apple laptops running Windows 7. "That should tell you a lot about having a great OS."

Some of Turner's jibes were more enthusiastic than coherent. "It is so good to have something to compete with Salesforce.com (CRM) head-to-head," Turner trumpeted, referring to Microsoft's Dynamics CRM Online, which has gone live in direct competition with Salesforce.com's offerings. "Now, we have this humongous pacifier to stick in the mouth of [Salesforce.com CEO] Marc Benioff."

Not all of Turner's talk was bluster. He also took the opportunity to provide a eulogy for Microsoft products that the company hopes its users will upgrade, namely Windows XP, Office 2003 and Internet Explorer 6. "Those products deserve a standing ovation. They have been so good to so many people. But you know what? They are dead. End-of-life is 2014," Turner said.

These widely used products define what Microsoft is for far too many people, he added. "The reality is that is not what we are at all. You can't even begin to get someone's mind around Lync and SharePoint and the cloud until we get these old applications remediated and moved forward," he said.

Turner also outlined the strategy partners should take to help get their customers onto the Microsoft Azure cloud. Microsoft's Azure service has already collected 40,000 customers across 41 countries, although this is a small percentage of the customers Microsoft would like to have using this service. He explained that the two vital pieces of software that every organizations should have to get cloud ready is Microsoft System Center and Microsoft Active Directory.

"When they want they want to go to the cloud, these two assets will make that possible," he said. "If they are not quite ready to go to cloud, it doesn't matter. We'll take them when they are ready."

July 13, 2011

8 hot features in Windows 8

The rumor mill is in high gear as people speculate about new features in Microsoft's latest version of Windows. Here's a compilation of the latest leaks, rumors and previews.

Microsoft recently allowed select OEM partners to download updated preview builds of Windows 8. Since then, there have been several leaked images of supposedly new features that you might see in the next version of Windows when it launches (perhaps in early 2012). And Microsoft showed off some features in a preview last week. Here we have compiled the most interesting ones. (Watch a slideshow version.)



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First look at Windows 8

1. Windows Phone 7's theme and UI

Last week, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 8 will have a tiles-based interface. Called Immersive, this GUI is meant to be used in full-screen mode, and is probably targeted at tablets running Windows 8. Source.

2. Ribbon User Interface in Explorer

It looks like Microsoft is taking the Ribbon GUI that they introduced in Office 2007, and gradually extended to their other software products including Windows Live Essentials 2011 and Windows 8. So expect a Ribbonized Explorer. Source.

3. Cloud Integration

The Windows 8 Explorer interface suggests it will access Microsoft's cloud services, possibly SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh. SkyDrive is an online storage space that you can put your files in, and Mesh lets you sync your other Windows computers and mobile devices remotely. Both are already available by installing Windows Live Essentials 2011 onto Windows 7 or Vista. Source.

4. Windows Live Integration

Along with being more wedded to Microsoft's cloud services, the Windows 8 preview suggests that you'll be able to use your Windows Live (or Hotmail) account to log into your Windows 8 computer. The profile image of your Windows Live user profile would then appear to the far right of the system tray. If you want to experience how this might work, this unofficial, user-created app mimics this feature for Windows 7. Source.

5. Built-In PDF Reader

Microsoft may include the capability for Windows 8 to load and display PDFs, with its own PDF reader they're calling Modern Reader. So there will be no more need to download and install Adobe Reader or its speedier competitor Foxit Reader. The user interface and look of Modern Reader is full-on Metro. Source.

6. ISO Mounting

It looks like you'll be able to mount an ISO file to Windows 8 and access its contents as though it is a data CD or DVD drive. Having this functionality in prior versions of Windows has been available only as a third-party program, such as Virtual CloneDrive or Daemon Tools. Source.

7. File Download Verification

First implemented into Internet Explorer, it looks like Microsoft may be expanding its SmartScreen filter feature throughout the Windows 8 ecosystem. So when you try to download a file, SmartScreen will kick in and evaluate whether the source URL is known to distribute malware. Source.

8. Aero Auto-Colorization

Here's something that doesn't address the critical nuts-and-bolts of Windows 8, but could be fun: Aero can be set to automatically change the colors of your Windows theme based on the primary colors of a desktop wallpaper image you use. The result could be harmonious or awful, of course. This is one of those tinker-around-with toys. There's already a program that does the same thing for Windows 7 called Aura. Source.
8 more rumored features of Windows 8

The following have been publicly announced, reported or heavily rumored:

1. App Store: It seems like every company has or is about to launch an app store, so it should come as no surprise that we're probably going to see one in Windows 8. There has been debate for months whether screenshots that have been leaked are fake.

2. ARM Processor Support: Indicating Microsoft is probably looking to position Windows 8 for tablet use as well, the company confirmed the OS will support ARM, the processor used mostly in embedded systems and mobile devices.

3. Factory Settings Restore: If your Windows computer has been hit with Trojans, worms or viruses, Windows 8 could have an option to restore it to its "factory settings" -- like the daisy-fresh way it worked when you first started it up. This is supposed to be faster to run than using the restore method that comes with most OEM computers.

4. History Vault: Windows' long-time "restore to a given point in time" function will be renamed History Vault and become like OS X's Time Machine. It will be a more robust tool that takes a "snapshot" copy of the entire contents of your Windows 8 computer's hard drive and then lets you easily restore things to that prior system state.

5. Instant-On and Improved Power Settings: There have always been minor to annoying power setting issues with Windows. Rumors of near instant-on and better efforts to save on power consumption would fit into Microsoft's goal to make Windows 8 more tablet-friendly.

6. Internet Explorer 10: Yep, Microsoft only recently launched IE 9 and has yet to release a preview of its follow-up. It's probably a safe bet IE 10 will be in Windows 8 when the OS launches.

7. Multi-Touch Interface Support: Another sign that Microsoft likely wants to make Windows 8 more appealing for tablets is rumored support for multi-touch interfaces. We can probably assume that the aforementioned Immersive UI is being developed to work ideally with a multi-touch screen. (In fact, Microsoft did confirm multi-touch capabilities in a preview late last week.)

8. Really Fast Install: Supposedly, installing Windows 8 will take up less than half the time it does with Windows 7.

July 11, 2011

How to survive a cloud outage

You can't prevent your cloud service provider from going down, but there are ways to protect yourself

Amazon's infamous cloud outage in April brought down a number of popular Web sites, including foursquare and Reddit - but many of Amazon's enterprise cloud customers were able to weather the storm without experiencing downtime.



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Guide to cloud management software
They architected their systems for resiliency by using multiple availability zones, having hot backups in traditional data centers, or having a backup cloud provider set up and ready to go in case of a problem.

Silicon Valley-based photosharing company SmugMug stayed up through the outage even as its peers failed. That was partly because it avoided the use of Amazon's Elastic Block Storage - the particular service component that went down.

But the company also spread its systems across several Amazon data centers - what Amazon calls "availability zones."

Other companies would have stayed up as well if they had also distributed their applications, says SmugMug CEO Chris MacAskill. He also recommends that companies also use multiple Amazon regions, which are more isolated from one another than availability zones. Of course, Amazon does charge extra for using multiple zones, so that needs to be taken into account.

SmugMug relies heavily on Amazon, using its cloud-based Simple Storage Service (S3) to store customer photos and videos. SmugMug also uses many instances of the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). But instead of using Elastic Block Storage - which is attached to individual EC2 instances, and often used to store operational data - the company still uses traditional data centers.

That has its own downsides - the week of Amazon's outage, for example, the company lost a core router, its backup, and a core master database server. "I wish I didn't have to deal with routers or database hardware failures anymore, which is why we're still marching towards the cloud," MacAskill says.

And, despite the outage, the cloud-based services that he gets from Amazon are still better than what SmugMug could have on its own, he adds, and better than other cloud service providers. "We're very committed to them," he says.

Israel-based startup Kitely Ltd. only used one of Amazon's availability zones - but, fortunately, not the one that went down.

However, the company plans to learn from the experience. "We intend to split all of our services across multiple availability zones," Kitely CTO Oren Hurvitz says.

Kitely, which runs cloud-based virtual meeting and collaboration environments based on the OpenSim platform, also performs continuous checks to ensure that all of its services are up and running.

"Our system is designed with the assumption that any service might stop working at any time," he says. "If we discover that a server is not responding then we terminate it and start a new server instead."
Traditional backups

Another company unaffected by the outage because it used multiple availability zones was Mashery, which provides APIs to more than 100 companies such as BestBuy, Hoovers and The New York Times. But Mashery also has another backup plan - a traditional data center.

"We very early on realized that there could be a service problem where Amazon would be entirely unavailable, and we decided that we needed fail-over infrastructure," Mashery CEO Oren Michels says. "We have dedicated hardware with Internap."

Atlanta-based Internap Network Services Corp. provides not only a hot backup site for Mashery but also a production environment for customers that need lower latency than possible with a cloud, or services delivered in geographic areas where Amazon is not available.

"We maintain plenty of infrastructure on both sides to handle peak load," he says.

When Mashery was first building its cloud infrastructure two years ago, Amazon was the only real player in town. Backing up to another cloud was not an option back then - but it might be possible now.

"We're definitely keeping our eye on it," he says. "But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Amazon has worked amazingly well for us. Likewise, Internap has been a great partner and continues to provide us the services we need."

Internap has even lowered its prices to stay competitive, he adds, though price isn't the major factor in his decision-making.

"We have a hundred huge brands as customers," he says. "It's more expensive to lose customers in case their stuff goes down. Our customers pay us to solve their API problems, and that includes that we stay up if there's an outage."

Companies that are just making the transition to the cloud often use traditional data centers as backups at the start of the process, says Rob Enderle, an analyst at research firm Enderle Group.

"You can have a set of lesser resources that are on stand-by that you can failover to," he says. "Often, that's whatever you had before you moved to the cloud. You can fail-over to a lower-performing technology and still hold your customers."

Companies that have some applications running in a traditional data center and some running in the cloud may be able to double up, he says, and use the same disaster recovery site for both, since the odds are low that Amazon would go down at the same exact time as the traditional data center.

But he warned against trusting too much in using one set of cloud services as a backup for another set of cloud services on the same cloud.

"A redundant service might use some of the same resources as the primary service," he says. "Care should be taken to ensure that redundancies are, in fact, redundant and not simply a different name for overlapping hardware and software."
Secondary cloud providers

Using a cloud service provider as a backup for a traditional data center is typically more cost-effective than the other way around.

That's because with a cloud service provider, you pay for computing cycles. When it's not being used, customers need only have the minimum computing power running to enable a quick switch-over, and then add more server capacity as needed.

With a traditional data center, enough servers have to be available to handle peak workload, even if they are rarely used. That translates to hardware costs as well as power and staffing requirements - typically a traditional backup center would double total computing costs, while a cloud backup would only add a fraction.

July 9, 2011

Offering The A-To-Z Of Enterprise Solutions On One Platform

Here’s a Web application that claims to offer multiple enterprise management tools on a single platform. We take a close look at the product and explore the technology that drives it!




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As the market talks about ‘recession proofing’, here is a tool that offers an integrated, customised and hassle-free IT environment to enterprises, and that too on a subscription basis. A2zapps.com—a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform—lets businesses automate their operations across the board or for select departments. It offers business software (CRM, ERP and other IT enterprise solutions) on a subscription basis. The service is offered in much the same way telecom vendors provide telephony services to their subscribers – users just need to pay a monthly subscription fee. The service is entirely available on the Web and does not require any server installation or front-end programming at the customer’s end.

It’s different, and how!

Pointing out the difference between A2zapps.com and other SaaS offerings, Kantanu Kundu, CEO and chairman, A2zapps.com, says, “Most of the SaaS products available in India either focus on a specific application or vertical; or are hosted models (single-tenancy), with limited customisation. The rest are headquartered outside Asia and require major technical skills to customise as per customer needs. But to get started with A2zapps.com, at the most, one needs to know Java Script and HTML (no Java/C++ programming is required), even if the customer needs heavy customisation.”

Kundu says that the majority of the IT enterprise solution providers have tweaked their existing on-premises models to fit into the hosted/SaaS model. In some cases, they lack true multi-tenancy. While in others, the software has been built to work on a LAN (local area network) and, therefore, is too bulky to be able to provide fast access on a WAN (wide area network) link. But A2zapps.com has been built on the SaaS (multi-tenant) platform (any apps) architecture from Day One. The extensibility of the platform provides customers the flexibility to add new applications as they grow. So users can start with minimum functionality, improve usage and then start adding other modules without any extra cost. In fact, the pricing for subscriptions and for customisation has been done keeping the Indian SME (small and medium enterprise) segment in mind and is not a global dollar pricing like that of most MNC software providers in India.

High on usability

A2zapps.com provides a comprehensive set of applications that are interlinked and can help organisations to use it for their group companies, as well as every single department within each group company like HR, sales, support and operations. The highlight of A2zapps.com is its simple screens and tabs, and its ease of use, says Kundu. “The product is ideally suited for the Indian emerging enterprise space that often lacks IT skills…and needs systems that are easy to use, and are completely hassle-free,” he adds.

The application offers the ability to import and export data, and reports in the most commonly used formats like spreadsheets. In addition to all these, labels for menus, fields, and reports can be named according to the organisation’s naming conventions, thereby making it user-friendly. The product currently supports various verticals like education, healthcare, professional services, logistics services, real estate and construction, hotels, manufacturing, and non-profit organisations. One of the early users of the application, Capt R K Mittal, MD, MAHAN Institute, says: “The platform has allowed us to integrate many activities at our centres in the Delhi/NCR region, thereby providing the best collaborative environment at an affordable cost.”.

July 7, 2011

Let's face it: HTML5 is no app dev panacea

Don't believe the hype: building serious applications still takes more than mere Web markup

Nothing frustrates a professional developer more than hearing someone describe themselves as "an HTML programmer." Coding Web pages with markup has about as much to do with real programming as writing a menu has to do with cooking a meal. But you wouldn't think so to hear platform vendors tell it. Lately, HTML has been made out to be a preferred development tool for everything from smartphone and tablet apps to full-blown desktop applications.



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Palm launched its WebOS platform claiming developers needed nothing more than Web standards to build apps for it. Microsoft did the same with Windows Phone 7. Google's Chrome browser has a "Web store" that lets you shop for desktop Web applications. But my jaw finally dropped when a recent demo showed how developers will be able to use HTML5 to write apps for Windows 8, leading panicked Windows developers to speculate that Microsoft was planning to drop support for Silverlight and even .Net itself.

[ Get your websites up to speed with HTML5 today using the techniques in InfoWorld's HTML5 Deep Dive PDF how-to report. | Also on InfoWorld: "HTML5 in the browser: Canvas, video, audio, and graphics" | "HTML5 in the browser: Local data storage | "HTML5 in the browser: HTML5 data communications." ]
HTML5 Deep Dive

Holy cow. Are we really so blinded by the HTML5 hype wagon that we'd believe Microsoft is ready to scupper core Windows APIs in favor of Web standards? It makes no sense. HTML5 is a fine tool and it will do great things for the Web, but lately it's been pushed to such lofty heights that it's plain ridiculous. As welcome as HTML5 is, there are plenty of reasons why nobody should consider it the universal development tool of choice. Here are some caveats to consider.

1. Good luck building anything with HTML alone
Anyone who suggests you can build apps in HTML is pulling your leg. What they really mean is you can build apps using HTML and JavaScript, but even this doesn't give you the whole picture. The minimum for any real Web application is HTML, JavaScript, and CSS -- three separate languages, all at once. The W3C's HTML5 effort has added still more APIs to the mix of Web standards, enabling such capabilities as multithreading and local storage. This is assuming your app won't communicate with any kind of server-side component -- for heavy computation or storage, perhaps -- and all the additional languages, APIs, and standards you'd need to confront then.

When anyone suggests that building apps is "as easy as building Web apps," what are they really saying? Web development has evolved into a complex, multitiered, multilanguage discipline. Often it's no picnic. Is that really the model we want to foist off on the next generation of developers?

July 6, 2011

The fall and rise of Microsoft Silverlight

Before hitching up with Windows Phone and Windows 8, Microsoft's cross-platform rich Internet application framework gets a modest upgrade

Microsoft Silverlight has had a topsy-turvy year. Apparently doomed or at least marginalized by HTML5, Silverlight found a foothold in Windows Phone and has more recently emerged as a key component of the Jupiter application framework and programming model for Windows 8. If Silverlight has become less important as a rich Internet application (RIA) framework, it has become more important to Microsoft's desktop and mobile platforms overall.



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In the meantime, the cross-platform RIA framework is still kicking -- though development has clearly slowed. More evolutionary than revolutionary, the "new" capabilities in Microsoft's Silverlight 5 beta merely incorporate existing Microsoft technologies and port functionality previously seen in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).

[ Also on InfoWorld: Microsoft offers developers early access to Windows Phone "Mango." | Keep up with the latest developer news with InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]

More than a year has gone by without a major Silverlight release, and with none due until late 2011, I expected the forthcoming version 5 to be a major rev that would cement Silverlight's superiority over Adobe Flash. Instead, I was disappointed to find that many promised Silverlight 5 features are still missing or meager. Even the included code previews for satellite projects -- such as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) RIA Services and Expression Blend -- do little more than gussy up existing capabilities.

In short, the Silverlight 5 beta looks more like a dot revision with feature creep than a major upgrade. Rather than extending Silverlight to continue hammering away at Adobe Flash, Microsoft seems to be working toward a desktop smackdown with itself -- adding Windows-specific platform invocation calls, Component Object Model (COM) support, and untethered file system access that push Silverlight deeper into the domains of .Net and WPF.

This blurring of these lines shouldn't come as a total shock. After all, Silverlight was originally code-named WPF/Everywhere. Plus, it undoubtedly makes good fiscal sense for Microsoft to consolidate internally with Windows 8 and a new version of Windows Phone on the horizon. Microsoft has said that the next version of the Windows Phone OS (aka Mango) will sport the Silverlight 4 runtime, and that there will be no support for running Silverlight applications in the Windows Phone browser.

Silverlight 5: Improved tools
I appreciate that Silverlight 5 is prerelease, and perhaps I shouldn't be looking at it so critically. Stepping in from the big picture, there are a number of improvements to Silverlight's runtime and development tools that shouldn't be ignored.

I installed the Silverlight 5 Tools Beta to Visual Studio 2010 SP 1. The Beta included the Developer Runtime, SDK, and a new preview of WCF RIA Service v1 SP2. Instead of Visual Studio, you could use Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1 as the development platform.

July 5, 2011

Internet Explorer market share continues to sink

June numbers are in, and Internet Explorer continues its precipitous fall while Chrome and Safari pick up the slack

Last month I talked about Internet Explorer's inexorable decline in market share.

The June numbers are out, and Internet market tracking firm Net Applications shows yet another significant decline in IE market share worldwide, to 53.68 percent from 60.32 percent for June of last year, down about 7 percentage points in the past year.




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Internet Explorer market share continues to sink
Picking up the slack for Internet Explorer? Chrome, once again. It's risen from 7.16 percent in July of last year to 13.11 percent in June of this year, up about 6 percentage points in the past year. But Chrome's being aided and abetted by Safari, which has risen from 5.09 percent market share in July of last year to 7.48 percent in June of this year, a phenomenal gain.

Firefox market share has declined in the past year, although not by a significant amount, from 22.91 percent last July to 21.67 this June.

It looks like the Safari increase is due, in no small part, to increasing popularity of the iPad. For the first time, the iPad now accounts for more than 1 percent of all browsing worldwide, and more than 2.1 percent of all browsing in the United States.

The times, they are a-changin'.

July 4, 2011

The 10 worst cloud outages (and what we can learn from them)

Sending your IT business to the cloud comes with risk, as those affected by these 10 colossal cloud outages can attest

As a concept, there's a lot to like about the cloud. Drop those bulky servers and get yourself a big, white hard drive in the sky. Someone else handles the upkeep and lets you put your data where you want it. Even the word "cloud" itself brings to mind a heavenly (if slightly fluffy) fantasy.

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The reality is, of course, a mixed bag. What you gain in avoiding upkeep, you lose in control. And the security concerns are considerable. But nowhere is the nightmare as vivid as it is when your cloud service goes down.

[ Get the no-nonsense explanations and advice you need to take real advantage of cloud computing in InfoWorld editors' 21-page Cloud Computing Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]

Just ask any of the businesses affected by Amazon Web Services' high-profile outage in April.
"We were pretty blown away," says Nick Francis, whose startup, Help Scout, had launched just one week prior to Amazon's problem. "We definitely weren't prepared."

Francis wasn't the only one caught off-guard. Big-name properties like Reddit and Foursquare fell flat when Amazon's cloud sputtered.

"The cloud has been sold as this magical thing that just works and is totally reliable," says Lew Moorman, chief strategy officer of Rackspace, a cloud provider that's seen its fair share of outages. "The truth is that buying through the cloud is another way of buying computing, and computing is inherently flawed. If you want to make sure those flaws don't hurt you, you have to plan ahead."

To help keep your business pain-free in the cloud, we offer these hard-earned lessons at the hands of 10 of the worst cloud storms the Web has weathered.

Colossal cloud outage No. 1: Amazon Web Services goes poof. Freeing yourself from network maintenance gruntwork is a chief selling point for doing business in the cloud. The downside? Standing by helplessly when your cloud vendor's routine configuration change grinds your business to a halt.

That is what many AWS customers experienced this past April, when Amazon's Northern Virginia data center suffered a glitch and -- to use the technical term -- went totally nutso.

The error started during a network upgrade, when a misrouted traffic shift sent a cluster of Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) volumes into a remirroring storm, as they sought out available boxes into which they could insert backups of themselves -- perverse, I know. That set off a series of events that ultimately took down much of the company's U.S. East Region.

That's the short version, anyway -- if you're interested in the full nitty-gritty, clear out 47 hours in your schedule and read Amazon's novel-length explanation.

The problems persisted for about four days. But while many businesses struggled, others such as Netflix took the storm in stride. The key to survival? Designing your systems with these types of failures in mind.

"Our architecture avoids using EBS as our main data storage service, and the SimpleDB, S3, and Cassandra services that we do depend upon were not affected by the outage," Netflix engineers wrote in their "Lessons Netflix Learned From the AWS Outage" blog post. Stateless services and multiple redundant hot copies of data across availability zones were key to avoiding AWS cloud fail pain.
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