There's no debating Apple knows how to build great products. The company's iPhone and iPad are standouts in their respective markets, and competitors might try as hard as they can to match the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm, but never come close. For the foreseeable future, Apple will stand atop the mobile market and prove—as it has over the last several years—why it's the very best at what it does. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't need to do some things to make its next iPad better. In March, Apple is expected to show off the iPad 3 that, some analysts say, will be a major update over the tablet the company launched last year. There's no telling if that will happen, of course, due to Apple's unwillingness to divulge product details before launch, but given the company's history, there's a good chance it'll offer up something new that consumers will want to buy. The only question now is, what should the iPad 3 come with? Believe it or not, Apple won't need to make that decision on its own. The company can look around the mobile market right now and find a host of features that it should borrow from some of its own products, as well as those from other companies.
Now that the Consumer Electronics Show is behind us and all the prominent companies in the industry have shown off their upcoming products for the year, It’s time to prognosticate on what devices, software and other solutions will be launching with much fanfare in 2012. As with previous years, Apple’s line of products, including the iPhone and iPad, are definitely going to catch the attention of people around the globe. But it looks like they will be joined by a host of other products from Microsoft, Google and even Amazon. In other words, 2012 is shaping up to be a huge year for major new introductions and some of the most anticipated products yet to hit store shelves. But which of those product launches will make their mark in 2012? More importantly, can certain products that gained a lot of advance interest and market buzz deliver on the hopes consumers and enterprise users have for them? We’ll see. But this eWEEK slide show will examine which new products are likely to stir interest in the tech market in 2012:
The abundance of smartphones and tablets based on Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems has facilitated the creation of nearly 500,000 jobs in the United States since 2007. That's the conclusion from TechNet, a policy and political network of CEOs and senior executives that aims to stimulate the growth of technology and innovation. For this report, TechNet looked at the so-called "App Economy," noting that developers have crafted and launched nearly 1 million software applications for the iPhone, iPad and Android gadgets. Indeed, Apple's App Store boasts roughly 500,000 apps, including 190,000 for the iPad. Google's Android Market offers more than 300,000 apps. There are plenty of programs for gaming, workout tracking and other tools. TechNet's position is that each app represents jobs for programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers and support staff, resulting in a boon for the overall economy. This App Economy is especially dominant in California, which accounts for nearly a quarter of all App Economy jobs, thanks to Silicon Valley's abundance of software engineers. Here, eWEEK takes a deep dive into the numbers to show developers where they can make money or improve their programming skills to meet demand.
Microsoft is prepping Windows 8's beta—also known as the "Consumer Preview"—for release later in February. Although the Developer Preview gave people the chance to play around with a rough draft of the upcoming operating system, that beta will provide a much better idea of what users can expect when the release version arrives sometime in the second half of 2012. Many of Windows 8's features will be instantly familiar to anyone who's used previous versions of Windows. The traditional desktop is still there, accessible via a "Start" screen of big, colorful tiles linked to applications (the better to port Windows 8 onto tablets). The new operating system has even borrowed a few design cues from other Microsoft products like Office: There is, for instance, a "ribbon" user interface for Windows Explorer (albeit a minimized one, which could come as a relief to those who dislike that way of navigating through options). But the biggest system changes tie into Microsoft's expectations that Windows 8 will find its way onto tablets and other ultra-mobile devices: The ability to mark a wireless network as metered or unmetered is just one example of this. In a time where users are abandoning traditional PCs as their main computing device in favor of smartphones and tablets, the need is greater than ever for Microsoft to adapt with the times, lest it be left behind. The following are some new Windows 8 features designed to make the platform more portable and easier to operate once users find a space to sit down and work.
Everyone in the enterprise is now talking about how to leverage big data, and a good chunk of that discussion includes the evolution of NoSQL database technologies. Experts are saying that 2012 is the year when IT departments start adopting NoSQL in earnest, but is the enterprise ready yet? What needs to happen in NoSQL's evolution to make it prepare it for highly complex data requirements? To find out, eWEEK asked Robert Greene, vice president of technology at Versant and a 20-year veteran of the database industry, to break down what needs to happen for NoSQL to become enterprise-ready. Versant is an object-oriented database provider, and the company is taking its own approach to the NoSQL movement. For instance, Greene said that NoSQL solutions need to leverage more of the classic database techniques for concurrency control and design their internals to take full advantage of modern multi-core hardware architecture. In addition, Greene said NoSQL is learning what the object database industry learned several years ago as it sought to deal with soft schema over a relational storage engine. However, enterprises will not change all their internal processes and replace existing systems for the sake of NoSQL. To evolve, NoSQL must address interoperability with existing systems, to couple through ETL, to facilitate data manipulation through enterprise tools, and it needs to present itself as a well-defined resource to existing monitoring and management processes.
One of the dreams journalists, high-tech watchers and pundits have is that a high-rising Internet darling files its S-1 statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, announcing its intentions to go public. The resulting filings reveal oodles of facts about the company's culture, fiscal results, its view on the competition and other details. Facebook effectively fulfilled the dream of many Feb. 1 in its filing to go public. Along with it, came the deluge of details the company had not been required to bare for the general public. These details include interesting facts, for example, that Facebook's revenues were $3.71 billion last year. Media pounced on the revelations, feasting on such tidbits as how many times Facebook used the word mobile—123 times, Twitter is mentioned twice, Microsoft five times and Google 14. Really, the record-keeping is exhaustive. eWEEK boiled down some of the key details and put them together here for our readers' leisurely perusal. Enjoy.
Apple's iPhone 5 will likely launch at some point this year, but so far, the technology giant hasn't said when that might be. Even so, the rumor mill has been suggesting Apple will follow last year's lead and try to launch the new handset at some point during the tail end of the summer or early fall. So far, several rumors have cropped up about the iPhone 5. Some say that the device will come in multiple flavors, appealing to those who want both larger and smaller displays. Others say Apple will offer up a single model that boasts huge improvements over its predecessor, the iPhone 4S. More still, say Apple will launch a nominally upgraded iPhone 5 that won't in any way shock or impress consumers. Simply put, the only people who know what the iPhone 5 will look like are those working at Apple. And as you might expect, not one of them is saying what the next device will be like. But that doesn't mean the iPhone 5 can't be improved upon. In fact, the device must be an improvement over its predecessor.
If Apple’s incredibly strong iPad sales during the fourth quarter told industry observers anything, it’s that the company’s tablet was far and away the most-desired slate of 2011. Part of that might be due to the fact that the tablet didn’t face much serious competition. But it’s also due to the quality consumers and even some enterprise users found in the device. But 2012 is a new year with a host of opportunities for every tablet maker. Every major firm, from Apple and Samsung to RIM and Amazon, has a chance at becoming the top tablet maker of the year. However, they’ll need to achieve that by delivering all the features that consumers and enterprise customers are looking for in their tablets. They’ll also need to promote the products effectively to make sure the world knows about the features and components that can make their models real contenders. This eWEEK slide show examines some of the key factors that will determine 2012’s tablet king. And unfortunately for Apple’s competitors, it appears the iPad has a long head start.
Digium introduced its first IP handsets on Feb. 1, with three models aimed at the ordinary worker, the power user and the big bosses. The D40, D50 and D70 are expected to become available in April, with prices starting at $129 for the two-line D40. The new handsets are designed specifically to leverage the features of Digium's Asterisk communications platform and the Switchvox line of unified communications systems. These phones boast as part of their software an application engine that includes a JavaScript API that allows direct interaction with core features of the phone. The Switchboard Web interface that Digium builds into Switchvox systems is now available for the phone itself, putting the user in control of advanced features such as presence management, queue monitoring, recording and voicemail control. The D40 and D50 are meant for use with 100M-bps Fast Ethernet connections, while the D70 can take advantage of Gigabit Ethernet where available.
2011 went into the books as a year of environmental disasters on an unprecedented global scale that have affected the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. The United States alone set a record with 12 separate billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Thus, data backup and recovery has become a hot topic among IT managers. With this as background, data protection provider Acronis and the Ponemon Institute did some research to see how SMBs are approaching disaster recovery. The result is Acronis' second annual Disaster Recovery Index, released Feb. 1, which audited 18 countries and nearly 6,000 IT personnel. According to the survey findings in this report, a typical SMB today manages more than 100 servers, desktops and laptops and produces almost 40TB of fresh data each year. That is an awful lot of data to protect. The following slide show explains some of the research highlights.
Facebook filed for its initial public offering as expected Feb. 1, ending a week of hype, buzz and punditry that had financial and Internet analysts predicting the social network giant's initial public offering would be the biggest in the history of the Internet. The company will trade under the ticker symbol “FB,” but has not revealed whether it will trade on the NASDAQ or NYSE. While Facebook will go on touting its Like buttons for Web publishers and hawking its Timeline user interface for consumers and applications alike, the company's financial statements will be poked, prodded and pored over by hundreds of experts looking to divine just how big an Internet player Facebook is now and can become 5, 10, 15 years down the road. Facebook may be the biggest IPO to date, but it isn't the only game in town. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the top Internet company IPOs of the past couple of years, along with some obvious earlier blockbuster debuts. Plus, we make our logical guess for whom we think the next IPO will be.
No matter what team you find yourself rooting for this Super Bowl Sunday, pretty much everyone can agree that a high-definition, beer-soaked and burger-filled Super Bowl party is close to a patriotic duty. However, the Super Bowl is about more than chips and dip, overhyped commercials, and overblown halftime shows—haven't we heard enough from Madonna in the past three months? There's the game, of course, but also the opportunity for you to show off to your friends the latest gadgets and gizmos to make your party the one to remember, whatever the outcome of the game. On top of that, football fans have a wide selection of smartphone apps available through Apple's App Store or Android Market to keep you up to date with scores, trivia and other game information. Last but not least, there's the odd cooler-plus-goalpost folly, which we've included to keep things interesting. Here are our picks for the biggest, best and HD-brightest of the bunch.
Amazon's Kindle Fire is an unabashed success, though how much of a success remains unknown thanks to the e-commerce company's refusal to disclose unit shipment sales for its Kindle line of e-readers and tablets. Amazon has only said it sold millions of Kindles and Kindle Fires during the holiday quarter. Furthermore the
company's Q4 earnings were less than stellar, throwing more shadow than light on hardware sales. Still, most industry analysts have crunched their own numbers. But first, here's a level set: When word leaked that Amazon would launch an Android tablet, every high-tech pundit saw it as an affront to Apple and its world-dominating iPad. Speculation is about as iterative as software out of Google, so when further info leaked that the tablet would be priced between $200 and $300, people stopped calling it an iPad challenger and started predicting it would be the first hugely successful tablet to compete with existing offerings from Samsung, Motorola and HTC. Analysts now believe that's about right. Check out why in this eWEEK slide show.
With HTML5 and CSS all the rage with developers, particularly Web developers, a new site has emerged to advise them on the use of features in the programming languages. The HTML5 Please site offers expert advice on which features to use and not to use when developing apps. The site breaks its advice down into three categories: use, use with caution, and avoid. Additionally, it tells developers which features they should use with fallbacks or polyfills. The bottom line is that the new site gives developers recommendations on which HTML5 and CSS3 elements they can safely use to create apps and sites that are effectively supported across a range of browsers. Because HTML5 is a moving target and many of its elements are too new to safely use for cross-browser support, HTML Please is a welcome aid to developers who want to color inside the lines. The HTML5 Please site is a community project created by Divya Manian, Web opener for Opera Software; Paul Irish, developer programs engineer on the Google Chrome team; Tim Branyen, a software engineer at Bocoup; Connor Montgomery, a Web developer and computer science student at St. Louis University; and a host of others. This slide show takes a look at the HTML5 and CSS3 elements that HTML5 Please says are completely safe for developers to use.
While the U.S. Constitution generally prevents the government from snooping through personal laptops without just cause, those protections don't apply at the U.S. border, where agents can take any electronic device, search through all the data and keep it for further scrutiny, even without cause. Business travelers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals may have confidential or privileged information on their devices that need to be protected. Even personal devices can contain a wealth of sensitive information, including medical records and financial documents. "Our lives are on our laptops–family photos, medical documents, banking information, details about what Websites we visit, and so much more," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Seth Schoen, Marcia Hofmann and Rowan Reynolds wrote in a guide for travelers carrying digital devices. While agents are authorized to keep the devices up to 30 days for their search, anecdotal evidence suggests they can take longer, according to the EFF. For organizations with compliance requirements, having confidential data out of their control for an extended period of time can have serious repercussions. These searches can also impact employee productivity while waiting for the search to complete. Below are some tips from the EFF on how to protect data privacy on electronic devices in case of a border search.
2011 is being commonly referred to as "The Year of Disasters." The United States set a record with 12 separate billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These incidents have prompted many organizations to reconsider the human element during a crisis or major news event and evaluate how they communicate with employees, suppliers, investors and customers. Emergency and mass notification systems are designed to help organizations communicate to stakeholders during an incident or disruption. However, in response to the high occurrence of prominent disasters in recent years, the marketplace has been flooded with products to address emergency and mass notification needs. The need to diligently evaluate vendors is critical to ensure that services will meet an organization's specific requirements. Our key information source in the following slide show is Tracey Forbes, vice president of software business development at SunGard Availability Services.
One of the most talked-about Android smartphones unveiled at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show three weeks ago was the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx. The Maxx can mean a lot of things—a bigger screen, faster processor or more apps. Instead, Motorola used the Maxx branding to describe the Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered phone's world-beating battery life. The Razr Maxx touts a power supply of 3,300mAh, or roughly twice what you get from most high-end handsets in the market today, including its Droid Razr predecessor, which has a 1,780mAh power supply. This is crucial because the Razr Maxx churns data on Verizon's 4G Long-Term Evolution network. Anyone who has ever tested or owned a 4G LTE Verizon phone, such as the HTC ThunderBolt or Samsung Droid Charge, knows how rapidly those smartphones with 4G radios burn through battery charges. The Razr Maxx, which has a 1.2GHz processor, casts aside the rapid-battery-drain concerns and offers a whopping 21.5 hours of talk time and nearly 16 days of standby time. So you can play as much Angry Birds and watch as many YouTube videos as you want in a workday, and your Maxx should still be rendering data at the end of the night. This eWEEK slide show takes a closer look at the Droid Razr Maxx.
Droid Razr Maxx Boasts Best Android Smartphone Battery
The traditional January gathering of the Apple fans in San Francisco may have a new name, but the trend away from serious hardware and toward accessories for iGadgets continues, as we saw at what is now called Macworld | iWorld. With applications for Mac OS X stuffed into a back alley of the Moscone West convention hall and a mobile applications pavilion placed front and center, it's clear that the show's organizers recognize where the Applesphere is headed. Gone are the days when one could save a few bucks on a new Mac at the show, but scattered throughout the hall are a number of companies that offer new and interesting ways to protect an iPhone.
Storage is being looked at with new eyes as CIOs and CEOs see that storage is a critical component of managing big data, the Internet-of-things, cloud and analytics. Smarter storage is necessary for businesses to stay ahead as data continues to explode—to 2.7 zettabytes in 2012, up 48 percent from 2011. In fact, 57 percent of IT decision makers from a 2011 IBM survey stated that their organizations need a new storage approach to manage future growth. As storage becomes a key business driver in 2012, IBM officials said the industry will see new breakthroughs in storage research and business models coming from sectors such as entertainment and health care. Meanwhile, technologies such as IBM SmartCloud can enable organizations, their employees and partners to get what they need when they need it, from advanced analytics and business applications to IT infrastructure such as virtual servers and storage to access to tools for testing software code. IBM officials said all this can be deployed securely across IBM’s global network of cloud data centers. With these new storage challenges and opportunities, Steve Wojtowecz, vice president of storage software development at IBM, outlined the five storage trends that will emerge in 2012.
If you're a technology professional with considerable experience, 2012 could be your year for a significant salary bump or even a hefty bonus, according to new survey data from Dice, a Website for technology and engineering career information. The Dice Salary Survey, administered to 18,325 employed technology professionals between September and November 2011, suggests that salaries are on the rise in certain areas (Silicon Valley and Portland, Ore., top that list) and for certain skill sets (including WebLogic and JBoss proficiency). On top of that, more technology professionals are receiving bonuses, and those bonuses are larger. Among job categories enjoying gains, "the biggest ones we've seen for over a year now are in mobile and cloud," Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com, told eWEEK. Management of data was also a gaining category, with companies needing business architects and other professionals to "make sense of the data coming from all different directions." Skills related to enterprise Java (such as WebSphere, in addition to the previously mentioned WebLogic and JBoss) led to higher-paying jobs, as well. In terms of cities, Portland and Seattle have seen a rise in the number of cloud-related companies coming online, while Austin, Texas, and other locales are becoming hubs for games and mobile-tech development. The industry verticals most likely to pay out bonuses to their workers included telecom, hardware, banking, software and utilities/energy. The survey data wasn't fantastic for all tech professionals, however: Those at entry level saw their salaries actually decline, even as those with considerable experience (11 years or more) enjoyed a rise in pay.
Alfresco Team is a package of powerful collaboration tools that can be quickly deployed for a small workgroup or pilot project, but one which can easily scale to fit one’s needs. It works well with the Alfresco Mobile tools for Apple iOS, which themselves open up entirely new ways for businesses to capture and use images and sound. Alfresco Software is attempting to address the small and mid-range customer with Alfresco Team, based on the Alfresco Enterprise architecture used by nearly 2,000 businesses, including Home Depot, Michelin and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. It can be deployed in a traditional premise-based environment running Linux or Windows, or on an Amazon EC2 instance. Alfresco Team offers solid enterprise-class content management features including version tracking and granular user access. Coupled with the Alfresco Mobile tools for iOS, which allow the capture of audio, still images and video, Alfresco Team offers a first-class collaboration environment that meets the budget of the smallest organization.
Alfresco Team Makes Collaboration Simple
Verizon Wireless Jan. 19 began selling its first new significant Android smartphone of 2012, the pretty LG Spectrum, which costs $199.99 on contract. LG hasn't pumped out many smartphones in the U.S., but this Android 2.3 Gingerbread handset is a beauty, boasting a 4.5-inch True HD IPS (in-plane switching) 16.7M Color TFT touch screen with 1,280-by-720-pixel resolution. This is the same technology LG uses for its HD televisions. Combine this viewing experience with the phone's Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 1.5GHz dual-core chip on Verizon's 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, and it's easy to see how this little machine can be a multimedia powerhouse for video consumers. To wit, the phone comes with HD access to ESPN's ScoreCenter app, which offers scores and highlights. It also provides Netflix access and the SmartMovie HD app for shooting and editing HD video. Check out eWEEK's hands-on tryout of the LG Spectrum in this slide show.
MacWorld 2012 opened Jan. 26 in downtown San Francisco, and, although it is always one of the most interesting IT shows each year, this time it doesn't have quite the same panache as it has in the past. Attendance appears to be down somewhat, and there aren't nearly as many vendors showing their wares as in previous years. One of the main reasons for this is that Apple itself no longer participates; in fact, this is the third year since the mothership has pulled out of the event, which is staged by IDG World Expo. However, there are still plenty of relevant and imaginative products and services to see. Here in this slide show are a few of them. MacWorld 2012 continues through Jan. 28. (All photos by Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK.)
There’s little debating that the iPhone 4S is an outstanding device. The smartphone comes with Apple’s Retina Display, an 8-megapixel camera and support for the virtual personal assistant Siri. Depending on a customer’s desire, it might just come with many of the features they’re looking for, and at a price of just $199 with a two-year contract, it’s a worthwhile option. However, just because the iPhone 4S is a worthwhile purchase, it doesn’t mean that it should be the automatic choice of people shopping for new mobile products. There is a crowd of companies offering highly sought-after devices that, in one way or another, could be a better option for the average consumer than Apple’s iPhone 4S. But it’s not just today’s products. One should also consider that in the coming months, several devices will be launching that might just make the iPhone 4S look rather obsolete by comparison. One of the best options might turn out to be Apple’s next smartphone release, the iPhone 5. This eWEEK slide show looks at some of the products you should take a look at before the iPhone 4S:
Austin, Texas, joined counterparts from across the globe—including Finland, Canada and Taiwan—as the most intelligent cities in the world, according to the Intelligent Community Forum. The think tank recently rolled out its 2012 Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year list, saying that the cities provide a model of economic and social development in the 21st century using information and communications technology (ICT) to power growth, address social challenges and preserve and promote culture. Two cities in the United States and three in Canada made this year’s list, along with one city each in Europe and Asia. The following communities, drawn from the Smart21 of 2012, were named the top seven based on analysis of their nominations by a team of independent academic experts. Each of the communities has created a “uniquely powerful” ecosystem on a foundation of information and communications technology, said ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla. “By becoming platforms for innovation, they are creating a better life for citizens on all rungs of the economic ladder and a vibrant future for the next generation,” Zacharilla said.
Google risked drawing the ire of privacy pundits and federal regulators Jan. 24 with its augmented privacy policies. The practices, which kick-in March 1, call for a single, unified privacy policy to preside over 60 of Google's 70 products that previously had disparate privacy rules. What this means is users of Google search, YouTube, Gmail and Google Docs and Calendar will all be using the services under the banner of one privacy policy. This may sound fantastic to some users and for government regulators who lament complex, long-winded legalese—until you get down to the other details. Going forward, Google account users may have their data from Gmail or YouTube cross-pollinated with Google search, Calendar and dozens of other Google applications. Users can't opt out of these privacy changes without closing their Google accounts, a radical measure for most users. The eWEEK slide show examines the policy details and the public backlash that is already gathering strength.
We at eWEEK are interested in bringing you information that fits generally into four main categories: facts about new products, services and relevant IT use cases; cogent ideas from thought leaders; history of where IT has been; and previews of what will be coming into the IT world. There are other subsets, but these four buckets hold most of what one will find here in our pages. While it's certainly important to know what has happened, it's equally valuable to know what is going to happen. Today's slide show involves categories 2 and 4: ideas from thought leaders on what will be shaping the IT world in the future. With all this in mind, eWEEK presents a compilation of 10 cogent predictions from highly regarded IT thought leaders. No particular time window is placed on them. Special thanks to Pam Robinson of Mindshare for collecting the thoughts of the thought leaders included in this article.
File-sharing giant Megaupload is now dead. The Website boasted 50 million users a day and accounted for 4 percent of all Internet traffic, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Now, Megaupload has been shut down following an international criminal sting spearheaded by the DOJ. With the shutdown of Megaupload, many users are wondering where to store and share large data files. Here, eWEEK identifies the top 10 Websites that offer gigabytes of cloud storage space for nominal fees. All these sites offer the ability to share files, as well store files for preservation or backup purposes. Many of the identified sites also offer free storage as well, albeit a limited amount. Some are backed by corporate giants and have controls in place to prevent copyright-related issues, while others skirt around the issues, hoping to avoid DOJ scrutiny. Here is a look at the top 10 Megaupload alternatives, including Dropbox, RapidShare, Amazon Cloud Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.
Black Duck Software has announced its 2011 Open Source Rookies of the Year list of the top 10 new open-source projects—and three honorable mentions—to hit the streets. The list, released Jan. 18, features two open-source cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) projects, two others tailored to the needs of game developers and a toolkit to help social media application developers build Web apps. The Black Duck Software 2011 Open Source Rookie of the Year list is the fourth annual edition of the company’s rundown of the top new projects out there. Using data on open-source projects from Ohloh.net and the Black Duck KnowledgeBase, Black Duck reviewed thousands of open-source projects started in 2011 to select the Open Source Rookies of the Year. Using a weighted scoring system, points were awarded based on commit activity—commits per day, size of the project team, and the number of in-bound links to the project. Black Duck determined the top 10 projects following an audit of its findings and normalization of scores. In addition to the 10 Open Source Rookies of the Year, Black Duck identified three projects that deserve honorable mention due to their outstanding rate of commits and team support.
The time has come once again to think seriously about Apple’s iPad. Only this time, the focus isn’t on the iPad 2 but on Apple’s iPad 3. That tablet, which is rumored to be launching in March or April, could very well be a groundbreaking option for consumers and enterprise users alike. The excitement and speculation has been building for months already. That excitement becomes all the more impressive when one considers that the device’s details have yet to be announced. In fact, Apple hasn’t even acknowledged that that it will launch an upgraded tablet model this year. For now, in official channels, Apple’s focus is solely on the iPad 2. But those who have been following Apple over the years know better. Apple will release a new tablet this year and there’s a solid chance the slate will come with a host of features to appeal to customers. But just what features should be built into this new tablet? This eWEEK slide show has some suggestions for what we’d like to see in Apple’s iPad 3:
A recent Linux Foundation survey shows that open-source technology is poised for continued growth among new and existing users for a variety of reasons, including lower total cost of ownership, technical features and security. The survey, released in January, is entitled “Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users,” and is co-written by the Linux Foundation and the Yeoman Technology Group. The survey shows that affinity among new and veteran Linux users continues to increase at the expense of Windows and Unix. Of the businesses surveyed, 84 percent of the IT shops currently deploying Linux have expanded its usage during the last 12 months, and continue to rely on it as their preferred platform for “greenfield” deployments, as well as for mission-critical applications. According to the Linux Foundation, part of this growth is due to Linux’s role in two of today’s biggest IT trends: supporting the increasing level of “big data” and achieving productivity and security gains with virtualization and cloud computing. Enterprise Linux users show steady progress on all of these fronts and a clear preference for Linux as the foundation for these trends.
2011 was the year of Google's Android operating system, as manufacturers introduced more than 300 smartphones, tablets and other devices that run the mobile OS. Yet that doesn't tell the whole tale of the year, as Apple came on strong in the December quarter with its iPhone. People in the U.S. bought a lot of iPhones for the holiday quarter. Nielsen surveyed 25,0000 people for December and found that nearly 47 percent said they bought an Android device over the previous three months, with 44.5 percent owning up to acquiring an iPhone for the same period. That gap was a gulf at the beginning of October, when 61.6 percent of 25,000 people surveyed said they purchased an Android device, compared with just 25 percent who bought an iPhone over the three months prior. What happened? Did Android, with all its variety of form factors, lose some of its cool factor to a single device and OS? This eWEEK slide show examines some of the reasons Apple gained shared in the U.S.
At Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando, Fla., IBM unveiled new software and services that deliver new networking capabilities to the increasingly social-savvy workforce. With the new offerings, IBM customers can apply analytics to their social business initiatives, allowing them to gain actionable insight on social networking sentiment anytime, anywhere and put it to work in real time. IBM announced new social analytics software that integrates wikis, blogs, activity streams, email, calendaring and more, and flags relevant data for action. The new IBM Connections is expected also to allow for instant collaboration with one simple click and the ability to build social communities both inside and outside the organization to increase customer loyalty and speed business results. IBM’s SmartCloud for Social Business is expected to deliver a cloud-based productivity suite allowing users to co-edit documents in real time, while providing one-click access to social networking, online meetings, enterprise-class email, calendaring and instant messaging. IBM also announced new software that integrates social networking capabilities with enterprise content management to better connect people with information so they can make informed decisions and act quickly. In addition, Big Blue unveiled new messaging and collaboration software that brings the power of embedded experiences to the Web and mobile devices providing a single point of entry for all business processes.
Apple launched a new education initiative at a high-profile Jan. 19 event at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum, focused on “reinventing textbooks” and using technology to make the classroom more engaging for students. Led by Apple executives including Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, the presentation focused on three aspects: iBooks 2, designed to bring what was described as a “new textbook experience” to the iPad; iBooks Author, which lets publishers and authors create interactive textbooks; and a revamped iTunes U, which gives educators the ability to distribute course materials and video or audio lectures. For days leading up to Apple’s event, rumors leaked that the company was prepping something related to textbooks. Before his death, Apple CEO Steve Jobs long harbored an abiding interest in creating some sort of text-book related product. “He wanted to disrupt the textbook industry and save the spines of spavined students bearing backpacks by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad,” read one passage in Jobs’ recent biography by Walter Isaacson. At another point, Jobs “agreed” with News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch that “the paper textbook business would be blown away by digital learning materials.” The time has come to see whether the prophecy can indeed come true.
With more than 426,000 employees, 100,000-plus contractors, and a broad range of business partners and customers, IBM has no choice but to be a social business. However, at the Lotusphere 2012 conference in Orlando, Fla., in mid-January, IBM CIO Jeanette Horan spelled out just how social a business IBM has become. Horan said that not only does IBM produce social software, the company also has become the largest corporate consumer of social technologies. IBM operates in 170 countries and is divided into five integrated operating teams and markets. On any given day, 50 percent of IBMers regularly work away from traditional IBM offices. About 12 percent are work-at-home employees, and another 20 or so percent are "road warriors"—mobile workers. About 6 percent are based entirely at client sites, and 3 percent work in manufacturing settings. IBM does a variety of things that support social business within the company, including using its own IBM Connections social software, as well as Cognos Consumer Insight for social listening. Other social enablers at IBM include: Global Business Services and social selling; online jams; the IBM Whirlwind mobile apps store; the Human Resources Department and new hires; an expertise locator; and the technology adoption program. For a related article click here.
The top city in the United States for technology jobs is in Texas, but it's not Austin. Instead, Houston is the leading city for energy and technology job growth, with a 145 percent increase in technology jobs from 2010, according to a list compiled by CyberCoders, a recruiting firm for the IT industry. Northern California, with its storied Silicon Valley, also is highly represented, with both San Francisco and San Jose (and its 100 percent increase in tech jobs) among the top 10. Also making CyberCoders' list of the top 10 cities for technology jobs is Seattle. Known for its proximity to tech giant Microsoft and a lot of great startups, this city comes in ninth. And rounding out the list is Atlanta, which saw a 15 percent increase in technology jobs from 2010 to 2011.
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang Jan. 17 resigned from the company's board of directors, severing his final tie with the Internet company he helped build when he was a Stanford University student 17 years ago. His departure may bring some satisfaction to financial analysts who believe Yang is largely responsible for Yahoo's downward spiral, particularly since he replaced Terry Semel as Yahoo CEO in 2007. Yahoo's downfall amounts to a failure to keep pace with the financial and user-engagement growth enjoyed by Internet rivals Google and Facebook. New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson hopes to breathe some fresh life into the struggling Internet power, which still has a staggering 700 million visitors worldwide each month. This eWEEK slide show provides a brief retrospective of how Yahoo evolved under Yang's watch.
Not all data breaches are the result of a malicious attacker breaking into the network. Ex-employees can download sensitive documents to a personal USB drive and take it to their new employer. Backup drives containing sensitive data can get lost or stolen. Employees trying to be productive by taking work home can misplace their flash drives. All these potential scenarios expose the organization to data loss and regulatory fines. The best time to figure out how to use secure USB flash drives and the necessary security policies to protect the data is before a data breach, according to Kingston Digital, a memory and USB device vendor. “Data is the DNA of any company and as such, must be protected at all times and handled cautiously and wisely,” said John Terpening, secure USB business manager at Kingston. Organizations should know what to do if the device gets lost, such as selecting products that can be remotely disabled via a Web interface if lost or compromised, or locked after too many incorrect password attempts, according to Kingston. Below are some tips on how organizations can secure USB drives and the data stored on them.
Apple is a wildly successful company that generates billions of dollars in profits every quarter. This is one of the clearest examples of how a company with the right strategy, great products, a strong leader and the willingness to take some risks can become hugely successful. However, like any other company, Apple faces challenges each year. In recent memory, the iPhone maker has been able to overcome those challenges with ease, thanks to the strong and self-assured leadership of Steve Jobs. But with the passing of Jobs, Apple will no longer have its greatest strategist and advocate to lead it through turbulent times. Does that mean that Apple will stumble or fall on hard times? Of course not. Apple is still a top company for a reason, and that won't change in just 12 months. But the Cupertino, Calif.-based company could see its power and influence reduced this year if it can't respond effectively to challenges. This slide show highlights what sort of challenges Apple must overcome in 2012:
Google's Search, plus your world (also known as SPYW) technology, a social approach to search that injects content from users' Google+ posts and Picasa photos into users' search results, has ruffled feathers in the Internet sector like no product since Google Buzz. While Buzz, Google’s failed social search effort, rubbed people the wrong way for exposing their Gmail contacts to other people, this personal search initiative is controversial for different reasons. On the privacy front, the service is not opt-in, which is a problem for privacy groups even though search results are tailored to each individual. However, not only are results HTTPS encrypted but Google has also made sure to mark personal results with specific designations used on Google+, including brandings for Public, Limited or Only you. More seriously, SPYW fails to aggregate content from Facebook and Twitter in the search results. This is proving to be a huge problem for Google critics who have accused the company of engaging in antitrust practices. Of course, this approach isn't without some rationale and its own back story, which eWEEK gladly supplies here in this slide show.
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