NewsFactor Network

Bing Bangs Out More Market Share at Yahoo's Expense

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

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

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

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

Bad for Bing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Restrictions, Restrictions

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

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

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

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

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

MySpace Revamp Aims To Reverse User Exodus

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

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

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

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

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

Focusing on Youth

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

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

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

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

Patches Highlight Problems in Maintaining Older Software

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

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

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

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

A Patch Roller Coaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Flashy Tablet Argument

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

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

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

As Ballmer Praises Apple, EFF Cites Stiff App Store Rules

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:25:44 -0500

With the stakes high in Microsoft's bid to add its search engine to the iPhone, a few words of praise by the software giant's CEO have drawn a considerable amount of attention.

"Apple's done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property" in the App Store, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a University of Washington audience last week.

Playing Bing-o

Although Ballmer was stating the obvious, observers and analysts quickly surmised that he was trying to sweeten the waters in advance of Apple's decision on whether to replace Google with Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on the iPhone operating system.

Business Week reported in January that the two giants were in negotiations for that deal. Asked by Reuters about the prospects after unveiling the Windows 7 Phone Series last month, Ballmer said, "I hear the same rumors you do."

The App Store has more than 130,000 products for sale or free, fueling the sale of iPods and iPhones and creating a user experience that other smartphone manufacturers have tried to emulate. Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile has less than 1,000 apps.

No Denying It

"It would appear that Microsoft is no longer in denial about what Apple has accomplished," said Michael Gartenberg of the Altimeter Group, a technology consulting firm. "The question is, will Microsoft be able to drive a wedge between Apple and Google and find a new and unlikely ally in the mobile space?"

As Ballmer praised the App Store, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based nonprofit, launched a broadside against Apple by publishing the company's 28-page developer licensing agreement on its web site.

Since NASA now has an iPhone app, the group cleverly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the agreement that the government agency signed with Apple.

'Major Shift'

"The entire family of devices built...

Remote-Code Vulnerability Being Exploited in IE 6 and 7

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:51:17 -0500

Older versions of Internet Explorer are under attack. Microsoft warned Tuesday afternoon that cybercriminals are actively exploiting a security vulnerability that lets attackers execute malicious code from remote locations.

Microsoft's internal investigation reveals that the latest version of the browser, Internet Explorer 8, is not affected. Likewise, Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 is not affected.

Here's a quick list of affected versions for IT administrators looking to implement a workaround to mitigate the risk: Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7.

"In addition to Microsoft's Patch Tuesday updates today, the company also issued an advisory for a new zero-day vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer," said Josh Talbot, security intelligence manager for Symantec Security Response. "Symantec has observed exploitation of this vulnerability in the wild and has created Trojan.Malscript!html and JS.Downloader detection to mitigate this attack."

The Root of the Problem

Microsoft said the vulnerability exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer. Under certain conditions, it's possible for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted, according to a March 9 Microsoft security advisory. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.

"At this time, we are aware of targeted attacks attempting to use this vulnerability. We will continue to monitor the threat environment and update this advisory if this situation changes," Microsoft said. "On completion of this investigation, Microsoft will take the appropriate action to protect our customers, which may include providing a solution through our monthly security update release process, or an out-of-cycle security update, depending on customer needs."

Mitigating Factors

IT administrators can take heart in the mitigating factors that may protect their...

Cisco Unveils Much Faster CRS-3 Router for Net Growth

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:31:57 -0500

The wait is over. Cisco Systems on Tuesday finally took the lid off its hype machine to reveal ... a new router. Cisco is positioning its CRS-3 Carrier Routing System as the foundation of the next-generation Internet that will pave the way for rapid growth of video transmissions, mobile devices, and new online services.

The CRS-3 offers three times the traffic capacity of the its predecessor, the CRS-1, Cisco said, and promises to accelerate the delivery of new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace. That's a lot of hyperbole, but analysts said it's believable.

"It's too bad Cisco led up to this router announcement with so much hype. People were expecting Armageddon or something. They had this countdown timer as if something big was going to happen," said Zeus Kerravala, a vice president at Yankee Group. "At the end of the day what Cisco announced was a big, fast router. But that's what Cisco does. We expect Cisco to release bigger, faster routers. It's what they built their company history on."

Lighting-Fast Router

The Cisco CRS-3 can handle up to 322 terabits per second. To put that speed into perspective, this router would allow the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just more than one second. Or every man, woman and child in China to make a video call -- simultaneously. And every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.

The Cisco CRS-3 makes possible unified service delivery of Internet and cloud services. A Network Positioning System provides layers three to seven application information for the best path to content. And a cloud virtual private network for Infrastructure as a Service lets customers "pay as you go" for computing, storage and network...

Sony, Samsung Join Campaign To Push 3-D TV Sets

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:29:49 -0500

On the heels of the big 3-D television presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Sony and Samsung are joining Panasonic, LG Electronics, and others in promoting the new technology. On Tuesday, Sony said it is aiming for 10 percent of its TV sales within the next year to be 3-D models, and Samsung announced a range of HDTV sets and Blu-ray players will ship later this month.

At a press conference Tuesday in New York City, Samsung announced what it described as the "world's first available full HD 3D LED TV," as well as a variety of related 3-D home entertainment products.

'World's First HDTV App Store'

Under a new promotion, buyers of a Samsung 3-D TV and 3-D Blu-ray player or home theater system will get a "3-D starter kit" with two pairs of 3-D glasses and a 3-D version of DreamWorks Animation's Monsters vs Aliens. The manufacturer also said it plans to make available a 3-D version of the studio's popular Shrek film series.

Samsung's 3-D offerings include 46- and 55-inch LED TVs being released this month, and others to be rolled out over the next several months. It also touted the 240-Hz refresh rate and Internet connectivity in the new models, as well as access to the "world's first HDTV app store," Samsung Apps.

On Wednesday, Panasonic will start selling its first 3-D TV in the U.S. in a partnership with Best Buy, while Samsung is also launching a 3-D TV and Blu-ray player offer with that retailer. LG said Tuesday it will begin offering its new 3-D sets in India.

Sony's first sales will be in June in Japan, and the company hasn't announced launch plans for the new products in the U.S. It has also said it will be releasing a software update for the PlayStation 3,...

Web Standards Group Gets a New Leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White House Starts Spreading the Tweets

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:01:01 -0500

#wanttospinWHreporters?

If you're PressSec -- White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' username on Twitter -- you join the powerful social media platform and push your message across the Internet, 140 characters at a time.

Blending behind-the-scenes nuggets with a defense of President Barack Obama's record, White House and administration officials increasingly are communicating through Twitter.

The popular social network is operating as a Web-based clearinghouse for public statements on weighty subjects (the federal budget) and the mundane (personal grocery lists). It's similar to a bulletin board where anyone can post short notes and users cull the pieces they see by choosing to "follow" individuals' account.

Forget press releases. Gibbs and his deputy, Bill Burton, are now sharing news in Twitter messages. So far 35,000 people have signed up to follow Gibbs and more than 6,000 are tracking Burton. Those two officials have a ways to go to catch actor Ashton Kutcher and his 4.6 million followers.

"Wow unreal game... POTUS watched OT in his office right off the Oval Office -- all of us are so proud of our great team," Gibbs tweeted during the men's Olympic hockey finals last Sunday, when the Americans lost the gold medal game to Canada in overtime. POTUS, of course, is the acronym for president of the United States.

Burton offered a midgame, inside-the-Beltway joke: "Tied! White House response, on bgnd, from a low- to midlevel administration official: USA! USA! USA!" (He was referring to a favorite administration request when talking to the press "on background" means the official won't be identified publicly.) After the U.S. loss, Burton noted that America still led the overall medal race.

These are hardly the pronouncements one expects from the president's top spokesmen. But as Obama's team continues an online strategy set in place during the campaign and imported to Pennsylvania Avenue, it seems only...

IBM Develops Earth-Friendly Plastic

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:01:32 -0500

When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn't necessarily become another plastic bottle.

Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it's recycled that it can't be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can't easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills.

Researchers from IBM Corp. and Stanford University believe they have developed a way to significantly improve the quality of recycled plastic and strip away those limitations.

A new recycling method the researchers are announcing Tuesday involves a way to break the plastic down so that it can be reused again and again in the same form. It is an advancement that could intrigue beverage companies and help cut the environmental damage from making plastic from scratch.

The innovation is a new family of catalysts that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it "ridiculously economical" to build it back up again, said Bob Allen, senior manager of chemistry and functional materials for IBM's Almaden research center in Silicon Valley.

The project is in the laboratory on a small scale. Researchers are planning a bigger pilot at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, home to Saudi Arabia's national laboratories. Allen said the technology could be commercially available within five years if the pilot goes well.

A critical question will be the price of the technology.

Andrew Williamson, a director with the venture capital firm Physic Ventures who has seen IBM's research, said it could help solve one of the biggest challenges facing food...

Tax Time Brings Out the Fraud Artists

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:03:14 -0500

How do you know that the sender of an e-mail that has landed in your inbox is trying to steal your money or your identity? The message comes right out and asks for it.

Tax season means computer criminals are going to be out in force, pumping out bogus e-mails that purport to be from the Internal Revenue Service. These messages ask you to supply personal information in all kinds of scams. Often the scam e-mails offer help speeding up the preparation of tax returns or securing a big refund.

The e-mails also might just be a cover for criminals to install malicious software on your computers, by tricking you into opening attachments or visiting poisoned Web sites.

Scam e-mails can be stunningly convincing, so you often can't tell just by looking at them whether they're real or fake. They can use authentic-looking IRS logos and even e-mail addresses: Scammers can make it appear as if they're writing from a legitimate government e-mail address, so you can't trust the "from" line in e-mails you receive.

So what should you do to protect yourself?

Don't supply your personal information, such as Social Security numbers or credit card numbers, to anyone e-mailing you for it. The e-mails might state that they just need a few pieces of personal information to get started. The IRS doesn't discuss tax matters with people by e-mail.

Also, don't open attachments or follow links in unsolicited e-mails. When it comes to computer security, if someone's offering you something online that you didn't ask for, chances are you probably don't want it.