Imagination to battle ARM with MIPS server chips

Imagination Technologies, the UK company that designs the graphics chips for the iPhone and iPad, will release a new CPU design next year for low-power servers, the company's CEO said this week.

It's part of a broad push by Imagination to expand the use of MIPS chips in all kinds of products, including servers, tablets, smartphones and wearable computers. Imagination inherited the architecture when it bought financially struggling MIPS Technologies last year.

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"The intent with MIPS is to cover all the markets where a CPU is relevant," said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination's CEO, at a press event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

It's a new and bold effort by Imagination, which is best known for the PowerVR graphics chips used in many top-tier mobile devices, including Google Glass. It hopes to expand the MIPS business in areas where the architecture is already strong, such as networking and home media systems, and also to plow new ground.

That will mean increased competition with Imagination's UK rival ARM Holdings. ARM is the dominant designer of CPUs for smartphones and tablets, and it's also targeting the server market, so the moves by Imagination could set up a grand battle between the two companies over the next few years. ARM, meanwhile, is also going for a bigger slice of Imagination's graphics business.

In servers, both companies are targeting low-power "hyperscale" servers, used by companies such as Facebook and Google to run massive online workloads. They will both have to compete with incumbent Intel, which has stepped up its own efforts to build low-power chips.

ARM and Imagination both develop chip designs that they license to other companies to manufacture. They each offer architectural licenses, which let companies design their own chips from scratch, and licenses for complete core designs, which can be turned into finished products more quickly.

Companies such as Broadcom and Cavium already build MIPS chips for specialized network equipment using an architectural license. But to promote MIPS more broadly, Imagination will offer complete core designs for servers as well.

Asked to give a timeframe, Yassaie said Imagination's upcoming Series5 "Warrior" CPUs will cover every segment of the market -- including servers -- by the end of 2014. It will take a further two to three years for chip makers to create finished server products and get them to market, Yassaie said.

"So for us to be a significant player in [servers] it will take several years. But in terms of technology, come the end of next year I would expect to have a solution for all the markets that are important for a CPU to be in," he said.

Imagination had already made clear that it would use the MIPS acquisition to build CPUs for the tablet and smartphone markets. Yassaie's comments Wednesday show the company is serious about servers as well.

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Samsung starts mass production of DDR4 memories

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Microsoft sets $100 Surface Pro discounts in stone

Microsoft yesterday made permanent the $100 price cut to its Surface Pro tablet that it ran as a temporary sale through most of August.

Surface Pro devices rely on Windows 8 Pro and Intel processors, rather than the stripped-down Windows RT and lower-powered ARM processors of the Surface RT. Surface Pro tablets can run traditional Windows software, often called "legacy" software, like the full-featured Office 2013 productivity suite.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Microsoft Surface naming debacle about to get worse. | Windows 8 left you blue? Then check out Windows Red, InfoWorld's plan to fix Microsoft's contested OS. | Microsoft's new direction, the touch interface for tablet and desktop apps, the transition from Windows 7 -- InfoWorld covers all this and more in the Windows 8 Deep Dive PDF special report. | Stay atop key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]

Sale prices were first unveiled Aug. 4 and were to run only through Aug. 30, or until supplies lasted. The discounts were available only in the U.S., Canada, China and a few other markets.

According to Microsoft, the Surface Pro permanent prices will be the sales prices: $799 for the model with 64GB of storage space, $899 for the one with 128GB.

Touch Cover prices will start at $79.99, $40 off the former price, and Surface RT-Touch Cover bundles, which were also discounted, will start at $399, $50 lower than originally. The more keyboard-like Type Cover, however, will remain $129.99.

The cheaper prices will be extended to all markets where Microsoft sells the Surface.

"The customer response to recent Surface pricing and keyboard-cover promotions has been exciting to see, and we are proud to begin rollout of Surface Pro, Touch Cover and Surface RT bundles at even more affordable prices starting August 29," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email.

Late Thursday, however, the Microsoft Store did not show all the new prices.

The Surface Pro discounts followed even more aggressive Surface RT price cuts in July. Then, Microsoft slashed the price of the Surface RT by up to 30 percent, reducing all models by $150.

Although Microsoft is expected to unveil new Surface tablets this fall, it's had a hard time unloading the first-generation inventory. For the quarter that ended June 30, Microsoft took a $900 million charge against earnings to account for excess stock of the Surface RT, and unspecified components and accessories.

According to one analyst, that write-off was probably the precipitating event that pushed Microsoft's board of directors to shove CEO Steve Ballmer out the door.

Microsoft has also heavily discounted the Surface RT in offers to schools, and given away thousands of the tablets at various conferences this year.

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Windows 8.1 won't rescue PC market this year, IDC says

The PC market will weaken even further this year and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8.1 OS will be unable to reverse the drop in shipments, IDC said on Thursday.

Due in part to increased adoption of mobile devices globally and a drop in PC sales in China, shipments will shrink 9.7 percent in 2013, according to IDC, which previously had predicted a fall of 7.7 percent drop.

[ Also on InfoWorld: A first, jaundiced look at Windows 8.1 RTM. | Windows 8 left you blue? Then check out Windows Red, InfoWorld's plan to fix Microsoft's contested OS. | InfoWorld has your top picks: the best Windows 8 tablet laptops, convertibles, and Ultrabooks. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]

Microsoft's Windows 8 has also been blamed by analysts as one of the reasons for the decline in the PC market. Windows 8.1, due to ship in mid-October, will address some user complaints, but PC shipments will also fall next year, and rebound with only single-digit growth in 2015, said Jay Chou, senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement.

With Windows 8, Microsoft has put a tablet-like touch user interface on PCs, which has baffled users buying non-touch PCs. Touch laptops remain expensive, and PC makers expect enterprises to upgrade laptops to the Windows 7 OS. The Windows 8 OS and high prices of PCs are reasons why people are looking at attractively priced tablets instead, Chou said.

Lower-priced laptops and convertible designs will ultimately help the PC market recover, IDC said.

"Advances in PC hardware, such as improvements in the power efficiency of x86 processors remain encouraging," Chou said.

The weak China market will be another major factor in PC shipments dropping, IDC said. PC makers like Lenovo have recorded PC shipment growth due to a strong China market in the previous quarters. IDC is forecasting PC shipments in China to fall by double digits this year, compounding an already weak consumer market in developed countries.

PC shipments dropped by 11.4 percent during the second quarter this year, totaling 75.6 million units, according to IDC. Component shortages also played a part in shipments dropping during the quarter.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's email address is agam_shah@idg.com.

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A first, jaundiced look at Windows 8.1 RTM

A first, jaundiced look at Windows 8.1 RTM | Microsoft windows - InfoWorld App DevApplicationsBig DataCloud ComputingConsumerizationData CenterMobile TechSecurityVirtualization News Blogs Test Center Technologies Tech Watch White Papers Webcasts Deep Dives Video More Our Blogs InfoWorld Tech Watch InfoWorld New Tech Forum InfoWorld Readers: Off the Record InfoWorld InfoTube Bruzzese: Enterprise Windows Cringely: Notes from the Field Grimes: Security Adviser Gruman: Mobile Edge Gruman: Smart User Knorr: Modernizing IT Linthicum: Cloud Computing Marshall: Virtualization Report Oliver: Strategic Developer Phipps: Open Sources Prigge: Information Overload Snyder: Tech's Bottom Line Venezia: The Deep End See all Blogs Feature Top picks: The best Windows 8 tablet laptops, convertibles, and Ultrabooks

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Thanks to a modern-day Robin Hood enigmatically named WZOR, new pirated Windows 8.1 RTM bits are coursing through the underground veins of the Internet. I've had a chance to play with the pirated RTM version of Windows 8.1 Pro for about 18 hours now, and what I see is disheartening at best, infuriating in places. A full review will follow, but here's what struck me the most about the latest, unofficial, not-yet-released version of Windows 8.1.

If that isn't enough of a caveat, consider: Microsoft has said repeatedly that it will make changes to Windows 8.1 itself, and particularly to the Metro apps, before General Availability on Oct. 18. More accurately, Brandon LeBlanc in Blogging Windows played a little time zone game:

I am excited to share that starting at 12:00am on October 18th in New Zealand (that's 4:00am October 17th in Redmond), Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 will begin rolling out worldwide as a free update for consumers with Windows 8 or Windows RT devices through the Windows Store. Windows 8.1 will also be available at retail and on new devices starting on October 18th by market.

What we're seeing in the RTM bits right now may change by the time customers start using Windows 8.1 on Oct. 17 or Oct. 18.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of the problems in Build 9364, which I described in March, were also in the disappointing Milestone Preview detailed in June and elaborated on in July, and in the mess encountered in Build 9471 earlier this month and are still in the pirated RTM build. Whether they'll change by GA is anybody's guess.

Here's a quick rundown of the problems I still see:

Smart Search slithers: It's Smart for Microsoft marketing but not for you. Smart Search -- the single greatest privacy-busting feature Windows has ever spawned -- is enabled by default on installation. Smart Search sends every search term you type for local, on-your-computer-or-network searches to that big Bing engine, for collecting, collating, and enhancing your shopping experience.Local accounts crumble: It's still almost impossible to install Windows 8.1 from the distribution ISO with a local account. Microsoft tries over and over again to force you to use, or sign up for, a Microsoft account. The only way to install with a local account requires you to enter a bogus email address -- you're supposed to know this by osmosis, as there are no instructions -- and you're finally given the option to install with a local account. Of course, if you upgrade through the Microsoft Store, Microsoft already has your account information (that's the only way to get into the Store), so this is a non-issue.Libraries lynched: The old Windows 7 and Windows 8 libraries aren't built by default, and they're hidden in the new File Explorer. Microsoft wants you to use SkyDrive, so it's made libraries very hard to discover. It's even hard for most customers to find their Public folders. Ka-ching. And the ultimate insult: if you elect to install SkyDrive ("recommended"), your Documents library is set up so anything stored in the Documents library automatically gets shunted to SkyDrive.Backup and Restore Center gone: If you have Windows 7 or Windows 8 backups created using the Windows Backup and Restore Center, you're going to have a jolly good time trying to restore them with Windows 8.1. System Restore points aren't created until you figure out how and where to turn them on. (On Metro Start, type restore, click Create Restore Point, select the drive you want to enable, click Configure, select Turn on System Protection, OK twice -- that was easy, wasn't it?)  next page › 12 Tags: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft, Windows 8 Print| .from-cso {float: left; padding: 0 0 12px; width: 50%;}Top 10 States for Tech Jobs Growth10 Free Google Chrome Extensions to Increase Your Productivity8 Things You Need to Know About SEO NowHow the Snowden Effect Is Paralyzing CIOs

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Screenshots of Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch leaked

Service Desk Comparative ReportGartner's recent magic quadrant for IT Service Support Management included no vendors as leaders or innovators. Learn why and how ITinvolve is delivering an innovative service desk solution that empowers IT staff through social collaboration and visualization to improve incident analysis and triage to speed incident resolution time.

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Microsoft: Talks with U.S. gov't on surveillance transparency break down

Negotiations have broken down between two Internet giants and U.S. government representatives over the companies' requests to publish information on the surveillance requests they receive, a Microsoft executive said Friday.

Microsoft and Google both filed lawsuits in June asking that the companies be allowed to disclose more information about U.S. government surveillance requests they receive. The two companies agreed to extend the government's deadline to respond to the lawsuits during negotiations over recent weeks, but those negotiations have failed, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post.

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"We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all," Smith wrote. "While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure."

The two companies requested that they be allowed to publish data about the number of surveillance requests they receive after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked information about the agency's widespread surveillance activities.

"We both remain concerned with the Government's continued unwillingness to permit us to publish sufficient data relating to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders," Smith wrote. "We believe we have a clear right under the U.S. Constitution to share more information with the public."

U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's announcement Thursday that his office would begin to publish the total number of national security requests each year was a "good start," Smith wrote. "But the public deserves and the Constitution guarantees more than this first step."

Microsoft wants to publish information showing the number of national security demands for user content, such as the text of an email, he said. 

Microsoft and Google will move forward with their lawsuits after negotiations have broken down, Smith said. The U.S. Department of Justice has a late Friday deadline to respond to both Google's and Microsoft's lawsuits in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A DOJ spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for a comment on Smith's blog post.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

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Salesforce.com mobile app developers gain security tools

Good Technology has integrated its Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform with Salesforce.com's Mobile SDK to help developers build mobile applications that are more secure and easily managed.

The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets combined with the BYOD (bring-your-own-device) trend presents several challenges to IT departments, including developing mobile applications and then efficiently managing and protecting them. Salesforce.com's Mobile SDK (software development kit) helps with the former and Good's Secure Mobility Platform offers the latter.

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The goal with the integration is to make it easier for Salesforce.com developers to build apps compatible with Good's containerization technology, which offers features such as app-level encryption as well as compliance and jailbreak detection. Enterprises can also put in place data loss prevention and automated actions that lock and wipe applications without impacting a user's device or personal data, according to Good.

The Mobile SDK, which is available for Android and iOS, is a key part of Salesforce.com's accelerating mobile push. It lets developers choose between building applications directly for Apple and Google's OSes, web applications or so-called hydrid applications -- which make it possible to embed HTML5 apps inside a native container.

Recently, Salesforce.com announced version 2.0 of the SDK, which added the SmartSync data framework allowing developers to create applications that work with data both off and online.

Good isn't the only mobile management tool vendor that's working with Salesforce. On Tuesday, competitor MobileIron announced Anyware. The hosted enterprise mobility management service lets administrators distribute mobile apps to employees as well as manage their devices from the Salesforce administration console, MobileIron said.

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Benioff lays out Salesforce.com's future strategies

Salesforce.com's second-quarter earnings conference call featured the usual dose of chest-thumping by CEO Marc Benioff as the company posted $957 million in revenue and raised its full fiscal year forecast to at least $4 billion.

But the call also revealed some telling details about the company's strategic direction and growth. Here's a look at the highlights.

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Going vertical, Oracle style: Salesforce.com recently brought aboard former Oracle sales executive Keith Block, who left that company last year after instant messages in which he was critical of Oracle co-president Mark Hurd surfaced as part of a lawsuit with Hewlett-Packard.

While Block's departure was inevitable, he was considered a key to Oracle's growth and success. And he's currently filling an important hole in Salesforce.com's strategy, Benioff said on Thursday's call.

"One thing Salesforce.com has never fully optimized for is enterprise distribution and the ability to reach the largest customers in the world with highly customized solutions for their industries and their verticals," he said. "You saw how Keith executed that strategy extremely well at Oracle over the last 26 years, and we look forward to seeing him execute a very similar strategy enhanced for Salesforce."

As a bonus, Block has poached Oracle sales executive Tony Fernicola, who Benioff claimed is "perhaps the most successful sales executive from Oracle of all time."

Siding with SAP: Salesforce.com has long used Oracle's technology under the hood of its platform, despite the fact that Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison have butted heads publicly for years.

While it's not clear how much of their banter has been competitive theater versus rooted in true animosity, it was still shocking to see the companies' recent announcement of Salesforce.com's long-term commitment to Oracle products, as well as the subsequent warm-and-fuzzy conference call between Benioff and Ellison.

As part of the deal, Oracle will also integrate Salesforce.com's CRM (customer relationship management) with its own cloud-based HCM (human capital management) and financials software.

Now Benioff wants to do it again, in a sense.

"It's my hope and I believe that we will be able to develop and create a similar alliance with SAP," Benioff said on Thursday. "I believe it's in the interest of their customers and our customers that Salesforce works well with Oracle, works well with SAP, and even works well with Microsoft, because our customers have these existing investments that we want to leverage."

In 2011, Salesforce.com announced a set of consulting and integration services SAP customers could use to "unlock" data from their back-end systems and build social connections between employees and customers.

To this end, Salesforce.com signed one of the "largest platform transactions in our history" in the quarter with food distributor Sysco, which was already implementing Salesforce.com CRM, Benioff said.

"We're able to take their huge investment in SAP back-office and put on a customer-facing capability that they badly needed but SAP was not able to deliver for them," he said. "I believe there's a lot of SAP customers that are in a similar position."

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Will software-defined networking kill network engineers' beloved CLI?

SDN (software-defined networking) promises some real benefits for people who use networks, but to the engineers who manage them, it may represent the end of an era.

Ever since Cisco made its first routers in the 1980s, most network engineers have relied on a CLI (command-line interface) to configure, manage and troubleshoot everything from small-office LANs to wide-area carrier networks. Cisco's isn't the only CLI, but on the strength of the company's domination of networking, it has become a de facto standard in the industry, closely emulated by other vendors.

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As such, it's been a ticket to career advancement for countless network experts, especially those certified as CCNAs (Cisco Certified Network Associates). Those network management experts, along with higher level CCIEs (Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts) and holders of other official Cisco credentials, make up a trained workforce of more than 2 million, according to the company.

A CLI is simply a way to interact with software by typing in lines of commands, as PC users did in the days of DOS. With the Cisco CLI and those that followed in its footsteps, engineers typically set up and manage networks by issuing commands to individual pieces of gear, such as routers and switches.

SDN, and the broader trend of network automation, uses a higher layer of software to control networks in a more abstract way. Whether through OpenFlow, Cisco's ONE (Open Network Environment) architecture, or other frameworks, the new systems separate the so-called control plane of the network from the forwarding plane, which is made up of the equipment that pushes packets. Engineers managing the network interact with applications, not ports.

"The network used to be programmed through what we call CLIs, or command-line interfaces. We're now changing that to create programmatic interfaces," Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Padmasree Warrior said at a press event earlier this year.

Will SDN spell doom for the tool that network engineers have used throughout their careers?

"If done properly, yes, it should kill the CLI. Which scares the living daylights out of the vast majority of CCIEs," Gartner analyst Joe Skorupa said. "Certainly all of those who define their worth in their job as around the fact that they understand the most obscure Cisco CLI commands for configuring some corner-case BGP4 (Border Gateway Protocol 4) parameter."

At some of the enterprises that Gartner talks to, the backlash from some network engineers has already begun, according to Skorupa.

"We're already seeing that group of CCIEs doing everything they can to try and prevent SDN from being deployed in their companies," Skorupa said. Some companies have deliberately left such employees out of their evaluations of SDN, he said.

Not everyone thinks the CLI's days are numbered. SDN doesn't go deep enough to analyze and fix every flaw in a network, said Alan Mimms, a senior architect at F5 Networks.

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Report: NSA pays millions for US telecom access

When it comes to tapping into U.S. telecommunications networks for surreptitious surveillance, the U.S. National Security Agency can't be accused of not paying its way.

The government agency pays "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" to U.S. telecommunications companies for the equipment and service required to intercept telephone calls, emails and instant messages of potential interest, according to a story in Thursday's Washington Post.

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For the current fiscal year, the NSA will pay $278 million for such access, and had paid $394 million in fiscal 2011, according to the Post.

Although previous news reports of NSA surveillance noted that the agency paid the costs for tapping into communications networks, the exact amount the agency has paid has not been cited before, according to the Post.

One of the largest of the 16 U.S. intelligence offices, the NSA is in charge of collecting and analyzing data to track foreign activities that could be harmful to the U.S. The agency is overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense's Director of National Intelligence.

The practice dates back at least to the 1970s. These data collection programs -- which have gone under names such as Blarney, Stormbrew, Fairview, and Oakstar -- are separate from the PRISM program first publicly unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. PRISM collects data from U.S. service providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, whereas with these programs, the NSA collects potential data of interest as it moves across telecommunication gateways.

The article did not provide the names of any telecommunications companies that participate in the program, though notes they typically are paid for the costs of hardware and the labor to install and run the necessary equipment, as well as a certain percentage for profit.

The privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center had noted that it is troublesome that the NSA is paying so much to telecommunication companies given that their customers expect that their communications remain private.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's email address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com.

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Offshoring will kill 1.5 million IT jobs by 2017

Approximately 1.5 million IT jobs -- about half of the number that existed in North America and Europe in 2002 -- will have been eliminated by 2017, according to new research from The Hacket Group. The mass job loss will be attributable to the combined impact of offshoring, technology-driven productivity improvements and a low-growth business environment.

The research factors new job creation into the figures. Over that 15-year period, Hackett says 620,000 new IT jobs will have been produced while 1.2 million will be eliminated due to productivity gains and 950,000 will have moved offshore.

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The eradication of IT roles will actually slow over the next couple of years -- Hackett predicts 63,000 net jobs will be lost this year -- due to predictions of an uptick in economic growth.

Roles in application maintenance and development along with infrastructure support have been the hardest hit, says Eric Dorr, senior research director with the Hackett Group, and its unlikely those positions will ever move back onshore.

"While there will still be new jobs and a lot of IT work taking place, those jobs that moved offshore are not coming back," Dorr says. "That's a relatively rare phenomenon."

Companies need global business services -- and more onshore IT talent
A major factor in the continued embrace of offshoring has been the expanded use of global business services, a shared services approach to supporting an integrated suite of back-office business services including IT, finance, and human resources.

Many companies have found they count on global business services operations to drive cost and productivity improvements year after year, according to The Hackett Group, saving an average of 20 percent in the first year and 6 percent in subsequent years. "Global business services are here to say," says Dorr. "No question."

Meanwhile IT leaders are facing talent shortages onshore. "The real limitation in a company's ability to implement technology is talent," Dorr says. "And there is only so much talent to go around." Currently IT organizations are facing shortfalls in the areas of big data analytics, according to Dorr.

In the several years that The Hackett Group has been researching and modeling the state of IT employment in the west, the most surprising development has been increasing automationg and productivity gains companies have achieved.

"Two years ago, everyone was talking about offshoring. But at the end of the day, a company would prefer to eliminate a job [altogether rather than moving it offshore," says Dorr. "With increased economic uncertainty and rising wage levels offshore, we've seen a shift toward more automation -- companies just trying to eliminate the work."

Ultimately, the Hackett model represents a more mature and global market for IT talent, according to Dorr. "One thing we starting talking about last year was the there are only so many jobs can move offshore. At some point that dries up," says Dorr.

"That doesn't mean globalization is coming to an end -- quite the opposite, we're entering the next stage of globalization. Companies are creating a far more rational and globally integrated model of where to source labor based on availability, qualifications and cost. A few years from now it will be more of a truly globalized economy," Dorr says.

Stephanie Overby is regular contributor to CIO.com's IT Outsourcing section. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn.

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Salesforce.com mobile app developers gain security tools

IDG News Service - Good Technology has integrated its Dynamics Secure Mobility Platform with Salesforce.com's Mobile SDK to help developers build mobile applications that are more secure and easily managed.

The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets combined with the BYOD (bring-your-own-device) trend presents several challenges to IT departments, including developing mobile applications and then efficiently managing and protecting them. Salesforce.com's Mobile SDK (software development kit) helps with the former and Good's Secure Mobility Platform offers the latter.

The goal with the integration is to make it easier for Salesforce.com developers to build apps compatible with Good's containerization technology, which offers features such as app-level encryption as well as compliance and jailbreak detection. Enterprises can also put in place data loss prevention and automated actions that lock and wipe applications without impacting a user's device or personal data, according to Good.

The Mobile SDK, which is available for Android and iOS, is a key part of Salesforce.com's accelerating mobile push. It lets developers choose between building applications directly for Apple and Google's OSes, web applications or so-called hydrid applications -- which make it possible to embed HTML5 apps inside a native container.

Recently, Salesforce.com announced version 2.0 of the SDK, which added the SmartSync data framework allowing developers to create applications that work with data both off and online.

Good isn't the only mobile management tool vendor that's working with Salesforce. On Tuesday, competitor MobileIron announced Anyware. The hosted enterprise mobility management service lets administrators distribute mobile apps to employees as well as manage their devices from the Salesforce administration console, MobileIron said.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Salesforce.com's Benioff lays out future strategies

IDG News Service - Salesforce.com's second-quarter earnings conference call featured the usual dose of chest-thumping by CEO Marc Benioff as the company posted US$957 million in revenue and raised its full fiscal year forecast to at least $4 billion.

But the call also revealed some telling details about the company's strategic direction and growth. Here's a look at the highlights.

Going vertical, Oracle style: Salesforce.com recently brought aboard former Oracle sales executive Keith Block, who left that company last year after instant messages in which he was critical of Oracle co-president Mark Hurd surfaced as part of a lawsuit with Hewlett-Packard.

While Block's departure was inevitable, he was considered a key to Oracle's growth and success. And he's currently filling an important hole in Salesforce.com's strategy, Benioff said on Thursday's call.

"One thing Salesforce.com has never fully optimized for is enterprise distribution and the ability to reach the largest customers in the world with highly customized solutions for their industries and their verticals," he said. "You saw how Keith executed that strategy extremely well at Oracle over the last 26 years, and we look forward to seeing him execute a very similar strategy enhanced for Salesforce."

As a bonus, Block has poached Oracle sales executive Tony Fernicola, who Benioff claimed is "perhaps the most successful sales executive from Oracle of all time."

Siding with SAP: Salesforce.com has long used Oracle's technology under the hood of its platform, despite the fact that Benioff and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison have butted heads publicly for years.

While it's not clear how much of their banter has been competitive theater versus rooted in true animosity, it was still shocking to see the companies' recent announcement of Salesforce.com's long-term commitment to Oracle products, as well as the subsequent warm-and-fuzzy conference call between Benioff and Ellison.

As part of the deal, Oracle will also integrate Salesforce.com's CRM (customer relationship management) with its own cloud-based HCM (human capital management) and financials software.

Now Benioff wants to do it again, in a sense.

"It's my hope and I believe that we will be able to develop and create a similar alliance with SAP," Benioff said on Thursday. "I believe it's in the interest of their customers and our customers that Salesforce works well with Oracle, works well with SAP, and even works well with Microsoft, because our customers have these existing investments that we want to leverage."

In 2011, Salesforce.com announced a set of consulting and integration services SAP customers could use to "unlock" data from their back-end systems and build social connections between employees and customers.

To this end, Salesforce.com signed one of the "largest platform transactions in our history" in the quarter with food distributor Sysco, which was already implementing Salesforce.com CRM, Benioff said.

"We're able to take their huge investment in SAP back-office and put on a customer-facing capability that they badly needed but SAP was not able to deliver for them," he said. "I believe there's a lot of SAP customers that are in a similar position."

Benioff also alluded to Salesforce.com putting its software on top of implementations of HANA, SAP's in-memory database.

Targeting ExactTarget: Earlier this year, Salesforce.com acquired marketing software vendor ExactTarget, dropping $2.5 billion on the deal in its largest-ever purchase. Marketing will become a $1 billion annual revenue stream for Salesforce.com, Benioff has said.

Work is underway to make that prediction a reality, according to Benioff.

For one thing, ExactTarget has had a "rather boutique" sales organization, he said. For Salesforce.com to get the most out of ExactTarget, sales representatives need to act as if "there is no difference between selling the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud, or the Platform," Benioff said.

Combining the marketing products sales teams is "one of the most important things that I work on every day," Benioff added.

Over time, customers can expect a "comprehensive application" encompassing ExactTarget as well as Salesforce.com's Radian6 social analytics product and its Buddy Media and Social.com advertising platforms, Benioff said.

Deluge at Dreamforce: Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event in San Francisco this November will be its biggest yet. More than 120,000 are registered to attend it so far, according to Benioff. Last year, the total was around 90,000.

While Salesforce.com has offered keynote and expo passes at no charge, which certainly helps inflate those numbers, the year-over-year growth is nonetheless significant.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Facebook tells employees, 'build something' -- with a table saw

IDG News Service - Facebook's motto may be "move fast and break things," but the 3,000 employees at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, now have the chance to do just the opposite.

To attract workers and keep them happy, the social network offers many well-known perks including free on-campus dining, a gym, and shuttle buses to and from San Francisco. But if those aren't cutting it, here's one that might do, literally: a woodshop.

The 3,000-plus square-foot facility houses more than a dozen pieces of machinery including table saws, lathes, drill presses, sanders and a laser engraver. The idea is to give employees an opportunity to exercise another part of their brain, get their creative juices flowing and build something beyond their usual output of webpages, mobile updates and other products that don't exist outside of a computer screen.

And, Facebook hopes the shop will inspire employees to apply some new thinking to the jobs they were hired to do.

Hans Lintermans, a Facebook product manager in marketing, visits the woodshop at least once a week, sometimes during his lunch break, to work on any number of projects. On Thursday he was busy doing some polishing on a cutting board for cooking. Before that he made a two-by-six-foot table out of solid redwood he picked up from a local lumber yard.

Next on the list? Maybe a butcher block, the craftsman said.

Facebook is famous for its hackathons -- usually anything-goes, all-night coding workshops that are meant to spawn new product concepts and prototypes.

But the woodshop, Lintermans said, is just as exciting, if not more so. "It helps me to unwind and think outside the box," he said.

Some other Facebook employees are still making up their minds.

"It's a perk," said Sean Nicolay, a software engineer who had stepped in for an introductory three-hour training session on how to safely use the machines.

Ted Kalaw, another software engineer, called it an extension -- albeit a more hands-on one -- of the culture the company tries to foster around creativity.

The woodshop is located just off the busy boulevard of cyclists and walkers that bisects the company's main quad. It sits adjacent to Facebook's Analog Research Lab, a screen printing studio and workshop.

There are all sorts of stylized posters adorning the walls of Facebook's buildings, bearing corporate mantras like "Stay Focused and Keep Shipping," or "The Foolish Wait." The Analog Research Lab is where those posters and other "offline" handiwork is produced.

Think of the woodshop, then, as the 3-D cousin to that lab, with sawdust.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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The NSA pays millions for U.S. telecom access

IDG News Service - When it comes to tapping into U.S. telecommunications networks for surreptitious surveillance, the U.S. National Security Agency can't be accused of not paying its way.

The government agency pays "hundreds of millions of dollars a year" to U.S. telecommunications companies for the equipment and service required to intercept telephone calls, emails and instant messages of potential interest, according to a story in Thursday's Washington Post.

For the current fiscal year, the NSA will pay $278 million for such access, and had paid $394 million in fiscal 2011, according to the Post.

Although previous news reports of NSA surveillance noted that the agency paid the costs for tapping into communications networks, the exact amount the agency has paid has not been cited before, according to the Post.

One of the largest of the 16 U.S. intelligence offices, the NSA is in charge of collecting and analyzing data to track foreign activities that could be harmful to the U.S. The agency is overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense's Director of National Intelligence.

The practice dates back at least to the 1970s. These data collection programs -- which have gone under names such as Blarney, Stormbrew, Fairview, and Oakstar -- are separate from the PRISM program first publicly unveiled by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. PRISM collects data from U.S. service providers such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google, whereas with these programs, the NSA collects potential data of interest as it moves across telecommunication gateways.

The article did not provide the names of any telecommunications companies that participate in the program, though notes they typically are paid for the costs of hardware and the labor to install and run the necessary equipment, as well as a certain percentage for profit.

The privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center had noted that it is troublesome that the NSA is paying so much to telecommunication companies given that their customers expect that their communications remain private.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Will software-defined networking kill network engineers' beloved CLI?

IDG News Service - SDN (software-defined networking) promises some real benefits for people who use networks, but to the engineers who manage them, it may represent the end of an era.

Ever since Cisco made its first routers in the 1980s, most network engineers have relied on a CLI (command-line interface) to configure, manage and troubleshoot everything from small-office LANs to wide-area carrier networks. Cisco's isn't the only CLI, but on the strength of the company's domination of networking, it has become a de facto standard in the industry, closely emulated by other vendors.

As such, it's been a ticket to career advancement for countless network experts, especially those certified as CCNAs (Cisco Certified Network Associates). Those network management experts, along with higher level CCIEs (Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts) and holders of other official Cisco credentials, make up a trained workforce of more than 2 million, according to the company.

A CLI is simply a way to interact with software by typing in lines of commands, as PC users did in the days of DOS. With the Cisco CLI and those that followed in its footsteps, engineers typically set up and manage networks by issuing commands to individual pieces of gear, such as routers and switches.

SDN, and the broader trend of network automation, uses a higher layer of software to control networks in a more abstract way. Whether through OpenFlow, Cisco's ONE (Open Network Environment) architecture, or other frameworks, the new systems separate the so-called control plane of the network from the forwarding plane, which is made up of the equipment that pushes packets. Engineers managing the network interact with applications, not ports.

"The network used to be programmed through what we call CLIs, or command-line interfaces. We're now changing that to create programmatic interfaces," Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Padmasree Warrior said at a press event earlier this year.

Will SDN spell doom for the tool that network engineers have used throughout their careers?

"If done properly, yes, it should kill the CLI. Which scares the living daylights out of the vast majority of CCIEs," Gartner analyst Joe Skorupa said. "Certainly all of those who define their worth in their job as around the fact that they understand the most obscure Cisco CLI commands for configuring some corner-case BGP4 (Border Gateway Protocol 4) parameter."

At some of the enterprises that Gartner talks to, the backlash from some network engineers has already begun, according to Skorupa.

"We're already seeing that group of CCIEs doing everything they can to try and prevent SDN from being deployed in their companies," Skorupa said. Some companies have deliberately left such employees out of their evaluations of SDN, he said.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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How Social Analytics Can Improve Enterprise IT Efficiency

CIO - Imagine your manager offered to eliminate much of the red tape, bureaucracy and distractions you encounter daily.

Imagine eliminating the hours spent in meetings to discuss the need for more meetings. Imagine your manager were able to distribute the workload more evenly among colleagues, or even recognize the need to hire additional personnel.

Now imagine your manager offered all these things, and all you'd have to do is let him read your email.

Enter the Social Enterprise

That's the promise behind VoloMetrix's Social Enterprise Intelligence, an automated, software-based plugin that extracts data from corporate IT collaboration applications including email, calendars, messaging and various social networks.

VoloMetrix then uses that data to analyze exactly where and how much time, energy and costs are being spent on day-to-day operations and on strategic initiatives.

"Think of it like a 3D networking topography," says VoloMetrix CEO Ryan Fuller. "A general organizational chart is flat -- it shows who reports to whom, but it doesn't show who's collaborating across departments and divisions and with whom, who's working together on certain projects, the dependencies and the connections. This is a great source of untapped data," Fuller says.

CIOs and other C-level executives have plenty of access to data "after the fact," says Fuller, in the form of financial and revenue metrics, call center logs and data, and customer tracking through CRM systems. However, it's difficult to gain real-time insight into how employees are connected, how resources are being used and how time is being spent.

Social Analytics: A New Form of Business Intelligence

"This kind of enterprise social analytics technology is a hot commodity right now as enterprises look for new ways to leverage these social connections for business," says Glenn O'Donnell, principal analyst, Infrastructure and Operations Professionals at Forrester Research.

"They already see value in Facebook, LinkedIn, even Twitter's proprietary algorithms that can see connections and then infer what people are interested in, can see how they're connected with other folks, and make sense of your network," O'Donnell says.

Using social analytics on previously unused data sets -- reading email headers, calendar data, instant messaging logs -- can deliver a lot of business value, especially for large, distributed enterprises that aren't on a first-name basis with most of their employees, he says.

"If you're a small organization, everyone's already intimately involved with each other and those connections are well-known. There's really no need to track who's interacting with whom, how often and why, because chances are, you already know all too well," O'Donnell says.

"But in a large organization," O'Donnell says, "It's really important to map who is connected, how intimately, what they're working on and to what extent. This is where the value is -- resource allocation, time management, asset utilization."

Though it looks like a piece of abstract art, this enterprise sociograph is actually showing concrete connections and collaborations between employees. Each color represents an initiative, vendor or customer. And each line represents an instance of employee engagement with that particular initiative, vendor or customer.

VoloMetrix is designed to let managers and decision makers customize an organizational chart, strategic initiatives and customers to provide a unique, custom-tailored, weekly or monthly report that details how much time employees are spending in meetings, handling customers, dealing with administrative processes, Fuller says. "It's a way to see how many employees are engaging with each customer, and how much time each vendor, project or initiative is taking from your organization to make sure they're not either getting shortchanged or you're not going overboard."

Another Hit on Privacy?

As far as user privacy and confidentiality, VoloMetrix pulls only header-level data, not attachments, email content, contact names, specific calendar data, Fuller says. Privacy and confidentiality policies vary from customer to customer and even from country to country, but the bottom line is that the data streams used are completely anonymous.

"Conspiracy theorists and the uber-paranoid folks will always latch onto the issues of privacy and assert that they're always against this sort of thing," says O'Donnell. "They'll say, sure, the powers-that-be will tell you 'We're not actually reading your email,' but how do you know they aren't actually reading your email?'" O'Donnell said.

In fact, there's no legal expectation of privacy when dealing with corporate data from company owned systems like email, he says.

Fuller says that the solution is less about individual actions than it is a way to aggregate data to better view 'bigger picture' issues.

In fact, in many of VoloMetrix customers' deployments, Fuller says the product has opened the door for managers to better address employee concerns and to better distribute workloads, increasing productivity. (Fuller says VoloMetrix currently has eight-to-10 "very well-known, large, global enterprise customers." However, he added, they do not want to be named.)

Giving Insight Back to Employees

"We found that many CIOs and managers wanted to take this data and give it right back to their employees so they could see where their time and energy is going, and where the distractions, the obstacles to productivity were coming from," Fuller says.

The reports can quickly identify where bottlenecks and pain points are in an organization, and can actually empower employees -- especially junior employees -- to better their situations, he says.

"The more junior you are, the less control you have over where your time goes. Without hard data to back up your complaints, let's face it, often times, it's just brushed off as an employee whining," Fuller says. "But with these kinds of reports, employees can say, 'Look, I really am being pulled in a billion different directions, and let's figure out how to address that so I can be more productive and have better relationships.' It can be very empowering."

In fact, Fuller says, when one customer described VoloMetrix to its approximately 8,000 employees and gave them the choice to opt-in or opt-out, only 2 percent (about 160 people) chose not to participate, he says.

CIOs are great at knowing how to allocate IT resources -- storage and networking, software, infrastructure and all the related costs, but this can really help identify more of the "soft" opportunities to redirect energy, personnel and time, Fuller says.

VoloMetrix has almost doubled in size over the last year, Fuller says, and while the company started out aiming for a pretty horizontal customer base, they're now focusing on areas like IT, sales and post-merger integration.

O'Donnell notes that the solution is accessible for almost any large organization, and while it's not exactly plug-and-play, implementing the technology doesn't require a whole lot of up-front investment or highly technical skill sets.

"There's a generic plugins for Microsoft Exchange, but from there, it's so customizable that the skillsets vary insofar as you need to be able to tie it into different systems," O'Donnell says. "Project management, for instance, would require a different skillset than if you were using it to track finance, or sales, so, at the end-user level, each implementation will differ slightly between departments."

Of course, O'Donnell adds, one crucial piece of the puzzle is having a skilled data analyst on hand who can take the data provided, read it and use it to make the business run better and more efficiently. It's best if at least one employee has experience handling and analyzing large data sets, he said.

"CIOs are looking to be strategic enablers for the entire business, and this is a great way to go to their peer executives and say, "We've been providing you these technology tools -- email, messaging, collaboration -- for years, and this is how you're using them, but now we also can give you analytics to better understand how you can use them more effectively," Fuller said. "That's the real business value."

Sharon Florentine covers IT careers and data center topics for CIO.com. Follow Sharon on Twitter @MyShar0na. Email her at sflorentine@cio.com Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook.

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This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.

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Why are virtual assistant apps so shy?

Computerworld - We've been on the brink of a new relationship with our gadgets for years.

"Real soon now," we're told, mobile apps will interrupt us with personalized information we never asked for. These interruptions would show us opportunities ("Those shirts you like are half-off at the store around the corner"), facilitate our social lives ("Your friend Janet is also visiting New York and is free for lunch -- would you like to invite her?") and save our bacon ("You haven't ordered a flower delivery for your anniversary -- would you like me to take care of it?").

What are they waiting for?

Apple's Siri responds impressively but doesn't take the initiative to interrupt much.

MindMeld is supposed to ship to general availability an app that churns out information related to your video conversations. The technology and platform look impressive, but the purpose of MindMeld's proof-of-concept app will be context for conversations, not mobile personal assistance.

EasilyDo is supposed to give you predictive results, but like most in this category, you have to work for it. The results are a fraction of what you want, actually harvesting data from social networks, calendars and location-oriented databases and placing them in a stream.

EasilyDo performs a wide variety of useful tasks like contacting people for you, telling you when to leave for your meeting, getting directions, automatically creating new contacts and many other things. EasilyDo automates tasks to simulate a personal assistant, but it doesn't do anything you haven't specifically commanded it to do. It doesn't interrupt you proactively with contextual information beyond things like telling you to leave for your next meeting.

Osito is another cool app that suffers from the same lack of creative interruption as EasilyDo. It's more of a rollup of the kinds of information you can get elsewhere, but presented in a stream with some pop-ups. It's more about automation than contextual assistance.

Foursquare just got interesting. The company rolled out a test version of Foursquare that throws advice and context at you when you walk into a restaurant or around a neighborhood. ("Try the cheese fries in this place -- they're incredible.")

Checking in isn't required. In fact, the information will pop up even if the Foursquare app isn't running. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Sadly, the test is for 2,000 lucky Android users only, with a wider rollout promised for an unspecified future. Foursquare tested a comparable feature called "Radar" two years ago, but killed it after "Radar" killed battery life.

Google Now has by far the best proactive interruption in the business, if you have an Android device.

Google Now grabs information about you from Gmail, Google Search and elsewhere, and uses that data to improve results.

Lately, Google has folded in some amazing capabilities. For example, it preemptively feeds you information about your car rentals, public transportation information based on guesses about where you might want to go, movie tickets and sports scores.

Google Now tells you more information about whatever's on screen. It knows what you're watching because, with your permission, it listens to the sound of the show to figure out what you're watching.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

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Leaked US spying budget reveals investments in 'groundbreaking' cryptanalysis

IDG News Service - The U.S. intelligence community is reportedly using 20% of its $52.6 billion annual budget to fund cryptography-related programs and operations.

Some of those funds are invested in finding weaknesses in cryptographic systems that would allow breaking encrypted communications collected from the Internet and elsewhere, according to a portion of a top-secret document published Thursday by The Washington Post and obtained from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The document is the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal summary for the National Intelligence Program, which spans 16 agencies with over 107,000 employees. The entire report called "FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification" has 178 pages, according to the Post, but the newspaper only published 17, including a 5-page statement signed by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

In his statement, Clapper listed the primary areas of investment for the intelligence community which included Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). In respect to SIGINT he wrote: "We are bolstering our support for clandestine SIGINT capabilities to collect against high priority targets, including foreign leadership targets. Also, we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic."

Cryptanalysis is the science of analyzing cryptographic systems in order to find weaknesses that would allow obtaining the contents of encrypted messages without advance knowledge of the encryption key.

Previous documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA is collecting Internet communications en-masse with the help of telecommunication and technology companies. U.S. companies that operate the backbone telecommunications and Internet infrastructure are paid millions of dollars every year by the government to allow the NSA to collect data as it moves through their fiber-optic cables and networks, the Post reported Thursday.

The newly leaked budget reveals that this money is paid through a project called the "Corporate Partner Access" that was expected to cost $278 million during fiscal year 2013, the newspaper said. There are some other payments for "Foreign Partner Access" totalling $56.6 million, although it's not clear if these are for foreign companies, foreign governments or other entities.

The NSA's mass upstream interception of Internet traffic has prompted many people in the security community to wonder what the agency's crypto-cracking capabilities might be in relation to encryption schemes and protocols that are in widespread use on the Internet today. Some crypto experts believe that there is not reason to believe the NSA can crack strong encryption algorithms vetted by scientists, but others said that the feasibility of breaking widely used encryption protocols like SSL/TLS depends on various factors, like key size and other configurations.

While the leaked budget document does not provide details about the NSA's ability to crack encrypted communication, it does confirm that cryptography and cryptanalysis are one of the U.S. intelligence community's key areas of interest.

Twenty-one percent, or roughly $11 billion, of the 2013 budget was intended for the Consolidated Cryptologic Program (CCP), which includes NSA programs and is staffed by around 35,000 employees. This makes it the second most expensive program of the intelligence community after the Central Intelligence Agency program, which was supposed to receive 28% of the funds.

Of the $11 billion used to fund the CPP, around $2.5 billion, or 23%, were intended for "collection and operations" and $1.6 billion, or 15%, for "processing and exploitation." The program's biggest expenses were estimated in the "enterprise management and support" category which was set to receive 26% of the funds.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Apple faces threat from China, bellwether in battle against Android

Computerworld - Apple faces a threat from an unexpected quarter: Chinese developers crafting Android apps, an analytics firm said today.

Chinese developers build nearly two-thirds of the mobile apps used by Chinese consumers -- an even higher percentage than U.S. developers contribute to U.S. consumers' app usage patterns -- illustrating not only the difficulty outsiders face in breaking into the massive market, but reinforcing one analyst's claim that Apple will face a crisis next year if it continues to shed smartphone share.

According to Flurry, a U.S.-based mobile analytics firm, U.S. developers are losing their grip on the mobile app ecosystem, and have accounted for just 36% of all smartphone and tablet apps published so far this year. That's down from 45% over the last two years.

The U.S.'s contribution to the overall app market -- Android and iOS -- looked better when Flurry weighted the data by time spent with apps: There, U.S. developers accounted for 70%. But that, too, was smaller than in years prior, when U.S. programmers held app usage shares of 75% and 76% in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

While Flurry's data was meant to push U.S. developers to think globally -- something they've not done nearly as successfully as those in other countries -- it also revealed an interesting trend in China.

China, said Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, is not a big software exporter at the moment. But that will change.

"The software export market [for China] is nascent now, it doesn't look like a big software exporter yet," said Khalaf in an interview. "But Chinese developers are starting to see some adoption in Japan and Korea. That's their focus now: CJK [China, Japan and Korea]."

And Chinese apps, localized for export, will continue to grab global share by expanding into other neighboring markets, including Southeast Asia, India and Indonesia. "The sheer numbers in India ... that's a lot of market [for Chinese apps]," said Khalaf.

The Chinese maneuver may seem inconsequential to Apple at first glance, but Khalaf begged to differ.

That's because Chinese consumers are more likely to be using an Android-based smartphone, one tied to the Android ecosystem, than they are to own an iPhone and rely on Apple's app market. In earlier studies by Flurry, the firm pegged the Android-iOS split in China at about 2 to 1, with Apple's installed base accounting for just 35% of the country's total. The remaining was all Android.

And Chinese developers, like all developers, follow the money. If Android dominates the installed base, Android is what developers will write for.

"When you look at the apps being submitted to Flurry, you do see an interesting shift happening, with Chinese developers releasing Android and iOS apps at the same time," said Khalaf. "But an 'Android-first' release could be the next shift down the road."

And that's where things start to get ugly for Apple. Or so Benedict Evans, an analyst with U.K.-based Enders Analysis, has argued.

In a report published in early August, Evans maintained that without a low-priced iPhone in its portfolio -- and by low, he meant as low as $200 to $300 -- Apple risked losing mind share among developers. In other words, Apple needs market share as much as profit margin for the iPhone to continue being a credible smartphone brand.

Like Khalaf, Evans saw the danger stemming from developers' decisions.

"Developers are starting to move from creating new products on the basis 'iPhone, then maybe Android' to 'iPhone and then Android' or even 'iPhone and Android at the same time,'" Evans said in his report. "We do not see Android becoming a first choice this year, but it is no longer optional for any publisher seeking real reach. If total Android engagement moves decisively above iOS, the fact that iOS will remain big will be beside the point -- it will move from first to first-equal and then perhaps second place on the roadmap."

If that happens, Apple is in a world of hurt.

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Microsoft will move forward with litigation over NSA data collection

Computerworld - Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said on Friday that the company would move ahead with its lawsuit against the U.S. government, seeking permission to release more information on demands Microsoft receives from the National Security Agency (NSA) and others for Internet user data.

In a blog post, Smith dismissed as inadequate the Obama Administration's announcement late on Thursday that it would begin publishing, on an annual basis, the total number of national security requests for customer data made to Internet and telecom service providers.

"The Government's decision represents a good start. But the public deserves and the Constitution guarantees more than this first step," Smith said.

He noted that it is vital for companies such as Microsoft to be able to publish data that clearly distinguishes between government requests for actual user content and government requests for metadata like the subscriber information related to a particular email address.

Such information can be published in a manner that poses no risk to national security. Any discussion on service provider obligations and government data collection practices under the anti-terror Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would remain incomplete unless this type of information is publicly released, Smith said.

However, in a blog post announcing intention to release data on the number of NSA requests each year, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made clear that this is as much information the government is willing to provide for now.

"FISA and national security letters are an important part of our effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe, and disclosing more detailed information about how they are used and to whom they are directed can obviously help our enemies avoid detection," Clapper said.

Both Google and Microsoft sued the government in June over the issue. Both companies are among the several major Internet players from whom the NSA and other intelligence agencies are gathering large volumes of data on Internet users under FISA orders.

Under the anti-terror statute, the companies are currently prohibited from disclosing any details about the information they are required to provide, or even how many requests they receive each year from the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

Microsoft and others have vigorously argued that their inability to disclose such information is hurting them and had resulted in all sorts of misperceptions about the government having direct access to their systems. Their concerns are also likely being fueled by recent warnings that the NSA's data collection activities could cost U.S. cloud companies billions of dollars in business going forward.

In his blog post, Smith noted that since June the U.S. Department of Justice has filed six extensions for time to respond to the complaints aired by Microsoft and Google in their lawsuits. Microsoft agreed to those extensions, he said.

Last month, the company asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to personally help Microsoft and others share more complete information on how they handle national security requests for customer data.

"We hoped that these discussions would lead to an agreement acceptable to all," Smith wrote. "While we appreciate the good faith and earnest efforts by the capable Government lawyers with whom we negotiated, we are disappointed that these negotiations ended in failure."

As a result, the company will "move forward with litigation in the hope that the courts will uphold our right to speak more freely," Smith wrote. "And with a growing discussion on Capitol Hill, we hope Congress will continue to press for the right of technology companies to disclose relevant information in an appropriate way."

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at  @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

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Facebook's new face recognition policy astonishes German privacy regulator

A German privacy regulator is astonished that Facebook has added facial recognition to a proposed new privacy policy it published on Thursday.

"It is astonishing to find the facial recognition again in the new proposed privacy policy that Facebook published yesterday. We therefore have directly tried to contact officials from Facebook to find out if there is really a change in their data protection policy or if it is just a mistake of translation," Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Johannes Caspar said in an email on Friday.

The Hamburg data protection commissioner, already at odds with Facebook over its use of face recognition technology, reopened its proceedings against the company in August last year, telling the company to either obtain explicit consent for face recognition from users, delete the data, or face a lawsuit, Caspar said at the time.

Facebook turned off facial recognition for all European users in September last year, and said it would delete all face recognition templates for existing users in Europe.

The German commissioner stopped its proceedings against Facebook in February, when it confirmed that the company had deleted the facial recognition data gathered on German users without their consent.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Turning on facial recognition again in Germany might be illegal, Caspar said, adding that it depends on how Facebook implements it. The social network should ask for the explicit and informed consent of the user, Caspar said.

"That means that there has to be offered an opt in for users," he added.

Facebook initially deleted the face recognition data in response to recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner that it adjust its privacy policy. The company's Irish subsidiary is responsible for the data of users outside the U.S. and Canada, and therefore falls under the jurisdiction of the Irish DPC, which also confirmed independently that Facebook had deleted the face recognition data .

On Thursday, Facebook proposed changes to its privacy policy on Thursday, including one related to the tag suggest feature that uses facial recognition in order to let users easily tag friends in photos they upload.

Tag suggest is used in the U.S. in the same way it was used in Europe before it was turned off. Facial recognition software is used to calculate a unique template of a user's appearance based on facial features using variables such as the distance between the eyes, nose and ears.

"We are able to suggest that your friend tag you in a picture by scanning and comparing your friend's pictures to information we've put together from your profile pictures and the other photos in which you've been tagged. You can control whether we suggest that another user tag you in a photo using the 'Timeline and Tagging' settings," the proposed change reads.

Facebook proposed the change in its U.S. privacy policy, and also in translated versions of the policy for European countries, including Germany.

However, according to the Irish DPC, Facebook does not yet intend to offer the service in Europe.

Facebook Ireland consulted the Irish DPC in relation to its proposed privacy policy changes and confirmed that this feature is not yet available in Europe, said Ciara O'Sullivan of the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in an email. "Any proposed changes to this position would be discussed with our Office," she said.

The Irish DPC suggested to Facebook Ireland that it clarify to its users that the tag suggest feature is not currently available in Europe, she added.

Facebook is still working with regulators to find a way to turn face recognition back on in Europe, a Facebook Germany spokeswoman said in an email.

Loek Essers focuses on online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues.
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Flash Professional CC review: Solid improvements but no flashy new features

Absent flashy, headline-grabbing new features, Adobe's updates for Flash Professional CC are simply improvements to the program's existing core features and functions. Alongside the app's enhanced user interface, Flash CC's new ability to export projects to HTML, to full HD video and audio, and to test animations directly via USB on mobile devices, are designed to benefit the vast majority of users.

Need more space to work on your animation? Use Flash CC's full screen editing mode. Adobe has overhauled the familiar Flash user interface in this version. It is now a fashionable dark gray, which looks very professional (but can be switched back to light gray). The timeline and code editor have also been improved, alongside numerous other interface elements. A full screen editing mode, which shows only the canvas, hiding all the palettes, is a great addition.

The workspace canvas has also been adjusted. In the past, you were limited to a maximum size. That limitation is now gone, so you can import large graphics for a scrolling background—great for game developers creating a jump-n-run (side scroller) game.

Flash's new 64-bit architecture works well with late model MacBook laptops and will surely scream with the recently introduced Mac Pros. Adobe has rewritten most of Flash's code to convert it to a native cocoa application. For artists who like to work anywhere from a client's workspace to their home office, Flash CC automatically syncs preferences of your Flash installations through the Creative Cloud.

Dark grey or bright grey: You can decide which color theme works best for you. Flash Professional CC's ability to export video and HTML are the most intriguing and important features of this upgrade. That's because, with the growing mobile and tablet market, many companies are migrating the front end of their websites away from Flash to HTML5.

At the same time, companies are installing digital signage, which works best with video, so for some users, the new version of Flash might have multiple uses. Exporting a Flash Animation as Video (.mov file) is straightforward, and while this feature was available in CS6, Adobe Media Encoder is now integrated into the workflow, allowing conversion to different formats.

In combination with the new unlimited workspace, it is now possible to create videos with an almost endless scrolling background.

The HTML export feature works fine if you create an animation in a timeline—just open the Toolkit for CreateJS palette, select the output path, and click Publish, and if you have Preview selected, the animation will open in the browser and play. However, sometimes you want to have several animations running simultaneously on one page. If you add the HTML code and the generated JavaScript on one page, then one of the animations won’t work because of conflicts with the JavaScript. It is possible—with some editing—to get it to work, but it would be great if Adobe improved this feature to make it easier for non-programmers. Nevertheless, the generated animation is a great start if you are creating a website or a mobile app using DreamWeaver, Flash and PhoneGap.

Exporting animations as HTML5 is a step in the right direction, but that feature might not be useful for everyone. I would also like to generate videos in an SWF file through ActionScript. You know those viral marketing campaigns that allow you to add yourself to a video and share it with your friends? Adding the ability to export a video from within an SWF would allow you to create such an application. It would also allow you to record video in a Flash App that requires interaction.

Adobe has put a lot of effort into supporting mobile developers. In the previous Flash version you had to go through Apple iTunes to upload your app; now you simply connect your mobile device and set the target to Air for iOS or Air for Android. This little improvement is a huge timesaver.

Testing your mobile app just got easier: Publish directly to your iPhone for testing without having to go through iTunes.

While there's much to praise in the new version of Flash, there are some missing items. For example, the Bone Tool (Inverse Kinematic), one of my favorite new features in CS4, has been removed from the program. According to Adobe, the Bone Tool had several bugs that led to user complaints. It was dropped from Flash Professional CC, though it will likely be reinstated at a later point with an improved workflow.

Adobe Flash Professional CC looks fresh with its new and improved interface. With updated support for HTML and Video Export, the new version of Flash seems to move in a new direction as an all-in-one video/animation tool. New features work mostly as expected, though with room for improvement.

The question now is: Who is the target audience? Movie editors will certainly stay with After Effects or Premiere Pro and Web Developers have likely set their sights on Adobe Edge Animate. Where does Flash Professional CC fit in? Flash still has the great advantage of being a solid developer platform equipped with a powerful programming language (ActionScript 3.0). If Adobe pushes Flash further toward game-and mobil-development, it will find a new user base. For such users, the new features are nice to have, but not as fundamental as the sprite sheet generator introduced in CS6. For most users, this update might not offer enough to justify an upgrade. Those who are planning to buy a new Mac Pro later this year, the performance boost of 64-bit however might be tempting.

Michael Baumgardt is a consultant and project manager for large scale Web projects.
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