Sudan comes back online after 24-hour Internet blackout

Sudan has regained access to the Internet after a nearly 24-hour blackout that may have been a government-directed response to violent rioting in the country over lifted fuel subsidies.

Service was restored around 1 p.m. local time Thursday, according to an analysis performed by Renesys, an Internet performance management company. It was the largest national blackout seen since Egypt went dark in 2011, Renesys said.

There is some debate over what caused the outage. The Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday that the Sudan government did not block Internet access.

The blackout happened, the embassy said, because violent protestors burned the facilities of the Canar telecommunications company, which hosts the core of Internet services for the country. “These fires resulted in continuing Internet blackouts across Sudan,” the statement said. The embassy could not be immediately reached Thursday to comment on the Internet’s restoration.

But the Canar Internet service provider actually lost access about 90 minutes after access was cut to Sudan’s two other major ISPs: Sudatel and Zain, according to Renesys.

“This is suspicious,” said Doug Madory, senior analyst at the company.

Because the two outages occurred independently of one another about 90 minutes apart, there was not a single technical failure leading to the blackout, he said. “That makes the likelihood drop dramatically that these two outages were coincidental,” he said.

There have been other cases of countries losing Internet access amid anti-government protests. In 2007 the Internet in Myanmar was shut down for two weeks following violent protests, according to Renesys.

Meanwhile the demonstrations in Sudan have left at least 29 people dead, Saudi-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya reported Thursday.

The International Monetary Fund urged Sudan to cut fuel subsidies when the country lost its main oil-producing territory after South Sudan became an independent state in 2011, the Washington Post reported.

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NASA Lunar Orbiter Solves Snag After Successful Launch

The LADEE spacecraft, which began its trip to the moon last night in a launch from Virginia's coast, has run into some mechanical problems, NASA says. Officials say the robotic orbiter remains on track, however, and its problems can be resolved before it reaches the moon next month.

"Team members are analyzing a situation with LADEE's reaction wheels, but say the spacecraft is communicating and working as designed, with plenty of time to resolve the issue before reaching lunar orbit," NASA says.

Update at 12:30 p.m. ET: Issue Is Resolved, NASA Says

In an update posted to Twitter, S. Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Center, says that the problem has been fixed.

"It appears the @NASALADEE start up issues have been resolved. Guess we just had to burp the baby"

Thank you to our readers for pointing the update out in the comments section.

Our original post continues:

Carried by a Minotaur V rocket, the craft burst into the night sky from the Wallops Flight Facility shortly before midnight Friday, leaving a bright trailing flame that was visible for hundreds of miles along the Eastern seaboard.

The launch inspired many amateur photographers to post their images of the craft's arcing path. NASA has compiled those photos in a Flickr group.

LADEE stands for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. The craft "will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about its atmosphere and the role of dust in the lunar sky," NASA says.

The AP has more on the technical issues facing the mission:

"S. Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which developed the spacecraft, told reporters he's confident everything will be working properly in the next few days.

"LADEE's reaction wheels were turned on to orient and stabilize the spacecraft, which was spinning too fast after it separated from the final rocket stage, Worden said. But the computer automatically shut the wheels down, apparently because of excess current. He speculated the wheels may have been running a little fast."

The craft's reaction wheels are used "to position and stabilize the spacecraft," NASA says. Worden also said that the snag doesn't represent "an unusual event in spacecraft" and that there is no need to rush to fix the problem. LADEE is expected to reach the moon in 30 days.

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Windows 8 surpasses Vista's uptake rate -- 10 months after launch

Microsoft got some good news Sunday as metrics company Net Applications said Windows 8's user share in August is now larger than Vista's at the same point in the latter's post-launch timeline.

Windows 8's user share of all PCs running Windows, a tally that included Windows 8.1, the update slated to ship next month, jumped to 8.4 percent in August, Net Applications said Sunday. The 2.5-point gain was a single-month record for the struggling OS, and more than double the previous record set in June.

[ 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. | 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. ]

Ten months after its January 2007 retail debut, Windows Vista -- the operating system widely dubbed a flub and a flop -- accounted for 7.3 percent of all Windows PCs.

November 2007, the 10th month after Vista's debut, was the first month that Net Applications used a new methodology that weighted data by countries, an attempt to come up with more accurate estimates for markets, such as China, for which it had relatively little data.

Net Applications measures operating system user share by counting unique visitors to some 40,000 websites run by its customers.

In May, Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' head of marketing, argued that it was futile to compare Windows 8's uptake with Vista's prior to the latter's November 2007 numbers because of the methodology change.

Computerworld had been comparing Windows 8 and Vista adoption using pre-November 2007 data for Vista -- comparisons that regularly put Windows 8 at the short end of the stick -- and offered its last update using Net Applications' figures on May 1.

Although Windows 8's 10-month user share is larger than Vista's, it remains far behind Windows 7's at the same point in the latter's roll-out. Ten months after Windows 7's October 2009 launch, the OS had accumulated a 17.3 percent share of all Windows PCs -- more than double Windows 8's.

Rival analytics firm StatCounter did not mark the same dramatic increase in Windows 8's share as did Net Applications. The Irish company, which measures operating system usage by counting the total page views of a much larger number of websites than does Net Applications, said Windows 8 gained about four-tenths of a percentage point to end August with a 7 percent share of all personal computers.

It was unclear what drove the massive increase in Net Applications' accounting of Windows 8's user share, although a small portion of the gain, about one-tenth, was due to the counting of Windows 8.1. According to Net Applications, Windows 8.1's share of all machines running Windows was about 0.3 percent.

Windows 8's 2.5-point increase was the second-largest one-month gain by a Microsoft operating system since late 2006, when Computerworld began recording Net Applications' data. It was especially impressive after a slow-down in Windows 8's adoption during July.

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Windows 8 surpasses Vista's uptake rate -- 10 months after launch

Computerworld - Microsoft got some good news Sunday as metrics company Net Applications said Windows 8's user share in August is now larger than Vista's at the same point in the latter's post-launch timeline.

Windows 8's user share of all PCs running Windows, a tally that included Windows 8.1, the update slated to ship next month, jumped to 8.4% in August, Net Applications said Sunday. The 2.5-point gain was a single-month record for the struggling OS, and more than double the previous record set in June.

Ten months after its January 2007 retail debut, Windows Vista -- the operating system widely dubbed a flub and a flop -- accounted for 7.3% of all Windows PCs.

November 2007, the 10th month after Vista's debut, was the first month that Net Applications used a new methodology that weighted data by countries, an attempt to come up with more accurate estimates for markets, such as China, for which it had relatively little data.

Net Applications measures operating system user share by counting unique visitors to some 40,000 websites run by its customers.

In May, Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications' head of marketing, argued that it was futile to compare Windows 8's uptake with Vista's prior to the latter's November 2007 numbers because of the methodology change.

Computerworld had been comparing Windows 8 and Vista adoption using pre-November 2007 data for Vista -- comparisons that regularly put Windows 8 at the short end of the stick -- and offered its last update using Net Applications' figures on May 1.

Although Windows 8's 10-month user share is larger than Vista's, it remains far behind Windows 7's at the same point in the latter's roll-out. Ten months after Windows 7's October 2009 launch, the OS had accumulated a 17.3% share of all Windows PCs -- more than double Windows 8's.

Rival analytics firm StatCounter did not mark the same dramatic increase in Windows 8's share as did Net Applications. The Irish company, which measures operating system usage by counting the total page views of a much larger number of websites than does Net Applications, said Windows 8 gained about four-tenths of a percentage point to end August with a 7% share of all personal computers.

It was unclear what drove the massive increase in Net Applications' accounting of Windows 8's user share, although a small portion of the gain, about one-tenth, was due to the counting of Windows 8.1. According to Net Applications, Windows 8.1's share of all machines running Windows was about 0.3%.

Windows 8's 2.5-point increase was the second-largest one-month gain by a Microsoft operating system since late 2006, when Computerworld began recording Net Applications' data. It was especially impressive after a slow-down in Windows 8's adoption during July.

Windows 8 faces a much different environment than did either Vista or Windows 7, as those predecessors were released as PC shipments were on the rise, not in a historic slump. Nor did they have to contend with tablets as rivals for consumer and corporate attention and spending.

Microsoft will release Windows 8.1 on Oct. 17 to current Windows 8 customers, then follow with a retail debut -- and with systems running the update -- on Oct. 18. Windows 8.1 is essentially a redo meant to answer customer complaints about the radical changes in Windows 8, which split workspaces between two wildly-different user interfaces.

Windows 8's user share of 8.4% was ahead of Vista's but far behind Windows 7's at the same point in their post-release adoption cycles. (Data: Net Applications.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Windows in Computerworld's Windows Topic Center.

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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Second-gen Nexus 7 still plagued by multitouch issues after software update

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Microsoft will craft XP patches after April '14, but not for you

Computerworld - Just because Microsoft doesn't plan on giving Windows XP patches to the public after April 8, 2014, doesn't mean it's going to stop making those patches.

In fact, Microsoft will be creating security updates for Windows XP for months -- years, even -- after it halts their delivery to the general public.

Those patches will come from a program called "Custom Support," an after-retirement contract designed for very large customers who have not, for whatever reason, moved on from an older OS.

As part of Custom Support -- which according to analysts, costs about $200 per PC for the first year and more each succeeding year -- participants receive patches for vulnerabilities rated "critical" by Microsoft. Bugs ranked as "important," the next step down in Microsoft's four-level threat scoring system, are not automatically patched. Instead, Custom Support contract holders must pay extra for those. Flaws pegged as "moderate" or "low" are not patched at all.

"Legacy products or out-of-support service packs covered under Custom Support will continue to receive security hotfixes for vulnerabilities labeled as 'Critical' by the MSRC [Microsoft Security Response Center]," Microsoft said in a Custom Support data sheet. "Customers with Custom Support that need security patches defined as 'Important' by MSRC can purchase these for an additional fee.

"These security hotfixes will be issued through a secure process that makes the information available only to customers with Custom Support," the data sheet promised.

Because Microsoft sells Custom Support agreements, it's obligated to come up with patches for critical and important vulnerabilities. And it may be required to do so for years: The company sells Custom Support for up to three years after it retires an operating system.

Custom Support and the XP security updates that result have been one reason why some experts have held out hope that Microsoft will backtrack from retiring XP next April. Their reasoning is straight-forward: Microsoft will have patches available -- its engineers won't have to do any more work than they already committed to doing -- so handing them out to all would be a simple matter.

Or not. Most experts have said that the chance Microsoft will prolong Windows XP's life run between slim and none. And giving away patches to everyone risks a revolt by those big customers who have paid millions for Custom Support.

But Microsoft does have options. Computerworld sees six.

Continue patching for free

If Windows XP remains a major presence, as it appears likely, with projections as high as 33.5% of all personal computers at the end of April 2014, Microsoft could decide to continue patching the aged OS with free fixes for critical vulnerabilities, maybe even those rated important.

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.

Read now.

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Barnes & Noble backtracks, decides to keep designing Nook tablets after all

Barnes & Noble is backtracking on an earlier decision to stop designing its own tablets, and says it will produce at least one new Nook device in time for the holiday shopping season.

The bookseller had never intended to stop making Nook tablets entirely. But in June, Barnes & Noble said it would outsource its tablet design and manufacturing to third parties, while continuing to design its own e-readers.

Barnes & Noble announced its change of heart in an earnings statement, which also carried news of holiday hardware. “At least one new NOOK device will be released for the coming holiday season and further products are in development,” Michael Huseby, President of Barnes & Noble and CEO of Nook Media, said in the statement. Huseby didn't say whether this device would be an e-reader or a tablet.

Huseby became CEO of Nook Media after last month's resignation of Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch. In an earnings call, Huseby was openly critical of the previous management, and how the company produced far more Nook tablets than it could sell. Barnes & Noble is now selling those devices on the cheap.

"We overestimated demand for the products that we put out, and as a result of that, had to discount those products … and we don't want to be in that position again,” Huseby said.

As for future products, Huseby said that “wholesale outsourcing of our color device business is neither appropriate nor is it smart for the company.” Barnes & Noble needs to stay competitive in devices if it wants to keep selling e-books and other content, Huseby said, and he believes the Nook design team can do a better job than an outside partner.

It's unclear, however, how Barnes & Noble will get back in the game while its competitors keep gaining more market traction. Although the company's app partnership with Google gives Nook an edge over rival Amazon, Google itself is seeing rapid growth its own Nexus 7 tablets, produced in partnership with Asus. By wavering on whether to design its own Nook tablets, Barnes & Noble may have cost itself precious time—especially if the company doesn't have a new tablet ready for the holidays.

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Bitcoin wallet service to issue refunds after users' funds stolen

A widely used Bitcoin wallet service plans to issue refunds to people who saw their bitcoins stolen as a result of a weakness in its application.

Blockchain.info, which has a Web-based service called My Wallet, has also upgraded its application after finding a vulnerability similar to one discovered earlier this month in some Bitcoin wallet programs running on the Android mobile OS.

“Likely if you have been affected by this problem your coins will have been taken already,” a Blockchain.info official wrote on the Bitcointalk.org forum. “All affected users will be refunded in full.”

The number of affected users is small, said Roger Ver, who is an investor in Blockchain.info, via email. Blockchain.info expects to refund around 50 BTC or $5000, he said.

Interest in Bitcoin has surged since its debut just four years ago. The system offers a low-cost way to transmit virtual currency over the Internet, and many companies and entrepreneurs are working to solve concerns around how to safeguard bitcoins from hackers.

Blockchain.info’s My Wallet uses a browser extension that encrypts a person’s Bitcoin wallet on their computer before it is sent and stored on its servers.

On Tuesday, Blockchain.info upgraded its browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox and its Mac OSX client after it was found a random number generator wasn’t working securely in some cases, potentially exposing people’s bitcoin stashes to theft.

Random numbers are used to sign transactions performed over Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer network as part of its public key cryptography system. If duplicate random number values are used to sign more than one transaction, it may be possible for an attacker to figure out a person’s private signing key and sweep their bitcoins away.

The issue came to light after one user reported on Bitcointalk.org that 1.8 bitcoins—worth around $218 as of Wednesday morning according to Mt. Gox’s market price—were stolen.

The user speculated that Blockchain.info or Firefox had a weakness in code that generates random numbers, similar to the problem found in Android Bitcoin clients earlier this month.

Several Bitcoin clients that used a random number generator component within Android were patched after it was found it occasionally repeated random numbers. Google also issued a patch.

A Blockchain.info official wrote on the forum that My Wallet users on Firefox could be particularly vulnerable. Users should upgrade their My Wallet browser extension to the latest versions, which for Chrome is v2.85, for Firefox is version 1.97 and for Mac clients is version 0.11.

The official also advised that people who only use Blockchain.info’s web interface “should clear their browsers cache before next login.”

Bitcoin addresses—which are used by people to send and receive bitcoins—that may be affected have been listed on Bitcointalk.org.

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Microsoft updates Windows Phone App Studio after developer projects soar

Microsoft is updating the recently launched beta of Windows Phone App Studio to improve performance and scalability after the new app development tool crossed 55,000 active projects.

The hosted service was launched two weeks ago in a bid by Microsoft to increase the number of applications available on Windows Phone by allowing users to create apps without writing any code. The service lets users choose from a number of templates to get started and then add content such as images, videos, RSS and Twitter feeds.

So far, the response has been well above what Microsoft expected, according to a blog post on Monday. In the first 48 hours, Microsoft saw more than 20,000 people from all over the world starting more than 30,000 projects, and on Monday it crossed 55,000 active projects. To help manage demand, the company implemented a temporary access code system, it said.

Microsoft is also making some fundamental changes to improve App Studio's overall performance and the scalability of the system. There have been a few hiccups in the first two weeks of availability, according to Microsoft. The company is also adding new functionality; users can choose from new templates and there are connections to more external data sources, including Flickr, which users have been asking for.

The company didn't provide any details on when Windows Phone App Studio would become generally available.

The availability of more apps is key for Windows Phone's continued growth, according to Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Sales of Windows Phones to end users increased to 7.4 million during the second quarter, which was enough to surpass sales of BlackBerry for the first time. But the OS still only has a 3.3 percent market share, according to Gartner.

"While Microsoft has managed to increase share and volume in the quarter, Microsoft should continue to focus on growing interest from app developers to help grow its appeal among users," Gupta said.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

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Microsoft restores Outlook email after intermittent outage

Microsoft on Saturday apologized for a three-day partial outage of Outlook.com and said the email service was back up and running, only to note hours later that problems still plagued some customers.

Early Saturday, the Redmond, Washington company said it had finally resolved Outlook.com's issues, which stemmed from a failure in a caching service of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), the popular synchronization service widely used to sync smartphones and tablets with company email, contacts, and calendars stored on Microsoft Exchange Server systems.

"We want to apologize to everyone who was affected by the outage, and we appreciate the patience you have shown us as we worked through the issues," Microsoft said in a note appended to its services status board.

On Wednesday, Outlook.com, the SkyDrive cloud storage service and the Peoples contacts application suffered partial outages that began around 10 a.m. ET. While the Peoples problem was fixed about five hours later, SkyDrive's was not fully resolved until Thursday around 4 p.m. ET.

Some users of Outlook.com, however, were unable to access email on mobile devices that relied on EAS—a category that includes iPhones, whose iOS uses EAS for synchronization—until around 4:30 a.m. ET Saturday.

During the outage, Microsoft said, the cache service failure "caused these devices to receive an error and continuously try to connect to our service. This resulted in a flood of traffic that our services did not handle properly."

Microsoft said it had already taken steps to prevent similar problems in the future. "[We] have made two key changes ... one that involved increasing network bandwidth in the affected part of the system, and one that involved changing the way error handling is done for devices using Exchange ActiveSync."

The cache flood problem Microsoft described sounded reminiscent of the trouble earlier this year that the company documented in iOS 6.1-powered iPhones and iPads which affected not only on-premise Exchange servers within enterprises, but also Microsoft's own infrastructure, including its Office 365 subscription service.

But Outlook.com's problems were not completely behind it Saturday morning. Around 2:30 p.m. ET, Microsoft again logged a problem on the status board, saying, "A small percentage of mobile users may experience intermittent issues while syncing email."

As of 9 p.m. ET Saturday, that problem had not been resolved.

The Outlook.com outages were an embarrassment to Microsoft for multiple reasons, including a boast the week before that its Office 365 cloud-based service exceeded 99.9 percent uptime each of the last four quarters, and new attacks against rival Google Gmail in another run of its "Scroogled" campaign that kicked off Aug. 9.

Microsoft touts its own Outlook.com as an alternative to Gmail.

In fact, the latest Outlook.com outage was the second this year within weeks of a new Scroogled attack. In mid-March, about five weeks after a different Scroogled round, Microsoft's online email service went dark for about 15 hours.

Outlook.com has logged numerous interruptions in the last 60 days, including on June 14 and 27; July 1, 2, 3, 11, 12-14 and 25-26; and the event that began August 14.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news.
More by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

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Review: Adobe hits a home run with After Effects CC

Adobe has hit another home run with After Effects CC, expanding the software’s capabilities and refining the tools that professional filmmakers and motion-graphics artists depend on. Further enhancements in performance make After Effects CC a must-have partner for animators and video editors working with Premiere Pro CC.

New features such as a live 3D workflow with Cinema 4D Lite, now included with Creative Cloud, give motion-graphics artists and compositors much-needed integration with true 3D object animation.

In addition, several upgraded tools—including the Refine Edge Tool (for use with Roto Brush), Warp Stabilizer VFX, and Pixel Motion Blur—make the CC version a substantial revision for compositors and animators. Also new are the enhanced 3D Camera Tracker, bicubic sampling for layers, and the ability to send a comp to render through the Adobe Media Encoder, which allows you to continue working in After Effects while your project renders in the background.

For me, however, the real beauty of Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the ability to sync my user profiles and preferences between machines and to access my software and settings when I’m working remotely—simply by signing in with my Creative Cloud User ID.

The benefits of Creative Cloud have turned out to be the most talked-about topic since Adobe’s announcement of the subscription-only program. The two primary benefits are continuous upgrades and the accessibility and flexibility of the software license. As a user, I no longer have to wait for new features or tool enhancements, because they become available as soon as the developers test them and ready them for distribution—they aren’t restricted to an arbitrary schedule.

Better still, my license can follow me wherever I’m working. Working animators and motion-graphics specialists often have long-term assignments on-site with clients who may not have the latest software. Because I have the option to log in to Creative Cloud, I can download and install After Effects CC (or any other CC software) and use it on my clients’ machines. Once I’m done for the day, I log out; the software remains installed, but it is not functional until I log back in again on my next visit. The best part is being able to sync my user preferences and settings when I change machines. This way, After Effects CC looks and feels exactly the same no matter where I’m working on a particular day. 

The Roto Brush is my favorite tool because I rely on it for my compositing work. With the addition of the Refine Edge Tool, getting a clean edge around features such as hair, animal fur, or even trees on the horizon is as easy as wiping a brushstroke over the edges where you need more detail.

Simply use the Roto Brush to select the general area you want to track, just as in After Effects CS6, and then select the Refine Edge Tool to paint over the edges that need more detailed refinement, such as the trees against the sky. This arrangement allows me to either give a different effect or color-grading treatment to the sky than to the foreground, or replace it altogether.

Using the Refine Edge Tool to select over the edges with detail against the sky.

Also added in the Refine Edge settings are Refine Hard Matte, which smooths the often aliased edges of a mask, and Refine Soft Matte to allow a soft feather in an alpha channel without pixelation.

Adobe updated many other tools and effects, such as the 3D Camera Tracker, which now allows you to define a ground plane or reference plane. Now, repetitive track points are deleted along the track path when you delete the first selection, which optimizes the tracking data where objects in motion aren’t needed to track in the scene.

The Warp Stabilizer VFX effect replaces the previous Warp Stabilizer and provides better control. Some key features added to the effect are Preserve Scale, Objective, and Auto-delete Points Across Time. Reverse Stabilization and Apply Motion to Target are helpful for stabilizing shaky footage.

The Refine Edge Tool selector.

The new Pixel Motion Blur effect is one I’ve been expecting for a long time, and is particularly useful when I’m trying to match animations, motion graphics, and high-frame-rate video to slow-shutter film-look footage shot at 24 fps. In the past, the only motion-blur control you had in After Effects was if an object or layer was physically moving on the Timeline. Otherwise, you could apply motion blur to video footage or rendered animations only by using masked areas of Directional Blur or by employing a third-party effect such as RE:Vision FX Reel Smart Motion Blur (RSMB).

In the side-by-side example below, the original footage (on the right) was shot at 60p and has an annoying high-frame-rate look to it, with no motion blur from the camera movement or the movement of the horse. However, with the Pixel Motion Blur effect applied, only the pixels in the highest degree of motion are blurred, giving a much softer effect similar to that of film shot with a slower shutter.

Applying the Pixel Motion Blur effect to high-frame-rate footage renders a filmlike effect (left).

Some other great new features include bicubic sampling of layers, similar to scaling in Photoshop, plus footage clip reloading and a function to find missing files, effects, and fonts. Also, Adobe added improved import/export modes and encoding options, along with other enhanced usability features.

Since Adobe’s introduction of Ray-Traced 3D in After Effects CS6, users have been wanting more 3D integration. The big announcement for After Effects CC is the inclusion of the Cineware effect plug-in that allows you to use Cinema 4D files in your composition—with Cinema 4D as a renderer. A streamlined version of Maxon Cinema 4D (Cinema 4D Lite) is included with Creative Cloud, and you can upgrade it to the full version at a discount.

You can create a new C4D file from inside After Effects CC, which launches the Cinema 4D Lite app. The tools and features are somewhat limited compared to the full-license version, but you can still do some basic modeling, object animation, and camera moves inside the app. You can also open existing C4D models, complete with their texture and bump maps. All the material manager features appear to be identical, and you can easily edit maps in Adobe Photoshop CC.

?Adjusting the material editor on a model in Cinema 4D Lite.

Once you’ve completed your edits in Cinema 4D Lite, you simply save the file and return to After Effects CC, and the comp updates automatically.

Using the Cineware effect plug-in, you can select the Cinema 4D Lite camera or create a new 3D comp camera to control the views and animations.

One caveat, however, is that you can be only in Classic 3D mode–not Ray-Traced 3D. This limitation means that After Effects lights will have no effect on the C4D layers, nor will any 3D layers interact with or integrate into the 3D scene. You have to create or animate all of your 3D objects and text inside of Cinema 4D Lite if you want those items to be integrated with one another in reflections, shadows, and interactivity.

?Selecting the Cinema 4D camera from the Cineware effect panel in the After Effects CC comp.

A big boost in productivity comes from the new menu/keyboard option to send a comp to Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to render in the background instead of locking up After Effects for a lengthy render. This means you can continue to work on other comps in your project instead of waiting for a render to complete.

Adobe After Effects CC is now more accessible than ever. Whether you’re upgrading from a previous version or ready to dive in for the first time, you won’t be disappointed with the flexibility the Creative Cloud model offers. The updates in this first release of the CC version are equivalent to those of a major version release, but knowing that we don’t have to wait another 18 months for even more updates and new features is a huge bonus. I’m especially interested to see where the program goes in 3D functions now that Cinema 4D is part of the workflow, and I would really like to see more integration with Ray-Traced 3D layers.

Jeff Foster has written and contributed to several books and magazines, and has been producing motion graphics, photography and creative design for major corporations, television and film for more than 20 years. See his full bio and content at PixelPainter.com.
More by Jeff Foster

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Review: Adobe hits a home run with After Effects CC

Adobe has hit another home run with After Effects CC, expanding the software’s capabilities and refining the tools that professional filmmakers and motion-graphics artists depend on. Further enhancements in performance make After Effects CC a must-have partner for animators and video editors working with Premiere Pro CC.

New features such as a live 3D workflow with Cinema 4D Lite, now included with Creative Cloud, give motion-graphics artists and compositors much-needed integration with true 3D object animation.

In addition, several upgraded tools—including the Refine Edge Tool (for use with Roto Brush), Warp Stabilizer VFX, and Pixel Motion Blur—make the CC version a substantial revision for compositors and animators. Also new are the enhanced 3D Camera Tracker, bicubic sampling for layers, and the ability to send a comp to render through the Adobe Media Encoder, which allows you to continue working in After Effects while your project renders in the background.

For me, however, the real beauty of Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the ability to sync my user profiles and preferences between machines and to access my software and settings when I’m working remotely—simply by signing in with my Creative Cloud User ID.

The benefits of Creative Cloud have turned out to be the most talked-about topic since Adobe’s announcement of the subscription-only program. The two primary benefits are continuous upgrades and the accessibility and flexibility of the software license. As a user, I no longer have to wait for new features or tool enhancements, because they become available as soon as the developers test them and ready them for distribution—they aren’t restricted to an arbitrary schedule.

Better still, my license can follow me wherever I’m working. Working animators and motion-graphics specialists often have long-term assignments on-site with clients who may not have the latest software. Because I have the option to log in to Creative Cloud, I can download and install After Effects CC (or any other CC software) and use it on my clients’ machines. Once I’m done for the day, I log out; the software remains installed, but it is not functional until I log back in again on my next visit. The best part is being able to sync my user preferences and settings when I change machines. This way, After Effects CC looks and feels exactly the same no matter where I’m working on a particular day. 

The Roto Brush is my favorite tool because I rely on it for my compositing work. With the addition of the Refine Edge Tool, getting a clean edge around features such as hair, animal fur, or even trees on the horizon is as easy as wiping a brushstroke over the edges where you need more detail.

Simply use the Roto Brush to select the general area you want to track, just as in After Effects CS6, and then select the Refine Edge Tool to paint over the edges that need more detailed refinement, such as the trees against the sky. This arrangement allows me to either give a different effect or color-grading treatment to the sky than to the foreground, or replace it altogether.

Using the Refine Edge Tool to select over the edges with detail against the sky.

Also added in the Refine Edge settings are Refine Hard Matte, which smooths the often aliased edges of a mask, and Refine Soft Matte to allow a soft feather in an alpha channel without pixelation.

Adobe updated many other tools and effects, such as the 3D Camera Tracker, which now allows you to define a ground plane or reference plane. Now, repetitive track points are deleted along the track path when you delete the first selection, which optimizes the tracking data where objects in motion aren’t needed to track in the scene.

The Warp Stabilizer VFX effect replaces the previous Warp Stabilizer and provides better control. Some key features added to the effect are Preserve Scale, Objective, and Auto-delete Points Across Time. Reverse Stabilization and Apply Motion to Target are helpful for stabilizing shaky footage.

The Refine Edge Tool selector.

The new Pixel Motion Blur effect is one I’ve been expecting for a long time, and is particularly useful when I’m trying to match animations, motion graphics, and high-frame-rate video to slow-shutter film-look footage shot at 24 fps. In the past, the only motion-blur control you had in After Effects was if an object or layer was physically moving on the Timeline. Otherwise, you could apply motion blur to video footage or rendered animations only by using masked areas of Directional Blur or by employing a third-party effect such as RE:Vision FX Reel Smart Motion Blur (RSMB).

In the side-by-side example below, the original footage (on the right) was shot at 60p and has an annoying high-frame-rate look to it, with no motion blur from the camera movement or the movement of the horse. However, with the Pixel Motion Blur effect applied, only the pixels in the highest degree of motion are blurred, giving a much softer effect similar to that of film shot with a slower shutter.

Applying the Pixel Motion Blur effect to high-frame-rate footage renders a filmlike effect (left).

Some other great new features include bicubic sampling of layers, similar to scaling in Photoshop, plus footage clip reloading and a function to find missing files, effects, and fonts. Also, Adobe added improved import/export modes and encoding options, along with other enhanced usability features.

Since Adobe’s introduction of Ray-Traced 3D in After Effects CS6, users have been wanting more 3D integration. The big announcement for After Effects CC is the inclusion of the Cineware effect plug-in that allows you to use Cinema 4D files in your composition—with Cinema 4D as a renderer. A streamlined version of Maxon Cinema 4D (Cinema 4D Lite) is included with Creative Cloud, and you can upgrade it to the full version at a discount.

You can create a new C4D file from inside After Effects CC, which launches the Cinema 4D Lite app. The tools and features are somewhat limited compared to the full-license version, but you can still do some basic modeling, object animation, and camera moves inside the app. You can also open existing C4D models, complete with their texture and bump maps. All the material manager features appear to be identical, and you can easily edit maps in Adobe Photoshop CC.

?Adjusting the material editor on a model in Cinema 4D Lite.

Once you’ve completed your edits in Cinema 4D Lite, you simply save the file and return to After Effects CC, and the comp updates automatically.

Using the Cineware effect plug-in, you can select the Cinema 4D Lite camera or create a new 3D comp camera to control the views and animations.

One caveat, however, is that you can be only in Classic 3D mode–not Ray-Traced 3D. This limitation means that After Effects lights will have no effect on the C4D layers, nor will any 3D layers interact with or integrate into the 3D scene. You have to create or animate all of your 3D objects and text inside of Cinema 4D Lite if you want those items to be integrated with one another in reflections, shadows, and interactivity.

?Selecting the Cinema 4D camera from the Cineware effect panel in the After Effects CC comp.

A big boost in productivity comes from the new menu/keyboard option to send a comp to Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to render in the background instead of locking up After Effects for a lengthy render. This means you can continue to work on other comps in your project instead of waiting for a render to complete.

Adobe After Effects CC is now more accessible than ever. Whether you’re upgrading from a previous version or ready to dive in for the first time, you won’t be disappointed with the flexibility the Creative Cloud model offers. The updates in this first release of the CC version are equivalent to those of a major version release, but knowing that we don’t have to wait another 18 months for even more updates and new features is a huge bonus. I’m especially interested to see where the program goes in 3D functions now that Cinema 4D is part of the workflow, and I would really like to see more integration with Ray-Traced 3D layers.

Jeff Foster has written and contributed to several books and magazines, and has been producing motion graphics, photography and creative design for major corporations, television and film for more than 20 years. See his full bio and content at PixelPainter.com.
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State dumping IBM after IT project runs 42 months late, $60 million over budget

The state of Pennsylvania will not renew its services contract with IBM regarding the development of a modernized unemployment compensation system, after the project reportedly has gone 42 months behind schedule and $60 million over budget.

In August, state officials commissioned a study from Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, seeking “to determine the best course of action moving forward,” according to a statement released this week by Department of Labor and Industry Secretary Julia Hearthway’s office.

“The bottom line is that the problems we’ve identified cannot be solved and we will not renew our contract with IBM,” Hearthway said in the statement. “The level of risk, combined with the critical nature of the system, demands that the Department of Labor & Industry has a system that produces timely decisions reliably and accurately.”

IBM landed the contract in June 2006. The project was originally budgeted at $106.9 million but the state has so far “dedicated funds approaching $170M,” according to the Carnegie Mellon study.

By early 2011, “a number of program risks and issues were identified” but the project had already experienced significant cost overruns “without any measurable solutions,” Hearthway’s office said.

“We are surprised by today’s announcement,” IBM spokesman Scott Cook said via email Thursday. “This decision is based on a third-party report that we had not seen at the time of the Commonwealth’s announcement, despite repeated requests to the Department of Labor and Industry to review it together.”

“In complex information technology implementations, there is accountability on both sides for system performance and service delivery,” Cook added.

Indeed, the Carnegie Mellon study singled out state officials for criticism on a number of fronts. For example, the original solicitation for the project had “major weaknesses,” including a “lack of detailed and object source selection criteria” and “unprioritized and often ambiguous requirements,” according to the study.

State officials also failed to delegate project roles, leading to a situation “in which no one in [the Department of Labor and Industry] was accountable and responsible for the administration of the program.”

There may be political overtones to the situation. Hearthway’s announcement noted that she took office in April 2011 and her office “began to aggressively manage the system and work with IBM to take corrective actions.”

The Carnegie Mellon report also praises DLI’s current senior leadership for taking a “hands-on and aggressive” approach to managing the project.

Meanwhile, IBM contributed to the project’s problems as well, according to the report. “Another concern has been instability in [IBM’s] workforce,” it states.

After some design documents were finished in 2008, IBM took a large number of business analysts that had become the “memory” of the state’s business requirements, off of the project: “This decision created a significant knowledge gap as the program entered the critical application design and development phases.

Staffing changes weren’t confined to the business analysts. In fact, since the project’s start 638 IBM contractors have worked on it, “with the majority of the workforce having less than one year on the project and 75 percent having less than two years,” the report states.

Carnegie Mellon’s study recommends that state officials build an improved governance structure for the project, and also that work on the third release of the software be halted in favor of stabilizing previous releases.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
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Twitter introduces 'in-tweet' abuse button after complaints

Twitter has revised its guidelines around abusive behavior following bomb and rape threats made against several prominent female users of the service in the U.K.

"We want people to feel safe on Twitter, and we want the Twitter Rules to send a clear message to anyone who thought that such behavior was, or could ever be, acceptable," wrote Del Harvey, Twitter senior director for trust and safety, and U.K. General Manager Tony Wang, in a blog post on Saturday.

The company is also modifying its interface to make reporting threats and abuse easier. Although users could report abusive behavior before, Twitter is streamlining that procedure by creating a button within tweets that allows people to file a direct report, the officials wrote.

Users have been referred to Twitter's Help Center. The button has been introduced in the latest version of Twitter's iOS application and on its mobile site. Next month, the button will appear on its Android application and on Twitter.com, they wrote.

The BBC reported on Sunday that police were investigating eight bomb and rape-related threats made over the social networking service.

On Saturday, Wang wrote "I personally apologize to the women who have experienced abuse on Twitter and for what they have gone through."

"The abuse they've received is simply not acceptable. It's not acceptable in the real world, and it's not acceptable on Twitter," he continued in another tweet.

Twitter also plans to add more staff to its teams that handle abuse reports and is "exploring new ways of using technology to improve everyone's experience on Twitter," Harvey and Wang wrote.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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Microsoft to rename SkyDrive after losing trademark suit

Microsoft will be forced to rename its SkyDrive cloud storage service after failing to defend its trademark against U.K. broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting.

BSkyB, as the service is more commonly called, filed suit against Microsoft in 2011 in the English High Court, successfully arguing that the “Sky” portion of its name could be confused with Microsoft’s own SkyDrive, and that Microsoft’s use of the name SkyDrive infringed Sky’s rights in the ‘Sky’ mark.

In June, Microsoft lost the case in England and Wales, and failed on appeal as well.

For Microsoft, losing the case will have financial consequences, as the company will be forced to rewrite promotional materials, which have increasingly focused upon SkyDrive as the glue that holds its various software services together. Microsoft hasn’t said how much it will all cost, but will probably provide an accounting in subsequent earnings reports, if the amount is materially significant.

BSkyB said that the settlement included “financial and other terms,” which suggests a financial settlement as well.. However, Microsoft will be allowed to use the SkyDrive name for a “reasonable amount of time,” the company said in a statement.

For its part, Microsoft was apparently happy to put the matter behind it.

MicrosoftA typical SkyDrive account (new name to come later...)

“We’re glad to have resolution of this naming dispute, and will continue to deliver the great service our hundreds of millions of customers expect, providing the best way to always have your files with you,” Microsoft said in a statement. Company representatives declined to comment further.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, this is the second high-profile branding effort that’s been marred by a trademark dispute. After promoting the “Metro” design schema within Windows 8, Microsoft was then sued by a German company, Metro AG,  also for trademark infringement.

Microsoft quietly began moving away from using the “Metro” description soon thereafter, replacing it with either “Modern” or just “Windows 8” to describe the look and feel of apps within its Start page interface.

The rebranding also takes place after Microsoft beefed up SkyDrive’s photo capabilities. New users who sign up for Microsoft’s services via a Hotmail or Outlook.com email address receive 7GB of SkyDrive storage for free, for storing photos, documents, and other files, with paid options to add more.

What  effect will the rebranding have on you? Probably nothing, in the long run. Over time, Microsoft will most likely roll out point updates for the services and apps affected by the ruling, simply replacing the name with an updated moniker.

Yes, this will cost Microsoft development resources, and will probably cause some consumer confusion, as well. But the court ruling ties Microsoft’s hands.

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Opponents of NSA surveillance aren't giving up after House vote

Privacy and digital rights groups have dug in for a longer fight against massive surveillance programs at the U.S. National Security Agency, even after the House of Representatives voted last week against an amendment to curtail the agency’s data collection.

The House last Wednesday narrowly defeated an amendment to a defense spending bill that would have prohibited the NSA from the bulk collection of phone records from U.S. carriers and cut off funding for the phone records collection program as currently designed, but digital rights groups have said the close vote gives them hope of weakening support for the NSA programs in Congress.

Lawmakers have introduced several bills to curb the NSA data collection, and privacy advocates may push for another amendment to a bill on the House or Senate floor, said David Segal, executive director at Demand Progress, a digital rights group.

The vote last Wednesday “demonstrated that a majority of rank-and-file members agree with us, while the institutionalists—leadership, committee chairs—disagree,” he said by email. “So it could be difficult to move things through the committee process ... but there’ll be some relevant floor votes in coming months.”

Wednesday’s vote was “unnervingly close,” Sina Khanifar, a digital rights activist and organizer of DefundTheNSA.com, added in an email. “While we lost the vote, the fact that over 200 representatives were in support of the amendment, despite lobbying by the NSA and strong opposition from the White House, sends a really strong message.”

DefundTheNSA.com asks opponents of the NSA surveillance to continue to contact their lawmakers. “This isn’t over yet,” the site said. “The tide is turning against domestic surveillance.”

Members of Congress aren’t tabling the issue, either. The Senate Judiciary Committee will conduct a hearing Wednesday focused on how to strengthen privacy rights and provide more oversight of the NSA programs.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is lead sponsor of a bill that would set a higher standard for the NSA to collect domestic information and would make public more information about surveillance programs.

Testifying at the hearing will be representatives of the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as surveillance critic the American Civil Liberties Union and Judge James Carr, who formerly served on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Carr has proposed changes to the court’s processes that would allow judges there to appoint lawyers to oppose surveillance requests.

Several other lawmakers have also introduced bills that would limit the NSA’s ability to collect data.

Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced a bill last week that would release the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, two laws that give the NSA authority to conduct antiterrorism surveillance.

On June 19, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, introduced the FISA Court in the Sunshine Act, which would require U.S. officials to disclose most orders of the surveillance court that include “significant legal interpretation” of surveillance laws.

And on June 7, Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act, which says that the U.S. Constitution shall not be “construed to allow any agency of the United States government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause.”

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service.
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