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NaggieNuance acquires MacSpeech for undisclosed amount

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Nuance Communications Inc., the speech-recognition software maker, said Tuesday that it has acquired MacSpeech, which makes speech-recognition software for Apple Inc.’s Macintosh computers, for an undisclosed amount.

San Francisco-based MacSpeech makes general-use programs and ones designed specifically for the medical and legal fields.

According to Nuance, which already makes a dictation program for Apple’s iPhone, the deal will help it produce its flagship Dragon Naturally Speaking desktop software for Macs.

Shares of Nuance rose 18 cents, or 1.3 percent, to close at $14.63.

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NaggieFive Benefits of an Open Source Symbian

Monday, February 8th, 2010

opensource logo Five Benefits of an Open Source Symbian

The Symbian Foundation has given the Symbian mobile operating system a second life, making the smartphone platform open source. The lifeline will revitalize the platform, and has benefits for Nokia, smartphone developers, Symbian handsets, and smartphone users.

With all of the hype and attention devoted to the iPhone, it’s easy to forget that Symbian is actually the leading smartphone operating system in the world. Symbian has nearly as much market share as the rest of its competitors combined–including the iPhone, with more than 330 million Symbian smartphones in use.

If Symbian is so dominant, why should Nokia spin it off, and why should the Symbian Foundation make it open source? The answer is that the Symbian is yesterday’s smartphone operating system. It may be dominant, but it’s declining.

Globally, Symbian has a huge footprint, but RIM and Apple have been steadily chipping away at it. It is somewhat geriatric compared with next-generation smartphone operating systems like iPhone and Android.

For the Symbian platform, the move to open source is a good move with benefits at all levels.

Here are five ways an open source Symbian is good for the smartphone platform:

1. Nokia. From the transition to open source, Nokia will be benefited because it pumps new blood into the waning platform without any effort or investment from Nokia.

While Nokia moves on to creating new devices built on its Linux-based Maemo platform, it will still gain a marketing and public relations boost from its relationship with Symbian and its dominant contribution to the development of the smartphone platform.

2. Smartphone Manufacturers. The availability of Symbian as an open source operating system gives smartphone manufacturers an alternative to Google’s Android. Android has demonstrated that an open source mobile operating system can be a very effective platform–enabling smartphone vendors to customize the OS, and develop robust devices at a lower cost (or higher profit margin) due to the lack of associated licensing fees.

Some manufacturers may be interested in leveraging an open source platform, yet be reluctant to partner too closely with Google. Even vendors who have embraced Android may be looking for alternatives now that Google has entered the market as a direct competitor with the Nexus One.

3. Developers. Making the source code of the Symbian operating system available as open source opens up a huge market for developers. Symbian will never achieve the rabid success of the iPhone App Store, but it’s hard to ignore a market of 330 million potential customers. Just based on economy of scale, even a mediocre Symbian app could be quite lucrative.

4. Businesses. Taking the developers benefit in a different direction, companies of all sizes will benefit from the ability to customize the platform, and develop unique applications to integrate Symbian smartphones with the enterprise, and streamline business processes.

For businesses that are already invested in Symbian-based smartphones, an open source Symbian can extend the useful life of the devices and enable the company to maximize the investment it’s already made rather than allocating precious budget dollars to smartphone upgrades.

5. Users. The 330 million Symbian users of the world get some new life as well. As developers embrace the open source Symbian and begin to create innovative applications for the smartphones, Symbian users will benefit from new features and functionality without having to trade their devices in for an iPhone or a Nexus One.

The transition to open source isn’t necessarily all wine and roses, though. As different developers take the open source code in different directions, there is a risk of the platform forking and creating some confusion as far as which Symbian will work with which Symbian smartphones.

Making Symbian open source may stop some of the hemorrhaging of market share Symbian has experienced, and it is almost guaranteed to extend the useful life of the platform. However, it is still yesterday’s smartphone platform and Symbian’s days are still numbered–the number is just higher now.

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ShwetaIntel Pushes out VPro for Core I5, I7 Processors

Monday, February 8th, 2010

On Thursday, Intel announced a new vPro platform for its Core processors to make remote maintenance and management of PCs easier in an enterprise.

With vPro technology, Laptops and desktops enable IT administrators to use hardware-based technologies to manage and secure PCs through a wired or wireless network. The new vPro technologies will be in systems with Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 processors, which were announced earlier this year, Intel executives said during a webcast on Thursday.
intel logo 2009,E U 194934 3 Intel Pushes out VPro for Core I5, I7 Processors

The vPro platform includes new hardware, which can solve a larger number of problems than prior vPro platforms. The technologies could help reduce support costs and the number of support visits to desktops, said Rick Echevarria, vice president of the Intel architecture group.

For example, a technology called Anti-Theft 2.0 uses software and hardware technology to remotely disable systems and lock access to data if a PC falls into wrong hands. A message can also be designed for disabled PCs that will be displayed after boot. This feature will be especially important to secure data on laptops, which can get easily stolen. The technology can also enable a disabled laptop remotely.

The new platform also includes technology called Keyboard-Video-Mouse Remote Control (KVM Remote Control), which gives support personnel better control of PCs remotely. Intel has introduced new hardware to enable the KVM capability, which helps establish a stable connection to remote PCs, Echevarria said. System administrators get pre-boot access to systems, which help solve a larger set of problems including disk and operating system failure.

Users will need to agree to start a KVM session with support personnel in order to maintain privacy, according to Echevarria. Built-in KVM technology also helps cut costs as it reduces the need for a KVM switch or software usually needed to enable such functionality.

As part of vPro, the new Core i5 and Core i7 chips will take advantage of a new instruction called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for faster data encryption and decryption. That could help secure data residing in servers or virtualized environments.

During the webcast, Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s server division, said Intel has worked with Microsoft to enable vPro features on Windows 7. The platform enables Windows 7 to do things in System Center that previously required a desk-side visit from support, including remotely awakening and troubleshooting PCs.

The latest vPro platform based systems will include Intel’s Q57 Express chipset. Close to 500 hardware and software vendors will take advantage of the latest vPro technology. PC makers including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo will be releasing systems based on the platform, according to Intel.

The company declined comment on whether the new platform will support systems with Advanced Micro Devices processors. But Echevarria said that there are scenarios that Intel has enabled with vPro that utilize specific Intel-developed technologies. For example, the new AES instructions are found only in Intel’s new Core processors, and do not apply to platforms that don’t include support for those instructions.

Advanced Micro Devices offers competitive tools to compete with vPro. It offers a tool to remotely fix PCs based on DASH (Desktop and Mobile Architecture for System Hardware), a suite of specifications set by Distributed Management Task Force for remote management of laptops and desktops.

Intel’s Core vPro processor technology supports standards such as DASH, Echevarria said in an e-mail. “Intel is a contributor to the specifications from the DMTF. Remember that standards are necessary, but not always sufficient,” he said.

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NaggieMicrosoft to Drop Linux, Unix Versions of Enterprise Search

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Microsoft announced Thursday that it will no longer offer Linux or Unix versions of its enterprise search products after a wave of releases set to ship in the first half of this year.

Bjorn Olstad, CTO for Fast and a Microsoft distinguished engineer, wrote that Microsoft would continue offering and updating standalone versions of the company’s ESP platform for Linux and Unix after it bought Fast Search & Transfer in 2008. “Over the last two years, we’ve done just that”, he added.

But the products being released this year will be the last containing a search core compatible with Linux and UNIX, he said. There is logic behind Microsoft’s decision, according to Olstad.

Microsoft is trying to make the move easier on affected customers, Olstad added.

He stated that they will always interoperate with non-Windows systems on both the front- and back-end. Our search solutions will crawl and index content stored on Windows, Linux, and Unix systems, and our UI controls will work with UI frameworks running on any operating system.

In addition, it will support ESP 5.3, the search core for the products that will be released this year, for 10 years. Customers who decide to keep running the core on Unix or Linux can “add Windows-only innovations or cloud-based services by using a mixed-platform architecture,” he said.

Microsoft is also rolling out an “upgrade program” that will “help customers evaluate our hosted solutions and/or a Windows-based deployment.”

However, “there’s no immediate action required as a result of this announcement-and I expect that most of you will stay with your current deployments for some time,” Olstad added.

According to Jared Spataro, director of enterprise search at Microsoft, a significant number of customers are running Fast on Linux or UNIX. He declined to provide specific figures. Microsoft made the announcement now in order to give those users plenty of time to prepare, he said.

According to Gartner analyst Whit Andrews, Microsoft’s promises of continued interoperability offer some comfort. “This doesn’t mean Microsoft is casting out Linux users from their customer base. There will be people running Fast on Linux right out to the 10-year limit.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s announcement raises another question: whether it will continue offering a standalone search product for the long term, given its moves to align the Fast technology with its Share Point collaboration platform.

According to Spataro, there are no plans at this time to drop a standalone version, although Microsoft doesn’t tend to “project out any further than one product wave”. “When we look at any strategy, we really are looking at market demand. [Right now] we certainly hear there’s a need for a standalone version.”

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NaggieMalicious Firefox Add-ons Installed Trojans

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Last night, Mozilla announced that two experimental Firefox add-ons, Master Filer and the Sothink Web Video Downloader version 4, infected victim PCs with Trojans when either add-on was installed.

The small-distribution extensions were previously available via Mozilla’s add-on site, but have since been removed. According to Mozilla’s post, the Master Filer add-on had been downloaded about 600 times and installed the Bifrose Trojan. The Sothink Web Video Downloader version 4 slipped in the LdPinch Trojan, and had been downloaded about 4,000 times.

According to the open-source organization, the malicious add-ons managed to sneak by the one malware scanner (unnamed in the post) used by Mozilla. The organization says it will now be scanning with two additional detection tools.

If you happen to have installed either of these malicious add-ons, note that removing the add-on will not remove any installed Trojan. You’ll need to run a separate antivirus scan and disinfection to clean your system. Mozilla’s post includes a list of antivirus software currently known to detect the particular Trojans involved.

This unfortunate incident makes clear why relying solely on one antivirus scanner is never a good idea, as no one program detects everything. Since this has happened at least once before with an infected Vietnamese language pack, I’m curious why Mozilla doesn’t simply switch to uploading all add-on submissions to the free Virustotal.com, which uses about 40 different engines to scan each submission. I’ve also asked Mozilla which scanner it had been using. If I get that information I’ll add it to this post.

According to Mozilla, it had been using ClamAV as its sole scanner prior to this incident. I’d guess Mozilla feels it’s a natural match as an open-source app, but the ClamAV engine didn’t fare well at detection tests when I reviewed the Windows version of the program, ClamWin.

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NaggieAdobe Fires Back at Apple’s Snub of Flash on the iPad

Friday, February 5th, 2010

What’s Apple’s problem with flash? After three years of the introduction of the iPhone, Apple’s refusal to include Flash on its soon-to-be-released iPad has sparked another kerfuffle between Apple and Flash maker Adobe Systems.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch in a lengthy blog post railed against Apple’s Flash avoidance and detailed why Flash has become successful on the non-iPhone part of the web. From its humble start allowing low-bandwidth vector animations on the web, Flash now includes animation, streaming audio, rich interactivity, arbitrary fonts, two-way audio/video communication, local storage, and “enabling the video revolution on the web, Lynch wrote.

Lynch wrote in blog that the explosion of smartphones and the imminent wave of tablet devices — including the iPad — means an “important crux for the future of Flash”. A plethora of devices in the mobile with different web-browsing capabilities threatens to break up what Flash largely built — “seamless, consistent and rich experiences,” he added.

Flash for Smartphones

According to Lynch, “Adobe is attempting to manage the transition to the mobile web with a version of the Flash player for smartphones — which will be deployed by all but one of the top manufacturers”. Any Guesses…

Flash works just fine on Apple’s devices, Lynch wrote. Adobe is developing stand-alone apps built on Flash that are currently available on the App Store. “This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen,” Lynch charged.

HTML5 Won’t Replace Flash

Apple is a supporter of the open-standard HTML5, which it says will eventually replace Flash. According to Lynch, he doesn’t think so. If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does, that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass.

“The coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the web with incompatibility issues,” Lynch wrote.

At the iPad’s introduction, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called Flash “buggy,” a charge Lynch denied in his post. “Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don’t ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically, Flash could not have achieved its wide use today,” Lynch wrote. “Addressing crash issues is a top priority in the engineering team, and currently there are open reports we are researching in Flash Player 10.”

Battle of the Titans

Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Research, said in a phone interview that this really all comes down to market power. “There’s a lot at stake for Adobe here. If Apple continues to gain and the iPad is a hit, and there are millions of devices out there that Flash is not compatible with, it’s a danger for them.”

As the phone was an “app” device, then the lack of Flash on the iPhone wasn’t a huge deal, it’s a different world with the larger iPad screen. According to Sterling, it was very jarring to see Jobs scrolling around the {New York] Times site and all these blue boxes where there should have been videos.

Sterling said, it seems really foolish at one level for Apple to shun Flash — it’s a media device and it needs to be able to play media. “On the other hand, perhaps it’s the height of arrogance where Apple thinks they can move the whole world to their technological choices.”

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NaggieDisputed Joojoo tablet to ship at end of February

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

A Web-browsing tablet device, the Joojoo, which is the subjects of a high-profile Silicon Valley legal dispute, appears on track to reach early buyers at the end of February.

After the technology blog TechCrunch, the flat touch-screen computer was known until December as the CrunchPad. It was born from a post by the blog’s well-connected and outspoken founder, Michael Arrington that called for collaborators on a “dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen Web tablet.”

Singapore-based Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan stepped up. His software startup, Fusion Garage, worked with Arrington and his team until November. And at that point the project imploded, with Fusion Garage announcing it would sell the device under a new name — and without Arrington’s involvement.

The production of the Joojoo is under way, said Rathakrishnan Wednesday, despite a federal lawsuit filed by Arrington. CSL Group, a Malaysia-based mobile phone and netbook maker, is subsidizing production costs in exchange for an undisclosed revenue share, according to Rathakrishnan.

Arrington is seeking damages and to keep Fusion Garage from selling or profiting from the Joojoo device. His lawyer didn’t return a message seeking comment about whether they might take further legal action.

CSL, which makes Blackberry-like phones it calls “Blueberry,” will also be an investor in the startup’s next round of funding, expected to close in the next two weeks. Late last year, Fusion Garage said it raised $3 million in a first round.

In an interview, Rathakrishnan would not specify how many people pre-ordered the $499 tablet, but “a good part” of those who did will receive their devices at the end of this month, he said.

Dramatically, the tablet landscape has changed since the Joojoo was first unveiled. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and others presented tablet prototypes. Less than a month later, Apple Inc. took the wraps off a long-anticipated version it calls the iPad.

Apple’s iPhone upended the smart phone category, leaving competitors scrambling to come out with touch-screen phones and application stores of their own. Many analysts expect Apple’s iPad to define the nascent tablet category in the same way.

However, Rathakrishnan said he believes the Joojoo gives consumers a better experience than the iPad because it has a larger screen and people will use it to surf the “real” Web, or sites they see on their regular PCs, rather than consume bits and pieces delivered through add-on apps.

He also implied Apple had imitated Fusion Garage in its development and marketing of the iPad. Both devices start at $499, Rathakrishnan noted, and Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, made his presentation from what looked like a couch after Fusion Garage described the Joojoo as perfect for “couch computing.”

Apple didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment.

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NaggieAndroid apps for business users

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

In businesses today, the Blackberry may be the most popular phone, but the openness of the Google Android platform is attractive too. Most of the big-name apps from the iPhone world are now available for the Android. And because the Android’s Web browser is based on the same WebKit rendering engine the iPhone uses, Web apps built for the iPhone will likely require minimal changes to work on Android devices.

Programmers enjoy the freedom offered by Google’s looser reins, and this will make life much easier for any business that adopts the platform. The Android operating system and marketplace are both pretty open, something that makes life much easier for the IT departments that support the phone. Distributing an app to all internal clients, consultants, and customers is much simpler without the tight strictures of the iPhone world.

Nowhere, the Android Market is near as deep as the iPhone’s App Store, and it shows when you browse through the apps. But the lack of depth isn’t as important to a business user as it might be to the casual consumer or gamer. Many of the dumb apps filled with scantily clad models aren’t available for Android yet, and those are a surprisingly large slice of the iPhone marketplace.

Even though the market for Android apps is still emerging, there are a number of good apps for business users. Take InfoWorld’s quick, at-a-glance tour of 10 Android apps for business users that help you find where you’re going, track your expenses and exchange rates, overcome language barriers, view and edit Office documents, and connect remotely to a company database or your desktop PC.

This story, “Android apps for business users,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments on mobile computing and Google Android at InfoWorld.com.

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NaggieApple Addresses iMac Flicker Problem with Update

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Apple has posted a firmware update, 27-inch iMac Display Firmware Update 1.0, to address persistent flickering problems in Apple’s largest iMac.

On Apple’s Web Site, the issue is heavily documented in this support thread, should fix what users have called intermittent flickers lasting a quarter of a second or so. But the fix won’t solve another concern: complaints of yellowing in the monitor, which Apple requires users return the monitor to an Apple store.

However, Apple has issued what appears to be a standard warning or disclaimer: “If your screen remains black after applying the update, contact Apple Care or an Apple Authorized Service Provider. If you continue to experience image corruption or display flickering, make sure you have also installed the 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0. If you are still having display issues after successfully completing both firmware updates, contact AppleCare or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.

The graphics firmware update, issued in December, was supposed to address ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards that may caused image corruption or display flickering. We can only assume the fix didn’t work, however, necessitating the second update.

It’s difficult to say whether Apple has solved the problem, as one user pointed the inherent problem with support forums: once the problem is fixed, people no longer visit the site, as their problems have been solved.

User “Aaron Stroot” reported: I have a week 45 27″ iMac i7. It has had minor screen flickering since the beginning, but it never really bothered me enough to worry about exchanging it. I never saw the flickering in Windows 7 so I figured it was a software thing that could be fixed, he added.

“Anyways, here is my experience:
1) First firmware update – seemed to fix it, but flickering came back after a day.

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NaggieGoogle tailoring tablet computer software

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Google tailoring tablet computer software

Though an iPad has commanded the technology world’s attention, Google quietly continued working on tablet computer software that could run rivals to Apple’s latest creation.

An image of what a Google tablet might look like were featured at a Chromium developers web page on Tuesday along with talk of how touchscreen controls could work based on the Internet titan’s Chrome computer operating system.

The images were posted online two days before the January 27 event at which Apple unveiled an iPad tablet computer that will begin shipping worldwide in March.

According to Google Chrome lead designer Glen Murphy, you may have seen our Chrome OS tablet concepts from last Monday; in the video, some floating hands interact with a touch surface.

Google made images and video of Google tablet gesture control capabilities available online for developers to consider.

The “concept user interface under development” could signal another front on which Google will battle with Apple, which uses its own custom software in the iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Macintosh computers.

The website focused on Chrome OS software and did not indicate whether Google would make its own tablet or opt to let others tend to the hardware.

Google’s mobile Android software is built into iPhone competitors, including the Internet firm’s own Nexus One smartphone released in January.

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