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NaggieOpenOffice.org Releases Version 3.2

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

openof11 OpenOffice.org Releases Version 3.2

On Thursday, the organization announced that OpenOffice 3.2 is now available for download.

The latest version of the productivity suite- which is intended to be an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office- boasts faster start-up times, ODF support, proprietary file support, support for postscript-based OpenType fonts, and more.

The release comes after OpenOffice.org hit a milestone of 300 million downloads over the course of its 10-year history, 100 million of which occurred from the organization’s main Web site.

The suite includes basic components like word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, and formula and database capabilities. Improvements to those components the version 3.2 boasts, including the Calc spreadsheet. The Chart module, meanwhile, received a “usability makeover” and includes new chart types.

Some people are currently locked in to other personal productivity tools – maybe by corporate IT policy, or by tie-in to other legacy software. For everyone else, we want OpenOffice.org to be the 2010 office software of choice, and 3.2 takes us another step towards that goal,” said Florian Effenberger, marketing project lead of OpenOffice.org.

Version 3.2 is available for download on the organization’s Web site.

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NaggieOracle launches worldwide cloud computing tour

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

With the launching a roughly 50-date global road show on the topic for developers and system administrators, Oracle has officially put both the legs on the cloud-computing bandwagon.

In contrast to CEO Larry Ellison’s well-publicized mocking of cloud computing, the move stands, which he has deemed a rebranding and conflation of existing technologies. But it’s not as if the ongoing tour wasn’t telegraphed.

During a recent webcast on how the company plans to use the assets it gained from the purchase of Sun Microsystems, executives indicated Oracle’s main focus will be on helping customers build private clouds. In 2008, Ellison himself said, albeit with sarcasm, that Oracle would make cloud computing announcements in the future.

Ellison said, “If orange is the new pink we’ll make orange blouses. I’m not going to fight this thing”. “Maybe we’ll do an ad. I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than … change the wording on some of our ads.”

But the road show will apparently go further than that by detailing in depth Oracle’s particular take on cloud computing, a label that has been slapped on everything from virtualized, scalable pools of computing infrastructure, such as that sold by Amazon Web Services, to SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications.

Events’ attendees will be able to “break through the haze” surrounding the topic, as “Oracle experts” clarify how companies can take advantage of “enterprise cloud computing.” The topics will include the tips to develop a private cloud, how to move current IT environments to a cloud-like structure, and how to use public cloud options such as AWS.

According to 451 Group analyst China Martens, the company simply has to stake a public claim in cloud computing given how pervasive the market forces in this direction are. One issue facing Oracle is how to include the Sun technologies in its plans, and that work is probably not complete, she added.

Already the company has made it clear that it has no immediate designs on Amazon’s turf, as it has abandoned Sun’s plans for a public cloud service. According to Martens, Oracle has sometime to formulate its own answer.

She added, whatever [Ellison] says is going to get lots and lots of play, and sometimes he says whatever comes into his head. And Oracle has to pull back and rephrase that. That’s what they’re doing, but slowly and carefully. They can set their own pace but have to show they’re listening to the market and [are] not in a bubble.

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SuzanneDell plans new line of ‘private cloud’ servers this year

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Dell is planning to take some of the custom servers designed by its Data Center Solutions division for Web giants like Yahoo and Facebook and sell them to a wider range of companies, including large enterprises, according to Dell executives.

About three years ago, the DCS unit was formed to help Dell get more business from large Internet firms. Its engineers often spend several weeks on-site with those companies to design low-cost, low-power systems that meet the special requirements of their search, social networking and other Web applications.

In an interview, Dell executives said that hands-on role means the DCS group designs servers only for large companies, such as Ask.com and Microsoft’s Azure division, which order tens of thousands of servers per year, but that’s about to change.

Dell will turn some of those custom servers into standardized products and sell them to companies that order lower volumes of systems later this year, including enterprises building “private cloud” environments in their data centers, and a second tier of smaller Internet companies. They will likely be sold under a new brand, CloudEdge.

Andy Rhodes, a director with Dell’s DCS group, said “What we’ve found is, there are a whole bunch of other customers who want access to those designs but who are not buying in those types of quantities”. “So the big thing we’re solving now, and we’ll talk more publicly about over the next couple of months, is how to provide more of that capability to many, many more customers.”

Dell isn’t discussing specific products yet and is still working out details, such as whether the servers will be sold by DCS or through Dell’s standard server channels. But the goal is to offer the designs to a wider market, even while DCS continues to do custom work for very large customers..

DCS aims to build highly energy-efficient servers that pack a lot of computing power into a small space. The systems often forego redundant power supplies and fans, for example, which saves on component costs and energy bills.

That also makes the servers less resilient to failure — a trade-off large Internet companies are willing to make for lower operational costs. Companies like Google and Yahoo design their Web applications to run on such “fail in place” architectures, so that workloads are rerouted around failed servers with little or no disruption to services.

According to Barton George, cloud evangelist for Dell, the main thing with these hyperscale systems is that the availability and resiliency are baked into the customers’ applications rather than into the hardware.

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NaggieZero-day hack of Oracle 11g database revealed

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

On Tuesday, a well-known security researcher showed how to subvert security in the Oracle 11g database by exploding zero-day vulnerabilities that would let a savvy user gain full and complete control.

David Litchfield, a researcher at NGS Consulting, demonstrated how a user can subvert security to elevate his privileges to take complete control over Oracle 11g. Altogether Litchfield announced this was his final day at NGS, saying he was considering changing his focus to computer forensics.

Researcher claims hack of processor used to secure Xbox 360, other products

Currently reported, Litchfield’s discovery shows that due to the way Java has been implemented in Oracle 11g Release 2, there’s an overly permissive default grant that makes it possible for a low privileged user to grant him arbitrary permissions. In a demo of Oracle 11g Enterprise Edition, he showed how to execute commands that led to the user granting himself system privileges to have “complete control over the database.” Litchfield also showed how it’s possible to bypass Oracle Label Security used for managing mandatory access to information at different security levels.

Until Oracle remedies the zero-day flaws he exposed, Litchfield advised Oracle 11g administrators to revoke public execute access to certain Java-based functions. He said he expects Oracle to soon release patches for the problems he identified and he intends to publish a white paper on the topic.

According to Litchfield, he thinks Oracle probably deserves a “B+” for security in the current version of its database, which he characterized as an improvement over the previous version, but criticized Oracle for not finding these problems in the requirements and design phases of the product. He added Oracle appears to be relying too much on security tools to catch problems after its product is shipped.

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NaggieFacebook gets more Bing — and control of display ads

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Facebook gets more Bing and control of display ads

On Friday, Microsoft said Bing will power Internet searches for Facebook’s 400 million members in an arrangement that returns control of display advertising to the social-networking service.

Previously, Bing had powered online searches on US Facebook pages.

According to Bing general manager Jon Tinter, Microsoft will provide Facebook users full access to Bing features as part of an “expanded cooperation in search”. You will start to see the fruits of our expanded relationship show up in the Facebook experience over the weeks and months ahead, he said.

According to Tinter, the companies mutually agreed that Facebook will take over selling display advertising posted at the website because it “just made more sense” given the unique nature of the website.

The control over the displaying advertisement by Microsoft served up at Facebook stretched back to shortly before the US software giant bought a 1.6-percent stake in Facebook in 2007 for 240 million dollars.

The arrangement was inked in a contract, which was up for renewal.

Last year, Microsoft launched its new Bing search engine.

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NaggieSymbian 3 Goes Open Source, But Nokia Ties Remain

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Now, the Symbian mobile operating system is completely open source. On Thursday, the Symbian Foundation released Symbian 3, the latest version of the platform.

The mobile world continues forging an open strategy with the open-sourcing of Symbian along with the Google’s Android operating system that invites handset makers to further customize and differentiate their products.

According to Haydn Shaughnessy, CEO of Cogenuity and editor of the Symbian Foundation’s blog, the open-sourcing a market-leading product in a dynamic, growing business sector is unprecedented. “Over 330 million Symbian devices have been shipped worldwide, and it is likely that a further 100 million will ship in 2010, with more than 200 million expected to ship annually from 2011 onwards.”

Is the Future Open Source?

Symbian’s transition from proprietary platform to open source is the largest in software history. The Symbian Foundation insists the open-sourcing of the platform lays the foundation for unlimited innovations in mobile development.

According to Lee Williams, executive director of the foundation, the development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result. “When the Symbian Foundation was created, we set the target of completing the open-source release of the platform by mid-2010, and it’s because of the extraordinary commitment and dedication from our staff and our member companies that we’ve reached it well ahead of schedule.”

Any individual or organization can use and modify the code for any purpose under the terms of the Eclipse Public License, whether that be for a mobile device or something else entirely. Symbian’s commitment to openness also includes complete transparency in future plans, including the publication of the platform road map and planned features up to and including 2011. Anyone can now influence the road map and contribute new features.

According to IDC analyst John Delaney, it’s increasingly important for smartphone platforms to offer developers something unique. “The placing into open source of the world’s most widely used smartphone platform emphatically fits that bill. It will be exciting to see where this takes the industry.”

Mobile OS Competition

Despite rolling out ahead of schedule, questions around Symbian’s success in the open-source realm remain. Symbian is still inextricably linked with Nokia, despite the fact that the handset maker set it free and established a foundation around it.

Open-sourcing Symbian is a positive development in light of competition with Android, Gartenberg said, but the resources required to optimize and customize Symbian may deter some handset makers from straying away from Android and Windows Mobile.

“The basic problem that Nokia has with its bulk of ownership of Symbian is the quintessential issue. How do you license something to someone else when you are competing with them?” Gartenberg asked. “Will other handset vendors view even an open-source Symbian as still being primarily a Nokia product and part of the Nokia ecosystem? If so, they may not want to contribute.”

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NaggieGoogle launches Chinese holiday travel map amid row

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

A map search service has been launched by Google in China for travelers taking trips during the Lunar New Year holiday season, despite a row over cyber attacks and censorship.

According to a spokeswoman for Google China, Marsha Wang, the service is available online now. The Google Spring Festival Map is based on the company’s regular map service but has “more features” targeting users’ special needs during this month’s holiday, the busiest travel period of the year in China, she said.

The statement posted on googlechinablog.com said, the special map provides information including real-time flight status, train schedules and ticket prices, highway conditions and weather updates.

The government estimates says that about 240 million people are expected to crowd China’s trains and planes for the holiday.

Chinese traditionally return to their home towns and villages for family reunions with this year’s travel period stretching from January 30 to March 10. The Lunar New Year falls on February 14.

Last month, Google threatened to abandon its Chinese-language search engine google.cn, and perhaps end all operations in the country, following hack attacks it says targeted the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It has also said it is no longer willing to bow to Beijing’s army of Internet censors — and will stop filtering search results soon, a move China says would violate its laws.

The US and Chinese officials have discussed the issue at length, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton qualifying her latest talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi as “open and candid.” But the row is one of an ever-increasing list of issues threatening relations between the United States and China.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt reiterated last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the Internet giant wanted to stay in China, but also said he hoped censorship rules would change.

According to Wang, it was “business as usual” at Google China’s headquarters in Beijing.

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SuzanneFirefox for Mobile Browser Runs on Nokia N900

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

firefox Firefox for Mobile Browser Runs on Nokia N900

Mozilla has launched a mobile version of its Firefox browser for the users of Nokia’s N900 smartphone, which runs the handset maker’s high-end Maemo operating system. And it’s built on the same engine as Firefox 3.6 for PCs.

According to the developers, the new mobile browser is currently available for download in more than 30 languages, with support for more smartphone platforms and languages on the way.

It’s the next step of Mozilla’s mission of providing one web that everyone can access — regardless of device or location, Mozilla blogger Erica Jostedt said Friday. “Key design principles are at the heart of the mobile browsing experience, including minimal typing, seamless synchronization with desktop Firefox, and the ability to take your Firefox with you, to name a few,” Jostedt wrote.

Expanding the Market

According to Gartner, the fledgling mobile browser market represents a huge opportunity for browser makers, since smartphones accounted for about 14 percent of the estimated 1.2 billion mobile devices shipped last year. The new mobile version of Firefox is intended in part to help counter the browser’s slowing growth on desktop and notebook PCs. According to Net Applications, Google’s Chrome browser outpaced Firefox by increasing its market share from 1.6 percent to 5.2 percent since March, even as Firefox boosted its share from 23.3 percent to 24.4 percent.

Mozilla is hoping to expand the browser market by bringing a full-fledged browser experience to smartphones, beginning with the N900. Though the world’s leading handset maker has not released any sales numbers for the smartphone so far, Nokia did say the device has been positively received.

nokia n900 black middle Firefox for Mobile Browser Runs on Nokia N900

Due to the N900’s fairly expensive price, however, Gartner expects the device to be of interest to technology lovers rather than a product destined for the mass market, noted Research Director Carolina Milanesi.

According to Milanesi, “What it does is to show the potential of the Maemo platform for the next-generation device, which should be in the market in the second half of the year”. Moreover, the Gartner analyst thinks the appeal of the platform “will be higher” once Nokia’s OVI Store gains “some traction as an ecosystem.”

Playing YouTube Videos

According to Mozilla, it’s currently investigating the development of a mobile Firefox version for smartphones running Google’s Android operating system and indicated that smartphones running Windows Mobile are also possible. Jostedt wrote, “We will continue to investigate and consider other platforms that can support the full Firefox experience”.

Still, the browser maker admits the door is currently closed to developing a browser for Apple’s iPhone. Moreover, smartphones from Research In Motion are out of bounds because Firefox’s Java-based operating system is not compatible with RIM’s Blackberry OS.

Firefox for the N900 introduces support for add-ons that anyone can build and distribute to bring new features to the mobile browser. For example, N900 owners can customize Firefox by adding language translators, AdBlock Plus, TwitterBar and even an enabler for watching the latest YouTube videos. However, the mobile browser does not yet offer a plug-in for Adobe Flash.

“The Adobe Flash plug-in used on many sites degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards,” Jostedt wrote. “We are working on an add-on that will allow the user to have control of which sites to enable plug-ins for.”

For the Nokia N900, Mobile Firefox offers support for touch-interface capabilities such as quick zoom, panning and scrolling. Tabs and browser controls are on the sides of the screen to enable the user to see entire web pages.

Additionally, a new technology called Weave Sync is on tap for synchronizing the user’s Firefox history, saved passwords, bookmarks and open tabs between computers and the Nokia N900.

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NaggieJooJoo Tablet PC Promised by End of February

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

joojoo press pic 6 JooJoo Tablet PC Promised by End of February

By the end of February, Fusion Garage’s JooJoo tablet PC is expected to be in consumer hands when it will likely give some indication as to the public’s interest in tablets such as the Apple iPad.

Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan says that not only have the preorders for the JooJoo tablet exceeded expectations, but there has been an increase in inquiries since the debut of the iPad–so it looks like the public may be ready for tablet computers after all, according to Venture Beat.

The JooJoo tablet, which began its life as the TechCrunch Crunch Pad, was announced in December 2009. The 2.4-pound touch screen tablet has a 12-inch, 1366-by-768-pixel display, 1GB of memory, and a 4GB Solid State Drive (used to store the OS and cache data). It also features a USB 2.0 port, Bluetooth support, built-in speakers, Wi-Fi, and a Webcam with a mic. The JooJoo tablet also features a fun (and potentially incredibly annoying) color-tinted screen–but don’t worry, the color can be changed.

The JooJoo tablet uses the web as its primary platform instead of custom-built apps. It also supports Flash and reportedly plays 1080p YouTube streaming videos fairly well. The JooJoo tablet’s price point is close to that of the iPad’s, at $499.

While the JooJoo tablet does beat the iPad in a few ways, it also falls short in some pretty major areas. It has a 4GB SSD, but users cannot directly save files to said drive–it’s purely an internet tablet. The problem with this, of course, is that the JooJoo has Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi only–there is no 3G option, though Fusion Garage is “not ruling out the possibility of 3G in the near future.” Here’s a tip, guys–the “near future” had better come pretty soon or people are going to start wondering what the point is of a big Internet-only-device that you can’t store music on.

Because the JooJoo tablet uses the Internet as its platform, the lack of an “App Store” is another downside. Sure, you don’t really need a Facebook app when you can just go to Facebook itself, but the Apple App Store is definitely a benefit of having an Apple product. Though some are critical of Apple’s extreme vigilance when it comes to apps, recent influxes of malware into other, similar app stores suggest that perhaps Apple is merely being alert. Not only will JooJoo’s lack of an app store make it harder for users to use the platform, but the openness may leave the JooJoo vulnerable to outside attacks.

Simply, the JooJoo tablet is just an internet in your hands, but if Rathakrishnan’s report of increased interest in the JooJoo after the announcement of the iPad is true, perhaps there is a big market for tablet PCs, regardless of what they do (or don’t).

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NaggieChina Tablet PC Maker May Sue Apple Over IPad Design

Monday, February 1st, 2010

ipad touch cover China Tablet PC Maker May Sue Apple Over IPad Design

A Chinese company, selling a tablet PC like Apple’s newly announced iPad, may sue the US Company over the similar design between the devices, said the company Monday.

Last Year, Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Industrial started selling its P88 tablet and is not ruling out a lawsuit against Apple, a company representative surnamed Wu said by phone.

The company is based in a southern Chinese city known for producing knock-off phones, which are called “shanzhai,” or “bandit” phones, and sometimes takes the form of counterfeit iPhones or other popular handsets.

According to Wu, we are not shanzhai for these things, because we were first.

The P88 weighs more than the iPad and has much shorter battery life at just over one hour during active use, compared to Apple’s stated battery life of 10 hours for the iPad. But both devices use touchscreens that have a black border and a similar size, at 10.2 inches for the P88 and 9.7 inches for the iPad. Wu said his company’s tablet is sold in the U.S., but declined to say at which outlets.

No immediate comment was returned from an Apple’s spokeswoman.

China’s gray market for electronic devices also reacted quickly to Apple’s announcement of the iPad last week. Some users on Taobao.com, a Chinese auction and retail site, are taking pre-orders for iPads they will first obtain in Hong Kong or elsewhere. Popular devices such as the iPhone or the Hero from Taiwan’s High Tech Computer (HTC) are often brought into China informally and sold there online or at electronics bazaars.

Apple has not yet cleared that if the iPad will be sold in China. Local carrier China Unicom started selling the iPhone last year, but gray-market versions of the device were already widely sold in China.

And according to Japanese electronics company Fujitsu, it owns the rights to the name “iPad,” raising another possible legal challenge for the Apple device.

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