Tag Archive for MSFT

| July 28, 2011
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Tablet Notes

Tablet NotesTablet adoption is reportedly outpacing the take-up rates of smartphones, computers, mp3 players, or game consoles. Adoption is underway in a variety of sectors beyond the consumer segment, into retail, industrial, education and business. The demands for mobility and real-time access to data are driving the tablet market.  Sales are expected to exceed 147 million by 2015.

Microsoft: It’s Not Too Late To Win In Tablets

Microsoft logoThe financial geniuses at Citi (C) that brought us the housing bubble also believe that Microsoft (MSFT) can still win the tablets wars. The BusinessInsider cites a report by Citi that says despite being late into the market Microsoft can become “#2 behind iPad” for these reasons:

Tablets are too expensive – Citi notes gadgets need to fall below $300 before they really take off. Until they reach that cost, Microsoft has time to reach people who haven’t jumped on the iPad bandwagon.

Android tablets are not very good – Citi believes that Android tablets won’t take off like Google’s (GOOG) Android Smartphones.

Android faces legal challenges – Android tablet makers are already facing a bunch of intellectual property suits from Apple (AAPL), Nokia (NOK), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft. Citi thinks Microsoft is hoping for royalties of $7.50 to $12.50 per unit. That would erase some of the cost-advantage of shipping Android.

Apps – Microsoft has an army of 6 million .NET developers who could start developing touch-optimized apps for Windows tablets. Plus, Citi says Microsoft can make Office an exclusive for its tablet and exploit its Xbox business to offer exclusive big-ticket games.

Enterprise – IT departments already know how to deploy, update, and push apps out to Windows PCs, so a Windows-based tablet should be easier to deal with than other tablets. Microsoft will also probably make Office an exclusive to its tablets and could create a technology where a tablet can “extend” a PC by giving them access to locally stored files. Citi does note that the “bring your own device” trend might favor the iPad instead, but this trend is still in the early days and not proven.

Citi predicts that about 75 million tablets will ship in 2013 and that Microsoft will have a “meaningful share” of those.

GigaTrust Brings Enterprise Rights Management To Apple’s iPhone And iPad

GigaTrust logoGigaTrust, a publisher of Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) content protection software that enhances and extend Microsoft (MSFT) Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) announced the release of the GigaTrust for iPhone and iPad mobile devices. The product consists of a client and “Mobility Server” that enables persistent content protection for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad equivalent to that provided by GigaTrust for the Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry smartphone and Windows Desktop according to DarkReading.

Reportedly GigaTrust for iPhone and iPad protects content at rest, in transit, and in use, allowing users to securely deliver and persistently protect emails while they are being read on the device. Additionally, iPhone and iPad users can apply GigaTrust protection to outgoing emails and email responses.

Mobile Security: The Great Misconception

Smartphone securityResearch from Kaspersky Lab shows that many users feel more secure using mobile devices than PCs to surf the Internet and that most consider the risk of losing personal data higher on computers than on their mobile devices. The report noted by ITnewsLink says there has been a recent increase in the number of attacks on mobile operating systems like Google’s (GOOG) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iOS, and experts expect to see considerably more in the future. Despite this, users in the Kaspersky Lab survey feel more secure accessing the Internet via a mobile device.

In the survey, users consider the risk of losing personal data lower on a mobile device than on a PC – despite the fact that around a fifth of all smartphone users has already experienced the loss or theft of a mobile device. The majority of users reported they store personal data, such as photos, emails or contact details, on their mobiles. Around one-third also save login information, such as PIN codes or passwords, for services on their mobile devices, demonstrating a large gap between secure reality and user perception

Next! Turns Your iPad into a Real Productivity Tool

Leftturn Labs logoAppScout says Next! For iPad is proof that the iPad can do work The app is a getting-things-done (GTD) styled app that will help keep your projects organized, keep your tasks from overwhelming you, and keep you moving towards your goal.

Next! can help you organize your to-dos and projects. AppScout says it doesn’t have the same features as a project management suite like Microsoft Project, it’s perfect for those projects that are essentially a long series of tasks to be completed with due dates and dependencies for each of them.

You can take notes, store documents relevant to your project, and tag items that you want to review with others, all from your iPad. Next! will even serve as a light document management system, giving you a central place for all of your project-associated documents, images, and files that you’ll need to refer to as you do the work.

Since the app follows the GTD philosophy it allows you to create action lists based on when the tasks will be completed as opposed to an arbitrary priority list. Your tasks can be adjusted as they get nearer or come into focus. You also get overall project status and health bars that show how far you’ve progressed towards completing your tasks and how closely you’re tracking to your schedule.

Next! is available in the iTunes App Store for the introductory price of $9.99.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Tablet computing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| July 14, 2011
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Swiss Party Plans to Sink PowerPoint

Swiss Party Plans to Sink PowerPointThe newly formed Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP), is a newly formed single interest party in Switzerland, dedicated to saving the world from the evils of Microsoft (MSFT) Powerpoint presentations reports TechEye. On its blog, the party claims that about 11 percent of more than 4.1 million Swiss employees have to waste their time assisting in the creation of PowerPoint presentations.

Microsoft PowerPoint logoCIO.com says the APPP, calculates the use of presentation software costs the Swiss economy 2.1 billion Swiss francs (US $2.5 billion) annually, while across Europe, presentation software causes an economic loss of €110 billion (US$160 billion). TechEye ironically points out that the amount is how much the Greek debt bail-out will cost. APPP bases its calculations on unverified assumptions about the number of employees attending presentations each week and supposes that 85 percent of those employees see no purpose in the presentations.

Microsoft logoAPPP is aiming high. It plans to become the fourth strongest political party in Switzerland. It has already had to adapt its strategy to emphasize that it is not just Microsoft’s Powerpoint software it wants to be banned but all makers of such software.

Still, it has a good chance of getting what it wants. In Switzerland, citizens can force a referendum on any subject. All it takes is 100,000 voters to sign a petition demanding one. It also looks like it has the backing of the U.S. Army.

Flip chartThe BusinessInsider reports that the APPP’s founder Matthias Poehm is a public speaking trainer. He has a particularly strong aversion to PowerPoint. Mr. Poehm has written a book called “The PowerPoint Fallacy” which just so happens to be featured on the APPP website. Mr. Poehm admitted to PC World that he’s using the party as a promotional tool to sell his book and he suggests the classic flip chart as the best option for presentations.

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What if Abraham Lincoln used PowerPoint at Gettysburg?

What do you think?

Would you vote to ban PPT in the US?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| July 2, 2011
Comments Off on AccountKiller KO’s Online Accounts

AccountKiller KO’s Online Accounts

AccountKiller KO's Online Accounts AccountKiller.com says it is a website dedicated to helping social network users reclaim their personal data. The website helps users reclaim their personal data by explaining and ranking social networking sites. The website explains how to delete online accounts and ranks them by how hard it is to reclaim your personal information.

AccountKiller provides instructions to remove your account or public profile on most popular websites, including Skype, Facebook, Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Live, Hotmail, MSN,  Twitter,  Google (GOOG), and many more.

The creators of AccountKiller have also created a blacklist of sites that do not allow their users to reclaim their online account information.  According to the website a black-listed site indicates it’s probably impossible or highly difficult to get rid of your account. Among the sites AccountKiller has blacklisted are:

The grey-listed sites may cost you some irritation or effort – but it should be possible to terminate your online accounts says AccountKiller. These sites will require you need to send a mail to the site, send a message using a webform or even call them to recover your personal information.

The creators of AccountKiller say that social media sites purposely make it difficult or even impossible to delete your account for two reasons. First, because they are profiting from their users’ data. These sites are in the business of data customer retention.  Alternatively, they suggest that these developers may simply be ignorant, lazy, or incompetent, i.e. not being able to create some account deletion function.

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Kudos to the creators of AccountKiller, I now recommend this site to anyone who has questions about these social networking sites. It is time for social networking sites to provide transparency into their real business model, data collection, otherwise, there could be a social networking bubble.

What do you think?

Do you know how to get out of your social networking sites? Can you?

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Apple (AAPL)
Category: Data protection | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| June 25, 2011
Comments Off on 40 Years of Malware – Part 2

40 Years of Malware – Part 2

40 Years of Malware - Part 22011 marks the 40th anniversary of the computer virus. Help Net Security notes that over the last four decades, malware instances have grown from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Fortinet (FTNT) marks this dubious milestone with an article that counts down some of the malware evolution low-lights.

The Sunnyvale, CA network security firm says that viruses evolved from academic proof of concepts to geek pranks which have evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, monetization of the virus scene was underway and almost all viruses developed for the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. According to FortiGuard Labs, the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years are:

– See Part 1 Here – See Part 2 Here  – See Part 3 Here  – See Part 4 Here

1945 – A Bug is Born –  Grace Murray Hopper, a researcher at Harvard, notes a system failure and finds a moth trapped in relay panels.

1949 – Self-replicating programs – John von Newman a researcher from Hungary published the theoretical base for computers that store information in their “memory”.

1962 – A group of Bell Telephone Labs researchers invents a game that destroys software programs.

1971 – The Creeper Virus appears on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. It replicates itself and displays a message: “I’m the Creeper: Catch Me if You Can.”

1974 – The Wabbit – was a self-replicating program, that made multiple copies of itself on a computer until it bogs down the system to such an extent that system performance is reduced to zero and the computer eventually crashes. This virus was named wabbit because of the speed at which it was able to replicate.

Apple IIe1981 – Elk Cloner – the first widespread virus on the Apple (AAPL) II platform, spreads by the floppy disk and infects boot sectors, generating messages and impairing performance.

1983 –  The term “computer virus” comes into vogue after Professor Len Adleman at Lehigh University demonstrates the concept at a seminar.

1986 – The Brain is the first global epidemic on the PC platform and shows businesses and consumers are clueless about protection.

1987 – Jerusalem virus – On any Black Friday (Friday the 13th), it would delete any programs that were run, instead of infecting them, so it simply couldn’t be ignored,” Roger Thompson told News.com, Australia. “You couldn’t throw away your hard drive, and reformatting it didn’t remove the virus,” the chief research officer for AVG said.

BSD Daemon1988 – The Morris worm – created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet and becomes the first worm to spread extensively “in the wild”, and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1990 – Chameleon– the first documented polymorphic virus, malware that adapts and changes to avoid detection.

1992 – Michelangelo – was expected to create a digital apocalypse on March 6, with millions of computers having their information wiped according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus.  Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal.

1995 –  Concept – the first Macro virus attacked Microsoft (MSFT) Word documents.

1996 – Laroux – the first Microsoft (MSFT) Excel virus, appears in the wild.

1999 – The Happy99 worm – invisibly attached itself to emails and would display fireworks to hide the changes being made then wished the user a happy New Year. It modified system files related to Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.

1999 – The Melissa worm targeted Microsoft (MSFT) Word and Outlook-based systems, and created considerable network traffic.

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Back in the day, I had to deal with both Happy99 and Melissa, as well as the occasional Stoned. Melissa was the easiest to deal with since I was running a GroupWise shop at the time, once the news spread, we just pulled the Cat5 from the GWIA and we saw minimal blowback. Let’s hear it for technological diversity.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| June 20, 2011
Comments Off on Tablet Notes

Tablet Notes

Tablet NotesiPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April 2010 release. Its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past records. iPad is outselling iPhone and the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.

Apple iPad Will Fail in the Enterprise

Dell logothe Apple (AAPL) iPad would ultimately fail in the enterprise. That is what Andy Lark, Dell‘s (DELL) global head of marketing for large enterprises and public organizations told CIO Australia.

… longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary [Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.

Mr. Lark claimed Dell had taken an enterprise approach toward tablet PCs. This approach will ultimately give Dell an edge. Dell has a major stake in Microsoft Windows and the desktop PC market. “We’ve taken a very considered approach to tablets, given that the vast majority of our business isn’t in the consumer space,” he said.

The cost of Apple products was another deterrent to iPad deployments. Dell’s Lark claims that the economics on a fully loaded iPad did not add up. “An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse, and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he claimed. “That’s not feasible.”

Despite the company’s history with Microsoft, it had embraced both Windows Phone 7 and Android operating systems “…Our strategy is multi-OS,” Lark said. “We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.”

Outlook on the iPhone and iPad

Pst Mail an iPad appHelp has arrived for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad owners who need access to their Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook e-mail. AppScout says users can check their email even when they don’t have an Internet connection.Pst Mail from Arrow Bit is an iPad app that provides offline access, potentially saving money on the user’s data plan. With the app, you can carry around a year’s worth of messages with you. Pst Mail can interact with the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to reply to or forward messages. It can also open pst files created with any version of Microsoft Outlook.

AppScout says to find messages in large pst files, Pst Mail includes an advanced search feature. You can search by sender, recipient, subject text, message body, or even attachment name. You can also limit the search to a particular time frame. The developers offer a free lite version of the app in the iTunes Store, which has all the same features as the full version but is limited to the number of messages a user may open in each folder. The full version costs $9.99 in the iTunes app store.

GoToMyPC: iPad App

GoToMyPC Citrix (CTXS) has launched an Apple (AAPL) iPad version of GoToMyPC, a remote desktop application that lets you log in to your computer and control it on the go. Up until recently, you needed a PC to log in to a remote PC using the service. But the iPad app lets you do it anywhere you can get an internet connection on an iPad.

Mobilputing says GoToMyPC is hardly the first app of its type for the iPad. LogMein, TeamViewer, Parallels, and Splashtop all offer similar apps. But the GoToMyPC app has tight security features including 128-bit AES encryption, user authentication, and dual passwords, oriented for business.

Apple Sued Over Apps Giving Information to Advertisers

Apple is being sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companiesApple (AAPL) and Apple app developers have been sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companies (which I wrote about here). Two suits were filed in the Northern District of CA against the iPhone and iPad manufacturer. Apple is named in Lalo v. Apple, 10-5878.

Lalo seeks class action and claims that iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they’re used, and for how long. “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views,” reports Bloomberg’s BusinesWeek.

According to Wired the second suit, Freeman v. Apple seeks both monetary damages and a court order to stop the profiling by app makers being sued are Pandora and Dictionary.com, Toss It, Text4Plus, The Weather Channel, Talking Tom Cat, and Pimple Popper Lite.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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