Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Mac attack: Vendors mull security software for OS X

Russian security vendor Kaspersky Lab has a prototype version of its virus protection software waiting in the wings in case Apple Mac OS X suddenly becomes a target of choice for hackers.
Kaspersky, based in Moscow, has no plans soon to make it into a product, but one could "be ready in just days," said Timur Tsoriev, spokesman, at the Cebit technology trade show in Germany on Tuesday.

Kaspersky's antivirus technology is flexible enough to work on different operating systems, said CEO Eugene Kaspersky. The company's analysts have also cracked open an iPhone, which runs a slimmed-down version of OS X, to see how it runs.

Whether to cover Apple's operating system has been a question for security vendors. At times, they've found it hard to make a business case to invest resources into building security software since Apple users feel segregated from the attacks suffered on a regular basis by Windows users.

As Apple's share of the PC market has grown, security analysts as well as vendors have forecasted that Apple's seeming immunity won't last forever.

So far, they've been pretty much wrong, as there have been no attacks on the scale that affects Windows machines, such as the Storm Worm. But Apple's software is far from perfect: In December, Apple issued 31 updates for Mac OS X. Its QuickTime multimedia player has also been patched several times.

As of now, hackers "don't pay any attention to the Mac at all," Kaspersky said. But it may come as no surprise that Kaspersky, whose business is based on selling security products, maintains he is skeptical of the security of most operating systems, including OS X.

"We see that Mac OS is taking a bigger and bigger share of the market," Kaspersky said. "We made the prototype to be ready just in case."

Net Applications, which tracks operating systems, said in January that OS X comprised about 7.6 percent of all of the PCs that visited a sampling of monitored Web sites. It was the third month in a row that the percentage increased.

Of security vendors with top market share, Symantec and McAfee have products for OS X, and Trend Micro secured a partnership last September to distribute software from Intego, which specializes in Mac Security products. Sophos, a company that focuses on the mostly-Windows corporate market, also supports the latest version of OS X, Leopard.

Finnish vendor F-Secure scuttled its Mac products around 1998, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer. But he didn't rule out the company taking another look at the platform. "Most of the hard-core geeks in our lab use Macs," he said.

Although Windows machines far outnumber Macs in businesses, it may be a good idea for administrators to run security software on a Mac if the machine is on a network with other Windows machines, said Marco Ruffer, who runs the business development section for Russian security company Dr. Web.

The Mac could potentially pass along harmful malware, even if it is not affected, he said. Dr. Web doesn't have a product for OS X, "but we've had some customers calling up" asking whether they offer it, Ruffer said.

Czech-based vendor AVG is also keeping an eye on how the Mac market shapes up. Miloslav Korenko, marketing director for AVG, said it's hard to say what level of Mac usage would prompt them to develop a product, "we are considering one as well."

Microsoft teams with Nokia to put Silverlight on devices

In its quest to make its Silverlight technology as ubiquitous as its competitor Flash, Microsoft is moving full speed ahead to promote adoption of the technology through some strategic moves and partnerships it will highlight at its annual MIX 08 conference, including a deal with Nokia to put the technology on mobile devices.
Microsoft teams with Nokia to put Silverlight on devices
IDG News Service 3/4/08

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service, New York Bureau

In its quest to make its Silverlight technology as ubiquitous as its competitor Flash, Microsoft is moving full speed ahead to promote adoption of the technology through some strategic moves and partnerships it will highlight at its annual MIX 08 conference, including a deal with Nokia to put the technology on mobile devices.
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Through a deal it will reveal Tuesday, Microsoft is working with mobile handset provider Nokia to put Silverlight on wireless devices for the first time, said Tom Honeybone, senior director in Microsoft's developer division. Silverlight is a cross-platform plug-in that lets developers create multimedia and rich Internet applications (RIAs) and then run them from the browser.

At MIX, Nokia plans to reveal a beta program for its runtime for Silverlight on its Series 60 and Series 40 handsets, as well as demonstrate Silverlight applications running on the handsets, he said. By the end of the year, Nokia plans to ship handsets with the runtime embedded that can run Silverlight applications, beginning first with the high-end Series 60 smartphones, Honeybone said. Silverlight on Series 40 phones and on Nokia's tablet devices will be available thereafter.

Microsoft eventually plans to include a runtime for Silverlight in its Windows Mobile platform, but it chose Nokia as the first company to bring Silverlight to handsets because of that company's prominent position in the mobile handset market, Honeybone said. "Series 60 is the clear leader, " he said. Nokia is not currently one of Microsoft's Windows Mobile handset partners, though there have been rumors that the company eventually will sign on to build Windows Mobile devices alongside competitors such as Sony Ericsson and HTC.

Microsoft will be developing a portability kit so Nokia can port Silverlight from the desktop to its mobile platform; that kit eventually will be available to other handset providers as well, Honeybone said.

Microsoft released Silverlight 1.0 in September 2007 as a plug-in for browsers that could work on Windows, Linux and the Mac platform. Microsoft developed the technology to displace Adobe's Flash, which currently has about 97 percent to 99 percent penetration on the Web as a technology for delivering multimedia content and RIAs.

Flash also is available on wireless devices as Flash Lite; the technology is available on more than 450 million phones, according to Adobe.

Microsoft recently renamed its forthcoming 1.1 version to Silverlight 2, saying it's more stable and fully baked than merely an incremental release. The company has said Silverlight 2 will be available in beta form in the first quarter of the year. It's not unlikely that release will be made available this week at MIX, though Microsoft has not said this and would not comment Monday.

As Microsoft prepares to make Silverlight more ubiquitous, the company is using its own reach on the Web to promote its use. The company has been using Silverlight on some of its own Web sites, confirmed Brian Goldfarb, group product manager, developer platform, at Microsoft.

Silverlight is not a required download to view the sites and users can opt out when prompted to download Silverlight, "but they will miss out on some great rich media content," he said.

Microsoft also has been using Silverlight as the delivery mechanism for some company-generated video, and its use was indeed required in at least one of those instances. Last week, a participant had to download Silverlight to view CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote Webcast live from the Microsoft's Windows Server launch event in Los Angeles.

Goldfarb said Microsoft will continue to use Silverlight more and more as part of its Web content delivery strategy, including Webcasts and other video presentations on the Web.

Microsoft also is leveraging partners to promote Silverlight adoption. One of the first partners to develop on Silverlight and use it as a delivery mechanism, MLB.com, now requires the use of Silverlight for baseball enthusiasts to view games, audio and video. And at MIX, AOL is expected to demonstrate a free Web mail product built on Silverlight 2, according to AOL.
Elizabeth Montalbano is Senior writer for the IDG News Service.

YouTube to improve usage metrics for marketers

Google's YouTube will soon give marketers more data about viewership of its videos, so that they have a better understanding of clips' reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales.
The online video site plans to make more granular metrics available in this year's second and third quarters, including data about the usage of YouTube videos that are embedded in external sites, said Brian Cusack, YouTube sales team manager.

"YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet," Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit in Miami on Monday.

YouTube, which gets about a third of its traffic from the U.S. and has almost 20 country-specific sites, is building models to distinguish content that is universally interesting from content that is locally interesting, in order to make that useful for its advertising customers, Cusack said. "That's an enormous initiative for us in 2008," he said, adding that YouTube is very interested in working with retailers with international marketing strategies.

During his speech, Cusack explained how YouTube, the world's most popular online video site, is being used by companies for marketing purposes, a fairly recent endeavor.

Although YouTube recently celebrated its third birthday, it only introduced significant advertising opportunities for marketers in last year's third quarter, and it is still learning how to use the site for these purposes, he said.

For example, one thing YouTube isn't doing a lot of is conventional online advertising like sponsored search ads and banners. "We have a lot of unsold inventory [of that kind] on YouTube," he said.

The reason: YouTube doesn't run ads at all along with videos submitted by regular users, because of concerns about potential copyright violations in those clips and because of lack of control and knowledge over those clips' content, Cusack said. Instead, ads only appear with professional videos from YouTube's roughly 1,500 commercial partners, like the National Basketball Association, CBS and Universal Music Group.

Where YouTube is seeing success among its advertising partners is in the use of its site in a way that is "authentic to the platform," Cusack said. This means that videos shouldn't be repurposed television ads, Cusack said. Instead, viewers should feel that the video was designed with the YouTube context in mind. "Let them know that you know you're talking to them on YouTube," he said. Moreover, the videos should encourage interactivity and engage viewers in conversation. That's an effective way for a company to use its YouTube presence to promote its products and beef up its brand, he said.

He gave several examples of successful marketing campaigns that employed YouTube recently, like those launched by Heinz, which held a contest for its customers to create a 30-second spot for the company; and the "Lions for Lambs" movie, which also held a contest for viewers to send clips with socially-conscious messages.

Cusack also shared some impressive usage statistics for the site. Every day, hundreds of thousands of clips are uploaded and hundreds of millions are viewed, he said. On a monthly basis, the site has about 68.5 million unique visitors and 3.7 billion page views. Users spend an average of 54 minutes on the site monthly. Visitors are spread out fairly evenly among all age groups, he said.

Gates: Google not a threat to hosted services

Microsoft has opened up its hosted version of SharePoint and Exchange to medium-sized and small companies, as it tries to take advantage of the demand for software as a service.
Now, businesses with 5,000 or fewer users can sign up for the beta of a hosted version of SharePoint, the collaboration software from Microsoft, as well as Exchange. Previously, the hosted versions were only available to larger companies.

General availability of the subscription service is expected by the end of the year, said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, speaking at the annual SharePoint conference in Seattle on Monday. “We’re moving to embrace customers of all sizes,” he said.

Microsoft hopes to test how well it is able to meet the needs of smaller companies, particularly those that may not have an expert IT department, with the expanded beta. “We want to scale this all the way down so that literally you don’t have to have an IT capability,” Gates said.

The wider availability of the service puts Microsoft in competition with Google, which just last week launched Google Sites, a hosted collaboration and communication service. “Microsoft's SaaS investment is both an offensive move to capture operational revenue (in addition to the license fees it now collects), and a defensive measure to combat potential incursions from suppliers such as Google,” wrote Matt Cain, a Gartner analyst, in a research note about the news.

Gates downplayed the competition with Google. “They really don’t have the richness and responsiveness, and you can see that relative to the success they’ve had there,” said Gates. He suggested that Google tends to create a big buzz with the introduction of new services but fails to maintain interest. “To be frank, the day they announce them is their best day,” he said.

Still, Microsoft will face challenges, Gartner said. “While it runs one of the largest public portal sites in the industry, providing large-scale SaaS services for business requires significant expertise in high availability, security, multitenant architectures, network topologies and problem resolution,” Cain wrote. However, Microsoft will likely attract small and medium-sized businesses to its hosted offering. By 2012, Gartner expects that 20 percent of enterprise e-mail seats will use hosted options, compared to 1 percent in 2007.

Serena Software unveils SaaS offerings for developers

Serena Software Inc. Monday joined the software-as-a-service business with the availability of a hosted version of its project and portfolio management (PPM) software.
At the same time, the company promised two more hosted offerings by the end of 2008 -- one slated for June availability that will host enterprise mashups for companies and a suite of hosted Agile life-cycle management tools that will be available by the end of the year.

First up in Serena's SaaS plan is a hosted version of its Serena Mariner PPM tool that is priced at US$18 per user per month. The Mariner tools provide companies with visibility into project status and metrics, noted Rene Bonvanie, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, partner programs and online services at San Mateo, Calif.-based Serena.

"[With Mariner], you can determine not only when things will be delivered but whether you are delivering the right things in terms of value," Bonvanie noted. "This is a great technology for visibility but also for communications so the CIO can communicate to their business stakeholders what exactly is gong on."

By June, the company will provide a service to allow its users to run business mashups "in the cloud," Bonvanie added. The company has promised a public preview of the mashup service by the end of this month.

"Mashups are being built by people who are not in IT ? business analysts and [business] people who build these simple applications," he said. "Oftentimes, these applications don't necessarily require an elaborate IT infrastructure."

Finally, before the end of the 2008, Serena will make available a hosted set of tools for Agile life-cycle management, which Bonvanie said will help ease some of the burdens associated with issues like collaboration among geographically dispersed development teams.

Teen masterminded mega-botnet

The world has been reminded that the era of the teen hacker is far from dead, with the arrest of a fresh-faced 18 year-old for allegedly masterminding a botnetting operation.
The New-Zealand-based accused, Owen Thorn Walker, is said to have been the leader of a group of programmers that set up a botnet that infected 1.3 million computers with the purpose of stealing credit cards and manipulating stock trades.

The FBI has put the losses caused by the Netherlands-sited botnet at US$20 million, most of it siphoned from the bank accounts of victims across the globe. Walker, who operated under the handle 'AKILL', now faces up to 10 years in jail if found guilty under New Zealand law.

Conventional wisdom has it that the era of hackers barely old enough to shave has passed into history and that cybercrime is now controlled by organized crime, motivated solely by money. This fails to notice that young, talented hackers can be just as likely to be part of such crime groups as their older peers.

And yet only days ago another teen hacker in the U.S. pleaded guilty to using a similar botnet system to install adware on hundreds of thousands of PCs. The police referred to him as 'B.D.H', suggesting that the individual could be even younger than Walker, possibly below the age at which he could be tried under adult criminal law.

Teen high spirits have also caused trouble for the authorities on other occasions in recent times, as Paris Hilton's infamous phone hacks demonstrate.

Authorities around the world seem to be turning their legal attention to the botnet problem at last, which has grown into the largest Internet security issue, beating even spam for malevolence.

"We worked closely with U.S. and Dutch authorities on this investigation. This arrest is significant not just to New Zealand but the international community as well," said Detective Inspector Peter Devoy of the New Zealand police, underlining the degree of cooperation now being employed to fight bring individuals to book.

"Very few people who carry out this sort of offending are ever prosecuted, so the resolution of this case has huge international implications," he added.

In addition to Walker, 13 other arrest warrants have been issued relating to the case in unspecified parts of the world.

Ballmer: Yahoo still in Microsoft's sights

Microsoft still has its eye on Yahoo, but CEO Steve Ballmer would not say Monday whether the company plans to pursue a proxy fight to remove Yahoo's board.

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Ballmer confirmed "a range of dialog" and "alternatives" under discussion with Yahoo, whose executives spurned Microsoft's initial US$44.6 billion cash-and-stock offer, posing the question of whether Microsoft would pursue a hostile takeover. The worth of Microsoft's offer has declined by several billion dollars as the company's share price has dropped over the past few weeks.

"I think it's important for me not to get into the detail," said Ballmer, who gave a keynote speech at the Cebit technology show in Hanover, Germany. "We still think the deal makes sense. We hope over time that becomes a reality."

Ballmer, whose company presented the unsolicited offer for Yahoo on Feb. 1, said the bid has merit for the companies' shareholders, advertisers, publishers and consumers.

Microsoft hopes that a deal will bring it the engineering resources and Web savvy that has made Yahoo one of the most recognizable Web brands and eventually allow Microsoft to better compete in the online advertising market with Google.

Yahoo has also been struggling against Google and been plagued by mediocre financial results in addition to turmoil in its management ranks. However, CEO Jerry Yang has told employees not to be distracted by the bid and to stay focused.

Ballmer said Microsoft remains "fully engaged" with Yahoo and maintained the two companies together have the potential to create a lot of value.

"Ultimately, Yahoo's management's going to have a perspective on that, Yahoo's board will have a perspective on that and Yahoo's shareholders," Ballmer said. "We are trying to have appropriate levels of engagement with all three of those constituencies as well as with other industry participants."

Apple slammed over programming secrets

Microsoft may not be the only software company that uses secret techniques to make its own applications work better with its operating system - a Mozilla Firefox developer has discovered similar practices at Apple.
While looking for ways of speeding up the performance of the upcoming Firefox 3 browser, developer Vladimir Vukicevic said this week that he came across dozens of secret tweaks built into WebKit - the software at the core of Apple's own Safari browser.

Separately, security researchers said this week they have found a way of locally bypassing the security of Mac OS X's Keychain password system.

Vukicevic was able to use a publicly documented technique to get the efficiency gain he wanted, but noticed that WebKit has its own, undocumented way of getting around the problem.

"Apparently, there is a way to do this programmatically, along with some other interesting things like enabling window update display throttling - but only if you're Apple," he wrote in a blog post. "All these WebKit methods are undocumented, and they appear in binary blobs shipped along with the WebKit source."

He said there are more than 100 such undocumented techniques in the WebKit library. "Would any other apps like to take advantage of some of that functionality? I'm pretty sure the answer there is yes, but they can't," he wrote.

Safari is based on open source software, but the concealments are a demonstration that Apple isn't fully committed to open source, Vukicevic argued.

"Despite my frustrations with Linux, this type of hiding isn't really possible in a real open source environment," he wrote. "I don't think this is malicious, it's just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that's not fully open to do."

David Hyatt, a WebKit developer, responded that the undocumented parts of Safari are kept hidden for a reason.

"Many of the private methods that WebKit uses are private for a reason. Either they expose internal structures that can't be depended on, or they are part of something inside a framework that may not be fully formed," he wrote on Vukicevic's blog. "As you yourself blogged, there was a totally acceptable public way of doing what you needed to do."

Separately, Apple confirmed a security bug that could allow local users to get access to a Mac OS X user's passwords.

The problem was discovered by programmer Jacob Appelbaum, one of the researchers who last week published methods for cracking hard disk encryption systems.

The password problem, which is specific to Mac OS X, is down to a programming error that stores the user account password in the computer's physical memory even after it's no longer needed.

Deutsche Telekom keeps its '4G' options open

Deutsche Telekom hasn't yet decided on a technology for its next generation mobile network, even though at Cebit it is demonstrating the LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology for speeding up 3G (third-generation) cellular networks.
Other "fourth-generation" options on the table include Mobile Wimax and UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband). However, the mobile carrier wants to keep its options open for now, said Philipp Humm, chairman of the carrier's mobile subsidiary T-Mobile Deutschland.

"We will start trials in the middle of the year, and make a decision towards the end of the year," said Humm.

At Cebit, though, it's all about LTE. Together with Ericsson, T-Mobile is demonstrating mobile broadband speeds at 100M bps download and 50M bps upload. Applications demonstrated will include high-definition television.

"LTE would be a natural step for us, but we don't want to choose before we know it can perform, both in terms of cost and performance," said Joachim Horn, Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile International.

When it comes to choosing between the options on the table, "The radio won't be the deciding factor, because they are all based on OFDM," he said, referring to orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, one of several techniques for sharing limited radio spectrum between multiple simultaneous communications.

Instead, said Horn, other factors like intellectual property, cost and the included ecosystem will make or break a technology.

Virgin Mobile enters India with Tata tie-up

Tata Teleservices Sunday unveiled an agreement to launch services under the Virgin Mobile brand name, aimed at youth in India.
Tata already offers mobile services in the country using CDMA (code division multiple access) technology.

Virgin Mobile is targeting the country's youth, aged between 15 and 30 years, which are estimated to be around 400 million, Virgin Group chairman Richard Branson told reporters in Mumbai.

Virgin Group will not, however, buy into its own network in India as Vodafone has, nor will it operate as an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). It has a revenue-sharing agreement with Tata for the use of the Virgin Mobile brand. Tata will use its own brand for the mass market and the Virgin brand for the niche youth market.

India added close to 9 million [m] new mobile subscribers in January, taking the total number of wireless subscribers to 242 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.

The country's booming mobile market is attracting multinational mobile services companies to invest in the market. Vodafone Group, for example, last year acquired a majority stake in Hutchison Essar, a large Indian network operator and services provider, that was later renamed as Vodafone Essar.

Web 2.0 experts share startup lessons

It's possible to launch a successful Web startup with little money, especially if you shift your attention away from the business plan and focus on building a great Web application.
That was one of the many tips that attendees at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami heard on Friday for how to succeed as a Web entrepreneur and Web application developer.

It came from Emily Boyd, co-founder of the popular Remember the Milk task-management Web application, who explained how she and her partner managed to launch their application with limited resources.

To accomplish that, they did a lot of benchmarking and research to find cheap, scalable and easy-to-use software, she said. Then they spent about a year developing the application's architecture in a way that minimized, as much as possible, its need to tap their server by doing most of the processing on users' PCs.

Thanks to that, since launching Remember the Milk in October 2005, they haven't had to expand their server capacity very much, even as their user base has grown, keeping costs down, she said. Along these lines, Boyd and her partner jumped all over Google's Gears, a technology for giving offline access to Web applications, and built it into Remember the Milk just days after Gears became available.

She also advised attendees to take advantage, as much as possible, of available APIs (application programming interfaces), in order to quickly add features and improve their applications. This is something that she and her partner continually do for Remember the Milk, especially for features that aren't core to the application's task-management functionality.

"We love APIs," she said. For example, they have a Google Maps mashup that places tasks on a map so users can visualize a route for running errands, she said.

If APIs aren't available for certain functions or devices, it's worth it to explore other avenues for integration using more granular programming, which she and her partner did to bring Remember the Milk into the Gmail inbox screen. However, she cautioned that in these cases, it can be problematic whenever the back-end code is changed in a way that breaks the integration. In the case of Gmail, her experience is that code changes are frequent, requiring regular maintenance on their part.

She also said it's important to be resourceful. Boyd and her partner are based in Australia, where the iPhone isn't yet available. But they wanted to build a version of Remember the Milk for it, so they bought one over the Internet and set to work.

She also told attendees to focus first on creating a truly compelling application that captures people's attention, and not worry too much about a business plan. "The most important thing is to build [an application] that people really want to use," she said. "[A great business model] doesn't matter if no one cares about your product."

Finally, she told attendees to constantly be thinking of ways to improve their applications and to not be too concerned about sticking to concrete upgrade roadmaps. She and her partner always have ideas floating around in their minds and instinctively pursue those that seem timely. "The truth is we don't know what we're doing next. I'm not sure if I should admit that," she said.

At least her admission wasn't as embarrassing as wolfing down more than 100 chicken nuggets in one sitting, a feat that Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of popular blogging software WordPress and founder and CEO of Automattic, said he attempted and survived.

Then he moved closer to the conference's topic, stressing that it's key to not ignore spammers, whom he called the "terrorists" of Web 2.0 companies. "They can really kill your product," he said, adding that his team has zapped more than 800,000 spam blogs -- or splogs -- from Wordpress.com.

Mullenweg also said that startup founders must be the most passionate members of the company, who are "obsessed about everything," and he recommended that, when building up a team, very careful attention be paid to the hiring process, since the staff will be critical to success.

Italy WiMax auction sets European record

The auction of 35 licenses will raise a European WiMax record of €136.3 million (US$205.8 million) for the Italian government, Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni announced Thursday. The ninth round of bidding concluded Wednesday, with bids showing a 176 percent increase on the starting offers, the minister said.
The biggest winner in the auction was the relatively little-known AriaDSL SpA, which secured licenses in all Italian regions for a total of €47.5 million, the Communications Ministry said. The company is reportedly controlled by Israeli billionaire David Gilo, founder of Vyyo, a Norcross, Georgia, company selling equipment for wireless high-speed data connections to businesses and homes.

The second-biggest spender was AFT SpA, a company providing WiFi hotspots around Italy, which paid €34.4 million for licenses in all Italian regions. The former telecom incumbent Telecom Italia snapped up licenses in central and southern Italy for a more modest €13.8 million. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset media group, Wind and Fastweb were among the major players to pull out before the end of the auction.

The auction of the WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) 3.5GHz radio frequencies, previously used for military communications, is intended to combat the digital divide in Italy and encourage the entry of smaller companies into the telecom market. The technology, which delivers speeds of 3M bits to 5M bits per second for downloads and 1M bits to 1.5M bits for uploads, is considered ideal for bringing mobile broadband communications to remote rural and mountainous areas.

Some 4.2 million Italians, or 7.5 percent of the total population, are still cut off from broadband Internet access, according to the Communications Ministry. The terms of the WiMax auction obliged bidders to explain their plans for introducing the technology to the country’s Internet black spots.

"The market geography to emerge from this auction is extremely positive, because it shows we have competition, a significant number of players and sizeable investments," Gentiloni told reporters in Rome. "The conclusion of the WiMax auction is a milestone on the road to the removal of the digital divide and to guaranteeing access to high-speed Internet as the new universal service of the 21st century," he said.

WiMax auctions in France and Germany recently raised €125.8 million and €56.1 million, respectively. Italy’s licenses run for 15 years and are renewable, but cannot be sold without Communications Ministry approval.

Supported Drupal distribution on the way

A startup company will release the first commercially supported distribution of Drupal, an increasingly popular open-source Web site builder/content management system, in the second half of this year.
Acquia, cofounded by Dries Buytaert, Drupal creator and project leader, will initially release a distribution code-named "Carbon," consisting of the Drupal 6.x core, the top 30 Drupal modules among the roughly 1,800 now in existence; a packaged installer; and assorted documentation and site-building guidelines. The startup is also readying an intelligent update notification service for customers, which is code-named "Spokes."

A lengthy FAQ on the Acquia Web site answers questions such as Buytaert's continued role in the development of Drupal.

"We do not claim to own or control Drupal in any way. ... The Drupal Association continues to operate the drupal.org domain, Dries continues to own the Drupal trademark, and the Drupal community continues to set the technical direction of the Drupal project," one passage states.

In addition, the FAQ says, "Acquia strongly believes that Dries must be able to effectively lead the Drupal project where the community wants it to go -- and not negatively affect the project due to our own needs."

Acquia provided data that Drupal has been downloaded 2 million times and that Drupal.org has more than 240,000 members. Companies including Forbes and The Onion have used it to build sites.

A commercial venture makes sense given such explosive growth, said Bryan House, product marketing director for Acquia.

Beyond the number of companies using the platform, Drupal implementations are becoming far more advanced, and as projects scale up, corporate users will want someone to call in case something breaks down, House said.

"There's a lot of people out there that love what Drupal's done," he said. "But as people build their businesses on it, there's a need for another level of support."

The company will likely never support every Drupal module; that task would simply be too sprawling, House suggested. "Each module is like a little open-source project in itself."

Acquia is rolling out its plans in a "managed, bite-sized way," House said.

Andrew Forbes, chief technology officer of WorthPoint, a networking and research site for collectors, is one Drupal user eagerly awaiting the supported distribution.

Drupal is "a little bit rough around the edges" but has "an amazing number" of features and possibilities, and it was initially cheap and easy to build out a site, he said.

But the platform is showing its limitations as WorthPoint's business grows, according to Forbes. "When you get into really interactive sites ... you run into the fact that Drupal wasn't really designed to scale well," he said. "It hasn't been wrung out by the large enterprises. ... I'm thrilled to be able to pay someone for a distribution they'll be able to stand behind."

Acer to acquire smartphone maker E-Ten

Acer, the world's third largest PC vendor, has signed an agreement to buy handheld device maker E-Ten Information Systems of Taiwan.
The acquisition will put Acer in the position to market and further develop a range of handheld devices, including smartphones and GPS devices. E-Ten has developed and sold several smartphone models over the past several years, including its Windows Mobile 6.0-based Glofish smartphone with GPS (global positioning system), in addition to other handheld electronic devices such as GPS devices and pocket PCs.

The deal is an all-stock transaction valued at NT$9 billion (US$291.3 million). Acer is offering to exchange one share of its stock for every 1.07 shares of outstanding E-Ten stock to pay for the deal.

The boards of directors at both companies have already approved the deal, but they still face shareholder votes and approval by government regulators.

The companies expect the deal to close in the third quarter of this year.

Acer cited mobility products as the main reason for the purchase, especially smartphones.

"The acquisition of E-Ten will allow Acer to play a key role in the development of the dynamic, fast-evolving market of smart handheld devices as well as ultra mobile devices in the future and will help bring Acer’s cutting edge mobile solutions to an even wider audience," Acer said in a statement.

The E-Ten deal follows a string of acquisitions by Acer, including the purchase last year of PC maker Gateway and the recent deal to buy Packard Bell, the European electronics maker.

Microsoft expands hosted software offering for business

Microsoft said Monday it will let smaller businesses use some of its key software applications over the Internet later this year, a sign of the company's rapid move to the Internet-centric computing favored by competitors Google and Salesforce.com.
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Microsoft adds event planning to Live services
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Last September, Microsoft opened its hosted software program, called Microsoft Online Services, to businesses worldwide with more than 5,000 users. Businesses pay a per-user subscription fee to access applications such as e-mail that are hosted on Microsoft's servers.

Those subscription-based services are typically cheaper for companies than installing applications on their own hardware. Other advantages include faster software updates and lower maintenance costs.

Microsoft, which built its fortune on so-called shrink-wrapped software, was criticized for moving too slowly in an area many analysts believe will develop into a significant portion of enterprise and small-business computing.

Company Chairman Bill Gates [cq] is expected to further detail the announcement on Monday in Seattle at a conference focusing on its SharePoint software. A limited beta trial of the services for small U.S. companies will start Monday.

Microsoft plans to make the services generally available by the end of the year. It did not disclose pricing.

The hosted applications will include Exchange Server 2007, used for e-mail, Office SharePoint Server 2007, a content management and collaboration tool, and Office Live Meeting, for audio and video conferencing over the Web.

Microsoft said a single Web interface can be used to managed those applications, performing tasks such configuring access for users, tracking support requests and managing licenses.

New subscription customers will also be able to blend their online software with on-premise software installed on their own servers.

Microsoft is trying not to alienate existing customers paying for what some call a pricey insurance plan, called Software Assurance. The plan, for on-premise software, lets customers obtain Microsoft product upgrades and other incentives for free. Microsoft is offering Online Services at a discount for those who pay for Software Assurance.

So far, Microsoft said companies using Online Services include Autodesk, Blockbuster and Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Intel announces Atom brand for Silverthorne, Menlow

Intel's Silverthorne and Diamondville chips will be called Atom and the company's Menlow platform for ultramobile computers will be renamed Centrino Atom when these products hit the market, according to a company spokesman.
The creation of the new processor brand sets the stage for the tiny, low-power chips' upcoming release, and marks the opening salvo in a concerted push by Intel to make ultramobile computers a mainstream product segment.

Several versions of the Atom processor are on track to be delivered to device makers during the first half of this year, according to Danny Cheung, an Intel spokesman in Singapore.

The processors are made using Intel's 45-nanometer process, and will run at clock speeds up to 1.8GHz. Slower versions will also be available, but Intel isn't saying what the slowest clock speed will be. Pricing for the chips has yet to be announced.

The chips, which measure less than 25 square millimeters, have a thermal design power (TDP) of between 0.6 watts to 2.5 watts. The number refers to the maximum sustained power that users are likely to see with the chips, not the maximum amount of power the chips can consume.

The small size of the Atom means 2,500 of them can be produced on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer, allowing Intel to sell them at a low price while maintaining high margins.

While Intel hasn't announced a specific date for Atom's release, Mobile Internet devices based on Centrino Atom will hit the market in the beginning of the second quarter, Cheung said.

Mobile Internet device, or MID, is the term Intel uses to describe some, but not all, devices that are generally referred to as ultramobile PCs. Prototype MIDs shown by Intel typically include touchscreens or slide-out keypads and the company envisions these devices running Linux instead of Windows.

Centrino Atom will include a single-core Atom processor, formerly called Silverthorne, as well as the Poulsbo chipset and a wireless chipset. Intel has yet to announce the formal name of Poulsbo, which packs a Northbridge and Southbridge chipset into a single package to reduce size and lower power consumption.

Not all Atom processors will ship with Poulsbo. Some versions of the chip, known by the code name Diamondville, will ship with two-chip chipsets. These processors, which will be available in single-core and dual-core versions, are intended for low-cost notebooks, like Asustek Computers' Eee PC, and inexpensive desktops, respectively.

Intel refers to these devices as netbooks and nettops to differentiate them from mainstream desktops and notebooks. To further separate these product segments, Intel has set guidelines for device makers that limit the features of Atom-based devices, preventing the chips from being used in notebooks with a 15-inch screen instead of a Core 2 Duo processor, for example.

Low-cost notebooks and desktops based on Atom will hit the market sometime during the third quarter, Cheung said, adding that Intel also expects to see demand for Atom processors in consumer electronics and embedded applications.

Intel expects low-cost computers will appeal to first-time computer buyers in emerging markets as well as users in more mature markets looking for a second computer.