CG girls gone wild

It's the latest in augmented reality - where computer images and the real world mix - but for many Japanese otaku, or geeks, it's destined to become another way they can interact with virtual girls. [ Watch the video ]

This system is from Geisha Tokyo Entertainment and involves a Web cam recognizing a 2D bar code on a small cube. When it sees the cube a CG-character appears on screen. Leave her alone and she'll get bored, sit around and even clean your desktop if you're lucky...


But bring another coded cube close-by and you can interact with the character. You can poke her and annoy her in various ways and even strip her down to a skimpy bikini. She'll complain at this abuse but still comply so if you're feeling guilty you can give her a present represented by another coded cube. She get happier when she sees the present and positively adore you when she finds out its a teddy bear.

If you think its too low-brow consider this: the company was formed and is largely staffed by graduates of the University of Tokyo, Japan's top university, and this first software is more about exploring the market and perfecting the technology before they go on to tackle bigger entertainment projects using augmented reality.

Alice should be arriving in October in Japan and the company has plans to put the software on-sale overseas including the US and China.

Pwnage 2.0 iPhone jailbreak software calls

The iPhone Dev team has managed to create unlocking/jailbreaking software for iPhone 3G within a few days of that product's release.

The team has published software - Pwnage 2.0 - which lets any iPhone or iPod touch user unlock the device, a process which enables installation of non-Apple-approved third party applications.

The Pwnage software can also unlock the iPhone for use with other networks, the team said, "Just to clear up some confusion over what this actually does: yes, it jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod touches. We only support the 2.0 firmwares," the team explained.

The scale of international demand for the iPhone in countries in which the device isn't available is illustrated by the fact that by February 2008, estimates of the number of unlocked iPhones in circulation around the world ranged from 800,000 to 1.5 million.

Installing unauthorized firmware on an iPhone voids the warranty and can render the device useless.

Software group weighs piracy lawsuit against eBay

A trade group representing hundreds of software vendors is considering a lawsuit against eBay for what it calls widespread sales of counterfeit software on the auction site.

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) has offered eBay several suggestions for stemming the sale of pirated software on its site, but the auction giant has rejected most of those ideas, said Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of the SIIA's antipiracy division. "We are at our last straw here," Kupferschmid said Friday. "If eBay continues to stiff-arm us ... then we will certainly consider litigation as an option."

The SIIA doesn't have immediate plans to file a lawsuit, but its members talked about the possibility during a meeting in May, Kupferschmid said. The lawsuit would likely accuse eBay of secondary copyright infringement, he said.

An eBay spokeswoman wasn't immediately available for comment, but eBay has defended its efforts to police against software piracy. EBay has put volume restrictions on software sellers, and it has eliminated most short-term software auctions, Nichola Sharpe, an eBay spokeswoman, said in March.

EBay's VERO (Verified Rights Owner) program, in place since 1998, allows rights owners to contact eBay and have items removed from auction listings. "We can't be the experts on what's fake or not," Sharpe said in March. "We're not the experts on counterfeits."

Earlier this month, in a similar lawsuit against eBay, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that eBay has taken sufficient steps to protect against sales of fake Tiffany jewelry items.

EBay pulled Tiffany items suspected of being counterfeit as soon as they were reported to the auction site, Judge Richard Sullivan said in his ruling. Trademark law does not require eBay to preemptively remove listings of Tiffany jewelry suspected of being fake, the judge said.

Sullivan's ruling came two weeks after Tribunal de Commerce in Paris fined eBay €40 million (US $62.7 million) for allowing the sale of Louis Vuitton Malletier and Christian Dior Couture counterfeit goods. EBay has said it will appeal the decision and spends about $20 million a year on efforts to remove counterfeit products from its site.

An SIIA lawsuit would likely focus on copyright infringement instead of trademark infringement, unlike the Tiffany case, and there's a more established track record of secondary copyright infringement lawsuits, Kupferschmid said. Trade groups representing the U.S. music and movie industries successfully sued peer-to-peer services Grokster and Morpheus in a case that ended up with the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, and the music industry was successful in its attempt to shut down the original Napster music-sharing service.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 and other copyright law sets out strong standards for secondary copyright infringement, Kupferschmid said. U.S. copyright law allows lawsuits for vicarious infringement, when the defendant has the ability to stop infringing activity and has a direct financial interest in the infringement.

The SIIA has asked eBay to end one-day and buy-it-now auctions of software, and the group has asked to buy a banner ad on eBay aimed at educating consumers about software piracy. EBay has so far rejected both of those ideas, but it has recently told SIIA it is reconsidering some of the trade group's suggestions, Kupferschmid said.

Ending buy-it-now and one-day auctions would allow SIIA to better track software sales on eBay, he said. SIIA has several staff members and a proprietary software program that attempt to flag infringing software on eBay.

Ending short-term auctions on software "would go a long way toward addressing most of our concerns," Kupferschmid said. "Until they actually do what we're requesting them to do, I still consider it a rejections."

This year, the SIIA has filed 32 lawsuits against eBay sellers accused of marketing counterfeit software. This week, an Oregon man was sentenced to four years in prison for identity theft and for selling counterfeit software on eBay, after the SIIA complained about him.

AOL to shut down Xdrive, other services

AOL will phase out several online services as the Time Warner unit continues to struggle in its transition from a business model based on subscription fees to one based on advertising revenue.

AOL will put out to pasture Xdrive, a hosted-storage service for individuals; AOL Pictures, a photo sharing and management site; and Bluestring, designed for sharing photos, music and videos, according to an internal memo obtained by technology news site TechCrunch.

In the memo, AOL Executive Vice President Kevin Conroy said these and mobile services AIM World and MyMobile will be "sunset" because they haven't gained enough popularity. A source close to AOL said the leaked memo is legit and that it was intended solely for Conroy's team.

AOL's popularity problem among end users and advertisers seems widespread, judging by the anemic growth AOL achieved in advertising revenues in the first quarter: 1 percent, when compared with the same quarter last year.

AOL has been on a years-long shift away from its traditional business, based on charging people for dial-up Internet access service and for exclusive online content. It has been trying to move to a model based on online advertising, which has been experiencing strong growth in the past five years.

However, while some of its services are undeniably popular, like its AIM instant messaging, AOL has failed to develop innovative services in growth areas, resorting to acquiring or creating many "me-too" services in markets where dominant players are already entrenched.

For example, AOL Pictures, its original photo upload and management service, couldn't compete against more technically advanced competitors like Flickr, which was founded in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo the following year. Meanwhile, Bluestring seems very similar to much more popular services like Photobucket, Slide and RockYou.

Unable to gain an edge through technical innovation, AOL has been investing heavily on acquiring advertising service providers like Advertising.com, Tacoda, Third Screen Media, Quigo, Lightningcast and AdTech, hoping to capture a piece of the action that way, but that strategy doesn't seem to be working too well either.

In its first-quarter earnings announcement, Time Warner stated that AOL's ad business had done well in sales to external sites and in paid search, but that it had been hurt by a decline in display ads.

AOL's ad revenue growth fell way below the U.S. rate. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), U.S. online ad revenue grew 18.2 percent in the first quarter.

This is the latest trimming of online services at AOL, which last year eliminated about 50 of them, as the company has become much more selective about maintaining only products that directly support the online advertising strategy, the source said.

AOL will try to sell Xdrive, AOL Pictures and Bluestring so that existing users of those services will be able to transition to a new provider, but if no buyer is found, the products will be shut down by the end of the year, according to the source.

If the services are closed, AOL plans to either burn end users' content into CDs and DVDs and send it to them or walk them through how to save the photos, videos and other media to local hard drives, the source said.

According to the memo, AOL also plans to merge its Video Portal with its AOL Programming Video Experiences by the beginning of the fourth quarter, as well as try to boost the online ad revenue generated by the AOL browser toolbar, desktop software, Webmail service and Truveo video search engine.

Open Web Foundation formed

InfoWorld — The Open Web Foundation, a non-profit organization intended to help create an "Open Web," was announced Thursday at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, Ore. Specifically, the organization is dedicated to the development and protection of non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies. The effort was announced by David Recordon of blogging tools maker Six Apart.

As described on its Web page, the foundation "is an attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification."
The foundation is attempting to break the trend of building separation foundations for each specification. Details regarding membership, governance, and intellectual property rights will be posted in the coming weeks.

Individuals such as Geir Magnusson, a vice president and board member at Apache, and Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, are participating in the Open Web Foundation. Organizations that support the foundation include Facebook, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, BBC, O'Reilly, Plaxo, Six Apart, SourceForce, and Vidoop.

AdaptiveMobile sees Sharp Rise in Volume of Mobile Network Virus Attacks

http://www.adaptivemobile.com/ — AdaptiveMobile today recommended to mobile operators that they step-up security for their subscribers, as they witness a steady rise in attacks. Recent analysis of data from AdaptiveMobile’s mobile operator customers suggests that two virus variants – CommWarrior and Beselo – are causing particular damage. While CommWarrior only affects Nokia Series 60 phones, Beselo attacks all smartphones, spreading via Bluetooth and MMS as a Symbian SIS installation file and is growing at four times the rate of CommWarrior.

One major operator has seen a rise in virus attacks from 0.5 percent of all messages to six percent over the last 12 months. On average, this operator receives 100,000 virus incidences a day, up from 70,000 in just one year.

Gareth Maclachlan, COO of AdaptiveMobile, comments: “It’s a worrying trend that’s not going to slow down yet. Fortunately, most subscribers are not infected as viruses are still immature and of limited virulence; but those who do get infected can lose up to 100 EUR a day from the MMS being sent by the virus. As these are typically corporate users with the latest phones, and who do not scrutinize their bills, operators are concerned that their best customers will churn if a competitor offers a solution.

“Protecting its users should be the first priority for any mobile phone provider. As infection rates continue to rise and higher proportions of customers are left at risk, mobile phone security will become a key differentiator for customer creation and retention – particularly among large organizations keen to ensure their staff is properly protected. The battle is heating up – and mobile operators have to make sure they are competing effectively.”

About AdaptiveMobile:

AdaptiveMobile (www.adaptivemobile.com) is the leading mobile security provider of unified customer protection for enterprises and individuals. The company offers comprehensive proactive protection from the increasingly prominent threat of mobile viruses, malware, inappropriate content, unsolicited communications and spam at a corporate and consumer level. AdaptiveMobile’s software works across all bearers, all technologies and all media.

AdaptiveMobile was founded in 2003 and boasts some of the world's largest mobile operators as customers and the leading security and telecom equipment vendors as partners. The company is headquartered in Dublin with offices in the North America, Europe, South Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

MobileMe fracas continues

Macworld.co.uk —
Apple's MobileMe migration continues to be troublesome, with the company last night confirming at least some problems that could be attributed to one of the MobileMe email servers.

In a note distributed last night, the company admits: "On Friday, July 18, 2008 (2008-07-18) we experienced a serious issue with one of our MobileMe mail servers. This issue is currently affecting approximately 1% of MobileMe members. Affected members are unable to send or receive email at www.me.com or access email using any email client software such as Mail on a Mac or Microsoft Outlook on a PC."

The company - which recently offered 30-day extensions on the period paid for by existing subscribers to compensate for the seriously troublesome migration - has also been forced to apologise for this all-new problem.

"We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service," the company informs.

The company claims all other MobileMe services are functional, but complaints continue to emerge from service users.

Parts of San Francisco network still locked out

The high-profile troubles on the city of San Francisco's computer network continue, despite a dramatic jailhouse intervention by the city's mayor this week.

While the city has regained control of the five devices at the heart of its FiberWAN network, which carries data between city government buildings, administrators are still locked out of the city's voice over Internet Protocol system and local area networks within the Sheriff's Department and the Recreation & Park Department. Assistant District Attorney Conrad Del Rosario revealed the ongoing problems Wednesday at a bail hearing for Terry Childs, the former network administrator with the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) who is accused of holding the city's networks hostage for the past 10 days.

[ Related reading: San Francisco's mayor gets back keys to the network ]

During that time, the networks have functioned normally, but IT staffers have been unable to make administrative changes to some of the city's critical routers and switches.

Childs' attorney, Erin Crane, had moved for a reduction in the US$5 million bail set in the case. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lucy McCabe denied that motion Wednesday.

[ Related reading: IT admin locks up San Francisco's network ]

Childs' defense has portrayed him as a capable engineer, surrounded by incompetent management, who simply didn't trust anyone with the administrative passwords to the five network devices at the heart of the FiberWAN. On Monday, Childs had a secret meeting with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom where Childs turned over the passwords.

Del Rosario argued against any reduction of bail, noting that Childs handed over the passwords only after a scheduled July 19 power outage at the city's One Market Street data center failed to take down the FiberWAN. Because Childs did not store network configuration files on the routers' hard drives, a power outage would wipe this information out of memory, disabling the network until it was reconfigured, he said.

[Related reading: IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering ]

The assistant DA said it was "extremely suspicious" that Childs only communicated with the mayor after the network did not go out of service.

In court filings, prosecutors say they do not know where these critical router configuration files are located.

As the city's principal network engineer, Childs worked on about 1,100 networking devices throughout the city, Del Rosario said. Even with the FiberWAN passwords, there are still questions about the rest of these systems. "We do not know whether we have control of these devices," he said.

Crane said that her client was the victim of jealous co-workers who were upset because his good work made them look bad. "I think the entire thing is specious," she told the judge. "This is a DTIS management problem."

This is not Childs' first time in criminal court. He also served four years in Kansas prison on aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary charges, prosecutors said. Those charges stem from an incident that occurred when Childs was 16 years old, Crane said.

The court also ordered Childs to stay away from several of his former co-workers, including Jeana Pieralde, the DTIS director of security who was allegedly so afraid of Childs that she locked herself in a room in the data center, and his former supervisor Herb Tong, whom Childs felt was undermining his work at the department.

Prosecutors say that police found bullets when they searched his Pittsburg, California, home on July 13.

In a brief appearance before reporters after the hearing, Crane said that she and Childs were "deeply disappointed that bail had not been reduced."

Childs' next scheduled court date is a Sept. 24 pretrial hearing.

Google launches Wikipedia rival

Google has launched Knol, its user-generated online encyclopedia, which it announced in December but had kept under wraps in private testing.

Although its goal and approach are similar to Wikipedia's -- to tap the collective knowledge of Internet users within an encyclopedia format -- Knol is different in several ways.

Knol will encourage writers to use their real names and stand behind their articles, and will give them the possibility to generate income from their work via Google ads.

"Every knol will have an author, or group of authors, who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good," wrote Knol product manager Cedric Dupont and software engineer Michael McNally in an official blog posting Wednesday.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, has a culture of anonymity in which contributors rarely use their real names, and no ads appear on the site.

In addition, Knol apparently will have more controls over submissions and edits than Wikipedia. In Knol, readers can suggest changes to articles, and the authors have the final word on whether to accept or reject the feedback. "This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it," the Google officials wrote. Readers will also be able to rate articles and write reviews of them.

In Wikipedia, anyone can make changes to articles and have them appear instantly online.

Although in the blog posting knols are described as "authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects," a Google spokesman said that anyone can write an article.

"Google will have no advance knowledge of the content of a knol and we will not be doing editorial screening of content posted by users and authors," he wrote via e-mail.

In addition, Google will encourage authors to use their real names, but will not require it, he said. Google will give authors the ability to have their identity confirmed via a telephone or credit card verification process. Articles penned by these authors will appear with a "verified" stamp, he said.

EMC revenue, profit defy economic woes

EMC's revenue grew 18 percent in the second quarter ended June 30, a result the company attributed to massive growth in the data enterprises need to store.

The company brought in US$3.67 billion worldwide in the quarter, up from $3.12 billion a year earlier. Revenue even rose 10 percent in the U.S., defying the country's economic woes, while gaining more in all of EMC's other regions around the world. The results beat expectations of analysts, who had predicted revenue of $3.56 billion, according to a Thomson Financial survey.

[ Related reading: VMware Q2 revenue up 54 percent, but slightly misses Street ]

"Despite continued economic uncertainty at the macro level, we believe spending on information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure technologies will continue to grow," said Joe Tucci, EMC's chairman, president and CEO, in a prepared statement.

The sales gains boosted EMC's profit as well, with net income reaching $377.5 million, or $0.18 per share, up from $334.4 million, or $0.16 per share, in last year's second quarter.

Information Storage, the company's largest business, saw revenue grow 14 percent to $2.87 billion. EMC said high points included midrange storage systems connected to Internet Protocol networks, as well as consulting and implementation. Meanwhile, the company's RSA security division had a 15 percent gain to $144 million, EMC said.

EMC derived a record 48 percent of its revenue from outside the U.S. in the quarter. The news was particularly good there, as both Asia-Pacific and Japan and Europe, Middle East and Africa had 27 percent gains in revenue from a year earlier. Latin America revenue grew 24 percent.

On Tuesday, VMware reported revenue growth of 54 percent from a year earlier, to $456 million. But that result fell slightly short of analysts' expectations.

The storage industry as a whole seems to be thriving despite economic weakness. Shipments of hard-disk drives hit 137 million units in the first quarter, up 21 percent from a year earlier, research company iSuppli said Tuesday.

Following the results, EMC's shares were up $1.24 to $13.70 in early afternoon trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Luxoft Acquires Romania’s ITC Networks

Acquisition of leading Romanian IT player increases Luxoft’s global delivery capability and telecom expertise

New York, NY; July 22nd 2008 - Luxoft, a global provider of high-end application and product development services, today announced it has acquired Bucharest-headquartered ITC Networks (ITCN), a leading Romanian software outsourcing provider specializing in the telecommunications industry. The combined company will have more than 3000 employees worldwide and an annual revenue run rate of over $150 million.

The acquisition of ITC Networks, which follows Luxoft’s April announcement of a new office opening in Vietnam, further expands the company’s global footprint. ITC Networks’ large scale delivery capability within the European Union, with its shared legal framework, ease of travel, and convenient time zones, makes Luxoft’s service offerings even more compelling for the European clientele. The deal also strengthens Luxoft’s expertise in the telecom industry, expanding its client portfolio with companies like Nortel Networks, Avaya, Trapeze Networks and others. In turn, existing ITC Networks clients will benefit from Luxoft’s best-of-breed processes and methodologies, financial stability, global delivery locations, and economies of scale.

“This acquisition is another step in Luxoft’s growth and strengthening of the company’s global presence,” said Dmitry Loschinin, President and CEO, Luxoft. “The tremendous telecoms aptitude of the combined team, prominent European Union location and shared commitment to engineering excellence will serve Luxoft, its clients and ITC Networks’ clients well for years to come.”

Doru Mardare, Managing Director of ITC Networks concurred. “This acquisition is a great boost to ITC Networks. We see full synergy with the Luxoft team in terms of our respective corporate cultures, ability to develop successful long term partnerships with leading global clients, and deep telecom industry expertise. We are looking forward to becoming part of a global entity, especially one that is growing as quickly as Luxoft.”

James Reeves, Vice President of R&D and World-Wide Customer Service Trapeze Networks, a client of ITC Networks, commented, “We are excited to work with such a world-class, global organization like Luxoft and are confident that this acquisition will further strengthen our relationship.”

About Luxoft
Luxoft, a member of the IBS Group, is an emerging global leader in application and product engineering outsourcing services for enterprise IT organizations and software vendors. Luxoft builds lasting partnerships with its clients, such as Boeing, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Dell, IBM, Sabre and other global leaders, based on the culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and deep domain expertise. Luxoft offers global delivery capability through its network of state-of-the-art delivery centers in North America, Central & Eastern Europe, and Asia. Luxoft’s customers benefit from the right mix of technology skills, industry knowledge, best-of-breed processes and methodologies, and a choice of engagement models.

Luxoft is the recipient of the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Global Outsourcing Growth Excellence & Customer Value Leadership Award, as well as the Applied Innovation Award from the IAOP and Wipro, ITAA and Forbes (together with Deutsche Bank). For more information visit: www.luxoft.com.

About ITC Networks
ITC Networks is a specialized provider of software engineering services for the telecommunications industry. ITC Networks’ range of services includes system and application development, re-engineering, software testing and test automation, maintenance, and support. ITC Networks is differentiated by its deep domain expertise, well defined processes and highly skilled engineers. ITC Networks’ satisfied clients include such industry leaders as Nortel Networks, Avaya, Trapeze Networks, and others. For more information please visit http://www.itcnetworks.ro

Nokia claims victory over Qualcomm in ongoing patent battle

The German Federal Patent Court ruled Wednesday that a Qualcomm GSM patent claim against Nokia is invalid, said the Finnish phone giant.

"This is the third court to conclude that Qualcomm’s patent claims against Nokia are without merit. The United Kingdom High Court, and the U.S. International Trade Commission, have both ruled asserted Qualcomm GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) patents to be invalid," said Nokia spokeswoman Anne Eckert.

Today’s decision is further evidence that Qualcomm does not have relevant and valid GSM patents and that it overstates its role as a wireless innovator, according to Nokia.

Nokia and Qualcomm are embroiled in a bitter battle that started back in 2006, at the heart of which is a licensing agreement between the two that expired in April last year.

"Nokia will be happy this ruling went their way, but this is not the end of this story by any means," said Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight.

The two companies are already gearing up for another trial in Delaware, which starts on Wednesday, and in Germany yet another hearing is scheduled for Oct. 22.

The stakes are very high; any fraction of a percentage in a final settlement between Qualcomm and Nokia will have a big impact, since Nokia sells such a large number of phones, according to Wood.

Qualcomm wasn't available for a comment.

But in the report for its second quarter 2008 Qualcomm wrote that as result of the dispute, it is not recording royalty revenue attributable to Nokia’s sales after April 9, 2007, until a court awards damages or the disputes are otherwise resolved by agreement with Nokia.

AT&T income growth spurred by iPhone, mobile revenue

AT&T reported growth in both its net income and revenue for the second quarter of 2008, with interest in Apple's iPhone spurring strong mobile and mobile data numbers.

AT&T on Wednesday reported net income of US $3.8 billion for the second quarter, up 31 percent from the $2.9 billion it reported in the second quarter of 2007. Adjusted net income was up slightly, from $4.3 billion to $4.5 billion, with the adjusted numbers excluding expenses related to AT&T's recent mergers.

Revenue for the second quarter was $30.9 billion, up 4.7 percent from the second quarter of 2007 or up 3.6 percent using adjusted numbers. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.76, meeting expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

AT&T has an exclusive agreement to provide mobile service for the iPhone in the U.S., and company officials said their deal with Apple has helped drive the growth. Apple released a new version of the iPhone, called iPhone 3G, on July 11, but strong sales of the new device didn't count on AT&T's second-quarter numbers, as the quarter ended June 30.

"AT&T is all about deploying and enhancing premier networks and products to deliver this world to both business and consumers," Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "The Apple iPhone 3G is a dramatic example of this transformation."

Sales of the iPhone 3G have been "everything we had anticipated and more," he added.

Even without the iPhone 3G to boost the quarter's numbers, AT&T reported that mobile revenue increased by 15.8 percent to $12 billion, with mobile service revenue up 14.8 percent.

Wireless data revenue was up 52 percent to $2.5 billion, AT&T said. Text messaging volumes on AT&T's mobile network tripled from the second quarter of 2007.

Wireline voice revenue was down 8.3 percent to $9.5 billion, but wireline data revenue was up 5.4 percent to $6.1 billion.

AT&T also reported that 170,000 new customers signed up for its U-verse TV service, which delivers television service over Internet Protocol networks. AT&T now has 549,000 U-verse TV subscribers, the company said.

Abaca Receives Network Products Guide 2008 Product Innovation Award

Abaca Technology Corporation, an innovator in email protection and messaging security, announced today that Network Products Guide, a Silicon Valley Communications publication and a world leading publication on technologies and solutions has named Abaca Virtual Email Protection Gateway™ VPG 1500, a winner of the 2008 Product Innovation Award. This annually venerated award recognizes and honors vendors from all over the world with innovative and ground-breaking products that are bringing essential and incremental changes and are setting the bar higher for others in all areas of information technology.

Abaca Virtual Email Protection Gateway VPG 1500 is a virtual email security appliance and software solution that delivers unprecedented email protection against spam, viruses, phishing attacks, DoS attacks, directory harvest attacks and spoofing with zero tuning. Combined with Abaca’s ReceiverNet™ Service, the Virtual Email Protection Gateway provides secure, managed access to the Abaca ReceiverNet Protection Network and guarantees a minimum of 99 percent accuracy.

Abaca Virtual Email Protection Gateway provides all the benefits of the Abaca Email Protection Gateway appliance with the added benefits of virtualization including: maximization of existing hardware investments; standardized hardware for improved manageability, availability, flexibility, and cost savings; and simplified backup and disaster recovery. The Virtual Email Protection Gateway VPG 1500 supports up to 1,500 licensed email users. To read more about this product innovation, please visit www.networkproductsguide.com/innovations/

“The goal of any product innovation must always remain a positive change, making or improving solutions better than before,” says Rake Narang, editor-in-chief, Network Products Guide. “Innovative products such as the Abaca Virtual Email Protection Gateway VPG 1500 are bringing improvements in email security through virtualization."

“Network Products Guide’s recognition of the Abaca Virtual Email Protection Gateway VPG 1500 further validates our solutions as excellence-in-class and ahead of the curve in email security,” said Leo Jolicoeur, CEO at Abaca Technology Corporation. “Product innovation is key to our continued commitment to meeting our customer needs and providing them with solutions that are ground-breaking.”

About Network Products Guide Awards

Network Products Guide published from Silicon Valley is a leading provider of products, technologies and vendor related research and analysis. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including product innovations, roadmaps, industry directions, technology advancements and independent product evaluations that facilitate in making the most pertinent technology decisions impacting business and personal goals. The guide follows conscientious research methodologies developed and enhanced by industry experts. To learn more, visit www.networkproductsguide.com.

About Abaca Technology Corporation

Abaca Technology Corporation is an innovator in email protection and messaging security. Abaca’s next generation technology, ReceiverNet™, offers a revolutionary approach in the fight against spam — providing an unprecedented level of performance and guaranteeing a minimum of 99 percent accuracy. Abaca has created a portfolio of advanced products and services based upon this core technology, thereby assuring users unparalleled messaging protection from spam, as well as viruses and phishing attacks. Abaca is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information about Abaca, please visit

Brocade deal to help drive data-center transition

Brocade Communications Systems' planned US$3 billion acquisition of Foundry Networks is a major strategic move in a brewing war over the future of data-center connectivity, industry analysts said Tuesday.

The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, would combine a maker of Fibre Channel SAN (storage area network) switches for data centers and a specialist in enterprise Ethernet LANs, two technologies that are headed toward a merger themselves.

[ Related reading: Brocade to buy Foundry for $3 billion ]

The future of data centers lies with Ethernet, because it's relatively inexpensive, keeps scaling up to higher speeds and is ubiquitous throughout the rest of enterprise networks, analysts say. Virtualization and data-center consolidation are helping to drive the need for Ethernet's growing speeds. The idea is to create a "unified fabric" that spans both the data center at the enterprise's core and the LAN where client systems are located. But there are two main ways to bring Ethernet to data centers with the features needed there.

Both Brocade and Cisco are pushing FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), an IEEE standard expected later this year that would combine characteristics of both systems. By mapping Fibre Channel traffic over Ethernet networks, it will let enterprises take advantage of Ethernet speeds of 10G bps (bits per second) and up while keeping the latency, security and traffic management benefits of Fibre Channel. FCoE will also smooth the migration to Ethernet by letting the two technologies coexist in a single switch, so existing SANs (storage area networks) can stay.

The alternative is iSCSI, (Internet Small Computer System Interface) which some smaller enterprises have adopted because it can be used with conventional Ethernet switches and without in-house Fibre Channel expertise, said Bob Laliberte of Enterprise Strategy Group. Its main proponents have been storage vendors, he said.

Although it will take years for current Fibre Channel SANs to be replaced, one of the two is likely to win out, analysts said.

"There's a major religious war between FCoE and iSCSI," said Burton Group analyst Dave Passmore. They represent completely different technical approaches to combining Ethernet and storage transport protocols. "Reasonable people will disagree," he said.

Like Fibre Channel, FCoE does not use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), the basic communication protocol of the Internet and Ethernet networks, instead making up for it with other tools. Of the two approaches, only FCoE requires expensive, specialized switches, Passmore said, but it's more attractive to many organizations because it allows for a smoother transition from existing architectures, he said.

Enterprises could eventually lose out by choosing the technology that loses, but FCoE and iSCSI will probably coexist for years, Passmore said.

A unified fabric could save users money as well as complexity, Passmore said. For example, instead of having one network connection to the LAN and another to the SAN that it taps into for data, a blade server could have just one set of connections.

"That would greatly simplify the user's network infrastructure and require fewer switches," Passmore said.

Security is the main potential concern about having a common type of network across data centers and LANs, he said. Having two completely different networks as is traditionally done has built-in security benefits. But costs and benefits always have to be balanced in adopting new technologies, he said.

Brocade's purchase of Foundry will create a second powerful vendor of FCoE, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. So far, Cisco has been the only company with both the vision and the technology to create a unified fabric, he said. Brocade had the vision and now is gaining the Ethernet goods, Kerravala said.

"If the concept of unified fabric really does come true, there are really only two vendors," Kerravala said.