The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is leery of bitcoin.
The agency issued a lengthy warning to investors on Wednesday about risks it sees in bitcoin and virtual currencies, much of which has been already iterated by bitcoin advocates or other regulators.
But the SEC, which is the top regulator for U.S. securities markets, also took a dig at bitcoin's short existence as another negative.
"As a recent invention, Bitcoin does not have an established track record of credibility and trust," the agency wrote in its advisory.
The statement perhaps conflates the pure technology of the bitcoin protocol that transfers the virtual currency, which has been vetted by cryptography experts as solid, with the nearly innumerable thefts, scams and failures of bitcoin-related businesses.
Bitcoin, which launched in 2009, has seen a fair share of challenges, including vacillating exchange rates and regulatory restrictions in countries such as China.
To back up its claim of bitcoin's track record, the SEC cited the February collapse of Mt. Gox, the Japan-based exchange that said it lost some 650,000 bitcoins and US$28 million in cash, confirming suspicions the exchange that once dominated bitcoin trading was in trouble.
Law enforcement and the SEC may also have trouble investigating bitcoin-related cases, the warning said, since banks are not involved with bitcoin transactions and there is no central authority to obtain information on users.
The SEC must rely on other sources for information in such cases, such as bitcoin exchanges or users. Seizing and freezing proceeds that are in bitcoin can also be difficult, the SEC said.
Of course, many of those supposed weaknesses are also what makes bitcoin attractive to certain kinds of users.
Google has snapped up startup Stackdriver that offers a service for developers to monitor apps and services on the cloud.
Stackdriver is joining the company's cloud platform team, Google said Wednesday, without providing the financial details of the transaction.
The teams will be working to integrate Stackdriver's functionality so that Google Cloud Platform customers can take advantage of the monitoring capabilities, which allow customers to have more visibility into errors, performance, behavior, and operations, Tom Kershaw, a Google product manager wrote in a blog post.
Google is investing more in the area in the coming months, he added, without providing details.
Stackdriver in Boston, Massachusetts said on its website that it was founded in 2012 on the belief that as cloud hosting takes off, tools for monitoring Amazon Web Services and other cloud environments would be required.
In a post announcing that Stackdriver is joining Google, the team wrote that it remains committed to delivering a world-class service for Stackdriver's current and future customers, regardless of their choice of infrastructure provider. "And because Google is fully committed to the cloud, expect us to continue to be as agile and responsive as ever as we begin this next chapter in our journey," the post added.
Google is adding features to differentiate its cloud service in an already competitive market for cloud services. Amazon Web Services and later Microsoft Azure cut prices of their cloud services in April after Google chopped prices. Most of Stackdriver's products and services are still largely focused on AWS but can also work with services from providers like Rackspace and with Google Compute Engine. The company said on its website that the largest AWS customers use Stackdriver.
In a separate development, the team at a designer of mobile-ready websites for restaurants also joined Google. Appetas in Seattle, Washington said Wednesday its team will shut down its service and is joining Google, but did not provide details of the transaction. Google could not be immediately reached for comment.
Asus may launch its first wearable device in this year's third quarter in line with its growing reliance on devices like smartphones and tablets to drive sales.
The company's CEO Jerry Shen indicated that a wearable product was in the cards on Wednesday during an earnings call. "In the third quarter, we will probably launch a product," he said speaking about Asus' wearables strategy. "This year we are only testing the waters a little bit," Shen added.
The Taiwanese PC maker is among the manufacturers Google is working with on Android-powered watches, the U.S. search giant said in a blog post in March.
But outside its partnership with Google, Asus is looking beyond smartwatches, wristbands and glasses, and eyeing other opportunities in smaller electronic devices, he added.
"In partnering with Google, we will launch some very good products, but we also have more ambitious goals," Shen said.
Asus is already the maker of Google's Nexus 7 tablet, a product that's helped propel the Taiwanese PC maker's sales in mobile devices. Increasingly, the company is breaking out of the PC space, and coming out with tablets, smartphones, and even hybrid devices with the functions of both.
Later this year, the company's new Fonepad devices will help drive its tablet shipments, Shen said. The Fonepad series are tablets that are 6 to 7-inches in size and pack phone calling functions.
The growth means that eventually the company's mobile devices revenue will surpass that of its PC business by 2017, he added.
"This doesn't mean that our PC business will decrease. We are going to sustain revenue growth," Shen said.
Asus still primarily makes most of its revenue from its PCs. In this year's first quarter, 62 percent of the company's revenue came from notebooks, whereas tablets only made up 12 percent.
Adblock Plus, a widely used browser extension that blocks many types of Web advertising, has released a more polished version for Apple's Safari.
Safari presented a few problems for Adblock Plus, which is developed by the company Eyeo in Germany, wrote Sebastian Noack, a developer.
The lack of a request blocking API (application programming interface) made it impossible to block requests that were initiated by Adobe Systems' Flash player, he wrote.
"We finally found a solution to block all ads, including pre-rolls and overlay ads, in all YouTube videos," Noack wrote.
Also fixed was a problem that caused the extension's settings to be reset when browsing data was cleared. Another involved an issue with Safari's JavaScript engine, which caused the extension to block the content of every website.
"We managed to work around this issue just yesterday," he wrote.
The Safari release comes after a three and a half month beta period. The company also released updated extensions for Chrome and Opera.
The latest tweaks to Safari's version now put it "mostly on par with Adblock Plus for Chrome and Opera," Noack wrote.
There are some limitations when it comes to blocking popups and requests initiated by Flash, but "most of these are limitations in Safari that will hopefully be addressed in future Safari versions," Noack wrote.
The Safari extension's user interface has also been fixed and optimized for Retina displays and supports 48 languages.
"Ultimately, we now have a fully functional and smooth UI that indicates how many ads you're blocking on each site you visit, tallies the amount you've blocked all time and gives you easy control over what you want to block," he wrote.
Leaders of key technology companies including Microsoft, Google, Twitter and Salesforce.com have written to the Governor of California Jerry Brown offering to partner with the state to increase computer education in kindergarten to 12th grade schools.
90 percent of these K-12 schools do not currently teach computer science. On the other hand, there is a mismatch between the number of computer science jobs and graduates in the state, according to the letter which is signed by business executives as well as organizations active in the area of education.
"The Conference Board estimates 70,000 open computing jobs in California—roughly 16 jobs for every computer science graduate in the state!," according to the letter.
The lack of access in urban and rural schools also creates inequity for students of color, with the result that in the entire state of California, only 74 African Americans and 392 Hispanic Americans took the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam in 2013, the executives wrote in the letter.
"Our shared goal should be that every K-12 student has access to high-quality computer science," said the letter, which is signed among others by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix.
Code.org, a nonprofit focused on expanding participation in computer science in schools, launched a campaign called the Hour of Code, an opportunity for students to try computer science for one hour. In four months, 34 million students have tried the Hour of Code, and almost 1.5 million people have signed Code.org's petition asking to expand computer science education, according to the letter.
The signatories have asked for a meeting with Brown to discuss "how we can work together and make California a computer science trailblazer."
Alibaba Group is the e-commerce player from China that you may have never heard of. But it's set to make one of the biggest initial public offerings in the U.S., possibly raising over US$20 billion, analysts say.
Why the company has been getting so much buzz was highlighted on Tuesday, when Alibaba filed its IPO documents. The contents reveal an e-commerce player selling more merchandise than eBay and Amazon.com combined, and primed to see surging financial growth from a still-developing Chinese market. Here are some details from Alibaba's IPO that show the company's prospects and upcoming challenges.
How big is Alibaba?
The company's presence on the world stage can't compare with the global user base of Google and Facebook. But the sheer scale of the Chinese market has been enough to turn Alibaba into an Internet giant on par with U.S. tech companies.
By value of merchandise traded, Alibaba claims to rank as the world's largest e-commerce company, trading goods worth $248 billion last year, the IPO filing said. Driving the purchases were Alibaba's 231 million active buyers. The 20,000-person company not only runs Taobao Marketplace and Tmall, two of China's largest online retail sites, but also platforms for wholesale trading. In addition, the company's affiliate Alipay is China's largest third-party online payment service.
Thriving from indirect sales
The Chinese e-commerce giant often gets compared to Amazon. But a major difference between the companies is that Alibaba doesn't sell its own inventory of goods. Instead, it manages the online marketplace for merchants to connect with consumers.
To earn revenue, the company charges fees to help merchants market the retail sites, and takes a commission for products that are sold. The business model means that while Alibaba generates less in sales, the company makes more in profit. For the last nine months of 2013, Alibaba's net profit was at $2.9 billion. In contrast, Amazon's net profit for all of last year was at $274 million, while eBay's was at $2.8 billion.
Potential for growth
One of the reasons investors are excited is that Alibaba has plenty of room to grow in China. The country has 618 million Internet users, and half a billion of them are going online with their phones, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. But total Internet penetration in the nation still remains at only 46 percent.
Alibaba's IPO filing showed that the company is growing at a breakneck pace. Net profit for the last nine months of 2013 was up by over 400 percent year over year. Furthermore, the company's active buyers ballooned by 71 million over the course of last year.
Mobile
One challenge facing the company is popularizing e-commerce on the smaller screens of smartphones. As of December, Alibaba had 136 million active mobile users. But of the $248 billion in goods traded on Alibaba's retail sites last year, only about 15 percent was bought by users on mobile devices.
In its IPO filing, Alibaba warned that in the mobile space, the company is focusing more on increasing user activity rather than maximizing revenue opportunities. On its mobile apps, the company is so far displaying fewer advertisements than those that can be found on its websites designed for PCs.
Who owns Alibaba?
Alibaba chairman and founder Jack Ma has been the face of the company, and owns a 8.9 percent stake. But it's Japanese tech giant SoftBank that has a far larger interest in the company, at 34.4 percent. In 2000, SoftBank initially invested in Alibaba with only US$20 million.
Yahoo also holds a sizeable stake, at 22.6 percent, the result of a deal it made with Alibaba back in 2005 for $1 billion. The U.S. company, however, has agreed to sell about 40 percent of its shares to the public or Alibaba in the upcoming offering.
Still China centered
Alibaba made no mention of an international expansion in its IPO filing, signaling that the e-commerce giant is still focused on China. Although the company has wholesale trading platforms geared for international buyers, it makes over 80 percent of its revenue from its home market.
Lately, the company has been on a spending spree in China to help it expand and compete against rivals. The company has bought stakes in local Twitter-like site Sina Weibo and in Youku Tudou, one of China's largest online video sites. It has also acquired AutoNavi, a leading mapping provider in the country, and started a mobile search engine with a local browser developer.
A former "Notorious Market"
Although Alibaba isn't as well-known outside of China, the company gained some notoriety after U.S. allegations that it was selling fake goods on its e-commerce sites. From 2008 to 2011, the company's Taobao sites earned a place on the "notorious markets" list published annually by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
In 2012, the office took Taobao off the list, citing the company's successful efforts to take down the infringing goods. But in Tuesday's IPO filing, Alibaba said any future allegations over the selling of fake goods could result in lawsuits, and bad publicity for the company.
PCWorldLenovo brings a twist to Chromebook design with N20p touchscreenPensioners withdraw lawsuit against IBM over China salesLenovo announces N20p Chromebook with touchscreen and 300-degree hingeHeartbleed-like bug in OpenSSH dismissed as a hoaxGames console maker Ouya exploring the Chinese marketQualcomm Toq smartwatch now features voice messaging (and, yes, it works)Microsoft's Xbox chief shoots down gaming handheld ideaMozilla proposes new version of net neutrality rulesApple-Samsung jury corrects verdict form but leaves Apple's damages at $119.5MXbox's Halo series may strike covenant with ShowtimeSAP after Sikka: The big questionsR gets commercial support just in time for big-data boomCEOs may look twice at IBM's new security suite, services as Target's head rollsRun your own cloud storage for less, EMC saysEMC acquires flash storage startup DSSDGroups want to 'reset the 'Net' to resist NSA surveillanceAMD announces 'SkyBridge' chips to bring together X86 and ARMAntivirus is dead, says maker of Norton AntivirusChadder: John McAfee slaps name on 'private' messaging appGoogle Chrome flirts with killing URLsFive Easy Tips For a More Organized Digital LifeOculus fires back over Zenimax claims to Rift VR technologyFree game alert: Dead Space is 'On the House' on Origin, but act fastHow to recover deleted filesGoogle's same-day delivery service hits New York and West Los AngelesAfter company overhaul, Acer chairman to step down in JuneHow to save big bucks on Office 3659 Windows Metro apps even desktop diehards can loveThe 20 best Chromecast apps, and countingTested: 6 new travel routers that can deploy a secure Wi-Fi network almost anywhere
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 06 May 2014 01:52:58 -0700 Tue, 06 May 2014 01:52:58 -0700 Mon, 05 May 2014 23:35:07 -0700 Agam Shah Agam Shah
Lenovo is bringing a unique design to Chromebooks with the N20p Chromebook, which has a touchscreen that can rotate roughly 300 degrees to a "stand mode."
In close proximity, the stand mode also makes the Chromebook convenient to view media content, said Robert Eckard, Lenovo's senior product manager for notebooks.
The N20p Chromebook will be priced at US$329. Lenovo also announced the non-touch N20 Chromebook, which will be priced at $279. The N20p weighs 1.4 kilograms, while the N20 weighs 1.3 kilograms. Both the N20 and N20p laptops have 11.6-inch screens that can display images at a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution.
The N20 and N20p are Lenovo's first Chromebooks based on the updated Chrome OS, which hit laptops in September last year. Acer, Samsung and Hewlett-Packard were the first companies to ship Chromebooks with the updated OS. Chrome OS is also being used in mini-desktops from HP, Google and Asustek, and an all-in-one PC from LG. Lenovo already sells the ThinkPad X131e, which started shipping in January 2013 and is based on the first version of Chrome OS.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151600/lenovo-brings-a-twist-to-chromebook-design-with-n20p-touchscreen.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 21:20:07 -0700 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro
A pension and relief fund that sued IBM for failing to warn investors of loss of business in China because of its alleged involvement with spying by the U.S. National Security Agency has voluntarily withdrawn the lawsuit in a New York court.
The Louisiana Sheriffs' Pension and Relief Fund has decided to voluntarily dismiss the action after additional investigation into the matters alleged, which included investigations in the U.S. and China and discussions with the defense counsel, John C. Browne, lawyer for the fund, wrote to the court in a letter disclosed Monday.
"We said the complaint proceeded to make numerous specious and false accusations, and IBM called upon the law firm that filed this action to do the right thing and dismiss it. We are pleased that they have done the right thing," IBM spokesman Doug Shelton wrote in an emailed statement.
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Lenovo's new N20p, announced Monday night, might look like any other compact Chromebook—there are plenty of them, and most are unremarkable. But the N20p offers two distinctive features: First, its 11.6-inch display is a 10-point touchscreen, a display enhancement that only the Acer C270P offers in this size class.
Second, the N20p borrows a trick from its Yoga cousins: Its hinge can rotate up to 300 degrees so that you can prop up the Chromebook in a standing position. That's a first for any Chromebook, and it makes the N20p one of the most interesting Chromebook models to come along since last year's high-end Pixel from Google.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151161/lenovo-announces-n20p-chromebook-with-touchscreen-and-300-degree-hinge.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 19:40:07 -0700 Jeremy Kirk Jeremy Kirk
Hackers claiming to have found a critical flaw in a widely used open-source remote login software, OpenSSH, are likely bluffing, according to a developer affiliated with the project.
OpenSSH is used to remotely log into Unix-based systems securely and is incorporated into a number of operating systems, routers and switches made by vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Red Hat.
On Pastebin, the hackers claim that two years ago they found a problem in OpenSSH that can allow data to be remotely accessed from a server. They claim exploiting the flaw can reveal system user hashes, keys and other random data.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151560/heartbleedlike-bug-in-openssh-dismissed-as-a-hoax.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 19:15:09 -0700 Michael Kan Michael Kan
Android console maker Ouya is considering entering the Chinese market as part of its expansion into Asia.
China recently ended a 14-year-old ban on foreign-made game consoles, opening the door for companies to tap the market, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman said Monday.
"When we enter a new market we want to do it the right way with the right partners," she added in an interview.
The San Francisco company is best known for its US$99 Android gaming system, and last year raised over US$8.5 million on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. A few of those early backers came from China, Uhrman said, while attending the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151540/games-console-maker-ouya-exploring-the-chinese-market.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 15:48:00 -0700 Jon Phillips Jon Phillips
The Toq smartwatch isn't so much a retail-ready smartwatch as Qualcomm's vision of what a smartwatch can be.
Armed with a diverse portfolio of mobile technologies, Qualcomm began releasing a limited run of Toq watches last year—mostly to show off its energy-efficient, always-on Mirasol display technology. And now Qualcomm has advanced its "living proof of concept" model further by integrating voice dictation into the Toq's text messaging feature. Powered by Nuance's voice-to-text engine, Toq users can now respond to incoming text messages by tapping on a microphone icon, and uttering brief replies.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151420/qualcomm-toq-smartwatch-now-features-voice-messaging-and-yes-it-works.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:11:00 -0700 Mark Hachman Mark Hachman
If you still had your hopes up for a portable Xbox gaming handheld, they just got dashed.
In a series of tweets Sunday night, Xbox chief Phil Spencer came clean on some of what gamers can expect from Microsoft during the E3 timeframe this summer. But Spencer also addressed the topic of a handheld Xbox: Put simply, it's probably not going to happen.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151282/microsofts-xbox-chief-shoots-down-portable-game-console.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:07:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross
The Federal Communications Commission should reclassify portions of broadband networks as regulated, common-carrier services to preserve net neutrality protections, Mozilla has said in a new petition to the agency.
After a contentious debate about U.S. net neutrality rules in recent weeks, Mozilla's proposal is an effort to define a "new path" for the FCC, Mozilla senior policy engineer Chris Riley said. The browser maker proposes that the FCC create separate rules for how broadband providers manage traffic for their customers and for websites and Web-based service providers.
The FCC should redefine the "remote delivery" service offered by the broadband provider to websites and Web services as a regulated service covered by traditional telephone regulations, Riley wrote in a blog post Monday. The Mozilla proposal would keep the broadband providers' relationship with customers as a lightly regulated information service, as it is today.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151303/mozilla-proposes-new-version-of-net-neutrality-rules.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:00:00 -0700 James Niccolai James Niccolai
The Apple-Samsung jury returned to court Monday to fix an error in its verdict form, but in doing so it declined to award Apple any additional damages.
The correction it made means the trial is now over—pending appeals—and that Samsung must pay Apple $119.5 million in damages, far less than the $2.2 billion it had been seeking.
The jury issued its initial verdict late Friday, finding Samsung had infringed two of the patents Apple sued over, and awarding damages for a third patent that Samsung had already been found to infringe. Samsung was cleared of infringing two other patents, and it was awarded $158,400 for Apple's infringement of one Samsung patent.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151320/applesamsung-jury-corrects-verdict-form-but-leaves-apples-damages-at-1195-million.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:52:00 -0700 James Careless James Careless That's according to Variety, which says a more traditional TV program will air on the pay TV channel, as opposed to the interactive version Xbox Entertainment Studios is developing for Xbox consoles. http://www.techhive.com/article/2151015/xboxs-halo-series-may-arrive-on-showtime-first.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Chris Kanaracus Chris Kanaracus
The abrupt departure of SAP technology chief Vishal Sikka has prompted a number of questions about the vendor's strategy, particularly in regard to the Hana in-memory computing platform, and what it could mean for customers.
There's also some intrigue over what sort of boardroom machinations may have prompted the high profile and widely respected technologist to suddenly leave SAP.
Here's a look at both topics.
SAP needs a new visionary: Sikka is being replaced by Bernd Leukert, a 20-year veteran of SAP who oversaw the porting of SAP's Business Suite ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to Hana.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151307/sap-after-sikka-the-big-questions.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Joab Jackson Joab Jackson
To help organizations get a better handle on the R statistical programming language, which is enjoying a surge in use as a big-data analysis tool, Revolution Analytics has introduced a new support package.
"A lot of companies have put so much investment into collecting data they didn't collect before. The next step after capturing big data is to analyze it," said David Smith, Revolution Analytics' chief community officer and head of the new open source solutions group, explaining why organizations may want to take a closer look at the R language.
"R is the lingua franca of data science," Smith said. The AdviseR support package cost US$795 per year, per user.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151306/r-gets-commercial-support-just-in-time-for-bigdata-boom.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
IBM picked a good day to launch a suite of security tools and services: a Monday morning when many CEOs saw in their news roundup that retailer Target is newly rid of a CEO who presided over a catastrophic data breach.
The new IBM Threat Protection System product suite and the Critical Data Protection Program set of IT services are aimed at enterprises that want to protect themselves against data theft.
The business consequences of poor enterprise security are growing ever larger, as cybercriminals get more ambitious: last year's intrusion into point-of-sale systems at Target led to the theft of 40 million credit cards and personal data on 70 million people. While the company's CIO was replaced earlier, the chairman and CEO Gregg Steinhafel is now stepping down as well, the retailer announced.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151305/ceos-may-look-twice-at-ibms-new-security-suite-services-as-targets-head-rolls.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Stephen Lawson Stephen Lawson
EMC is taking on Amazon's cloud storage service with a private cloud platform it says will cost less to use.
The Elastic Cloud Storage Appliance, launching on Monday at EMC World and delivered by the end of June, is a hyperscale storage system for enterprises to deploy in their own facilities. EMC previewed it last year under the code name Project Nile.
The ECS Appliance is part of a wider move into cloud and so-called software-defined storage by EMC, which is looking beyond traditional storage even as the company and most of its customers continue to rely on dedicated hardware platforms. Also on Monday, EMC is introducing ViPR 2.0, an update to its storage virtualization and management software, while rolling out a data-protection appliance for midsize customers under the Data Domain line.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151304/run-your-own-cloud-storage-for-less-emc-says.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Stephen Lawson Stephen Lawson
EMC has agreed to acquire DSSD, a Silicon Valley startup developing technology for pooling server-based flash for high-performance data access.
The company will help EMC tackle challenges in making flash capacity on servers into shared storage capacity. Its chairman is Andy Bechtolsheim, a pioneer of networked computing from Sun Microsystems and numerous startups. Its CEO, former 3Par executive Bill Moore, will continue to run the DSSD business inside EMC while Bechtolsheim remains a strategic advisor.
Server-based flash offers rapid access to data because it's connected to servers via fast PCIe connections. But it's limited to 10TB or less on each server and is hard to manage, forcing companies to rewrite applications just to use it, said Jeremy Burton, EMC's president of products and marketing, who announced the acquisition at EMC World in Las Vegas.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151302/emc-acquires-flash-storage-startup-dssd.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross
Web users and developers should take new steps to avoid surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency and other spy organizations, a group of privacy and digital rights advocates said Monday.
The 30-plus groups, including Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Reddit, Free Press and the Libertarian Party, have set June 5 as the day to "reset the 'Net" by deploying new privacy tools. June 5 is the anniversary of the first news stories about NSA surveillance based on leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Governments are building a "prison" around the Internet, the groups said in a video. "But government spies have a weakness," the video said. "They can hack anybody, but they can't hack everybody. Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes—mistakes we can fix."
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151300/groups-want-to-reset-the-net-to-resist-nsa-surveillance.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 11:55:00 -0700 Mark Hachman Mark Hachman
AMD took another step ahead toward what it calls "ambidextrous computing" on Monday, announcing a framework for bringing together ARM processors with its own X86 chips in what it calls "Project Skybridge".
From a technical standpoint, Project SkyBridge combines the world's two most popular processor architectures: X86, a high-performance chip architcture which dominates the PC, server, and notebook space, and ARM, the low-power, de facto chip architecture for tablets and smartphones. SkyBridge chips, whether they be based on ARM or X86, will be pin-compatible, meaning that they will be able to be used on the same motherboard with minimal changes, if any.
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So sayeth Brian Dye, Symantec's senior vice president for information security, in a weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal. The words sound shocking—Symantec and its Norton antivirus suite have been at the forefront of PC security for years and years. But don't let the stark claim fool you: Norton isn't being retired, and Dye's words merely reflect the new reality in computing protection.
While detecting and protecting against malicious software installed on your computer still plays a very vital role, many of the sophisticated attacks of today still manage to penetrate PCs with antivirus programs installed. In fact, Dye told WSJ that he estimates traditional antivirus detects a mere 45 percent of all attacks. That's not good.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150743/antivirus-is-dead-says-maker-of-norton-antivirus.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 10:27:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman
John McAfee thinks the world could use one more messaging app.
The former anti-virus software creator and international fugitive is promoting a new app called Chadder, which claims to keep messages secure through key server encryption. The app is available now for Android and Windows Phone, and an iOS version is coming soon.
However, the app appears to be in extremely rough shape, not even deserving the "beta" tag that the developers use in their description.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150988/chadder-john-mcafee-slaps-name-on-private-messaging-app.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 10:00:00 -0700 Ian Paul Ian Paul
Google has an interesting idea for upcoming versions of Chrome that could either make browsing safer or destroy the web as we know it. The latest build of Canary, Google's experimental version of the Chrome browser, introduced a feature that does away with URLs, also known as web addresses.
The new feature, called the Origin Chip, wasn't enabled by default in my tests. But you can turn it on by enabling the Chrome flag "chrome://flags/#origin-chip-in-omnibox" and setting it to enabled. Although this is very much an experimental feature, you can also enable the Origin Chip in the stable build of Chrome.
Bye, bye URL?
Above: Canary's Origin Chip. Below: The stable version of Google Chrome.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150857/googles-canary-browser-flirts-with-killing-urls.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 08:59:00 -0700 Dave Jeffers, BrandPost Dave Jeffers, BrandPost
[This is a sponsored article written by IDG Creative Lab, a partner of PCWorld, and not by PCWorld's editorial staff.]
We've put our whole lives into our computers, tablets, smartphones, and everything else we attach to the Internet. We've got our work mixed in with our private lives, old projects mixed in with new, and music on one device that we want to play on another. All this technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but all too often, it's just plain inconvenient.
Here are a few tips and tricks to put your digital world in order, and make your life easier for real.
Organize your libraries by content, not file type
You're working on a complex report. You've got spreadsheets, documents, photos, and so on. Do the photos belong in My Pictures? Of course not. Keep all of the files for a single project in a single folder. Better yet, put two folders in My Documents: Work and Home, and put your project folders in there. And reserve My Pictures for family and personal photos.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149901/five-easy-tips-for-a-more-organized-digital-life.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 08:30:00 -0700 Ian Paul Ian Paul
Virtual reality headset maker OculusVR recently came under attack from game development company Zenimax Media, and now Oculus is hitting back. On Thursday, Zenimax accused Oculus of stealing core technology that made the Oculus Rift headset a reality. But on Monday Oculus responded saying the charges are nonsense.
"We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax's actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false," Oculus VR said in a statement via e-mail. Oculus also said "there is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products."
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While games from other publishers pop up on Origin here and there, much of EA's PC gaming platform is dedicated to selling titles made by EA itself—and one soon-to-expire promotion will get you the full version of one of the hottest games of yesteryear for free. Until May 8, EA's offering the highly regarded space horror game Dead Space for the low, low price of absolutely nothing on Origin.
The game still holds up well despite being nearly six years old; we named it to our list of the most terrifying PC games around just last year. What's more, Dead Space still sells online for $20, so this is a pretty enticing deal for folks who haven't stepped into Isaac Clarke's shoes to battle the sinister Necromorphs yet.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150855/free-game-alert-dead-space-is-on-the-house-on-origin-but-act-fast.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 07:36:00 -0700 Lincoln Spector Lincoln Spector
Megan Aitken's partner lost "a load of photos." Here's my advice for recovering them.
Lost files can usually be recovered—if you discover the loss soon enough. But every time you write to the hard drive, you lower the likelihood of a successful recovery. So use that computer as little as possible until the files are recovered or you've given up hope.
[Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.]
Try these solutions, in this order:
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2147668/how-to-recover-deleted-files.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 07:26:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman Google Express Shipping lands on both coasts, and is still free for now. http://www.techhive.com/article/2150854/googles-same-day-delivery-service-hits-new-york-and-west-l-a.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 06:58:00 -0700 Michael Kan Michael Kan
After six months as Acer's chairman, company co-founder Stan Shih plans to step down on June 18, saying he is satisfied with the PC maker's new direction.
"The hope is that the company will soon break even and start making money again," he said in an interview on Monday.
The company's will appoint new board members in June, and the board will then select the new chairman.
Since November, Shih has been leading a major reorganization at the ailing Taiwanese PC maker. In that time, Acer has hired a new CEO, and plans to use software and services to help revive its business.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151240/acer-chairman-to-leave-pc-maker-in-june-no-replacement-named.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 06:00:00 -0700 Jon Seff Jon Seff
Maybe it's the recent release of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for the iPad. Maybe you want to make sure you have access to the latest version of Microsoft's Office suite on your multiple Macs (and even PCs). Or perhaps you want the perks, such as 27GB of total OneDrive cloud storage per user and an hour of free Skype world minutes each month. Whatever the reason, you've weighed your options and decided that an Office 365 subscription makes sense for you.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150851/how-to-save-big-bucks-on-office-365.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:30:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman Touch-first or not, these apps get things done
Sometimes a little open-mindedness goes a long way. You could dismiss Windows 8 as a "Fisher-Price operating system" that's unfit for real work, as many are oh-so-quick to do, or you could actually take advantage of its unique capabilities, using Windows Store apps to work faster and smarter. And with all the mouse-and-keyboard enhancements in the latest Windows 8.1 Update—especially the introduction of a universal taskbar that houses apps as well as traditional desktop software—these apps are now easier than ever to integrate into your workflow, even if you're pro-Start menu and anti-touch screen.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150246/9-windows-metro-apps-even-desktop-diehards-can-love.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:30:00 -0700 Susie Ochs Susie Ochs Google's $35 streaming stick is quickly catching up to boxes like Apple TV and Roku as more and more apps add support. http://www.techhive.com/article/2150868/the-20-best-chromecast-apps-and-counting.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:00:00 -0700 Michael Brown Michael Brown
If you need Internet access while you're away from your home or the office, you should carry a travel router in your bag. Free Wi-Fi hotspots are nearly always insecure, leaving your PC vulnerable to attack. Fee-based broadband services at hotels often are limited to supporting wired devices, so you won't be able to connect your smartphone or tablet. If the service is wireless, the provider will charge a fee for each device you connect to the network.
Use a travel router to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot or a facility's broadband connection, and it will create a private, secure, wireless network with a robust firewall. You'll be able to use that service with your laptop, smartphone, or tablet, and you'll be able to share that connection with friends, family, and colleagues traveling with you—paying just one fee for everyone. Many travel routers are outfitted with USB ports that support portable hard drives, so you can share files or stream media over your network, too.
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PCWorldLenovo brings a twist to Chromebook design with N20p touchscreenPensioners withdraw lawsuit against IBM over China salesLenovo announces N20p Chromebook with touchscreen and 300-degree hingeHeartbleed-like bug in OpenSSH dismissed as a hoaxGames console maker Ouya exploring the Chinese marketQualcomm Toq smartwatch now features voice messaging (and, yes, it works)Microsoft's Xbox chief shoots down gaming handheld ideaMozilla proposes new version of net neutrality rulesApple-Samsung jury corrects verdict form but leaves Apple's damages at $119.5MXbox's Halo series may strike covenant with ShowtimeSAP after Sikka: The big questionsR gets commercial support just in time for big-data boomCEOs may look twice at IBM's new security suite, services as Target's head rollsRun your own cloud storage for less, EMC saysEMC acquires flash storage startup DSSDGroups want to 'reset the 'Net' to resist NSA surveillanceAMD announces 'SkyBridge' chips to bring together X86 and ARMAntivirus is dead, says maker of Norton AntivirusChadder: John McAfee slaps name on 'private' messaging appGoogle Chrome flirts with killing URLsFive Easy Tips For a More Organized Digital LifeOculus fires back over Zenimax claims to Rift VR technologyFree game alert: Dead Space is 'On the House' on Origin, but act fastHow to recover deleted filesGoogle's same-day delivery service hits New York and West Los AngelesAfter company overhaul, Acer chairman to step down in JuneHow to save big bucks on Office 3659 Windows Metro apps even desktop diehards can loveThe 20 best Chromecast apps, and countingTested: 6 new travel routers that can deploy a secure Wi-Fi network almost anywhere
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 06 May 2014 01:52:58 -0700 Tue, 06 May 2014 01:52:58 -0700 Mon, 05 May 2014 23:35:07 -0700 Agam Shah Agam Shah
Lenovo is bringing a unique design to Chromebooks with the N20p Chromebook, which has a touchscreen that can rotate roughly 300 degrees to a "stand mode."
In close proximity, the stand mode also makes the Chromebook convenient to view media content, said Robert Eckard, Lenovo's senior product manager for notebooks.
The N20p Chromebook will be priced at US$329. Lenovo also announced the non-touch N20 Chromebook, which will be priced at $279. The N20p weighs 1.4 kilograms, while the N20 weighs 1.3 kilograms. Both the N20 and N20p laptops have 11.6-inch screens that can display images at a 1366 x 768-pixel resolution.
The N20 and N20p are Lenovo's first Chromebooks based on the updated Chrome OS, which hit laptops in September last year. Acer, Samsung and Hewlett-Packard were the first companies to ship Chromebooks with the updated OS. Chrome OS is also being used in mini-desktops from HP, Google and Asustek, and an all-in-one PC from LG. Lenovo already sells the ThinkPad X131e, which started shipping in January 2013 and is based on the first version of Chrome OS.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151600/lenovo-brings-a-twist-to-chromebook-design-with-n20p-touchscreen.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 21:20:07 -0700 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro
A pension and relief fund that sued IBM for failing to warn investors of loss of business in China because of its alleged involvement with spying by the U.S. National Security Agency has voluntarily withdrawn the lawsuit in a New York court.
The Louisiana Sheriffs' Pension and Relief Fund has decided to voluntarily dismiss the action after additional investigation into the matters alleged, which included investigations in the U.S. and China and discussions with the defense counsel, John C. Browne, lawyer for the fund, wrote to the court in a letter disclosed Monday.
"We said the complaint proceeded to make numerous specious and false accusations, and IBM called upon the law firm that filed this action to do the right thing and dismiss it. We are pleased that they have done the right thing," IBM spokesman Doug Shelton wrote in an emailed statement.
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Lenovo's new N20p, announced Monday night, might look like any other compact Chromebook—there are plenty of them, and most are unremarkable. But the N20p offers two distinctive features: First, its 11.6-inch display is a 10-point touchscreen, a display enhancement that only the Acer C270P offers in this size class.
Second, the N20p borrows a trick from its Yoga cousins: Its hinge can rotate up to 300 degrees so that you can prop up the Chromebook in a standing position. That's a first for any Chromebook, and it makes the N20p one of the most interesting Chromebook models to come along since last year's high-end Pixel from Google.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151161/lenovo-announces-n20p-chromebook-with-touchscreen-and-300-degree-hinge.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 19:40:07 -0700 Jeremy Kirk Jeremy Kirk
Hackers claiming to have found a critical flaw in a widely used open-source remote login software, OpenSSH, are likely bluffing, according to a developer affiliated with the project.
OpenSSH is used to remotely log into Unix-based systems securely and is incorporated into a number of operating systems, routers and switches made by vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Red Hat.
On Pastebin, the hackers claim that two years ago they found a problem in OpenSSH that can allow data to be remotely accessed from a server. They claim exploiting the flaw can reveal system user hashes, keys and other random data.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151560/heartbleedlike-bug-in-openssh-dismissed-as-a-hoax.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 19:15:09 -0700 Michael Kan Michael Kan
Android console maker Ouya is considering entering the Chinese market as part of its expansion into Asia.
China recently ended a 14-year-old ban on foreign-made game consoles, opening the door for companies to tap the market, Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman said Monday.
"When we enter a new market we want to do it the right way with the right partners," she added in an interview.
The San Francisco company is best known for its US$99 Android gaming system, and last year raised over US$8.5 million on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. A few of those early backers came from China, Uhrman said, while attending the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151540/games-console-maker-ouya-exploring-the-chinese-market.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 15:48:00 -0700 Jon Phillips Jon Phillips
The Toq smartwatch isn't so much a retail-ready smartwatch as Qualcomm's vision of what a smartwatch can be.
Armed with a diverse portfolio of mobile technologies, Qualcomm began releasing a limited run of Toq watches last year—mostly to show off its energy-efficient, always-on Mirasol display technology. And now Qualcomm has advanced its "living proof of concept" model further by integrating voice dictation into the Toq's text messaging feature. Powered by Nuance's voice-to-text engine, Toq users can now respond to incoming text messages by tapping on a microphone icon, and uttering brief replies.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151420/qualcomm-toq-smartwatch-now-features-voice-messaging-and-yes-it-works.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:11:00 -0700 Mark Hachman Mark Hachman
If you still had your hopes up for a portable Xbox gaming handheld, they just got dashed.
In a series of tweets Sunday night, Xbox chief Phil Spencer came clean on some of what gamers can expect from Microsoft during the E3 timeframe this summer. But Spencer also addressed the topic of a handheld Xbox: Put simply, it's probably not going to happen.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151282/microsofts-xbox-chief-shoots-down-portable-game-console.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:07:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross
The Federal Communications Commission should reclassify portions of broadband networks as regulated, common-carrier services to preserve net neutrality protections, Mozilla has said in a new petition to the agency.
After a contentious debate about U.S. net neutrality rules in recent weeks, Mozilla's proposal is an effort to define a "new path" for the FCC, Mozilla senior policy engineer Chris Riley said. The browser maker proposes that the FCC create separate rules for how broadband providers manage traffic for their customers and for websites and Web-based service providers.
The FCC should redefine the "remote delivery" service offered by the broadband provider to websites and Web services as a regulated service covered by traditional telephone regulations, Riley wrote in a blog post Monday. The Mozilla proposal would keep the broadband providers' relationship with customers as a lightly regulated information service, as it is today.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151303/mozilla-proposes-new-version-of-net-neutrality-rules.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 13:00:00 -0700 James Niccolai James Niccolai
The Apple-Samsung jury returned to court Monday to fix an error in its verdict form, but in doing so it declined to award Apple any additional damages.
The correction it made means the trial is now over—pending appeals—and that Samsung must pay Apple $119.5 million in damages, far less than the $2.2 billion it had been seeking.
The jury issued its initial verdict late Friday, finding Samsung had infringed two of the patents Apple sued over, and awarding damages for a third patent that Samsung had already been found to infringe. Samsung was cleared of infringing two other patents, and it was awarded $158,400 for Apple's infringement of one Samsung patent.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151320/applesamsung-jury-corrects-verdict-form-but-leaves-apples-damages-at-1195-million.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:52:00 -0700 James Careless James Careless That's according to Variety, which says a more traditional TV program will air on the pay TV channel, as opposed to the interactive version Xbox Entertainment Studios is developing for Xbox consoles. http://www.techhive.com/article/2151015/xboxs-halo-series-may-arrive-on-showtime-first.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Chris Kanaracus Chris Kanaracus
The abrupt departure of SAP technology chief Vishal Sikka has prompted a number of questions about the vendor's strategy, particularly in regard to the Hana in-memory computing platform, and what it could mean for customers.
There's also some intrigue over what sort of boardroom machinations may have prompted the high profile and widely respected technologist to suddenly leave SAP.
Here's a look at both topics.
SAP needs a new visionary: Sikka is being replaced by Bernd Leukert, a 20-year veteran of SAP who oversaw the porting of SAP's Business Suite ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to Hana.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151307/sap-after-sikka-the-big-questions.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Joab Jackson Joab Jackson
To help organizations get a better handle on the R statistical programming language, which is enjoying a surge in use as a big-data analysis tool, Revolution Analytics has introduced a new support package.
"A lot of companies have put so much investment into collecting data they didn't collect before. The next step after capturing big data is to analyze it," said David Smith, Revolution Analytics' chief community officer and head of the new open source solutions group, explaining why organizations may want to take a closer look at the R language.
"R is the lingua franca of data science," Smith said. The AdviseR support package cost US$795 per year, per user.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151306/r-gets-commercial-support-just-in-time-for-bigdata-boom.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
IBM picked a good day to launch a suite of security tools and services: a Monday morning when many CEOs saw in their news roundup that retailer Target is newly rid of a CEO who presided over a catastrophic data breach.
The new IBM Threat Protection System product suite and the Critical Data Protection Program set of IT services are aimed at enterprises that want to protect themselves against data theft.
The business consequences of poor enterprise security are growing ever larger, as cybercriminals get more ambitious: last year's intrusion into point-of-sale systems at Target led to the theft of 40 million credit cards and personal data on 70 million people. While the company's CIO was replaced earlier, the chairman and CEO Gregg Steinhafel is now stepping down as well, the retailer announced.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151305/ceos-may-look-twice-at-ibms-new-security-suite-services-as-targets-head-rolls.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Stephen Lawson Stephen Lawson
EMC is taking on Amazon's cloud storage service with a private cloud platform it says will cost less to use.
The Elastic Cloud Storage Appliance, launching on Monday at EMC World and delivered by the end of June, is a hyperscale storage system for enterprises to deploy in their own facilities. EMC previewed it last year under the code name Project Nile.
The ECS Appliance is part of a wider move into cloud and so-called software-defined storage by EMC, which is looking beyond traditional storage even as the company and most of its customers continue to rely on dedicated hardware platforms. Also on Monday, EMC is introducing ViPR 2.0, an update to its storage virtualization and management software, while rolling out a data-protection appliance for midsize customers under the Data Domain line.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151304/run-your-own-cloud-storage-for-less-emc-says.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:46 -0700 Stephen Lawson Stephen Lawson
EMC has agreed to acquire DSSD, a Silicon Valley startup developing technology for pooling server-based flash for high-performance data access.
The company will help EMC tackle challenges in making flash capacity on servers into shared storage capacity. Its chairman is Andy Bechtolsheim, a pioneer of networked computing from Sun Microsystems and numerous startups. Its CEO, former 3Par executive Bill Moore, will continue to run the DSSD business inside EMC while Bechtolsheim remains a strategic advisor.
Server-based flash offers rapid access to data because it's connected to servers via fast PCIe connections. But it's limited to 10TB or less on each server and is hard to manage, forcing companies to rewrite applications just to use it, said Jeremy Burton, EMC's president of products and marketing, who announced the acquisition at EMC World in Las Vegas.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151302/emc-acquires-flash-storage-startup-dssd.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 12:45:00 -0700 Grant Gross Grant Gross
Web users and developers should take new steps to avoid surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency and other spy organizations, a group of privacy and digital rights advocates said Monday.
The 30-plus groups, including Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Reddit, Free Press and the Libertarian Party, have set June 5 as the day to "reset the 'Net" by deploying new privacy tools. June 5 is the anniversary of the first news stories about NSA surveillance based on leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Governments are building a "prison" around the Internet, the groups said in a video. "But government spies have a weakness," the video said. "They can hack anybody, but they can't hack everybody. Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes—mistakes we can fix."
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151300/groups-want-to-reset-the-net-to-resist-nsa-surveillance.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 11:55:00 -0700 Mark Hachman Mark Hachman
AMD took another step ahead toward what it calls "ambidextrous computing" on Monday, announcing a framework for bringing together ARM processors with its own X86 chips in what it calls "Project Skybridge".
From a technical standpoint, Project SkyBridge combines the world's two most popular processor architectures: X86, a high-performance chip architcture which dominates the PC, server, and notebook space, and ARM, the low-power, de facto chip architecture for tablets and smartphones. SkyBridge chips, whether they be based on ARM or X86, will be pin-compatible, meaning that they will be able to be used on the same motherboard with minimal changes, if any.
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So sayeth Brian Dye, Symantec's senior vice president for information security, in a weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal. The words sound shocking—Symantec and its Norton antivirus suite have been at the forefront of PC security for years and years. But don't let the stark claim fool you: Norton isn't being retired, and Dye's words merely reflect the new reality in computing protection.
While detecting and protecting against malicious software installed on your computer still plays a very vital role, many of the sophisticated attacks of today still manage to penetrate PCs with antivirus programs installed. In fact, Dye told WSJ that he estimates traditional antivirus detects a mere 45 percent of all attacks. That's not good.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150743/antivirus-is-dead-says-maker-of-norton-antivirus.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 10:27:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman
John McAfee thinks the world could use one more messaging app.
The former anti-virus software creator and international fugitive is promoting a new app called Chadder, which claims to keep messages secure through key server encryption. The app is available now for Android and Windows Phone, and an iOS version is coming soon.
However, the app appears to be in extremely rough shape, not even deserving the "beta" tag that the developers use in their description.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150988/chadder-john-mcafee-slaps-name-on-private-messaging-app.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 10:00:00 -0700 Ian Paul Ian Paul
Google has an interesting idea for upcoming versions of Chrome that could either make browsing safer or destroy the web as we know it. The latest build of Canary, Google's experimental version of the Chrome browser, introduced a feature that does away with URLs, also known as web addresses.
The new feature, called the Origin Chip, wasn't enabled by default in my tests. But you can turn it on by enabling the Chrome flag "chrome://flags/#origin-chip-in-omnibox" and setting it to enabled. Although this is very much an experimental feature, you can also enable the Origin Chip in the stable build of Chrome.
Bye, bye URL?
Above: Canary's Origin Chip. Below: The stable version of Google Chrome.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150857/googles-canary-browser-flirts-with-killing-urls.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 08:59:00 -0700 Dave Jeffers, BrandPost Dave Jeffers, BrandPost
[This is a sponsored article written by IDG Creative Lab, a partner of PCWorld, and not by PCWorld's editorial staff.]
We've put our whole lives into our computers, tablets, smartphones, and everything else we attach to the Internet. We've got our work mixed in with our private lives, old projects mixed in with new, and music on one device that we want to play on another. All this technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but all too often, it's just plain inconvenient.
Here are a few tips and tricks to put your digital world in order, and make your life easier for real.
Organize your libraries by content, not file type
You're working on a complex report. You've got spreadsheets, documents, photos, and so on. Do the photos belong in My Pictures? Of course not. Keep all of the files for a single project in a single folder. Better yet, put two folders in My Documents: Work and Home, and put your project folders in there. And reserve My Pictures for family and personal photos.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149901/five-easy-tips-for-a-more-organized-digital-life.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 08:30:00 -0700 Ian Paul Ian Paul
Virtual reality headset maker OculusVR recently came under attack from game development company Zenimax Media, and now Oculus is hitting back. On Thursday, Zenimax accused Oculus of stealing core technology that made the Oculus Rift headset a reality. But on Monday Oculus responded saying the charges are nonsense.
"We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax's actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false," Oculus VR said in a statement via e-mail. Oculus also said "there is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products."
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While games from other publishers pop up on Origin here and there, much of EA's PC gaming platform is dedicated to selling titles made by EA itself—and one soon-to-expire promotion will get you the full version of one of the hottest games of yesteryear for free. Until May 8, EA's offering the highly regarded space horror game Dead Space for the low, low price of absolutely nothing on Origin.
The game still holds up well despite being nearly six years old; we named it to our list of the most terrifying PC games around just last year. What's more, Dead Space still sells online for $20, so this is a pretty enticing deal for folks who haven't stepped into Isaac Clarke's shoes to battle the sinister Necromorphs yet.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150855/free-game-alert-dead-space-is-on-the-house-on-origin-but-act-fast.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 07:36:00 -0700 Lincoln Spector Lincoln Spector
Megan Aitken's partner lost "a load of photos." Here's my advice for recovering them.
Lost files can usually be recovered—if you discover the loss soon enough. But every time you write to the hard drive, you lower the likelihood of a successful recovery. So use that computer as little as possible until the files are recovered or you've given up hope.
[Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.]
Try these solutions, in this order:
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2147668/how-to-recover-deleted-files.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 07:26:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman Google Express Shipping lands on both coasts, and is still free for now. http://www.techhive.com/article/2150854/googles-same-day-delivery-service-hits-new-york-and-west-l-a.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 06:58:00 -0700 Michael Kan Michael Kan
After six months as Acer's chairman, company co-founder Stan Shih plans to step down on June 18, saying he is satisfied with the PC maker's new direction.
"The hope is that the company will soon break even and start making money again," he said in an interview on Monday.
The company's will appoint new board members in June, and the board will then select the new chairman.
Since November, Shih has been leading a major reorganization at the ailing Taiwanese PC maker. In that time, Acer has hired a new CEO, and plans to use software and services to help revive its business.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2151240/acer-chairman-to-leave-pc-maker-in-june-no-replacement-named.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 06:00:00 -0700 Jon Seff Jon Seff
Maybe it's the recent release of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps for the iPad. Maybe you want to make sure you have access to the latest version of Microsoft's Office suite on your multiple Macs (and even PCs). Or perhaps you want the perks, such as 27GB of total OneDrive cloud storage per user and an hour of free Skype world minutes each month. Whatever the reason, you've weighed your options and decided that an Office 365 subscription makes sense for you.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150851/how-to-save-big-bucks-on-office-365.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:30:00 -0700 Jared Newman Jared Newman Touch-first or not, these apps get things done
Sometimes a little open-mindedness goes a long way. You could dismiss Windows 8 as a "Fisher-Price operating system" that's unfit for real work, as many are oh-so-quick to do, or you could actually take advantage of its unique capabilities, using Windows Store apps to work faster and smarter. And with all the mouse-and-keyboard enhancements in the latest Windows 8.1 Update—especially the introduction of a universal taskbar that houses apps as well as traditional desktop software—these apps are now easier than ever to integrate into your workflow, even if you're pro-Start menu and anti-touch screen.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150246/9-windows-metro-apps-even-desktop-diehards-can-love.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:30:00 -0700 Susie Ochs Susie Ochs Google's $35 streaming stick is quickly catching up to boxes like Apple TV and Roku as more and more apps add support. http://www.techhive.com/article/2150868/the-20-best-chromecast-apps-and-counting.html#tk.rss_all Mon, 05 May 2014 03:00:00 -0700 Michael Brown Michael Brown
If you need Internet access while you're away from your home or the office, you should carry a travel router in your bag. Free Wi-Fi hotspots are nearly always insecure, leaving your PC vulnerable to attack. Fee-based broadband services at hotels often are limited to supporting wired devices, so you won't be able to connect your smartphone or tablet. If the service is wireless, the provider will charge a fee for each device you connect to the network.
Use a travel router to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot or a facility's broadband connection, and it will create a private, secure, wireless network with a robust firewall. You'll be able to use that service with your laptop, smartphone, or tablet, and you'll be able to share that connection with friends, family, and colleagues traveling with you—paying just one fee for everyone. Many travel routers are outfitted with USB ports that support portable hard drives, so you can share files or stream media over your network, too.
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If you use a third-party Twitter client like Tweetbot, you might already be familiar with the idea of muting Twitter accounts. It's a useful feature if you're sick of seeing a specific topic show up in your timeline but don't want to block or unfollow someone, and it looks like Twitter might finally be catching on to the idea.
As pointed out by The Verge, on Friday Twitter user @missamber tweeted a screenshot from Twitter's official mobile app that shows an option to allow users to mute an account. Apparently, the new mute feature is still in a limited-rollout testing phase and not all users are seeing it—I sure don't see it, and I'm running the latest version of Twitter's iOS app.
Also, it's unclear at the moment whether the mute function is only for muting accounts, or whether you'll also be able to mute certain keywords too. It's also unclear whether we'll see this feature appear in Twitter for Mac and the service's Web interface.
Twitter does periodically test new features with a subset of its userbase before rolling it out to the rest of us. For example, back in March, Twitter tested a new feature that would tell you how many people viewed your tweets, and prior to that, it let a group of users get an early look at a website redesign, according to TheNextWeb.
As of right now, though, there's no indication on whether the rest of us will get this new mute feature, much less when.
SAP technology chief Vishal Sikka, champion of the companys Hana in-memory computing platform, is leaving the company in a major management shakeup shortly before co-CEO Bill McDermott is expected to be named sole CEO.
Sikka, who oversaw of all of SAPs product development, is leaving SAP effectively immediately for personal reasons, SAP said late Sunday.
No company in the industry can do what SAP can do in the cloud with the SAP Hana platform today, SAP co-founder and supervisory board chairman Hasso Plattner said in a prepared statement. I would like to personally thank Vishal for his contribution to take SAP to this stage. We will remain friends as he pursues the next step in his journey.
That last comment underscores the close personal and working relationship Plattner and Sikka had over the past several years as SAP introduced Hana initially as an in-memory database, ported it to run SAPs flagship ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, and then fleshed it out with a variety of platform services.
Today Hana is at the center of all SAPs development efforts, particularly in cloud computing, which makes Sikkas abrupt departure all the more surprising.
SAP is appointing global sales chief Robert Enslin and application development executive Bernd Leukert to the companys executive board. Enslin will continue running sales while Leukert will head up the global development organization, SAP said.
In addition, Helen Arnold and Stefan Ries have been appointed to SAPs global managing board, according to a statement.
Our SAP HANA platform is established as the global standard, its roadmap is in full effect, said McDermott and co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe in a statement. Now is the moment for leaders like Rob Enslin, Bernd Leukert, Helen Arnold and Stefan Ries to step up.
SAP announced last year that Snabe would step down as co-CEO this month and take a supervisory board seat.
Sikka's departure may signal a strategic shift by SAP from focusing on HANA as a platform to a growing set of applications with Leukerts appointment, said analyst Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Research, via email on Sunday.
It also indicates changes in thinking at SAPs board level, he added. Founder Hasso Plattners influence may be changing as at one point Vishal was supposed to be a candidate for CEO.
Comparisons will undoubtedly be drawn between Sikka and former SAP executive Shai Agassi, who held a similarly high-profile role at the company.
Agassi had been seen as next in line for the SAP CEO job but then left after then-CEO Henning Kagermann's contract was extended a couple of years and Plattner offered Agassi a co-CEO role instead.
It's possible Sikka hoped to ascend to the CEO or co-CEO level at some point and recently learned this was not to be, or at least not anytime soon.
Whatever the case, Sikka leaves a strong legacy at SAP, Wang said.
At a time when SAP needed a direction around future platforms, Vishal did a great job, Wang said in a follow-up phone interview.
Now with Leukert in charge, the stakes are different, he added.
Thats the big challenge for SAP, can they build apps quickly that people will want to buy?
EMC's big bet on software is likely to get even bigger at this week's EMC World conference in Las Vegas.
A year ago, the company announced ViPR, a storage virtualization and management platform designed to span hardware from across EMC and other vendors. This year, EMC may make that platform do even more, and it will showcase another concept for so-called software-defined storage even as it continues to rely on dedicated hardware systems as a mainstay of its business.
EMC has made a fortune selling smart storage boxes, such as its VMax and VNX arrays, but its future vision is more focused on the smarts than on the boxes. The company says it's committed to what it calls a "third platform" of computing built around cloud, mobile, big data and social networking. In that world, storage resources can reside in a number of different places and the real money is in the software that controls them.
Several developments over the past year, in addition to the ViPR announcement, have pointed in that direction. In September, ViPR 1.0 became available for non-commercial use. At the same time, EMC announced the Project Nile private-cloud storage architecture and improvements to its Storage Resource Management software suite.
Nile, which the company has said will come out in the first half of 2014, might launch at this week's show. Broader support for third-party hardware in ViPR may also come out. And EMC World 2014 will see at least one new software-based development: Project Liberty, an emerging technology in which EMC's VNX software runs independent of its VNX hybrid arrays.
The company is committed to a software-centered future, but it can't get there overnight, analysts said. Both within EMC and among its customers, there's still too much reliance on traditional systems even as shipments sag for some of those platforms. For example, in the first quarter of this year, revenue from the VMax line of arrays fell by 22 percent from a year earlier. While all this is going on, EMC is far from neglecting its hardware. In the past year, the company has also introduced major new flash-oriented versions of the VNX and the smaller VNXe and started shipping its all-new XtremIO flash array.
"The challenge is fighting a war on two fronts," Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Peters said. And while cloud and virtualization are probably causing some tension among business units at EMC, the same is happening between the old guard and new arrivals in some IT departments, he said.
Project Liberty is a case in point, according to IDC analyst Ashish Nadkarni. EMC ultimately sees the technology allowing enterprises to roll out a virtual VNX on a public cloud or infrastructure that may or may not be made by EMC. Users wouldn't get the performance that comes with a VNX array's specialized hardware, but they would get more flexibility. EMC is suggesting Liberty initially for customers' test and development projects. A broader rollout would have to be gradual, Nadkarni said.
"This is a huge cultural and delivery shift for EMC," Nadkarni said. "Delivering a storage array stack via software is an unknown thing in EMC. They've never, ever done this before."
Project Liberty is about letting customers run VNX as software on the hardware of their choice, but that doesn't necessarily mean users will have free rein, Nadkarni said. EMC puts a lot of work into certifying third-party products for use with its technology, and that will probably hold true for Liberty as well.
"They're not going to just say, 'Here you go, here's your software on a CD, go have a ball with it.' This is EMC we're talking about," Nadkarni said. "They will not certify anything where they don't know what the performance is going to look like."
The same goes for ViPR. Last September's release of the free 1.0 version was intended for uses such as teaching, academic research and proof-of-concept testing. In January, Version 1.1 came out and ViPR became generally available, still as a free download.
The software works with EMC's VMax, VNX, VPlex, Isilon and RecoverPoint hardware. It's also compatible with storage systems from NetApp and cloud software stacks from VMware and Microsoft, as well as OpenStack. Version 1.1 added support for HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) to turn existing storage into a big-data repository and let enterprises perform Hadoop analytics on their data in place, EMC said.
The key to making ViPR useful will be compatibility with a broad range of non-EMC products used in data centers, IDC's Nadkarni said. That includes ViPR both managing many different storage systems and working with the higher level frameworks enterprises use to control their data centers, including systems like OpenStack and authentication systems.
Whatever it may do this week, EMC is on its way to making software the heart of its core storage business, Peters of ESG said. That's where the profit margin and technology advances will come from. EMC is good at changing course and not getting too attached to any given product, he said.
"I think if you look a decade ahead, there won't be VMax and VNX like we know them today," Peters said. "EMC is a very good company at knowing that what really matters is that you're buying from EMC."
