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Google adds customization feature to Internet search
Google has launched a search feature that lets signed-in users re-rank, delete, and add comments on search results, according to a blog posted on Thursday.The new feature, SearchWiki, is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic and that by giving people tools, search is even more useful, according to Google.[ Google also recently added 'on demand' indexing to its Site Search. Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]Users who do the same search frequently can remove a site from the results that isn't of interest, said Anthony House, spokesman at Google.Users can also add comments to a site, which will pop up every time that site is in the results. If a user searches for car sites, they can add a comment to the site, so they remember that it has a lot of interesting information on, for example, hybrid cars, according to House.Comments are always shared with other users and signed with a person's username. Re-ranked search results, however, are only seen by the signed-in user and do not affect other people's results.Users can further personalize search results by typing in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of a site they want to add to the results of a given search or move a site to the top of the search results.There is also an option to see how other people have customized a search, which is accessed by clicking "see all notes for this SearchWiki" at the bottom of the page.For SearchWiki to work you have to be a signed-in Google user, and English must be the preferred language, according to House. Changes are stored in the user's Google account.If a user is wondering if he or she is signed in, they can always check by noting if their username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.Users can keep track all the changes they have made by clicking on "see all my SearchWiki notes". Users can also remove edits or comments and go back to the usual search results.
posted on November 21, 2008 07:15:17 am
You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz
New leaders arrive, old ones leave -- sometimes by the back door in the dead of night. And so it goes with this week's quiz, as the country gets to know a new president elect, a longtime senator says adios, and Yahoo employees wonder who will wear the crown (or the dunce cap) after Jerry Yang departs. Also on tap: A print magazine and a virtual world die, while a dead ISP and an extinct mammal rise from the grave. Have you got your finger on the tech pulse? Prove it by acing this week's quiz. Correct answers are worth 10 points, and no looking at your neighbor's DNA for clues. Ready?1. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Jerry Yang is stepping down as Yahoo's CEO but remaining at the company in another capacity. What will be his new title?a. Chief Operating Officer b. Chief Vacillating Officer c. Chief Yahoo d. Chief Sitting DuckTake the InfoWorld news quiz
posted on November 21, 2008 06:00:00 am
Microsoft to launch IE8 in '09; RC due out in Q1
Microsoft said Thursday it would issue an RC (release candidate) for IE8 (Internet Explorer 8) in the first three months of 2009, indicating it will ship its newest browser sometime in the first half of the year."We will release one more public update of IE8 in the first quarter of 2009, and then follow that up with the final release," Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager overseeing IE8, said in an entry to a company blog.[ Find out J. Peter Bruzzese's take on IE8 in his Enterprise Windows blog: "IE8 pushes back Firefox and Chrome even further" | Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]The current version is Beta 2, which was released in late August.If Microsoft's past performance is an indicator, the final of IE should launch in the first half of 2009. Its last major update, IE7, hit release candidate status in late August 2006, and shipped as a final version in mid-October of that year, a span of just under two months. Even if Microsoft pushes the release candidate of IE8 to users in March 2009, it should still be able to manage to ship a final edition by the end of June.Hachamovitch said the IE8 release candidate would be the final, more or less. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this [release candidate] update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done. They should expect the final product to behave as this update does." He went on to urge site and Web service developers to test their work against the release candidate when it ships.As other Microsoft officials have done since IE8 first appeared, Hachamovitch declined to set a specific date, however. "Our plan is to deliver the final product after listening for feedback about critical issues," he said. Previously, all that the company would commit to was a release prior to the launch of Windows 7, which in turn has been pegged for late 2009 or even early 2010.Although several people who left comments on Hachomovitch's blog applauded the disclosure of the rough timeline, others thought Microsoft is moving too fast."'We listen,' 'We are listening,' 'We've heard you,' and other stupid marketing sentences..., you've just heard nobody," said a user identified only as Oliver. "Where's beta3? Beta2 was unusable and crashed all the time, so we can't test it. Please give us a testable beta before a release candidate.""This has been said many times before, so I'll make it simple," added Jason Ashdown in another comment to the post. "We want a Beta 3! Beta 2 was nowhere near the quality we expected. Before getting to a [Release Candidate], we want to get the last set of bugs reports before you get to RC1. Closing the door now would be a horrible mistake."Although IE continues to dominate the browser market, relatively few people are trying the preliminary versions of IE8, according to Web metrics firm Net Applications Inc. IE8 accounted for just 0.58 percent of all browsers used last month, Net Applications reported. As a comparison, Google's Chrome, which was released about a week after IE8 Beta 2, and is in beta testing itself, accounted for 0.78 percent of the browsers used in October.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
posted on November 20, 2008 03:08:21 pm
Researchers find vulnerability in Windows Vista
An Austrian security vendor has found a vulnerability in Windows Vista that it says could possibly allow an attacker to run unauthorized code on a PC.The problem is rooted in the Device IO Control, which handles internal device communication. Researchers at Phion have found two different ways to cause a buffer overflow that could corrupt the memory of the operating system's kernel.[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]In one of the scenarios, a person would already have to have administrative rights to the PC. In general, vulnerabilities that require that level of access somewhat undermine the risk since the attacker already has permission to use to the PC.But it may be possible to trigger the buffer overflow without administrative rights, said Thomas Unterleitner, Phion's director of endpoint security software.The vulnerability could allow a hacker to install a rootkit, a small piece of malicious software that is very difficult to detect and remove from a computer, Unterleitner said.Phion notified Microsoft about the problem on Oct. 22. Microsoft indicated to Phion that it would issue a patch with Vista's next service pack. Microsoft released a beta version of Vista's second service pack to testers last month. Vista's Service Pack 2 is due for release by June 2009.Unterleitner said there has been lots of interest in the vulnerability. "We have received requests for detailed information on how to take advantage of this exploit from all over the world," he said.Microsoft officials contacted in London did not have an immediate comment.
posted on November 20, 2008 10:36:22 am
Sun receives complaint about Java vetting process
Sun Microsystems has heard from a company concerned about the vetting process of Java and open source, a Sun official said on Wednesday.Lawyers for the concerned company said they cannot be sure the results of the process are legally pure, said Patrick Curran, chair of the Java Community Process (JCP), during a panel session on open standards development at the QCon conference in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon. The JCP serves as the process for updating Java standards. Curran would not name the company.[ For more news from QCon, see "Ruby hailed as economic solution." ]"There is concern that if you do your development work in a completely open source manner through something like OpenJDK, that it is possible something will slip into the source code base that has not been appropriately vetted," Curran said in an interview after the session. He described the issue as not a big deal but a concern.?Sun began open-sourcing Java two years ago.Also during the panel session, Spring Framework founder Rod Johnson said that as a member of the JCP executive committee, he plans to push for openness in the Java standardization process."There may be times when that needs to be deviated from, but I would like that to be the starting point," said Johnson, who is CEO of SpringSource. Johnson was elected to the committee several weeks ago for a two-year term, he said.Johnson stressed community involvement in Java. "I think that it's too easy just to blame Sun for the fact that the community doesn't participate more," he said. Openness does not really work without participation, he said.Elsewhere in the JCP, Curran said all work on Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 will be done by the Java Development Kit community in an open source manner.Also on tap from the JCP are collaboration tools for better communication in the Java standards development process. "We are going to roll out some stuff on jcp.org, which is in forums and so on, to make it a little easier for expert groups to communicate amongst themselves and between themselves and the general membership," Curran said.There has been concern that expert groups have been operating behind closed doors, Curran said. The tools are currently in a beta form and are due in a couple months, he said.
posted on November 20, 2008 10:15:00 am
Will technology drive global recovery?
On Nov. 6, Sam Palmisano, chairman, president & CEO of IBM, made an important speech entitled "The Smart Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York City. That speech is only now getting public press attention.To emphasize the significance of Palmisano's speech, IBM took two-page ads out in numerous newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post, throughout the world. This can be seen as public relations, self-promotion or the simple realization that the way out of this global financial mess requires a refocus of technology not on the consumer, but on corporate business.[ Just how severe is the impact of the economy on IT? Find out in "Is tech in more trouble than we think?" And also learn the "Five top spending priorities for hard times." ]Palmisano's argument is that technology has permeated our daily lives to an extent beyond what prior generations could ever imagine. Here are some key points from this speech."The world is becoming instrumented." A vast array of sensors perform telemetry tasks in every industry that affects our personal as well as business lives. From RFID tags in retail stores to red-light/speed cameras to security systems to hospital instrumentation technology. No matter how mundane, these are now integral parts of our lives."Our world is becoming interconnected." From almost 2 billion people on an ever-growing Internet to the untethered virtual workplace, individuals have accessibility and mobility to time-shift and increase their productivity on a global basis. Add to that the non-human communication of telemetry devices and human to machine interaction, communication technology and services become a necessity for survival, not a luxury."All things are becoming intelligent." The PC and cell phone are just the "tip of the iceberg." Everything from our cars to our cameras to our clothing will be smart. The real advances in computer technology, information science and advanced analytics software are just in their infancy. As with any child, we are experiencing growing pains. We live in an information age where we have let information, be it an e-mail or a video, consume us rather than allowing technology to process the details and we as humans to process the exceptions."Digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging." Everything large or small contains or will soon contain a computational engine that can network and communicate. This is a subtle statement that from hindsight caught everyone by surprise. Another definition of "convergence" or a realization that we missed "seeing the trees because we were looking at the forest?"Developing technology for technology's sake (feed the consumer and they will feed the ad revenue-based Web sites) and business processes to increase profitability/revenue (make the quarter numbers to meet financial analyst expectations not long-term growth) were myopic goals while the "system was running on all cylinders."In achieving these goals we all got sloppy and missed numerous opportunities to utilize technology to benefit society, our county, our daily lives and last but not least our employer.Palmisano listed numerous examples such as energy waste caused by unintelligent and archaic electrical grids; traffic congestion causing lost working hours and gasoline consumption; corporate supply chain inefficiency reducing business profitability; antiquated global healthcare systems with little or no process linkage/communication (profits first/patients second) creating ever increasing costs and inflation; decreasing water supplies which limit access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities causing human malnutrition, disease and tainted food production; and financial institution risk taking that created a global fiscal disaster of unprecedented proportion that undermined global government, business and individual confidence.All of us can add to this list examples of technological sloppiness that have produced waste or loss of productivity/revenue. From the oil crisis to the healthcare crisis to the financial crisis, technology innovation and use have taken back seats to greed. At first this seems to be altruism or socially motivated thinking. Not true, capitalism with technology as its core competency will drive the next recovery.Good intentions aside, IBM had examples of technology/systems solutions for each of these problem areas. Sales pitch aside, Palmisano had it right -- increased technology use is the driving force that will produce a global business recovery. The next global growth period will be business driven not consumer driven. This is not the Internet Bubble of 2000 but the Business Recovery of 2010.Throwing human resources and/or money at a problem will not solve all of today's complex interdependent global issues. Add to this the prospect of increased regulation and oversight required to manage ourselves out of this financial mess and restore confidence in the global economy.Without the creative use of information technology, autonomics, collaboration and information analytic systems and communication internetworking on a global scale, this is an utterly impossible task that's doomed to failure. Conducting business the "old way" will not work going forward to 2010.Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate
posted on November 20, 2008 09:14:30 am
Microsoft's mobile IE6 will require more powerful handsets
Microsoft faces a tough sell with its latest mobile browser, Internet Explorer 6, since consumers will need to buy more powerful handsets to run it.Microsoft, which announced plans earlier this week to launch IE6 with market leader China Mobile, has made no secret of the more stringent requirements. It has indicated the software won't be available to download.[ Check out our slideshow featuring the latest wave of mobile products hitting the market: "Next-gen mobile devices: InfoWorld's preview guide" | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]The browser requires 500MHz chip processing speeds, according to Lena Goh, director of marketing in Microsoft's mobile communications business for Asia."It will only be available in new handsets," she added.Having to buy a new smartphone just to enjoy the benefits of mobile IE6 may put people off considering there are many choices for mobile Web browsers, including the popular Opera Mini and Skyfire .The initial launch of the browser will be on a Samsung Omnia i900 made for China Mobile. The Chinese mobile network operator, the world's largest with more than 436 million subscribers, has been offering new smartphones along with the rollout of its 3G network in China.Microsoft is launching mobile IE6 with China Mobile in hopes of capturing more first-time users in emerging markets, said Scott Rockfeld, director of Microsoft's mobile communications business.Among the improvements in IE6, the mobile browser will allow people to complete transactions more easily than before and offer users the choice to automatically revert Web site searches to mobile optimized Web sites or full Web sites.
posted on November 20, 2008 08:46:30 am
IBM tries to bring brain's processing power to computers
IBM Research on Thursday is expected to uncover work it is doing to bring the brain's processing power to computers, in an effort to make it easier for PCs to process vast amounts of data in real time.The researchers want to put brain-related senses like perception and interaction into hardware and software so that computers are able to process and understand the data quicker while consuming less power, said Dharmendra Modha, a researcher at IBM. The researchers are bringing the neuroscience, nanotechnology, and supercomputing fields together in an effort to create the new computing platform, he said.[ Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]The goal is to create machines that are mind-like and adapt to changes, which could allow companies to find more value in their data. Right now, a majority of information's value is lost, but relevant data can allow businesses or individuals to make rapid decisions in time to have significant impact, he said."If we could design computers that could be in real-world environments and sense and respond in an intelligent way, it would be a tremendous step forward," Modha said.There is a problem in the core philosophy of computing and a new approach is needed, Modha said. Today's model first defines objectives to solve problems, after which algorithms are built to achieve those objectives."The brain is the opposite. It starts with an existing algorithm and then problems [are] second. It is a computing platform that can address a wide variety of problems," Modha said.For example, the new approach could help efficiently manage the world's water supplies through real-time analysis of data that could help discover new patterns, Modha said. A network of sensors could monitor temperature, pressure, wave height and ocean tide across the oceans. "Imagine streaming this data to a global brain that discovers invariant patterns and associations that no algorithms of today can do," Modha said.It will also be able to sense the world's markets, like stocks, bonds and real estate, extracting patterns and associations in the way the brain extracts information from those environments.The research is not about concrete applications yet, but about understanding what the brain does and its implementation in computing, Modha said. The research includes work on nanotechnology, which has made it feasible to realize the brain function in cognitive computing chips that rival the low-power and small space of the brain, Modha said. Neuroscience has also matured, and supercomputing technology has progressed enough for IBM to undertake large-scale simulations to test a wide variety of hypotheses.It's a long and arduous research project that may lead to a number of technological breakthroughs, Modha said. He didn't provide a timeline for implementation of the platform.If the company succeeds in making this platform, it will lead to an entirely new computer architecture and programming paradigm that could overwrite the traditional ways of computing, Modha said.For the research IBM is working with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and universities including Stanford, University of Wisconsin in Madison, Cornell, Columbia University Medical Center, and University of California at Merced.
posted on November 20, 2008 08:08:10 am
Yahoo rolls out Glue search pages in the U.S.
Yahoo rolled out a beta version of its new Glue search concept for the first time in the U.S. late Wednesday.The Internet search method aggregates text, images, and video results on a single results page.[ For more news on Yahoo's roller-coaster week, see "Yahoo's Jerry Yang to step down as CEO" and "Yahoo OneSearch coming to T-Mobile USA" | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]The Glue Page Beta was first tested by Yahoo in India in May. Glue page results are displayed alongside the usual Yahoo India search results.In the United States, Yahoo Glue Beta is however being tested as a stand-alone experience that is not accessed via Yahoo Search, a spokeswoman for the company said."This iteration of the beta is centered around gathering insights about how people use topic pages focused purely on helping people discover information and browse through images, videos, articles, etc.," she added.In a post on the Yahoo Search blog, Julie Demsey of Yahoo Glue Product Management said that Yahoo is starting with a limited set of topics, pulling together content from the best places on the Web onto one Yahoo Glue page. The company plans to add more topics later.The pages are built using an algorithm that automatically places the most relevant modules on a page, giving users a visually rich, diverse page about the topic in which they are interested, the post added.
posted on November 20, 2008 07:09:10 am
A future without programming
A few years ago, self-proclaimed nondeveloper Kevin Smith worked for a software company that tried to build a project tracking tool using Microsoft .Net. Some 15 developers spent a year with little success. "After burning though a million dollars and still without a product, the company called it quits," says Smith, now managing partner of NextWave Performance, a consultancy in Denver, Colo.NextWave took up the idea but ran into similar timetable and budgetary overruns. "I said, 'I'll learn to code and do it myself,'" a frustrated Smith recalls. His search eventually led him to Coghead, a Web app for code-free development of Web apps -- and Smith built key components of the tracking tool in less than 30 days.[ InfoWorld Test Center shows the pros and cons of Coghead in an in-depth review; for an online app builder with a Microsoft twist, see the review of Caspio Bridge. | Read about other "Application builders in the sky." ]"I was showing my business partner some of this stuff the other day and he turned to me and asked, 'How do traditional developers stay in business?'" Smith says. "It's such a game changer. I think it turns developers from wizards who read the magic book and know the syntax into business analysts who understand the processes and goals of what they're trying to achieve."Such views may be a bit far-fetched, but it's true that do-it-yourself application development has never been more appealing. With IT budgets being squeezed, along with the growing dysfunctional relationship between IT staff and managers, it's no wonder the promise of cheap "codeless" development that sidesteps IT resonates loudly with businesspeople. "We also have a whole new wave of business users that are not intimidated by the notion of application development," says Mike Gualtieri, analyst at Forrester.Coghead and others, such as Caspio, Zoho, and Wufoo, are just the latest attempt to bring application development to the masses. From Cobol to 4GL to scripting languages to, recently, Microsoft's Oslo for model-based software development, the Holy Grail is to make it easier for nonprogrammers to program. Now Coghead CEO Paul McNamara believes cloud computing tools increase the number of potential software builders in the world tenfold.Whipping up a Web app There are areas where codeless software development makes sense, mostly with business apps that have multiple records, business logic, notifications, and other straightforward features. For instance, Jim Heagney, an accounting and systems consultant, tapped his experience with Great Plains and other ERP integration projects to develop a virtual-events scheduler, called Inexpo.Using Coghead, Heagney, another self-described nondeveloper, built Inexpo to manage all of the activities that go into producing a virtual, Web-based event, including order entries, invoices, expenses, purchase-order requisitions, and other transactions. Inexpo even interfaces with an accounting system "in all the right spots," Heagney says. Working part time, he built the application in only six months.?Anyone who is comfortable writing macros or sophisticated Excel spreadsheets has what it takes to create apps with Coghead, says McNamara. A person needs a basic understanding of relational databases, such as an account record that has many invoices stored against it. Sounds easy enough, yet the problem is that even seasoned business executives who know how to operate intricate database applications have no idea what goes on in the background, adds Heagney.Moreover, Heagney acknowledges some of Coghead's limitations today. For instance, the tool lacks simple ways to make mass changes and to create complex fields, he says. As with all cloud systems, reporting is a drawback because there's limited access to the back end. "One part I couldn't write was the general ledger -- the core piece of ERP -- which is a challenge right now because of the way the tables work," he says.InfoWorld Test Center analyst and software developer Peter Wayner, who authored the Coghead and Caspio reviews, takes it a step further: "In essence, [Coghead] is a fancy front end to a spreadsheet." Wayner, though, is quick to point out its potential, saying, "We're reaching a space where people can quickly build Web applications on top of any kind of database tables."Into a wall of disillusionment But don't count your applications before they hatch. Codeless software development is not as easy as the examples of Heagney and NextWave's Smith suggest, contends Forrester's Gualtieri. Rather, nonprogrammers heading down the do-it-yourself route should expect to confront a number of trials.Gualtieri believes many business users will get in over their heads and become frustrated, which will lead to disillusionment. That's because they'll have made mistakes along the well-trodden developer's path of identifying what they want to do, selecting the right tools, and architecting the project appropriately. Or, more simply, they'll pound their heads on the desk because they won't be able to insert a table with an image in one of the cells."It didn't take me long to generate an inscrutable error message, the kind that leads to panic in mere mortals but inspires real programmers to roll up their sleeves," Wayner writes in his Coghead review. "The drag-and-drop tool may look nice, but I think most serious Coghead programmers will need to learn BPEL syntax and then work backward to figure out why something isn't working." In other words, the Cogheads may eliminate the coding, but they still require you to think like a developer.The average business executive will hit a wall trying to do this himself, agrees Heagney. For this reason, 60 percent of Coghead's sales flow through the channel where at least some level of technical expertise and guidance is available.A simple Web app can also grow into a monster, with more users and features added daily. It may become so large and so unwieldy that intervention by the IT department is needed to save it. Or a company may need to hire a Coghead programmer to support the app. "Somebody has to understand the internal architecture of applications in order to protect integrity," says Yefim Natis, distinguished analyst at Gartner.Coding futures Natis scoffs at the idea that codeless software threatens the livelihood of traditional developers. "When apps are designed with heavy use of metadata -- it's highly productive and easy to use -- then you're doing configuration, not programming," he says. "Programmers had to create the environment in which some of the parameters could be manipulated by the business users."Everyone agrees that the gap between the business analyst and the software developer is closing, and thus developers should become more business savvy. But programmers won't really be affected by business analysts who fool themselves into thinking they can write business applications without programmer know-how. "People still have to understand how to create algorithms to deal with data and process," says Natis. "The means of expressing the algorithms may change, but the algorithms themselves do not."Even as business users become comfortable around technology and seize a greater role in application development (as well as managing their own PCs), the fact is programmers haven't been marginalized. Life may in fact get more interesting for programmers, says James Owen, an InfoWorld Test Center reviewer and founder of Knowledge-Based Systems, a consultancy specializing in business rule management systems.Codeless programming, which includes business rule-based systems, is sold on the idea that "business analysts will be able to insert their business logic without knowing the first thing about the underlying code," Owen explains. "When upper management realizes they now can do more with the same personnel, they begin to dream" of software skyscrapers that reach infinitely upward.But codeless programming can only do so much, and so IT programmers will be tasked with architecting and creating frameworks that support these lofty dreams. "And the dreams will lead to even more jobs for the IT programmers," Owen says. "Now the fun begins."
posted on November 20, 2008 06:00:00 am
Yahoo OneSearch coming to T-Mobile USA
T-Mobile USA will provide Yahoo's OneSearch search engine on its phones, a Yahoo executive said Wednesday.T-Mobile is placing a OneSearch button on its phones in a deal that is to be announced soon, said Marco Boerries, executive vice president and head of Yahoo's Connected Life Division, at the Open Mobile Summit conference in San Francisco. The carrier's decision to place a OneSearch button in the software of its subscribers' handsets is a much-needed win for Yahoo as it struggles against Google and Microsoft for search advertising dollars and looks for a successor to outgoing CEO Jerry Yang.[ Take InfoWorld's guided tour of T-Mobile's G1, the first phone to carry Google's Android operating system. | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]Yahoo's latest partner has a close relationship with Google in at least one area. Last month, T-Mobile USA became the first mobile operator to offer a phone based on Google's Android software platform when it put HTC's G1 handset on sale. T-Mobile could not immediately be reached for comment, and Yahoo's Boerries didn't say specifically whether the OneSearch button would appear on the G1.Yahoo let Google take away most of its market share in PC search and is working with carriers to make sure the same thing doesn't happen in mobile, Boerries said. So the company is working through mobile operators to get OneSearch set up on their phones in hopes that subscribers will go straight to Yahoo's search engine rather than calling up a competitor's, he said. Yahoo has deals with 26 mobile operators around the world, which have 850 million subscribers, he said.OneSearch is available by download to users of many phones. However, since mobile users traditionally don't download applications to their phones often, Yahoo can reach more users by preloading the button on their phones.In March, T-Mobile in Northern and Central Europe dropped Google search for Yahoo, and the U.K. carrier O2 also is a partner, Boerries said. Those deals have helped Yahoo gain a market share of 25 percent in Europe and more than 30 percent in the U.K., he said. The company had "lost all footprint on search" on PCs in Europe, he said.OneSearch is designed to return useful answers, instead of just a series of links, for easier use on mobile devices, and earlier this year was opened up to allow content from third parties such as reviews site Yelp. Voice search, which just this week became available from Google as an iPhone application, already was available for OneSearch, Boerries said.In 2009, Yahoo will concentrate on making it easier for advertisers to set up effective mobile advertising, Boerries said. For example, it's hard to make ads look good on a wide variety of mobile devices, and Yahoo wants to help solve that problem, he said. The company is exploring how to give advertisers the tools they need to create the right ad experience for consumers and to reach as many people as they want without having to make deals with many operators, he said.Mobile search advertising has to be built from the ground up, and not all Web search advertisers will want to make the leap, Boerries said.
posted on November 19, 2008 07:02:20 pm
Ruby hailed as economic solution, offering smaller investment and less risk
Advocates for the Ruby programming language on Wednesday hailed its usefulness as an enterprise application development option, especially in a down economy.The Merb framework for Ruby also was championed, during a session at the QCon conference in San Francisco. Speakers also defended Ruby and the Ruby on Rails framework against critics citing slow performance and scalability problems.Ruby serves as an alternative for companies seeking more affordable software development, said speaker Greg Pollack, CTO at Rails Envy, which offers Rails-related services."With Ruby, I can write less code to do more things, and I can probably give them a more affordable option," offering a smaller initial investment and less risk, Pollack said.Rails applications can be scaled via techniques such as the memcached application, Pollack said in an interview after his presentation. "Really, the way you scale Rails is just like you scale any other Web app," he said.Ruby reaches beyond the Web, Pollack said. It is being used to generate music and to maintain Linux boxes, as well as for graphics and desktop clients, he said.Merb, which is based on Model View Controller (MVC), offers an option to the widely known Rails framework, according to speaker Matt Aimonetti, a Merb evangelist."Merb meets the enterprise needs because of the cost, adaptability, and scalability," said Aimonetti, who nonetheless defended Ruby on Rails in benchmark tests he detailed. Tested against other frameworks such as the PHP-based CodeIgniter, Rails scored 88 requests per second (rps) while CodeIgniter was 98.2 rps, Aimonetti said."Really, Rails is not that slow. It's actually pretty close to the fastest PHP framework," Aimonetti said.Ruby, meanwhile, is fast in real-life Web benchmarks, he said. "Ruby as a language might be a bit slow, it's true, but when you use it on the Web, it's actually fast," said AimonettiMerb, he said, is "very suited for the enterprise world but not only [the enterprise]." It is "the fastest Ruby framework we have right now," Aimonetti said.The technology offers the concept of Merb "slices," which serve as stand-alone miniature applications that can be mounted inside other applications, he said. Merb offers modularity and flexibility, said Aimonetti.Merb 2.0, due within a year, will feature optimization in how requests are served and also target rapid prototyping.
posted on November 19, 2008 05:05:00 pm
Toshiba sets high storage capacity for small drives
Toshiba Storage Division? announced a breakthrough half-terabyte hard disk drive in a 2.5-inch form factor on Wednesday.The mini-drive is targeted for inclusion in mobile devices by OEMs.?The high-capacity drives are expected to enhance the capabilities and thus the interest in the new class of sub- and mini-notebooks coming into the market.Toshiba Model MKxx55GSX? will most likely also be included in game consoles and printers.The drive might also be designed as an external storage devices if an OEM is willing to wrap a plastic shell around the drive, add a connector like USB, and sell it as an external storage device. Weighing only 3.6 ounces as produced by Toshiba even with the additional weight of an external shell, the device could be easily packed in carry-on luggage.Although the units will ship in volume in December, OEMs may not have products incorporating the devices until the spring.The Serial-ATA 2-platter drive features 8MB of buffer memory, 3Gbps transfer rate, and a rotational speed of 5,400 RPM.Additional drives using the same form factor in the product line will include 400GB, 320GB, 250GB, 160GB, and 120GB models.
posted on November 19, 2008 04:06:10 pm
How much does spam cost you? Google will calculate
How much is spam costing your company? Google unveiled a nifty little calculator Wednesday to help you add it up.It's part of a marketing campaign for Google Message Security, the online spam-filtering service based on the Postini technology Google acquired last year. "We know in these tougher economic times that companies are trying to figure out how they can save," said Adam Dawes, a Google product manager.[ Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]To figure out the cost of spam, you enter things like the number of workers at your company, how much you pay them, how much spam they have to deal with, and presto: Google figures out how many days (and dollars) in lost productivity this represents. Of course it also tells you how long it would take for Google's service to pay for itself at your shop.For companies doing their spam-fighting in-house, there's also a "Total Cost of Ownership" calculator to show how inexpensive Google thinks its service really is.Last year, Nucleus Research reported that spam costs U.S. companies $712 per employee each year. A $31,000-per-year employee spending 16 seconds each on 21 spam messages per day would cost about this much, according to Google's calculator. That adds up to about $70 billion per year in lost productivity, Nucleus said.While Google may be helping people figure out how much spam costs, the company could do a thing or two to lower spam itself, said Richard Cox, chief information officer with the Spamhaus antispam group.He would like to see Google do more to block spammers from using Gmail service and to start including the IP addresses of Gmail senders in its message headers. "If you could see how many anonymous Gmail drop boxes are being used as the registration addresses for domains that are being used in spam, you'd understand just how much this is costing the community," he said of Gmail spam.
posted on November 19, 2008 03:43:29 pm
Microsoft, Novell eye Moonlight beta, system management
Marking the two-year anniversary of their controversial interoperability agreement, Microsoft and Novell this week are announcing upcoming availability of both the beta version of Moonlight, which puts Microsoft's Silverlight rich Internet application technology on Linux, and the general release of Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.The November 2006 agreement has had the two companies cooperating in having Microsoft offer Suse Linux support certificates from Novell and agree not to sue each other's customers over intellectual property issues. Some have protested that the agreement legitimized Microsoft's claims that Linux violates its patents.[ For a two-year retrospective on the agreement, featuring comments from Microsoft, Novell and an opponent of the arrangement, see The Microsoft-Novell Linux deal: Two years later. ]But the two companies are marching on with the two milestones. Moonlight is an open-source implementation of Silverlight, offering Linux users high-definition media capabilities, according to a Microsoft representative. The project is being shepherded by Novell.Moonlight will be provided as an open-source plug-in for the Firefox Web browser, Microsoft and Novell said. The first source code for the project was released in May. The beta release will be available free of charge.Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 is due the first half of 2009.Microsoft and Novell have collaborated on systems management to ease customers' management tasks associated with mixed IT environments, Microsoft and Novell said. Advanced Management Pack for Suse Linux Enterprise extends cross-platform Linux monitoring capability of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. It enables management of Windows and Linux servers from a single console.In another development in the open-source realm, Yahoo said this week that its BrowserPlus Web development technology will be offered in an open-source manner.BrowserPlus features a plugin framework for building Web applications that contain desktop capabilities. It can be extended with JavaScript APIs to access desktop facilities."By releasing BrowserPlus as an open source project, Yahoo will enable open development on the platform for in-browser desktop applications across the Web," a Yahoo representative said. "This will allow developers to rapidly extend the platform in a distributed fashion. Yahoo's hope is that community contributions and review will ensure BrowserPlus stays a secure, robust platform running on all popular operating systems and browsers."Yahoo said that the two-year-old project was a failure in some respects. The company had been looking to uncover innovative ideas in native clients applications and massage them into reusable client libraries. Yahoo was extracting good solutions to problems with wide appeal and making them easy for anyone in the company to apply, Yahoo said."At the end of our two-year run we had many C++ libraries, which ran on every operating system under the sun, to perform tasks ranging from the mundane (say, logging) to the exotic. To our dismay, we didn't have client teams all over Yahoo scrambling to use the stuff we built. We did, however, learn a lot from this experience," Lloyd Hilailel, of the Yahoo BrowserPlus team, said in a statement.
posted on November 19, 2008 01:42:09 pm

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