Cloudera positions Hadoop as an enterprise data hub

Taking note of how customers have been working with its Hadoop distribution, Cloudera has expanded the scope of its software so that it can serve as a hub for all of an organization's data, not just data undergoing Hadoop MapReduce analysis.

Some of Cloudera's enterprise customers have "started to use our platform in a new way, as the center of their data centers," said Mike Olson, Cloudera's chairman and chief strategy officer.

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"We think this is a very big deal. It will change the way the industry thinks about data," Olson said.

Cloudera has released a new beta of its commercial distribution, Cloudera Enterprise, that provides tools for managing an organization's data, as well as tools from Cloudera and third parties for data analysis.

Olson announced the beta of Cloudera Enterprise 5 at the O'Reilly Strata-Hadoop World conference, being held this week in New York. 

"It used to be that an organization had lots of balkanized data silos," Olson said. "The stuff that you used to run on a data warehouse because you had no choice, now you can run on the hub."

Putting the data in a Hadoop-based storage repository has many advantages, Olson argued. You can run different types of analytical workloads against the data in the hub. It can easily feed data to other systems, such as content management systems. It can work as an archiving system. 

An enterprise data hub, Olson said, can store data as it is generated, even if the organization isn't sure how the data will be needed. Such data may be valuable later for machine learning analysis or other uses not considered.

An enterprise hub also puts security and governance mechanisms in place to safeguard the data. Cloudera has been working on these tools for several releases, Olson said.

 "Our ambition is to draw more workloads in and make the hub more valuable over time," he said. 

Part of Hadoop's newfound ability to act as a data hub comes from software additions in the latest version of the open-source software, Apache Hadoop 2, on which Cloudera Enterprise is built.

The inclusion of YARN (Yet Another Resource Manager), for instance, allows Hadoop to handle multiple analysis applications, not just those that run on the batch process-oriented MapReduce.

To facilitate the hub, Cloudera has also set up a management framework that third-party analysis applications can plug into. SAS, Revolution Analytics, Syncsort and other organizations have ported some of their software to the platform. Porting analysis software requires that the operations be executed in parallel, as data in Hadoop is typically distributed across multiple nodes, Olson said. 

Cloudera Enterprise 5 also adds the ability to cache HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) contents in the working memory of a server, which can boost query response and data processing times.

The company's Navigator auditor tool now allows analysts and data modelers to search, explore, define and tag datasets. Users can add customized queries to Cloudera's Impala SQL engine. And Cloudera Enterprise 5 can work with the NFS (Network File System) nodes, which should make the process of injecting data into HDFS much easier, Olson said.  

The software also now can take snapshots of the data, providing a backup if the original data is lost or destroyed. 

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com.

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Enterprise software revenue growth suggests recovery under way, IDC says

The global enterprise software market expanded by 5.5 percent year over year during the first half of 2013 to $179 billion, a result that suggests a tentative rebound from economic turmoil in Europe, according to analyst firm IDC.

Global software revenue ticked up 5.1 percent during the same period in 2012, IDC said Wednesday. For the full year 2013, IDC expects a 5.7 percent growth rate.

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"Enterprises are seeing new opportunities to drive new and improved products and services by leveraging information," IDC senior vice president Henry Morris said in a statement. "Therefore, it stands to reason that software to manage, access, and share information (structured and unstructured) continues to be a priority for competing in today's economy."

The analyst firm breaks the software market into three main segments: applications; application development and deployment; and systems infrastructure.

Applications experienced a 5.8 percent sales increase in the first half of this year, driven by 28.3 percent growth in enterprise social networking product sales.

Application development and deployment product revenue lagged those results slightly, with a 5.1 percent first-half growth rate. Systems infrastructure software sales also increased 5.1 percent overall, but the system software subcategory jumped more than 8 percent due to factors such as the Windows 8 launch, according to IDC.

By region, Latin America was the fastest-growing area with an 8.6 percent uptick, followed by the U.S. with 7.9 percent. Growth was 5.1 percent in Western Europe.

Asia-Pacific saw a 6.6 percent rise in software revenue but only when Japan is excluded. A devalued yen resulted in a 9.2 percent drop in software revenue there when calculated in U.S. dollars, IDC said.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com.

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Eucalyptus eases way to bring Amazon cloud deployments in-house

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iOS apps vulnerable to Wi-Fi hijacking bug

Researchers from device security firm Skycure have unearthed an unnerving vulnerability in iOS that can be used to hijack a number of apps when used on an insecure Wi-Fi network. And it might not just be an iOS issue, either.

Skycure calls the problem "HTTP Request Hijacking," or HRH for short, and it exploits the way many iOS applications deal with receiving an HTTP 301 status code ("Moved Permanently") from a server.

"Most mobile apps do not visually indicate the server they connect to," says Skycure, "making HRH attacks seamless, with very low probability of being identified by the victims."

At its core, the attack is essentially a variant on a standard man-in-the-middle attack. If an app is used on an insecure Wi-Fi network, an attacker can intercept requests sent by the app, reply to the requests with a 301, and trick the app into being redirected to a hostile server.

This is bad enough, but iOS apps have a behavior quirk that makes them particularly vulnerable to the attack: Whenever they receive a 301 redirection request, that request is cached indefinitely. In other words, once an attacker uses a request hijack on an iOS app, its requests are redirected continuously to the hostile server until the cache is cleared ... and the user may never know about it.

HRH attacks do require a few conditions to be met before they can be pulled off successfully. Most crucially, they need to be "physically near the victim for the initial poisoning," meaning that the attacker has to know where the user is connecting via Wi-Fi and hijack that specific connection.

Skycure has declined to name specific apps that are affected by this bug, as part of its responsible disclosure policy. Instead, the company has created a sample application that demonstrates the problem in action, along with a short video demonstrating the hijack. Most importantly, Skycure has published code in its article that allows concerned iOS developers to fix the problem quickly.

The New York Times Bits Blog was one of the first third-party sources to spread the word, noting that the same researchers also found another iOS-related security issue, back in 2012, in which LinkedIn's iOS app turned out to be leaking sensitive information when it collected meeting details from users' iOS calendars. LinkedIn has long since fixed that problem, but more recently it's come under fire yet again for another iOS app, LinkedIn Intro.

In a final note to its post, Skycure adds that "HRH isn’t necessarily a problem of iOS applications alone; it may apply to mobile applications of other operating systems too." In the abstract, the mechanism of an HRH attack isn't specific to iOS. If another platform -- Android, for instance -- behaves the same way in caching 301 requests, the same attack could conceivably be performed there as well.

Let's hope that's not the case -- but better yet, let's find out if it is true and do something about it.

This story, "iOS apps vulnerable to Wi-Fi hijacking bug," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Lenovo claims battery life crown with new Yoga tablets

Lenovo is claiming that its new Yoga tablets will offer 18 hours of battery life when browsing the web, which would be the longest when compared to other tablets.

The company's new Yoga tablets, which will come in 8-inch and 10.1-inch versions, will provide 12 to 14 hours when watching high-definition video, said Stephen Miller, Lenovo ambassador. The tablets were announced at a launch event in New York.

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The battery life can be even longer if the tablets are set to low screen brightness, Miller said.

If Lenovo's claims of battery life hold up, the Yoga tablets will beat competition handily. Tablets today are at best able to squeeze up to 11 hours of battery life. The Yoga tablets have high-capacity cylindrical batteries similar to ones used in laptops, which helps prolong battery life.

The 8-inch tablet, which is priced at $249, weighs 400 grams. The 10.1-inch tablet is at $299 and weighs 603 grams. The tablets will run Android 4.2 and be available in the U.S. on Wednesday. The company did not comment on worldwide availability.

The battery is housed in the tablet's circular base, which makes it easier to grip the device. A kick-stand allows the tablet to sit firmly on the table.

With a circular base, the Yoga tablets bears a resemblance to Notion Ink's now-defunct Adam tablet, which was one of the first Android tablets to ship when it became available in late 2010.

The Yoga tablets run on MediaTek quad-core processors with a clock speed of 1.2GHz. Both of the tablets display images at a resolution of 1,280 x 800 pixels.

Other features include a 1.6-megapixel front camera, a 5-megapixel back camera, up to 32GB of internal storage, and micro-SD card slot for expandable storage.

Lenovo has introduced a range of tablets, PCs, and hybrids in the last few years. The new products are important as buyers move away from PCs to mobile products.

"We shipped more smartphones and tablets than PCs," during the third quarter, Miller said.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com.

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Microsoft to Windows XP users: your operating system is a major security risk

Microsoft isn't kidding when it says that people need to ditch Windows XP and has released alarming security numbers to prove its point. XP systems are indeed markedly more likely to fall prey to malware than later versions of Windows.

According to the firm's SIR (Security Intelligence Report) for the first half of 2013, Windows XP SP3 32-bit suffered a malware infection rate of 9.1 systems per 1,000 computers, which sounds modest until you read that the equivalent number of Windows 7 32-bit was 5.0 and for Windows 8 64-bit it was 1.4.

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To eliminate the possibility that this difference was caused by the behaviour of XP users, the firm correlated the number of infections to the encounter rate, in other words the number of systems in each OS version that met malware requiring intervention by Microsoft's security products.

Here, the different incarnations recorded roughly similar encounter rates, with XP at 16.3 percent, Vista at 16.5, Windows 7 at 19.1 percent, and Windows 8 RTM at 12.4 percent. Apart from underlining that Windows 7 is now probably the most targeted OS, it is clear that with Windows XP the ratio of encounters to infections is unflattering.

As the report's authors admit, that XP should be more vulnerable 12 years after its release than newer Windows versions is hardly surprising; malware creators have had longer to craft attacks, spot software flaws, and exploit the weaker security protection in the OS. But the point, Microsoft argues, is that the XP hardcore are taking a risk using the operating system in 2013, something that will only increase as an issue after the end of support in April 2014.

"Computers running Windows XP in 1H13 encountered about 31 percent more malware worldwide than computers running Windows 8, but their infection rate was more than 5 times as high," is the dry but accurate summary from the report authors.

Of course, all of this fits with Microsoft's earnest wish to see the back of XP and shift seats on to Windows 8. The other perspective is that Microsoft has drawn these numbers from its vast global database of systems running Windows operating systems and for this reason the numbers deserve to be taken seriously. Anyone who wants to be frightened some more might want to read a summary of the above points by Microsoft's director of trustworthy computing, Tim Rains.

For firms not able to abandon XP in 2014 for technical reasons (i.e. the need to support inhouse applications), the options are to use XP in a desktop virtualisation environment, adopt a policy of OS isolation (locking down applications, disconnecting USB ports, limiting Internet connectivity) or even buy a probably very expensive third-party support agreement.

One other interesting snippet from the report is the apparently shockfinding that running real-time antivirus software seems to be a good idea, or at least greatly reduces infection rates; malware infection rate is 7.1 times higher for those systems running real-time antivirus compared to those that don't.

This doesn't mean that when antivirus fails, it doesn't fail spectacularly -- and often enough to cause major concern about its effectiveness against targeted attacks -- but does underline that rumours of its imminent death are exaggerated.

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MongoDB support firm says intruders may have accessed databases

MongoHQ, which provides hosting and support for the open-source Mongo database, said attackers may have accessed several of its customers' databases earlier this week.

On Monday, someone accessed an internal support application using a password that had been used for a compromised personal account, wrote Jason McCay, MongoHQ's founder.

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The support application contains connection information for customer MongoDB instances, along with lists of databases, email addresses, and user credentials hashed with bcrypt, a file encryption tool, McCay wrote. An audit showed that several databases may have been accessed via that support application.

"We believe we have exhausted the scope of this compromise and are directly contacting all affected customers," McCay wrote. "We are continuing to evaluate our audit logs and conducting further investigations with the help of third-party experts."

The company invalidated credentials such as IAM (Identity and Access Management) keys it stored for customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for backups. MongoHQ has notified AWS of the accounts that may have been affected, and AWS is offering Premium Support for organizations that need new credentials, McCay wrote.

MongoHQ, which has offices in California and Alabama, provides services to let developers create and manage NoSQL Mongo databases for their applications.

Since the breach, MongoHQ said it has reset the login credentials for its employee accounts, including email, network devices and internal applications. Employee-facing support applications have been disabled until two-factor authentication is enabled, VPN connections to those applications are enforced and employee access permissions are reviewed, McCay wrote.

In the meantime, McCay said MongoHQ is modifying its system to encrypt and decrypt data at the application level, which will mitigate possible damage from the same type of intrusion. It has also hired a security consulting firm to do a penetration test of its application stack, McCay wrote.

"Based on their recommendations, we will be hardening our applications to provide more layers of security," he wrote.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk.

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Mozilla releases 10 patches, five critical, for Firefox

Mozilla released 10 patches for three versions of its Firefox browser on Tuesday, five of which are considered critical and could be used to remotely install malicious code.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warned that the problems "could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, bypass intended access restrictions, cause a denial-of-service condition or obtain sensitive information."

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The Mozilla products affected are Firefox 25, Firefox ESR 24.1, Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 17.0.10, Thunderbird 24.1, Thunderbird ESR 17.0.10, and Seamonkey 2.22.

Among the flaws fixed were several memory safety bugs in the browser engine, which is also in Mozilla's Thunderbird email client and Seamonkey, a suite of applications and web development tools.

Those bugs, tagged as update MFSA 2013-93, "showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances, and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," according to Mozilla's advisory.

The other four critical vulnerabilities could cause potentially exploitable crashes, Mozilla said.

One of the vulnerabilities given a "high" risk rating, MFSA 2013-99, could divulge information on a computer's local system. A security researcher, Cody Crews, discovered "a method to append an iframe into an embedded PDF object rendered with the chrome privileged PDF.js."

"This can used to bypass security restrictions to load local or chrome privileged files and objects within the embedded PDF object," Mozilla wrote.

In August, the TOR project warned that a vulnerability in Firefox ESR may have been used to collect information on computers visiting websites configured as TOR hidden services.

TOR, short for The Onion Router, is a system that allows for more anonymous browsing by routing encrypted requests for websites through servers worldwide. The TOR Project distributes a Browser Bundle, which includes Firefox for browsing with TOR.

The vulnerability could have facilitated the execution of remote code, but instead may have been used to collect the hostname and MAC address of Windows computers, it said. The TOR Project typically updates its browser bundle package quickly after Mozilla releases new patches.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk.

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New Windows 8.1 requirements strand some users on Windows 8

Windows 8.1 fixes many of Windows 8's most glaring flaws, but not everyone is able to bask in the bountiful new features. Owners of some older PCs have found themselves stranded on Windows 8, trapped by a subtle tweak in Windows 8.1's hardware requirements. And beyond the irritation factor, the issue could have troubling support implications for affected users, as Microsoft has told Windows 8 users they'll need to upgrade to Windows 8.1 by 2015 to continue receiving critical system updates.

"I'm rather frustrated, because I see no need for Microsoft to have produced a point release OS update -- or rather, a service pack -- with significantly different system requirements that would leave my PC 'marooned' on Windows 8," says Chip Sudderth, a PCWorld reader affected by the issue.

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Atomic changes
That issue is Windows 8.1's sudden need for CMPXCHG16b support in the 64-bit version. CMPXCHG16b allows for atomic memory exchanges. While modern 64-bit processors support CMPXCHG16b, some older hardware does not -- but the requirement wasn't a must-have for the 64-bit version of Windows 8. Trying to upgrade to Windows 8.1 on newly non-compatible hardware results in a message that your "CPU does not support CompareExchange 128."

While we were investigating the issue, Microsoft confirmed to Neowin that some older AMD processors, such as the Athlon 64 X2 and Opteron 185, lack CMPXCHG16b compatibility and won't work with Windows 8.1.
Now, Microsoft can't support previous-gen processors in perpetuity, but a service pack seems like an odd place to pull the rug out from underneath owners of older machines. And the issue isn't limited to AMD processors; Sudderth's rig runs on an Intel Core 2 Quad, a chip that was a beast when it was released in 2008 and one still capable of playing today's games. Core 2 processors are still the fourth most popular processor found in PCs, according to CPU-World's user data.

Sudderth's compatibility issues don't stem from the chip itself, however.

After running into the CompareExchange 128 error with his original Q300 Core 2 CPU, Sudderth tried swapping in another Core 2 Quad chip, the Q9550S, which explicitly supports CMPXCHG16b. No dice.

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Report: NSA breaks into Yahoo, Google data center links

The U.S. National Security Agency has penetrated the main communication links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, giving it access to the accounts of hundreds of millions of people including U.S. residents, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

By tapping the links, the agency is able to collect at will a wide range of content such as metadata -- indicating the recipients of emails and when the messages were sent -- as well as actual content like text, audio and video, according to the report.

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The NSA does not store all of the content permanently, but it keeps a lot, the newspaper reported, based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as well as interviews with what the Post called "knowledgeable" officials.

Through the program, millions of records are sent every day from Yahoo and Google's internal networks to data warehouses at the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, the report said. In the past 30 days alone, more than 181 million records containing various data had been processed by field collectors, according to the report.

The data links are exploited using a tool called Muscular, which is operated in partnership with the NSA's British counterpart, GCHQ, the Post reported. Together, the NSA and HCHQ can copy entire data flows across fiber-optic cables carrying information between Yahoo and Google data centers, the report said.

The interception points were not disclosed.

The revelation constitutes the latest in a series of high-profile leaks of information about U.S. surveillance programs since the Post and the Guardian newspaper first reported the existence of a program known as Prism in June. That program allows the NSA to access data stored within the servers at major Internet companies like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

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Samsung's takes baby steps in touting Tizen OS to developers

The open source Tizen mobile operating system is one of the most visible examples that Samsung isn't completely dependent on the Android mobile OS.

At the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco this week, Samsung held a single breakout session on developing apps using Tizen. The session was led by two engineers from Intel, which is working jointly with Samsung to create code to enable Tizen to run across multiple hardware platforms, including tablets, smartphones, cars and smart TVs.

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Most of Samsung's smartphones and tablets today run Android or the company's own Bada OS. In fact, Samsung is by far the largest Android smartphone maker globally, as well as the largest maker of smartphones overall, according to IDC and others.

The company does make Windows Phone smartphones as well, though a Windows Phone session wasn't among among the 50 scheduled at the developer conference. Nearly all of the sessions focused on applications or services that work on Android.

Tizen has a modern Internet interface for use on devices, supporting HTML 5 and other Web technologies, so developers can theoretically write applications once to work on many devices. A Samsung roadmap for Tizen rollouts hasn't been announced.

At the Tizen session on Tuesday, two developers in the audience said they had different experiences with their early Tizen development efforts. Developers at MightyMeeting, a maker of business collaboration applications, have been using Tizen with promising results because of its use of HTML 5 across platforms, said Mighty Meeting CEO Dmitri Tcherevik.

On the other hand, Shivakumar Mathapathi, COO at Dew Mobility, said his company tried Tizen with Windows Phone devices and found it wasn't very stable on the Microsoft mobile OS. He didn't provide any details.

Tcherevik said that Samsung's interest in Tizen demonstrates that it's "willing to try many different things" even as a large company.

Some attendees at Samsung's first developer conference said they were glad to see Samsung to show off its distinctive features with Android at an event other than Google I/O. Here, Samsung could separate itself from other Android smartphone and tablet makers.

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The chip times are a-changin': Intel agrees to build ARM chips

In what may be the most dramatic example of hardware "embrace and extend" to date, Altera announced at the ARM developer's conference yesterday that it had reached an agreement with Intel to manufacture Altera quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 chips using Intel's latest 14nm technology. Forbes claimed to have an exclusive scoop on the announcement, although Mark LaPedus at Chip Design reported on the agreement with Intel back in February.

Forbes cast the story as one of Intel rushing to catch up in the mobile market. The true nature of the beast, however, is far more nuanced.

Under the terms of this agreement, Intel isn't going to design or sell an ARM chip. Rather, Intel has agreed to use its state-of-the-art 14nm foundries to build chips for Altera. The foundry business is highly competitive -- TSMC and United Microelectronics (UMC) in Taiwan and California-based GlobalFoundries are all full-time foundries. Samsung in South Korea has an enormous foundry division. Intel's tossing its hat into the ring to compete with those foundries and several smaller ones, using its brand-new 14nm fabs in Oregon, Arizona, and Ireland.

In other words, Intel's not competing against ARM -- at least, not with this contract -- it's competing against TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, and Samsung.

Part of Intel's motivation may have more to do with excess plant capacity than a driving need to build Intel-stamped ARM competitors. Jason Mick at Daily Tech explained earlier this month that Intel had to delay its 14nm Broadwell chips to Q1 2014 because of problems shrinking the Haswell/Broadwell die from 22nm to 14nm. Reading between the lines, it looks like the delay left Intel with excess 14nm manufacturing capacity -- at least until next year. 

Don't be misled. Intel still wants to eat ARM's lunch, and its efforts to produce a souped-up version of Intel's Atom processor, called Quark, continue unabated. Quark, we're told, will be one-fifth the size of Atom and consume one-tenth as much power. While Intel will initially manufacture Quarks at its own fabs, at some point the system will be licensed out to third parties. Intel's stealing a page from ARM's playbook.

So yes, one day you could see an Intel-based Quark chip manufactured by, oh, TSMC. Just as you could see an Apple A7 chip or Qualcomm Snapdragon or Nvidia Tegra -- all ARM based -- manufactured by Intel.

The nature of the chip business is changing quickly. Let the competition begin.

This story, "The chip times are a-changin': Intel agrees to build ARM chips," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Apple's tablet lead shrinks as Android gains momentum

IDG News Service - Apple's once-dominant lead in the fast-growing tablet market is shrinking as buyers move to Android tablets, which are cheaper and available in different sizes, according to separate research released by IHS and IDC on Wednesday.

Tablet shipments during the third quarter this year totaled 47.6 million units, growing by 36.7% compared to the same quarter last year, according to IDC. Android tablets drove the growth, while Apple's iPad shipments were flat and Windows tablets continued to struggle.

Apple maintained the top spot in tablet shipments, totaling 14.1 million iPads during the quarter, growing by just 0.6% compared to the previous year. The company's tablet market share fell to 29.6% during the third quarter, down from 40.2% a year ago.

The current tablet market share of 29.6% is Apple's lowest to date, IDC said. Research firm IHS pegged Apple's third-quarter market share at 29.7%.

Apple's tablet shipments slowed due to a delay in product launches to the fourth quarter from earlier in the year. But the company is poised to regain market share with the new iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina display, which will start shipping in November.

"With two 7.9-inch [iPad Mini] models starting at $299 and $399, and two 9.7-inch models starting at $399 and $499, Apple is taking steps to appeal to multiple segments," said Jitesh Ubrani, IDC research analyst, in a statement.

Samsung was the biggest beneficiary of the growth in Android tablets, holding 20.4% market share during the third quarter, up from 12.4% a year ago. The South Korean company's tablet shipments totaled 9.7 million units, growing by 123% compared to last year. Asustek was in third place with shipments up 53.9% to 3.5 million. Lenovo was in the fourth spot, with tablet shipments of 2.3 million, growing by a whopping 420.7%. Acer was in fifth place, with quarterly shipments growing by 346.3%.

While Apple is the solo tablet vendor with iOS, the sheer volume and spate of sub-$250 tablets has made Android a leading tablet OS, said Rhoda Alexander, director of tablet research at IHS.

"The erosion in Apple's unit shipment market share was inevitable," Alexander said in a statement.

Samsung took some cues from its smartphone market and expanded its tablet offerings at different prices, Alexander said. But the low margins of Android devices have hurt the profits of tablet makers.

"Cheaper almost always wins the volume race, and competitors were quick to adjust pricing when it became clear that it was impossible to achieve anything close to Apple's unit growth at the same price level," Alexander said.

The overall installed base of Android tablets received an assist from a group of "other" small tablet vendors, which held the single largest market share in the IDC and IHS surveys. The group includes regional tablet vendors in China that ship sub-$100 tablets with 7-inch screens, cheap components and older versions of Android. Tablet shipments from that group totaled 16.8 million units according to IDC, and 16.4 million according to IHS.

The return rates on those cheap tablets are high, and the devices don't last too long. The cheap tablet business model is not yet proven, analysts said.

"Shipments alone won't guarantee long-term success. For that you need a sustainable hardware business model, a healthy ecosystem for developers and happy end users," said Tom Mainelli, research director of tablets at IDC.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Apple's $900 million moment

Computerworld - Apple yesterday put a value on its decision to give away future OS X upgrades to all Mac users and offer the iWork and iLife suites for free to new Mac and iOS device buyers.

Coincidentally, the $900 million that Apple will defer to account for the free software was exactly the same as the amount that its Redmond, Wash. rival wrote off its books in July.

But unlike Microsoft, which crossed off $900 million in revenue to account for an over-supply of Surface RT tablets, Apple's number was not a loss, but instead a long-term deferral of revenue: The money will eventually be recorded on Apple's books.

During an earnings call with Wall Street analysts Monday, Apple's CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, said that the company would defer an additional $900 million in revenue from the sales of Macs and iOS devices in the fourth quarter to account for the free OS X upgrades to the former, and free iWork and iLife apps for both.

"We are deferring a greater portion of the sale of each iOS device and Mac sold," said Oppenheimer. "We anticipate that the additional deferral per device sold, coupled with our sequentially greater unit volume expectations in the December quarter, will result in about a $900 million sequential increase in the net amount of revenue deferred for software upgrade rights and non-software services."

Later, in response to a question, Oppenheimer spelled out how much Apple would defer in revenue per device. "[For the] iPhone and iPad, we are deferring between $15 and $25. That's up as much as $5 per device. And Mac has been some $20 to $40, so up an additional $20," said Oppenheimer.

He also noted that Apple has been deferring revenue on iOS device and Mac sales, and that the $900 million was simply in addition to that. "As a result of an increase in the software that we are providing to customers for free, coupled with our sequential unit increases, we will defer, we think, about $900 million more in revenue," Oppenheimer summarized.

In previous filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Apple had said that it deferred $16 for each iPhone and iPad sold, $11 for each iPod Touch and $22 for each Mac. Those deferrals were to financially account for what Apple called "future, unspecified software upgrades and features relating to the product's essential software" and "the online services to be provided to qualifying versions of iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac."

Among the things covered by the deferrals were iOS upgrades -- which once cost iPod Touch owners as much as $20 -- updates to the iCloud online storage and synchronization service, and new functionality added to iOS and OS X via updates between major releases.

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Coast Guard spills the beans on Google's mystery barges

Computerworld - The U.S. Coast Guard has given up what could be a key clue in the tale of two mysterious barges moored on either side of the country.

After repeatedly declining to comment about the barges, which appear to be carrying structures made of shipping crates and are docked in the harbors in both San Francisco and Portland, Me., a Coast Guard spokesman divulged some information today, according to a CNBC.com report.

"We can confirm that Google is involved or associated with the barge, but there is a nondisclosure agreement in effect; the Coast Guard is unable to discuss or divulge any further details at this time," said Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas McKenzie, a Coast Guard spokesman..

Google has not returned repeated requests for information about the mystery barges.

These shipping containers piled on top of a barge in Portland, Maine, could be a Google floating data center, although the Internet company won't say. A similar barge is docked in San Francisco Bay. (Photo: Sharon Gaudin/Computerworld)

A Coast Guard spokesman stationed in Portland, Me. said earlier today that the captain of the station knows what's on the barge but most others there do not. The company behind the barrages has asked the Coast Guard not to talk about it because of proprietary concerns, he added.

The spokesman told Computerworld that work is not expected to begin on the barge in Portland until work is completed on the one in San Francisco.

The two barges have led to a lot of curiosity and speculation, much of it because of the heavy veil of secrecy around them.

Both are owned by By and Large, LLC, a company formed in 2012 in Delaware but with no known address or phone number.

Everyone from harbor masters to city workers to tugboat operators have either said they were never told what's on the barges, what they are intended for or whether Google is involved - or they simply won't say.

On Tuesday, Pete Vigue, CEO of The Cianbro Co., which has the construction contract for the barge docked in Portland, said he is working under a strict non-disclosure agreement.

Much of the speculation swirled around Google being the mysterious entity behind the floating structures. Some speculated that Google is building floating data centers, Apple-like Google retail stores or even Google Glass stores. Most think Google is trying out floating data centers, which the company got a patent for in 2009.

The floating data center, according to the patent, would be fueled by motion-powered, floating machines arranged in a grid and wired together. The machines, such as those built by Pelamis Wave Power Ltd in Edinburgh, Scotland, capture the natural motion of the waves, tides and current and convert it into electricity or pumping power for the data center's cooling pumps.

"It's not that far fetched," David Cappuccio, a vice president and chief of research at Gartner Inc., said in an earlier interview. "You have to be somebody of Google's size to even consider this."

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at  @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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Does Google's floating data center plan hold water?

Computerworld - With speculation swirling that two mysterious barges on either side of the U.S. are evidence Google's working on floating data centers, analysts say the company would have a lot of obstacles to overcome for that idea to become a reality.

"It's not that far fetched," said David Cappuccio, a vice president and chief of research at Gartner Inc. "You have to be somebody of Google's size to even consider this."

The two barges -- one docked in San Francisco Bay and the other docked in the harbor in Portland, Me. -- produced a barrage of questions and rumors in those communities. Then people realized the two barges are owned by the same company and have very similar names, prompting even more speculation.

These shipping containers piled on top of a barge in Portland, Maine, could be a Google floating data center, although the Internet company won't say. A similar barge is docked in San Francisco Bay. (Photo: Sharon Gaudin/Computerworld)

The barges each carry a large, structure seemingly comprised of shipping containers. They're about 40 feet wide and 70 to 80 feet long.

It's widely thought that Google owns the structures, which could be carrying floating data centers, Google Glass stores or Apple-like Google retail operations.

Google has not responded to multiple requests for information on the barges.

Fueling the speculation, though, is the level of secrecy around them.

Portland officials say they don't know what's on the barge docked in the harbor and the local Coast Guard station reported that only the captain there knows what's onboard.

A worker at The Cianbro Co., the construction company contracted to work on the barge in Maine, told a reporter taking photos of the barge on Monday to leave the property. Today, Cianbro CEO Pete Vigue told Computerworld that there is little he can say about the project.

"It is docked at our wharf," said Vigue. "I'm not allowed to make any comments on our involvement or what we're doing or what is happening at our facility. There is a very strict non-disclosure agreement."

He did add that he thinks this will be positive for the state of Maine. "I think it's very positive and we'll leave it at that," he said.

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Facebook strengthens its grip on mobile, latest earnings show

IDG News Service - Facebook made new gains in its efforts to monetize its mobile business in the third quarter, reporting Wednesday that those devices drove nearly 50 percent of its advertising sales.

Total revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was US$2.02 billion, the company reported in its earnings announcement, up 60 percent compared to $1.26 billion during the same period last year. The company's sales topped expectations of $1.91 billion, based on projections of analysts as polled by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue from advertising was $1.8 billion, up 66 percent from 2012's third quarter, Facebook reported. Ads on mobile devices constituted roughly 49 percent of those sales, the company said.

Profits were strong, too. Net income for the quarter was $425 million on earnings per share of $0.17, compared to a net loss of $59 million and a loss per share of $0.02 during the year-ago period.

Excluding share-based compensation expenses and related payroll tax expenses and adjustments, earnings per share were $0.25, up 108 percent from last year.

Mobile is a critical area of Facebook's business as more Internet users migrate away from the desktop in favor of devices like smartphones and tablets. Driving advertising on mobile can be challenging for Internet companies, but Facebook has been making inroads. The mobile gains reported Wednesday show a continuation of steady mobile advertising growth since late last year.

Facebook's mobile advertising sales have risen from 23 percent of total revenue in 2012's fourth quarter, to 30 percent in 2013's first quarter, and finally to 41 percent last quarter.

"The strong results we achieved this quarter show that we're prepared for the next phase of our company, as we work to bring the next 5 billion people online and into the knowledge economy," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement, referring to the company's Internet.org campaign.

The company stands to grow its mobile advertising sales further, given the launch of products like ads on Instagram, the popular photo sharing app owned by Facebook.

Earlier this year Facebook said that building mobile products would be a focus for 2013.

Facebook also grew its monthly active users during the quarter to 1.19 billion, an increase of 18 percent compared to last year. On a monthly basis, many of the company's users -- 874 million -- are also active on mobile, according to Facebook.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Google Apps, once a leader, falls behind cloud app rivals

IDG News Service - When Google Apps arrived in 2006, it stood on the cutting edge of web-hosted email and collaboration suites for businesses, a bold pioneer clearing a path in the new, wild frontier of enterprise cloud computing.

Seven years later, complacency has diluted that innovative spirit, and Google Apps now trails competing suites from IBM, Cisco and Microsoft in areas like enterprise social networking (ESN) and unified communications (UC).

Although Google improves Apps continually, the suite's main draw remains its Gmail component, as has been the case from the beginning. But, is cloud email still enough to attract prospective customers and retain existing ones? Is Google leaving Apps vulnerable to rivals by taking its time boosting its ESN and UC capabilities?

At healthcare company Schumacher Group, Google Apps is at risk of losing its place to Microsoft's Office 365. The Lafayette, La. company uses Apps to provide email to about 3,000 independent contractor doctors and Microsoft Exchange on premises for its full-time employees.

After relying on Apps for about four years, Schumacher Group is taking a close look at Office 365, which comes with online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Office, said Schumacher CIO Douglas Menefee.

"We're evaluating Office 365 and Google Apps, and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of both products," he said. "Microsoft has made great strides with Office 365. The sleeping giant awoke two years ago."

Menefee was referring to the launch of Office 365 in 2011, when Microsoft finally released a cloud email and collaboration suite that was comparable to Google Apps. "We have seen a major shift in the maturity of Microsoft's cloud-based products," he said. "They seem to be gaining a lot of traction."

Currently, Schumacher Group uses an on-premises Lync server for unified communications, and Salesforce.com's Chatter for ESN.

Even new customers adopting Apps with unbridled enthusiasm want Google to know they expect it to continue developing the suite in innovative ways.

That's the case at Whirlpool, the home appliances giant, which recently announced plans to migrate from an IBM Lotus Notes system to Google Apps. Getting cloud email and other basic productivity functions wasn't what tilted the scales in favor of Apps.

"Email and calendaring are commodity services," said Whirlpool CIO Michael Heim. "You don't do this kind of implementation just for email and calendaring."

In fact, Whirlpool, which will deploy Google Apps to about 30,000 employees worldwide, hopes to reduce its reliance on email. "If we could make email go away, we would, because there are better ways to work, and that's what's exciting for us," he said.

Whirlpool wants to push its employees to communicate with video conferencing, to share and co-edit documents in real time and to exchange ideas in internal online communities.

Thus, he's excited about the real-time collaboration capabilities in the suite's Docs office productivity apps, and he's interested in the new Hangouts UC tool in the Google+ consumer social networking app.

Hangouts, announced in May, will replace several Google audio, video and IM tools -- including Chat, Talk and Google+ Messenger -- consolidating and improving their functions.

Heim also expects Apps to gain a native, workplace-specific ESN element in the not-too-distant future. "Bringing these social collaboration tools to the enterprise is a big reason for moving to platforms like Google Apps," he said. "We expect to see that supported and its development continued in this product."

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Google+ popularity jumps with 540M monthly users

Computerworld - Have you been using Google+ lately? If you have, you haven't been alone. According to Google, the number of monthly active users on Google+ jumped from 390 million in May to 540 million users today.

"With 540 million people active across Google each month, 300 million people active in just the stream and more than 1.5 billion photos uploaded every week, the Google+ community is growing faster than we ever could have imagined," wrote Vic Gundotra, a Google senior vice president, in a blog post. "Today's updates are our way of saying 'thank you.' We hope they save you time and help you share your story."

And in that vein, Google announced improvements to Google+ Hangouts and the photo feature that are aimed at making it easier to message, photo edit and make video calls.

For Hangouts, Google has tried to tweaked the video calling experience, making it full screen across both mobile and desktops and enhancing webcam lighting automatically.

Hangouts for Android now supports location sharing and SMS. "This way you can send a map of your current location versus finding and typing an address, and you can send and receive SMS versus switching between apps," wrote Gundotra. "Animated GIFs also play inline."

The Android app and video calling features will be available in a few days, according to Google.

Google is also moving to make it easier to save, organize, edit and share photos and videos on Google+.

Gundotra said with Google+ for iOS, users will have their photos and video automatically backed up as they take them with the addition of full-size backups and background sync.

Google also is using its expertise in search to make it easier for users to find the one photo they're looking for out of the thousands they've taken. Google+ now recognizes 1,000 different objects, including sunsets and snowmen, so users can type in a search for the photo they're looking for in their photo library.

Other photo updates include automatic enhancements, tools for editing on the go, and the ability to erase unwanted moving objects , such as a car in the background, from a photo.

This article, Google+ popularity jumps with 540M monthly users, was originally published at Computerworld.com.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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Healthcare.gov blame game goes on at House hearing

Computerworld - A federal official directly responsible for Healthcare.gov appeared Wednesday to blame a "subset" of contractors for the website's problems. In doing so, the government was refuting contractor claims that the Website's problems are the government's fault.

But ultimately, Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the agency with direct control over Healthcare.gov's development, left the blame unclear.

Speaking to the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday, Tavenner broadly defended the ability of her agency, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, to manage contracts.

In her written testimony, Tavenner said, "CMS has a track record of successfully overseeing the many contractors our programs depend on to function." That was immediately followed by: "Unfortunately, a subset of those contracts for HealthCare.gov have not met expectations."

Last week, in a House hearing, some of the top contractors involved with Healthcare.gov blamed the government for not allowing enough time for end-to-end testing prior to the Oct. 1 launch.

But was Tavenner, in her testimony, saying that a "subset of those contracts," as written by the government, were flawed, undercutting the contractors on this project? Was she saying that her agency failed to manage a subset of the contracts? Was she saying that a subset of contractors failed to live up to the terms of their contracts? Or was she somehow making all these points?

Rep. David Nunes (R-Calif.), seemed to gather from Tavenner's written testimony that the fault rested with the contractors. He asked: "In your submitted testimony, you attributed the problems to the Healthcare.gov website, to a subset of contractors, is that correct?"

"I don't think I said that it was due to a subset of contractors," said Tavenner. The problems were due issues like capacity issues, she said, adding that the agency grossly underestimated site traffic.

She also acknowledges that there were functionality issues, such as problems with creating accounts.

Nunes pressed ahead, and reminded Tavenner of testimony in August when the agency assured the committee that contractors on Healthcare.gov were meeting certain targets and milestones.

"There are two possibilities," said Nunes. "First, that the (health) exchanges were progressing fine for years, just as you repeatedly told Congress and the breakdown resulted solely from problems with a few contractors that suddenly occurred 60 days before Obamacare was open to the public." The second possibility is that "there were problems much earlier ... but you did not tell Congress about these. Which is closer to the truth?"

Tavenner said that if she remembers the questions from August as referring to one aspect of the project, the data hub, which was progressing on time and has "operated flawlessly."

The position that the government has staked out is that it was expecting some launch glitches, typical for any large launch, at Healthcare.gov, but was surprised by the problems that did surface.

The U.S. is promising to have to the site fixed by the end of November.

Tavenner's agency is overseen by the U.S. Health and Human Services department. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is due to testify Wednesday.

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed . His email address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.

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How the C-Suite Can Close the Gender Gap

CIO - The statistics for women in corporate America remain dismal. Women hold only 17 percent of senior-level positions, 12 percent of board seats and 5 percent of CEO roles. Companies need to focus on developing a more diverse talent pipeline, says Elaine Miller, a managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers who focuses on advancing women in executive careers.

Do most organizations lack a framework to drive female talent upward?

Typically they have some sort of talent management program, but where they fall short is in diversity and particularly in promoting women into the leadership pipeline. They haven't put enough attention into how to develop female talent within the organization.

This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.

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How to Find IT Talent Capable of Being Customer-Focused

CIO - Richard Thomas, CIO at Quintiles Transnational, joined the company as CTO in 2005 after successful stints at data and analytics companies Nielsen and Telephia. During his time with Quintiles, the company has experienced tremendous market change and recently moved from being a private-equity-backed company to a publicly traded one.

With a network of more than 27,000 professionals conducting business in about 100 countries, Quintiles has helped develop or commercialize all of the top 50 best-selling drugs on the market.

How did you flip the IT organization to make it one driven by revenue and market forces?

This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.

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How to score an iPad Air on Friday

Computerworld - Apple will start selling the on-an-Atkins-diet iPad Air Friday. And with the reviews positively gushing -- perhaps an understatement, with powerhouses like the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg calling it the "best tablet I've ever reviewed" -- consumer competition might get heated.

How can you get one? Let's count the ways.

Stand in line. How 2007. Or 2010. But hey, knock yourself out.

Apple's retail stores will open at 8 a.m. local time on Friday, just as they did the day the iPhone 5S and 5C went on sale in September.

Set the alarm clock, Part 1. Apple's online store will begin taking orders at 12:01 a.m. PT, 3:01 a.m. ET. Steer for this page, pick your iPad poison and click through.

Apple warned Wall Street on Monday that the also-new Retina-equipped iPad Mini, which is slated to ship later next month, may be in short supply, but said nothing similar about the iPad Air, hinting that opening-day inventory should be solid.

But you never know. Last year, the iPad Mini -- the hotter of the two new tablets -- sold out within hours online. The fourth-generation full-sized iPad went into backorder as well; by the following Monday, shipping delays had lengthened to three-to-five days.

Because the iPad Air is arguably a much more aggressive refresh -- it's 29% lighter, 20% thinner, for example -- it's smart to assume it will sell out faster to the faithful than last year's same-old-same-old fourth-gen iPad.

Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi didn't think so. "There's no reason there should be shortages," she said today of the iPad Air. "The competition for Retina-quality screens is in the smaller form factors, not the 10-in."

Research firms that have predicted shortages of the new iPad Mini have blamed low display yields.

Set the alarm clock, Part 2. The iPad Air can also be ordered for at-home delivery or in-store pickup using the Apple Store iOS app, which runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch and, naturally, the iPad. On the latter, however, the app is simply a blown-up version of the iPhone version, a complaint many have mentioned in the reviews on iTunes.

Customers stymied by an overloaded Web-based store have often turned to the Apple Store app and successfully placed an early order. One Computerworld staffer used the tactic last month to score one of the few gold iPhone 5S smartphones available on Day One.

Drive to Best Buy, or Walmart See "Stand in line."

But supplies at these Apple retail partners will, if history is any guide, be lower, much lower, than Apple's own stores. Expect a rush at Walmart, which last week said it will sell the entry-level Air for $479, or 4% under Apple's list.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Infosys says its use of B-1 visas was legitimate

IDG News Service - Indian outsourcer Infosys said its use of B-1 visas in the U.S. was for legitimate business purposes and was not designed to circumvent the requirements of the H-1B visa program.

"No criminal charges have been filed against the company and no court rulings have been issued," said Infosys, which in the third quarter derived over 61 percent of its revenue from providing low-cost services to North America.

The response from Infosys late Tuesday comes in the wake of reports that the U.S. government is planning to fine India's second-largest outsourcer about $35 million on Wednesday over the company's use of B-1 visas which are intended for short-terms visits instead of longer duration H-1B temporary work visas.

The use of workers from India on outsourcing projects has traditionally been a contentious issue, particularly as Indian outsourcers are seen as displacing U.S. workers.

Infosys said it is in the process of a resolution with the U.S., but added that "the resolution has not been finalized."

A company spokeswoman late Tuesday declined to provide further information, including whether a settlement was likely to be announced Wednesday.

"Infosys denies any claims of systemic visa fraud, misuse of visas for competitive advantage, or immigration abuse. Those claims are untrue and only unproven assertions," the company said in the statement.

Infosys announced a provision of $35 million towards "visa related matters," while announcing its earnings earlier this month. In a subsequent statement, the company clarified that the sum would include legal costs relating to a proposed resolution with U.S. agencies over their "investigation into the Company's compliance with Form I-9 requirements and past use of B-1 visas."

Form I-9s are used for verifying the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the U.S.

Infosys received in May 2011 a subpoena from a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas that required that the company provide to the grand jury certain documents and records related to its sponsorships and uses of B-1 business visas. The company said it complied with the subpoena. The company has also confirmed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had said it found errors in a significant percentage of its Forms I-9 that it had reviewed, and may impose fines and penalties on the company for the alleged errors.

Infosys came under scrutiny in the U.S. after Jack Palmer, an Infosys employee in the U.S., alleged that the company committed visa fraud and that he had faced mistreatment for questioning the practice.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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iPhone 5s battery issue could result in reduced battery life

IDG News Service - Apple is reaching out to owners of the iPhone 5s because of a manufacturing issue that could result in reduced battery life.

The problem is affecting a "very limited" number of iPhone 5s devices, Apple said. In addition to reduced battery life, the issue could also could cause longer charging times.

"We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone," an Apple spokeswoman said via email. Apple didn't elaborate on how many phones were affected and what had caused the problem.

The company, however, isn't alone in struggling with battery-related problems. Earlier this month Samsung Electronics offered some owners of its Galaxy S4 replacement batteries because the existing ones weren't able to stay charged. The company said that a limited number of users were affected, but like Apple it didn't elaborate on the actual number.

The iPhone 5s was launched  Sept. 10 and has a 64-bit processor, a new 8-megapixel camera and a fingerprint sensor. Apple sold a record-breaking 9 million units of the iPhone 5s and fellow newcomer iPhone 5c three days after their Sept. 20 launch.

In the third quarter, Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones, compared to 26.9 million during the same period in 2012. But that wasn't enough to keep up with the overall growth of the smartphone market and its unit market share dropped from 15.6% to 13.4%, according to research from Strategy Analytics. All the other vendors in the top five -- Samsung, Huawei Technologies, LG Electronics and Lenovo -- grew their respective share.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Lenovo claims battery life crown with new Yoga tablets

IDG News Service - Lenovo claims that its new Yoga tablets will offer 18 hours of battery life when browsing the web, which would be the longest when compared to other tablets.

The company's new Yoga tablets, which will come in 8-inch and 10.1-inch versions, will provide 12 to 14 hours when watching high-definition video, said Stephen Miller, Lenovo ambassador. The tablets were announced at a launch event in New York.

The battery life can be even longer if the tablets are set to low screen brightness, Miller said.

If Lenovo's claims of battery life hold up, the Yoga tablets will beat competition handily. Tablets today are at best able to squeeze up to 11 hours of battery life. The Yoga tablets have high-capacity cylindrical batteries similar to ones used in laptops, which helps prolong battery life.

The 8-inch tablet, which is priced at $249, weighs 400 grams (14.1 ounces). The 10.1-inch tablet is at $299 and weighs 603 grams (21.2 ounces). The tablets will run Android 4.2 and will be available in the U.S. on Wednesday. The company did not comment on worldwide availability.

The battery is housed in the tablet's circular base, which makes it easier to grip the device. A kick-stand allows the tablet to sit firmly on the table.

With a circular base, the Yoga tablets bears a resemblance to Notion Ink's now-defunct Adam tablet, which was one of the first Android tablets to ship when it became available in late 2010.

The Yoga tablets run on MediaTek quad-core processors with a clock speed of 1.2GHz. Both of the tablets display images at a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

Other features include a 1.6-megapixel front camera, a 5-megapixel back camera, up to 32GB of internal storage, and micro-SD card slot for expandable storage.

Lenovo has introduced a range of tablets, PCs, and hybrids in the last few years. The new products are important as buyers move away from PCs to mobile products.

"We shipped more smartphones and tablets than PCs," during the third quarter, Miller said.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Mavericks rushes onto Macs as uptake easily beats predecessor to 10% mark

Computerworld - Five days after its release, Apple's new OS X Mavericks had accumulated more usage share than the predecessor Mountain Lion did in five weeks, an ad network claimed today.

Chitika said 11.8% of all Macs accessing clients' ads from the U.S. and Canada were running Mavericks five days after its launch.

In 2012, OS X Mountain Lion needed five weeks to collect a 10.3% share of all North American Macs.

Other Web measurement firms have not corroborated Chitika's data. U.S.-based Net Applications, which breaks out desktop operating systems by versions, publicly discloses only monthly statistics, not daily numbers. Net Applications will issue its October data on Friday.

But last year, just days after Chitika portrayed Mountain Lion's share at 10%, Net Applications said its data put the OS at 20%, hinting that Chitika's recent figure may be underestimating Mavericks' uptake as well.

Unlike previous OS X upgrades, Mavericks is free to all eligible Mac owners, which included those running Mountain Lion, 2011's Lion and 2009's Snow Leopard on machines up to seven years old.

Yesterday, Apple's chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, confirmed that Mavericks will be the first in a line of free operating system upgrades for the Mac. "We're ... making Mavericks and future OS X upgrades ... free to our Mac customers," Oppenheimer said, putting an end to speculation that the Mavericks deal was a one-off (emphasis added).

By freeing Mavericks from a sticker price, Apple hopes that a larger percentage of its customer base will upgrade, reducing OS fragmentation. As in iOS, whose users typically make the newest the default within weeks, the strategy will give OS X developers a bigger target: They can assume most Macs will soon be running Mavericks, and write for that edition to take advantage of its unique features and new APIs (application programming interfaces).

Apple likes to boast about the percentage of iOS users who have upgraded to the newest edition, and did so again last week at the unveiling of new iPad tablets when CEO Tim Cook said that 64% of all iOS devices were already on iOS 7. Cook dubbed it the "biggest, fastest software upgrade ever."

"It blows away the other guys," Cook then added, not speaking the word "Android" but clearly referring to Google's mobile operating system. "It gives our users the latest software so they can enjoy the greatest features and the best-possible experience."

That makes the silence from Apple about the number of Mavericks downloads especially odd. Last year, it trumpeted the sale of 3 million copies of Mountain Lion -- at $19.99 each -- in four days.

Mac owners with suitable systems can download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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MongoDB support firm says intruders may have accessed databases

IDG News Service - MongoHQ, which provides hosting and support for the open-source Mongo database, said attackers may have accessed several of its customers' databases earlier this week.

On Monday, someone accessed an internal support application using a password that had been used for a compromised personal account, wrote Jason McCay, MongoHQ's founder.

The support application contains connection information for customer MongoDB instances, along with lists of databases, email addresses and user credentials hashed with bcrypt, a file encryption tool, McCay wrote. An audit showed that several databases may have been accessed via that support application.

"We believe we have exhausted the scope of this compromise and are directly contacting all affected customers," McCay wrote. "We are continuing to evaluate our audit logs and conducting further investigations with the help of third-party experts."

The company invalidated credentials such as IAM (Identity and Access Management) keys it stored for customers using Amazon Web Services (AWS) for backups. MongoHQ has notified AWS of the accounts that may have been affected, and AWS is offering Premium Support for organizations that need new credentials, McCay wrote.

MongoHQ, which has offices in California and Alabama, provides services to let developers create and manage NoSQL Mongo databases for their applications.

Since the breach, MongoHQ said it has reset the login credentials for its employee accounts, including email, network devices and internal applications. Employee-facing support applications have been disabled until two-factor authentication is enabled, VPN connections to those applications are enforced and employee access permissions are reviewed, McCay wrote.

In the meantime, McCay said MongoHQ is modifying its system to encrypt and decrypt data at the application level, which will mitigate possible damage from the same type of intrusion. It has also hired a security consulting firm to do a penetration test of its application stack, McCay wrote.

"Based on their recommendations, we will be hardening our applications to provide more layers of security," he wrote.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Mozilla releases 10 patches, five critical, for Firefox

IDG News Service - Mozilla released 10 patches for three versions of its Firefox browser on Tuesday, five of which are considered critical and could be used to remotely install malicious code.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warned that the problems "could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code, bypass intended access restrictions, cause a denial-of-service condition or obtain sensitive information."

The Mozilla products affected are Firefox 25, Firefox ESR 24.1, Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 17.0.10, Thunderbird 24.1, Thunderbird ESR 17.0.10, and Seamonkey 2.22.

Among the flaws fixed were several memory safety bugs in the browser engine, which is also in Mozilla's Thunderbird email client and Seamonkey, a suite of applications and web development tools.

Those bugs, tagged as update MFSA 2013-93, "showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances, and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," according to Mozilla's advisory.

The other four critical vulnerabilities could cause potentially exploitable crashes, Mozilla said.

One of the vulnerabilities given a "high" risk rating, MFSA 2013-99, could divulge information on a computer's local system. A security researcher, Cody Crews, discovered "a method to append an iframe into an embedded PDF object rendered with the chrome privileged PDF.js."

"This can used to bypass security restrictions to load local or chrome privileged files and objects within the embedded PDF object," Mozilla wrote.

In August, the TOR project warned that a vulnerability in Firefox ESR may have been used to collect information on computers visiting websites configured as TOR hidden services.

TOR, short for The Onion Router, is a system that allows for more anonymous browsing by routing encrypted requests for websites through servers worldwide. The TOR Project distributes a Browser Bundle, which includes Firefox for browsing with TOR.

The vulnerability could have facilitated the execution of remote code, but instead may have been used to collect the hostname and MAC address of Windows computers, it said. The TOR Project typically updates its browser bundle package quickly after Mozilla releases new patches.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Report: NSA breaks into Yahoo, Google data center links

IDG News Service - The U.S. National Security Agency has penetrated the main communication links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, giving it access to the accounts of hundreds of millions of people including U.S. residents, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

By tapping the links, the agency is able to collect at will a wide range of content such as metadata -- indicating the recipients of emails and when the messages were sent -- as well as actual content like text, audio and video, according to the report.

The NSA does not store all of the content permanently, but it keeps a lot, the newspaper reported, based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as well as interviews with what the Post called "knowledgeable" officials.

Through the program, millions of records are sent every day from Yahoo and Google's internal networks to data warehouses at the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, the report said. In the past 30 days alone, more than 181 million records containing various data had been processed by field collectors, according to the report.

The data links are exploited using a tool called MUSCULAR, which is operated in partnership with the NSA's British counterpart, GCHQ, the Post reported. Together, the NSA and GCHQ can copy entire data flows across fiber-optic cables carrying information between Yahoo and Google data centers, the report said.

The interception points were not disclosed.

In a statement, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said the company does not give any government access to its systems. However, the company has been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping and has encrypted more of Google's services and links as a result, he said.

"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform," he said.

The revelation constitutes the latest in a series of high-profile leaks of information about U.S. surveillance programs since the Post and the Guardian newspaper first reported the existence of a program known as Prism in June. That program allows the NSA to access data stored within the servers at major Internet companies like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Review: Mobile Web dev frameworks face off

Infoworld - The programming world is made up of virtual city-states that tend to keep to themselves. The device driver authors rarely share much code or ideas with the server app creators. The Windows hackers don't talk with the Mac programmers. It's as if some emperor decreed that Java City will always be at war with C-ville.

That reality is changing rapidly as one language, JavaScript, breaks out of its once simple life of popping up alert boxes to tell people that they needed to fill out every form field marked with a red asterisk. This is most apparent in the mobile world where more and more developers are building mobile apps with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, then bundling them with a thin, native wrapper. Sure, the JavaScript code isn't always as responsive as the pure native code, but it runs on all of the major mobile platforms -- and in your desktop browser. It's the fastest way to create cross-platform apps.

[ The InfoWorld Test Center review: 3 PhoneGap toolkits tame mobile app development | How are your HTML and JavaScript skills? Find out in InfoWorld's JavaScript IQ test and HTML5 IQ test. | Keep up with the latest developer news with InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter. ]

JavaScript is making these inroads because tablets and phones are growing incredibly powerful, at least compared to their anemic predecessors. The fifth generation of the iPad may actually be 70 times faster than the first generation at some tasks. The new tablets and phones have so much horsepower that they don't always need the speed and simplicity of native code. If the workload isn't too heavy, they can do a good job with HTML5. Why not get all of the cross-platform simplicity if it works well enough? (For more information on what happens afterward, see our review of PhoneGap and related tools.)

But smartphone programmers aren't the only ones interested. For many people, the smartphone is their main way for accessing the Internet. A larger and larger percentage of the mail I get comes with a little disclaimer at the bottom asking me to disregard any typos because it was written on an iPhone or an Android phone. (The BlackBerry keyboards never seemed to need this, for some reason.) If regular websites want to follow the crowd, they need to generate pages that look good on the tiny screen. They can't assume that everyone is reading the information on a desktop box. That means the Web designers are interested in many of the same techniques as the mobile app designers.

Reprinted with permission from InfoWorld. Story copyright 2012 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Samsung takes baby steps in touting Tizen OS to developers

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- The open source Tizen mobile operating system is one of the most visible examples that Samsung isn't completely dependent on the Android mobile OS.

At the Samsung Developer Conference here this week, Samsung held a single breakout session on developing apps using Tizen. The session was led by two engineers from Intel, which is working jointly with Samsung to create code to enable Tizen to run across multiple hardware platforms, including tablets, smartphones, cars and smart TVs.

Most of Samsung's smartphones and tablets run Android or the company's own Bada OS. In fact, Samsung is by far the largest Android smartphone maker globally, as well as the largest maker of smartphones overall, according to IDC and others.

The company makes Windows Phone smartphones as well, though a Windows Phone session wasn't among the 50 scheduled at the developer conference. Nearly all of the sessions focused on applications or services that work on Android.

Tizen has a modern Internet interface for use on devices, supporting HTML 5 and other Web technologies, so developers can theoretically write applications once to work on many devices. A Samsung roadmap for Tizen rollouts hasn't been announced.

At the Tizen session on Tuesday, two developers in the audience said they had different experiences with their early Tizen development efforts.

Developers at MightyMeeting, a maker of business collaboration applications, have been using Tizen with promising results because of its use of HTML 5 across platforms, said Mighty Meeting CEO Dmitri Tcherevik.

On the other hand, Shivakumar Mathapathi, chief operating officer at Dew Mobility, said his company tried Tizen with Windows Phone devices and found it wasn't very stable on the Microsoft mobile OS. He didn't provide any details.

Tcherevik said that Samsung's interest in Tizen demonstrates that it's "willing to try many different things" even as a large company.

Some attendees at Samsung's first developer conference said they were glad to see Samsung show off its distinctive features with Android at an event other than the Google I/O conference. Here, Samsung could separate itself from other Android smartphone and tablet makers.

A few analysts have said Samsung is going a step further in offering its own developer conference, using it as preludes into Tizen and its own Samsung app store. Further, those analysts say Samsung is clearly trying to show off its own brand of products and software and emphasize that it is not entirely dependent or aligned with Android and Google.

In an interview, Curtis Sasaki, vice president of Samsung's Media Solution Center in the U.S., said that Samsung's separate app store, its developer efforts, its interest in Tizen and other moves are "not about forking Android or any of that stuff ... Android is big enough and continuing to grow. If we can continue to grow that ecosystem, then that's good for everybody."

"Google is a great partner of ours. Our job as a platform provider is to really help developers take advantage of core applications," Sasaki added.

Abe Elias, chief technical officer at Sencha, a Web application developer, praised Samsung for supporting Tizen and HTML 5.

Sencha uses HTML 5 to provide cross-platform applications to many large companies. There are 2 million registered developers using Sencha's tools.

"We're a huge fan of Tizen, and HTML is native in Tizen," Elias said in an interview. One reason application developers should support HTML 5 for making Web apps is to avoid the 30% fee charged by app stores to host a native app, he said.

Elias agreed that Samsung isn't trying to fork Android, but noted that the company has been separating itself from Google with a number of forked apps that ride atop of Android. For example, Google uses the Chrome browser with Android, while Samsung's browser is simply called Internet. Also, while Google has Hangouts, Samsung has Chat-On.

"Samsung's forking apps, not Android," he said.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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Security concerns prompt subpoena for Healthcare.gov data

Computerworld - A U.S. House committee chairman, citing security concerns, today ordered a Healthcare.gov contractor to provide detailed information about its work on the project.

Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman, Tuesday issued a subpoena for Quality Software Services Inc.'s contract with the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) to work on the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) website.

The subpoena also orders QSSI to disclose how much it has been paid so far for its work on the project for the project, along with details about all Healthcare.gov-related internal communications and that between the company and workers at HHS and the White House.

Issa said he issued the subpoena after QSSI failed to voluntarily hand the information after it was asked for it by the committee last week.

QSSI did not respond to a request for comment on the subpoena.

"It is crucial that you provide information quickly because of the serious concerns about data security related to the lack of testing," Issa said in a letter sent to QSSI and 10 other Healthcare.gov contractors on October 23. "This lack of testing is concerning due to the amount of sensitive consumer information flowing through the data hub and exchanges."

QSSI is responsible for building Healthcare.gov's core Data Hub, which is designed to support ACA health exchanges. The hub is operated by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and is designed to let healthcare marketplaces quickly verify the eligibility of individuals seeking insurance coverage.

Healthcare.gov's Data Hub doesn't store data, it's designed to connect insurance exchanges with federal databases at various government agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs.

QSSI also oversees the testing of software code developed by other Healthcare.gov contractors and last week signed a contract to be the general contractor in charge of fixing glitches that have plagued the site since it went live on Oct. 1.

Issa said that QSSI's first-hand knowledge of the design and implementation of the Data Hub could help committee members better understand the decisions that went into building the website.

The subpoena is the latest sign of a growing unease over the security controls in Healthcare.gov. Though the site does not store much personal data, critics fear that it could nonetheless expose users to identity theft and other types of fraud.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan, or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His email address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.

Read more about Gov't Legislation/Regulation in Computerworld's Gov't Legislation/Regulation Topic Center.

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