williewmsyouthfdn.com

Although it does increase the surface area, Google notes it brings some security features of its own, particularly for those running IE6. “Accessing sites using Google Chrome Frame brings Google Chrome’s security features to Internet Explorer users, providing strong phishing and malware protection (absent in IE6), robust sandboxing technology, and defenses from emerging online threats that are available in days rather than months,” Google said.

In addition to reiterating the security risks associated with running what she called “a browser within a browser,” Barzdukas said that using Chrome Frame also interferes with the private-browsing and clear-browser-history features within Internet Explorer 8.

The software maker, in a statement, said users are better off moving to a later version of Internet Explorer if they want the latest technology as opposed to using Chrome Frame.

Google plans to use Chrome Frame to, among other things, allow people to run Google Wave from within Internet Explorer.

Update 3:20 p.m. PT: Google offered up a statement on its own, explaining its thinking behind Chrome Frame.

“Microsoft scared of security of plug-ins. Uninstall Silverlight now,” Mozilla’s Dion Almaer wrote in a Twitter posting.

(Credit:
Google)

“If you are a user of IE6, you should get off IE6, not install another add-on,” she said. “It just compounds your problem.”

“Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that is currently in an early developer release and was designed with security in mind from the beginning,” Google said. “While we encourage users to use a more modern and standards compliant browser such as Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome rather than a plug-in, for those who don’t, Google Chrome Frame is designed to provide better performance, strong security features, and more choice to both developers and users, across all versions of Internet Explorer.”

Barzdukas also rejected the notion that it offers a good option for those still using Internet Explorer 6.

Update, 12:35 p.m. PT: I had a chance to chat with Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE.

Microsoft on Thursday lashed out against Google Chrome Frame–an Internet Explorer plug-in that supplants IE’s rendering engine with Google’s.

However, some took Microsoft to task for criticizing plug-ins, noting that Redmond itself has more than a few.

“With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,” Microsoft said. “Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.”

Google announced Chrome Frame on Tuesday, saying it can be used with Internet Explorer 6, IE7, or IE8 to use Chrome to render Web pages and execute their JavaScript programs. To work, users have to install the plug-in and Web developers must insert a line of code onto their Web sites that engages Chrome Frame when a person visits the site.

“That is not made clear,” Barzdukas said. “That is a trade-off that customers would really want to make with eyes wide open.”

77 percent of survey respondents reported greater hardware utilization rates through Linux virtualization, versus 56 percent of Windows users. Those who standardize on Linux find Linux virtualization much more manageable (62 percent) than Windows administrators who standardize on Windows virtualization (48 percent). More telling, four times as many Windows standardizers (23 percent) find Windows virtualization hard to manage than the Linux standardizers, only 6 percent of whom find Linux virtualization hard to manage. Linux translates into higher server utilization and, hence, less power consumption and more physical space: 59 percent of Linux administrators disagreed with the “We are rapidly running out of data center electrical capacity” statement, compared to 38 percent of Windows administrators. When presented with the statement “We are rapidly running out of data center floor space”, 60 percent of Linux administrators disagreed versus 45 percent of Windows administrators.

There are also licensing differences that bear directly on comparative costs. With Microsoft, users who don’t have volume agreements or who haven’t purchased the more expensive Enterprise or Datacenter editions will have to purchase licenses for every system and each of the virtual machines running on those systems. Linux, on the other hand, can be essentially free, meaning that companies can deploy it on multiple systems or in virtual machines at no cost.

(Credit:
Gabriel Consulting Group)

Microsoft has it in its power to turn the tide relative to Linux’s superior virtualization TCO, and it probably has little to do with the cost of Windows Server, and certainly not with the cost of its Hyper-V virtualization technology, which is now $0.00.

Perhaps the primary reason is that Microsoft didn’t really start to promote virtualization until long after the Linux crowd. This isn’t surprising: Microsoft has much to lose from virtualization. The fewer Windows server licenses an enterprise has to buy, the worse it is for Microsoft.

There are other benefits to those who primarily adopt, or standardize on, Linux, as the report suggests:

It’s an interesting conclusion, but leads to an even more interesting question: why don’t Windows administrators take advantage of virtualization to the same extent as Linux administrators? The answer–licensing cost and complexity–is something that Microsoft has the ability, but not the interest, to change.

While the survey also lists the benefits of source code access to Linux administrators, I suspect that this is of minimal value to the big majority of Linux adopters. Very few will care to “get intimate with the code,” to use the report’s language, preferring instead to stick to the more tangible (and easily accessed) cost savings from Linux virtualization.

Microsoft has now jumped into the virtualization market with both feet, giving its Hyper-V product away for free…but not really. Indeed, it is the pricing strategy Microsoft has for its servers that may go furthest in explaining its lack of appeal to Windows users, as noted in Gabriel Consulting Group’s report:

According to the survey, enterprises that predominantly use Linux virtualize roughly 30 percent more than those that prefer Windows, and heavier virtualization users do so much more aggressively on Linux systems than on Windows:

The survey’s author reports that “Linux users have clearly both adopted virtualization at a greater rate and embraced it to a greater extent than customers who have standardized on Microsoft operating systems,” but why?

Linux vs. Windows: Virtualization Trends

Virtualization may offer a significant advantage to Linux in the decade-old debate over Linux vs. Windows total cost of ownership (TCO). A new Gabriel Consulting Group survey (PDF) of mostly mixed-environment (that is, Windows and Linux) enterprises reveals significantly higher adoption of virtualization technology, with all the cost savings that go with it: less money spent on hardware and licensing fees.

Rather, it’s likely a matter of simplifying its famously Byzantine pricing, and making Windows Server licensing friendlier to virtualization. For example, Microsoft doesn’t allow migration of its products to a new physical server more than once every 90 days. This may ensure customers buy licenses with fewer restrictions, but it also appears to mean they simply buy fewer Microsoft licenses, period.

Given that commercial Linux isn’t free, Microsoft doesn’t need to make Windows free to make its Hyper-V virtualization more competitive with Linux virtualization. Simplification, it seems, would go quite far toward the goal of making Windows virtualization more palatable.

While enterprises could realize even bigger cost savings by simply using free Linux versus paid Windows, most enterprises will buy commercial support for Linux through Red Hat, Novell, or Canonical. Even factoring in this cost, however, Linux seems to lend itself more readily to virtualization and, hence, to cost savings that result therefrom.

One big thing Google is bringing to the table with this release over something like Apple’s iPhoto (at least for Mac users) is the capability to tag items that are spread out across your entire computer, as well as external drives. In that regard, it does a much better job than iPhoto when it comes to automatically importing and organizing photos–all without disturbing where they’re stored. Considering it now does much of what iPhoto is able to do with faces, with the added bonus of grabbing that contact information from your Google address book, it makes for a very seamless experience.

The new version of the software should appear as an update for users of Picasa v3.1 the next time they start the program. It can also be forced to update by clicking the “check for updates online” option in the help menu.

Picasa's software can now scan for faces, and offer up recommendations of people it thinks are your contacts.

Just as it does on the Web, Picasa scans your photos for faces, then groups together photos of specific people. It’s then your job to tell it who they are as well as confirm its guesses. If someone you’re tagging is in your Google address book, you can also look them up very quickly with auto-complete. Otherwise, Google gives you the option to add them as someone new; this information then gets synced back up your Google address book.

The system worked very well for me, but it was slow going. I had to leave the program running overnight for it to finish processing my 3,700 or so photos for faces. It also had my processor humming, since it was doing all the work on my machine instead of Google’s giant server farm.

(Credit:
CNET)

Roughly a year after rolling out facial recognition on its Picasa Web Albums site, Google on Tuesday is introducing an updated version of its Picasa software (for Windows | Mac) that can recognize faces in photos stored on users’ computers.

(Credit:
CNET)

That’s not to say Google hasn’t included a few things to help speed up the process. For one, if you’ve got photos that are both hosted online and on your hard drive–and that have already been scanned for faces, the Picasa software can grab that information and add it to your local library. This saves it from having to scan the same photos twice.

Users can now geotag their photos right in the Picasa, just like they can in Picasa Web Albums.

Along with facial recognition, the new version of the software integrates Google Maps–a much-wanted feature among geotagging fans. Just as you’re able to do in Picasa Web Albums, you can search for a location in Google Maps, then amend that geographic data to your photo. You can also view groups of photos by place by clicking on little red map markers that show where individual photos have been placed. Unlike the facial recognition feature though, this is still largely a manual process of doing a search for each location then adding it to a photo, or group of photos, at once. That is, unless you have a camera with GPS (which most people don’t).

As with Picasa Web Albums, your reward for trudging through your photos to add tags is better organization, which for a massive library of old, archived shots can be hugely helpful. And unlike Picasa’s albums feature, name tags let you quickly sort all of your photos by who’s in them–not when they were taken or how you’ve personally organized them. It also continues to do this with any photos you add to your library in the future.

And for photos it thinks contain people you’ve verified as contacts, it gives you quick “yes” and “no” buttons that can add or reject name tags. Oftentimes, clicking “yes” adds a few more suggestions for photos of that person that the program feels is safe enough to recommend. There’s also a way to group accept or group decline its suggestions, which saves time you would have otherwise spent clicking the buttons one at a time.

Previously: Revamped Google Picasa site identifies photo faces

Now, Article One is formally launching its service, and attacking what it said is a $1 billion market in fighting potentially invalid patents.

(Credit:
Article One Partners)

But again, because official patent investigators have only so much mental bandwidth, it is simply not possible for them to come up with the evidence themselves that can help out companies like RIM.

That’s where Article One feels it can make a difference in stopping patent trolls from trying to make fortunes by suing companies for infringement.

There are some solutions in the works, including Peer-to-Patent, a nonprofit system that would spread out the investigative work to a wide ecosystem of subject-matter experts. But clearly, some believe there’s money to be made by putting some of this work–at least when it comes to invalidating patent applications or even approved ones–in the hands of a large community.

An example of featured patent studies that Article One Partners has put out to its adviser community to help research.

So, in a case like that, a company would put in a request for research on Article One, at which point the advisers can respond with supporting evidence. And the company said it is paying out as much as 5 percent of its profits to the advisers, who are paid if their work helps to invalidate a patent.

The company’s model is to farm out potentially invalidating research to a community of “advisers,” all of whom can get paid for doing research that makes a difference in investigating applications or existing patents. The company has had its system in beta for about a year and it said that a third of the research done by its advisers has resulted in invalidating evidence.

According to information provided on stage at DemoFall 09 here Wednesday by a company called Article One Partners, as much as 45 percent of all litigated patents are eventually found to be invalid. But the U.S. Patent Office is obviously overwhelmed by the sheer workload it faces, and its investigators’ inability to keep up with the research that would help them reject many applications.

It aims to incentivize its advisers by paying them as much as $50,000 to do research and write up sophisticated studies. And this can be deeply valuable work, the company argued. For example, it said, even though RIM paid out more than $600 million to settle an infringement lawsuit, the patents in question were subsequently found to be invalid.

SAN DIEGO–It’s been very clear for a long time that the American patent system is deeply flawed.

If it works on a broad scale, this seems like an extremely important addition to the patent landscape, though certainly not the only one. But as is abundantly clear, the system is broken and needs as much help as it can get, regardless of whether it’s nonprofit or profit-based. And given how valuable such work is to large companies, there’s definitely a lot of money at stake.

Since smart-grid technologies rely on a steady flow of information, Cisco expects that utilities will need to invest in more sophisticated IT systems, said Mark Weiner director of Data Center Solutions and a member of a Cisco smart-grid team.

“We’ll start seeing a significant impact (in data centers) in five years because the moment you start using meters, the data’s coming in,” Weiner said.

Cisco is certainly not the only tech company that’s targeting the utility industry and stimulus money dedicated to the smart grid. The large IT suppliers–IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft–have long had offerings geared specifically for the utility industry.

Duke Energy contracted with Cisco to build an “information architecture” to handle an anticipated flood of data from its smart-grid programs where it will be installing hundreds of thousands of smart meters in the next two years. Duke Chief Technology Officer David Mohler said last month that gathering data from sensors on cables, people’s appliances, and substations could add up to a million nodes on the network.

The tech giant is developing a suite of smart-grid products designed to add networking smarts to the existing grid, including routers for substations and home energy-monitoring systems. But a large chunk of the $20 billion per year in smart-grid spending that Cisco anticipates is in traditional data centers.

Cisco is betting that utilities are more likely to invest in new data centers than new power plants in the coming years.

The number of smart meters in the U.S. is projected to grow from about 8 million units installed, or about 6 percent of all meters this year, to 13.6 million installed next year and to over 33 million in 2011. Utilities will also need to upgrade their computing infrastructure so that their systems for controlling the delivery of electricity can talk with other applications, such as billing, Weiner said.

But even with millions of dollars available, building out the smart grid–and smart-grid data centers–will likely take years.

If utilities are regulated to reduce peak-time usage, their IT needs shoot up even higher. Demand response, where a utility can turn down energy use at participating customer sites, requires utilities to poll information regularly from a potential large number of locations.

“The requirements are for huge amounts of data to be involved when you have these more advanced pricing models where the goal is to mitigate power generation,” said Weiner. “The catcher’s mitt for that data is the data center.”

By cutting peak-time usage, utilities can avoid turning on auxiliary “peaker plants” to supply electricity on a given day or, potentially, avoid building new power plants to meet growing demand.

Cisco is involved in a handful of smart-grid pilot programs, including projects in Amsterdam and Miami, where it is providing networking gear that transmits information from people’s homes and the electricity grid back to utilities.

Once utilities put in smart meters, their data processing and storage needs explode. Instead of sending a person to read meters once a month, information for billing or other applications can be sent back once a day, once an hour, or even every few minutes.

Images: The many faces of the smart grid

Fitbit uses a 3D motion sensor like the one in Nintendo's Wii to track everything from calories burned to minutes slept.

Perhaps most exciting of all is that Fitbit will now help each of us understand objectively how vigorously we engage in such activities as laughing, having sex, popping open that bottle of champagne, etc. Will Fitbit users suddenly do these activities more vigorously to maximize caloric output? This little gadget could be a far more romantic gift than current marketing suggests.

The math is easy, sure. But never before has a device tracked so many aspects of an individual’s physical movements to measure overall wellness. From caloric intake to activity levels (sedentary, lightly active, fairly active, and very active), Fitbit clips onto clothing or straps around one’s wrist and uses a 3D motion sensor similar to the one in Nintendo’s Wii to measure multiple aspects of one’s physical self.

And much in the way services like Quicken encourage people to measure whether they are living within their means, Fitbit’s Web site analyzes all this data and allows users to input goals. The device costs $99 plus shipping.

(Credit:
Fitbit)

Amount of steps you took today: 3,451. Miles traveled: 1.4. Calories burned: 348. Calories consumed: 625. Then you went to bed at 12:05 a.m. Time to fall asleep: 23 minutes. Times awakened: 25. You were in bed for 8 hours 2 minutes. Actual sleep time: 7 hours 42 minutes.

The iPhone’s worldwide market share jumped from 33 percent to 40 percent over February to August, according to AdMob’s “August Mobile Metrics Report,” which tracked smartphone usage for that six-month period. AdMob, which serves ads for mobile Web sites and apps, bases its numbers on data from ad requests, impressions, and clicks.

With the launch of the Pre, Palm’s WebOS has also taken off, grabbing a 4 percent slice of the smartphone market in August.

Phones running Google’s Android OS picked up a 7 percent market share by August versus only 2 percent in February, thanks to rapid gains in North America and Western Europe, said AdMob. Since its debut this summer, T-Mobile’s Android-powered MyTouch has been a top seller in both of those regions.

Top smartphones across the world

The global share for Nokia’s Symbian OS fell from 43 percent in February to 34 percent in August. However, Nokia smartphones remain hot sellers, accounting for 12 of the top 20 smartphones tracked by AdMob. Nokia’s N97 and 5800 XpressMusic units were the fourth and fifth most popular smartphones in the U.K. for August.

Research In Motion’s slice of the market dropped slightly from 10 percent in February to 8 percent in August. Still, RIM’s Blackberry devices accounted for three of the top 20 smartphones around the world. The Palm OS, running on older units such as the Centro, declined in share from 3 percent in February to 1 percent in August.

(Credit: AdMob)

Apple’s iPhone and Android-based smartphones have both seen solid growth throughout the world this year, says a report released Wednesday by AdMob.

On the downside, older smartphone systems have witnessed a drop in market share, according to AdMob.

(Credit: AdMob)

Finally, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile also lost share, falling from 7 percent in February to 4 percent in August, according to the report.

AdMob sells and tracks ads on mobile Web pages and applications to more than 7,000 publishers. The company compiled the data for this report based on its analysis of more than 10 billion monthly ad requests from over 160 different countries.

“With Exchange, we don’t give them any kind of technology ultimatum,” Jha said. “We don’t say ‘Thou shalt move to the cloud.’ ”

Microsoft has shifted its priorities, though. Unlike past versions of Exchange, Microsoft developed Exchange 2010 as a service first, and only later has it done the work on the server product. That server product, which has been in testing for some time and reached the beta stage in April, is now ready in a near-final “release candidate” form.

In an interview on Monday, Jha said that, although many see the rise of services as more of a benefit to companies like Google, he sees it as an opportunity for his business.

Microsoft's Rajesh Jha, shown here in his office earlier this year, says the shift from a world of servers to a world of services need not spell trouble for the Exchange business.

The fact that many customers are shifting from running their own e-mail servers to getting mail as a hosted service doesn’t have to spell doom for Microsoft, insists Rajesh Jha, the man who heads the Exchange business.

Jha acknowledged, though, that competition for the in-box is definitely heating up.

“It is where people spend more of their hours,” Jha said. “It’s become a real critical part of the day. Our competitors are smart. They see it too.”

In a year in which many software businesses–including a number within Microsoft–took a hit, the Exchange business continued to grow last year, Jha said, saying that revenue for the product nearly hit $2 billion and has 70 percent market share among corporate users.

Sounding a familiar refrain, Jha said that he expects customers to warm to Microsoft’s strategy, which lets them have the option of running Exchange themselves or purchasing it as a subscription hosted service.

Among its features is one that lets users “mute” an e-mail thread that they are no longer interested in being part of.

Jha reiterated that the final version of Exchange 2010 should be done later this year.

“I feel pretty good about how we are tracking,” he said, noting that half of Microsoft’s in-boxes–some 80,000–are now on the new version of Exchange. ”
We’ll definitely be ready this year.”

In addition to Google, IBM continues to push its Lotus Domino/Notes combination while Cisco has said it will have a Linux-based e-mail offering based on last year’s Postpath acquisition.

(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET)

“I feel we will grow our share overall with the move to services,” Jha said. In particular, Jha said that Microsoft has a better option for small and midsize businesses than it did when its only option was for those companies to run their own Exchange servers. “I think we have a huge opportunity for growth. I don’t think we are in a defensive position at all.”

The struggling auto giant held a media event to offer an update on its product and technology plans as it tries to stimulate sales following a bankruptcy and restructuring that has left it 60 percent owned by the U.S. Treasury Department and 11 percent owned by Canada.

The car will qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit and GM is working on bringing down the cost of future generations of the Volt, particularly the battery system, he said.

Other plug-in electric sedans are also expected to have triple-digit fuel efficiency once they come to market. The all-electric Tesla Motors’ Roadster, which is available now, advertises triple-digit fuel economy as well.

Henderson said that GM is confident that the combined highway and city mileage for the Chevy Volt, due to go on sale in late 2010, will be in the triple digits. Expressed in electrical terms, the performance will be 25 kilowatt-hours for 100 miles.

The 230 mpg–teased in a stealth advertising campaign on billboards and during baseball games–is based on a draft methodology for electric vehicles developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, GM CEO Fritz Henderson said here.

On the cost of the car itself, Henderson said that GM has not priced the Volt but that it will be expensive because it is a first-generation product. Unconfirmed estimates are said to be around $40,000.

WARREN, Mich.–The gas-electric Chevy Volt will get triple-digit mileage, including an estimated 230 mpg for city driving, General Motors said Tuesday.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson at company’s Tech Center in Warren, Mich.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET)

The cost of fueling a Volt will be significantly less than gassing up at the pump, Henderson said. In Detroit, where off-peak electricity rates are 5 cents a kilowatt hours, it will cost about 40 cents to recharge batteries overnight.

“Having a car that gets triple-digit fuel economy, we believe, will be a game changer for us,” Henderson said.

The EPA model is being developed for cars used in different climates and a mix of electric and gas driving conditions, GM executives said. City mileage will be better for the Volt because the extended-range electric power train runs for 40 miles on battery alone and then uses an internal combustion engine to recharge batteries.

Microsoft says “There’s plenty of innovation in the pipeline” for Windows Mobile. For those of us who haven’t considered a Windows-based phone since the iPAQ’s decline, the real question is, “If Microsoft has an innovative Windows Mobile experience, why is the company keeping it such a secret?”

But Windows Mobile? It’s lame.

Seriously, where has Microsoft been on mobile? It’s a market that the best companies in the software industry are targeting, including Google and Apple, but Microsoft seems to be AWOL. CNET’s Ina Fried notes some wishful thinking on Microsoft’s part to get back in the smartphone game, but I’m not seeing it.

As Morrissey used to croon for The Smiths, “How soon is now?”

Microsoft is fond of talking about just how much it spends on research and development. But it’s time to stop talking and start shipping. I’ve heard rumors of an exceptional mobile product on the way from Microsoft, but that’s all I ever hear: something “in the cooker” that will “rock the world soon!”

Yes, Microsoft is now partnering with Nokia to up its mobile game, but ZDNet’s Larry Dignan is spot on calling this a “dog of a deal born from weakness,” not strength.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

This despite advertising, computing, and (of course) communications moving to mobile devices. What has Microsoft been thinking? Or not thinking, as the case may be?

Perhaps that is why Microsoft’s smartphone market share has now dipped below 10 percent and shows no sign of resurrection.

This isn’t about open source versus proprietary software. It’s about focus, something that Microsoft seems not to have given mobile in a long, long time. Steve Ballmer was willing to spend roughly $45 billion on Yahoo to compete in search, but has managed only a $500 million acquisition of Danger to compete in mobile.

What Microsoft needs is to innovate. Or at least to copy someone else’s innovations. But it appears to be doing neither. This is inexcusable for a company with its resources and development talent. Microsoft is a great company, one that occasionally turns an industry on its head, as it has with SharePoint to the stodgy Enterprise Content Management market.

This isn’t a demand that Microsoft miraculously achieve mobile perfection. Heck, the iPhone has taught us that, great as it is, “good enough” is more than good enough (e.g., it comes with an underpowered camera…that everyone seems to use).

As Mark Sigal highlights, Google is approaching mobile with an open approach; Apple is winning with a closed approach; and Microsoft? Well, Microsoft seems to still think the phone is a PDA, with little innovation (closed or open) that would trouble a consumer to bother buying a Windows-powered mobile device.