Google finally will replace Google Gears with application based on HTML5 script. The following is the detailed news from eWeek:
Google Gears is the search giant's innovative technology for enabling offline applications. However, toward the end of 2009, Google announced that it was lessening its focus on Gears in lieu of support for HTML5, which provides Gears' offline capability and a lot more.
In a Feb. 19 blog post entitled "Hello HTML5," Ian Fette of the Google Gears team, said:
"If you've wondered why there haven't been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it's because we've shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into Web standards like HTML5. We're not there yet, but we are getting closer. In January we shipped a new version of Google Chrome that natively supports a Database API similar to the Gears database API, workers (both local and shared, equivalent to workers and cross-origin workers in Gears), and also new APIs like Local Storage and Web Sockets. Other facets of Gears, such as the LocalServer API and Geolocation, are also represented by similar APIs in new standards and will be included in Google Chrome shortly."
Resource Library:
Obviously the move is not trivial, particularly with a specification that is still evolving, such as HTML5. Indeed, added Fette: "We realize there is not yet a simple, comprehensive way to take your Gears-enabled application and move it (and your entire userbase) over to a standards-based approach. We will continue to support Gears until such a migration is more feasible, but this support will be necessarily constrained in scope."
In an interview with eWEEK, Dylan Schiemann, CEO of SitePen and a vocal advocate for the open Web, said, "I believe that with projects like Chrome Frame, and HTML5 native support in Firefox, Safari and Opera, Gears served its purpose in moving the open web forward. Gears was an important experiment on new ideas for making browsers better for things that were not possible in JS, at a time when browser vendors were afraid to implement features that had not yet been standardized."
Meanwhile, Fette explains Google's moves in pulling back additional support for Gears, while specifying what will be supported.
"We will not be investing resources in active development of new features," Fette said in his post. "Likewise, there are some platforms that would require a significant engineering effort to support due to large architectural changes. Specifically, we cannot support Gears in Safari on OS X Snow Leopard and later. Support for Gears in Firefox (including 3.6, which will be supported shortly) and Internet Explorer will continue."
However, a former Google engineer familiar with the project, said, "I think Gears is dead and being superseded by Chrome and Chrome Frame. All of the people I know from the Gears team are working on Chrome."
The former Googler, who asked for anonymity, added: "If you look at the Gears blog you will see that Gears' support has not been a priority. The tech leads are on to other things. One is on Google Voice; the other is on Chrome Extensions. Ever since Chrome the bet has been moved to WebKit and putting all of the effort there. Gears may trickle along, but HTML5 has all of the features from it basically, so as soon as browsers support them Gears can die."
And die it will. Added Fette to summarize his post:
"Looking back, Gears has helped us deliver much-desired functionality, such as the ability to offer offline access in Gmail, to a large number of users. Long term, we expect that as browsers support an increasing amount of this functionality natively and as users upgrade to more capable browsers, applications will make a similar migration. If you haven't already, you will want to take a look at the latest developments in Web browsers and the functionality many now provide, reach out with questions and consider how you can use these in your Web applications. Gears has taken us the first part of the way; now we're excited to see browsers take us the rest of the way."
Meanwhile, some observers view the issue as strictly evolutionary and not a matter of Gears versus HTML5. A prominent supporter of the open Web and a key developer of various well-known, standards-based Web technologies, told eWEEK:
"The word 'versus' strikes me as odd. Gears predates a lot of the APIs that are taking up equivalent functionality in HTML5 and the experience with Gears informed (and continues to inform) many of the discussions around HTML5 API designs. For instance, AppCache is a simpler-to-use version of the Gears manifest-driven app capture. As close observers have noted, the Chrome and WebKit teams are working hard to implement HTML5 features and get them deployed. Gears represented a good way to introduce new features fast. HTML5 is the standardization and maturation of many of those features. This is what the market for renderer features looks like when it's working. Nothing 'versus' about it."
This industry insider—who because of his position at a competing organization asked for anonymity—added that the move to HTML5 could actually be better for offline Web applications. However, "there aren't very many of them [offline apps]. Fewer still built by companies whose names aren't 'Google.' So it's either neutral to positive. I'm going to go with 'positive.' A standard allows people to build without fear, and multiple browsers are implementing AppCache. That's a good thing, and frankly the best-case outcome of the Gears experiment."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Patriotic Hackers from two Chinese Schools
SAN FRANCISCO — A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.
Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.
Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.
The revelations were shared by the contractor at a meeting of computer security specialists.
The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
Jiaotong has one of China’s top computer science programs. Just a few weeks ago its students won an international computer programming competition organized by I.B.M. — the “Battle of the Brains” — beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities.
Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated.
“We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
Spokesmen for the Chinese schools said they had not heard that American investigators had traced the Google attacks to their campuses.
If it is true, “We’ll alert related departments and start our own investigation,” said Liu Yuxiang, head of the propaganda department of the party committee at Jiaotong University in Shanghai.
But when asked about the possibility, a leading professor in Jiaotong’s School of Information Security Engineering said in a telephone interview: “I’m not surprised. Actually students hacking into foreign Web sites is quite normal.” The professor, who teaches Web security, asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
“I believe there’s two kinds of situations,” the professor continued. “One is it’s a completely individual act of wrongdoing, done by one or two geek students in the school who are just keen on experimenting with their hacking skills learned from the school, since the sources in the school and network are so limited. Or it could be that one of the university’s I.P. addresses was hijacked by others, which frequently happens.”
At Lanxiang Vocational, officials said they had not heard about any possible link to the school and declined to say if a Ukrainian professor taught computer science there.
A man named Mr. Shao, who said he was dean of the computer science department at Lanxiang but refused to give his first name, said, “I think it’s impossible for our students to hack Google or other U.S. companies because they are just high school graduates and not at an advanced level. Also, because our school adopts close management, outsiders cannot easily come into our school.”
Mr. Shao acknowledged that every year four or five students from his computer science department were recruited into the military.
Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Executives at Google have said little about the intrusions and would not comment for this article. But the company has contacted computer security specialists to confirm what has been reported by other targeted companies: access to the companies’ servers was gained by exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser.
Forensic analysis is yielding new details of how the intruders took advantage of the flaw to gain access to internal corporate servers. They did this by using a clever technique — called man-in-the-mailbox — to exploit the natural trust shared by people who work together in organizations.
After taking over one computer, intruders insert into an e-mail conversation a message containing a digital attachment carrying malware that is highly likely to be opened by the second victim. The attached malware makes it possible for the intruders to take over the target computer. (source: John Markoff -NYT)
They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.
Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.
Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.
The revelations were shared by the contractor at a meeting of computer security specialists.
The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
Jiaotong has one of China’s top computer science programs. Just a few weeks ago its students won an international computer programming competition organized by I.B.M. — the “Battle of the Brains” — beating out Stanford and other top-flight universities.
Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated.
“We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
Spokesmen for the Chinese schools said they had not heard that American investigators had traced the Google attacks to their campuses.
If it is true, “We’ll alert related departments and start our own investigation,” said Liu Yuxiang, head of the propaganda department of the party committee at Jiaotong University in Shanghai.
But when asked about the possibility, a leading professor in Jiaotong’s School of Information Security Engineering said in a telephone interview: “I’m not surprised. Actually students hacking into foreign Web sites is quite normal.” The professor, who teaches Web security, asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
“I believe there’s two kinds of situations,” the professor continued. “One is it’s a completely individual act of wrongdoing, done by one or two geek students in the school who are just keen on experimenting with their hacking skills learned from the school, since the sources in the school and network are so limited. Or it could be that one of the university’s I.P. addresses was hijacked by others, which frequently happens.”
At Lanxiang Vocational, officials said they had not heard about any possible link to the school and declined to say if a Ukrainian professor taught computer science there.
A man named Mr. Shao, who said he was dean of the computer science department at Lanxiang but refused to give his first name, said, “I think it’s impossible for our students to hack Google or other U.S. companies because they are just high school graduates and not at an advanced level. Also, because our school adopts close management, outsiders cannot easily come into our school.”
Mr. Shao acknowledged that every year four or five students from his computer science department were recruited into the military.
Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Executives at Google have said little about the intrusions and would not comment for this article. But the company has contacted computer security specialists to confirm what has been reported by other targeted companies: access to the companies’ servers was gained by exploiting a previously unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser.
Forensic analysis is yielding new details of how the intruders took advantage of the flaw to gain access to internal corporate servers. They did this by using a clever technique — called man-in-the-mailbox — to exploit the natural trust shared by people who work together in organizations.
After taking over one computer, intruders insert into an e-mail conversation a message containing a digital attachment carrying malware that is highly likely to be opened by the second victim. The attached malware makes it possible for the intruders to take over the target computer. (source: John Markoff -NYT)
Monday, February 15, 2010
This is the culprit Hacker that hacked Google Blogger.com
; This data is provided by China Springboard Inc.
; for information purposes, and to assist persons obtaining information
; about or related to domain name registration records.
; China Springboard Inc. does not guarantee its accuracy.
; By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data
; only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances, you will
; use this data to
; 1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
; unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via E-mail
; (spam); or
; 2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply
; to this WHOIS server.
; These terms may be changed without prior notice.
; By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.
DomainName : hollything.com
RSP: China Springboard Inc.
URL: http://www.namerich.cn
Name Server: NS2.UKNETHOST.RU
Name Server: NS1.ALLDNSHOST.COM
Name Server: NS2.ALLDNSHOST.COM
Name Server: NS1.UKNETHOST.RU
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Creation Date: 2009-12-07
Expiration Date: 2010-12-07
Last Update Date: 2010-02-14
Registrant Name: zhang cheng
Registrant Organization: zhang cheng
Registrant Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Registrant City: beijing
Registrant Province/State: beijing
Registrant Country Code: CN
Registrant Postal Code: 102542
Registrant Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Registrant Fax: +86.01045263256
Registrant Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Administrative Name: zhang cheng
Administrative Organization: zhang cheng
Administrative Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Administrative City: beijing
Administrative Province/State: beijing
Administrative Country Code: CN
Administrative Postal Code: 102542
Administrative Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Administrative Fax: +86.01045263256
Administrative Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Billing Name: zhang cheng
Billing Organization: zhang cheng
Billing Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Billing City: beijing
Billing Province/State: beijing
Billing Country Code: CN
Billing Postal Code: 102542
Billing Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Billing Fax: +86.01045263256
Billing Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Technical Name: zhang cheng
Technical Organization: zhang cheng
Technical Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Technical City: beijing
Technical Province/State: beijing
Technical Country Code: CN
Technical Postal Code: 102542
Technical Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Technical Fax: +86.01045263256
Technical Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
; for information purposes, and to assist persons obtaining information
; about or related to domain name registration records.
; China Springboard Inc. does not guarantee its accuracy.
; By submitting a WHOIS query, you agree that you will use this data
; only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances, you will
; use this data to
; 1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
; unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via E-mail
; (spam); or
; 2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that apply
; to this WHOIS server.
; These terms may be changed without prior notice.
; By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy.
DomainName : hollything.com
RSP: China Springboard Inc.
URL: http://www.namerich.cn
Name Server: NS2.UKNETHOST.RU
Name Server: NS1.ALLDNSHOST.COM
Name Server: NS2.ALLDNSHOST.COM
Name Server: NS1.UKNETHOST.RU
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Creation Date: 2009-12-07
Expiration Date: 2010-12-07
Last Update Date: 2010-02-14
Registrant Name: zhang cheng
Registrant Organization: zhang cheng
Registrant Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Registrant City: beijing
Registrant Province/State: beijing
Registrant Country Code: CN
Registrant Postal Code: 102542
Registrant Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Registrant Fax: +86.01045263256
Registrant Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Administrative Name: zhang cheng
Administrative Organization: zhang cheng
Administrative Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Administrative City: beijing
Administrative Province/State: beijing
Administrative Country Code: CN
Administrative Postal Code: 102542
Administrative Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Administrative Fax: +86.01045263256
Administrative Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Billing Name: zhang cheng
Billing Organization: zhang cheng
Billing Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Billing City: beijing
Billing Province/State: beijing
Billing Country Code: CN
Billing Postal Code: 102542
Billing Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Billing Fax: +86.01045263256
Billing Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Technical Name: zhang cheng
Technical Organization: zhang cheng
Technical Address: beijingshicaoyangqunanninglu125hao
Technical City: beijing
Technical Province/State: beijing
Technical Country Code: CN
Technical Postal Code: 102542
Technical Phone Number: +86.01045263256
Technical Fax: +86.01045263256
Technical Email: qingpenghaoyou12@sina.com
Friday, February 12, 2010
MS Windows Mobile 6.5 marketshare drops, while Apple and Google marketshares increase
Microsoft saw its share of the U.S. mobile OS market dip slightly between September and December 2009, to 18 percent, even as it launched Windows Mobile 6.5 in an attempt to stop its mobile market erosion. Microsoft has already begun incremental updates to Mobile 6.5, but the next big date to watch for is Feb. 15, when the company makes an announcement at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that could be the rollout of Windows Mobile 7. One of Microsoft’s main smartphone OS rivals, Research In Motion, also experienced a slight dip during that three-month period ending 2009.
Microsoft saw its share of the U.S. mobile operating-system market fall slightly between September and December 2009, the period during which the company launched its Windows Mobile 6.5 update in an attempt to slow or halt its market share declines.
According to ComScore’s Feb. 8 report, Microsoft’s share of the U.S. mobile operating-system market declined exactly 1 point, from 19 percent to 18 percent, between September and December 2009. Research In Motion also experienced a 1-point drop, albeit from 42.6 to 41.6 percent, and Palm suffered a 2.2-point drop from 8.3 percent to 6.1 percent.
By contrast, Apple gained 1.2 points during that period, claiming an estimated 25.3 percent market share, while Google climbed 2.7 points to reach 5.2 percent of the market.
Microsoft attempted to position Windows Mobile 6.5 as a chance to begin anew in the smartphone OS space, where it had seen its longer-term market share decline in the face of stiff competition from the likes of Apple, RIM and other competitors. "It’s the right time to take a look at the brand, the new capability that we built in and the new business experience," Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Windows Mobile, said in an interview with eWEEK on the eve of the operating system version’s release.
Windows Mobile 6.5, Sullivan added at the time, represents "a restart of our efforts in the mobile space and a continuation of the work we’ve done in the past, with new capability delivered in a much more frequent way."
Microsoft’s overall strategy centered on releasing Mobile 6.5 on a variety of smartphones, including ones by HTC, Sony Ericsson and LG Electronics. Microsoft also pushed to create a mobile application ecosystem for Windows Marketplace, designed as a competitor to Apple’s App Store. While Microsoft executives had dangled the hope that third-party developers could build enough programs for its storefront to launch with 600 apps in place, Marketplace ended up launching in October with some 246 applications from more than 753 ISVs (independent software vendors).
When contacted by eWEEK on Feb. 4 and asked how many applications are currently in the Marketplace, a Microsoft spokesperson responded: "In November we announced over 800 applications in Windows Marketplace for Mobile, more than three times the number we offered when Marketplace launched just a month before."
In addition, the spokesperson added, "We’ve estimated that there are around 20,000 applications available for the Windows Mobile 6x platform, although it’s important to note that Windows Marketplace for Mobile is not meant to aggregate all available mobile applications."
That spokesperson declined to offer the number of applications in the Marketplace as of February, saying, “We don’t release the exact numbers for applications because it changes all the time.” Counted by hand on Feb. 9, the Windows Marketplace for Mobile Website listed 718 mobile applications, in 14 categories, for U.S.-based Mobile 6.x smartphones. A pulldown menu on that Website gives access to mobile-application pages for other countries and their native languages, including Italy and Korea; a number of those countries, however, have only a small handful of programs listed, suggesting that the worldwide total of Mobile 6.x applications is not exponentially higher than that of the United States.
By contrast, Apple’s App Store expanded to more than 100,000 apps in 2009, with research firm IDC predicting in a Dec. 3 research note that the storefront will expand to around 300,000 apps by the end of 2010. That note also predicted that Google Android’s apps could expand "by a factor of five or more" over the next 12 months.
Microsoft is planning a major smartphone-related rollout at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress on Feb. 15; general online consensus seems to be that Microsoft will either introduce a totally new Mobile 7 or a largely revamped version of Mobile 6.5.
Minor updates to Mobile 6.5 are already circulating in the wild, with the Feb. 2 debut of the Sony Ericsson Aspen running Windows Mobile 6.5.3, a version with tweaks including capacitive touch-screen support, a horizontal scroll bar in place of tabs, touch support for legacy applications and a platform for enabling multitouch.
If Microsoft does choose to announce Mobile 7 on Feb. 15, for a rollout either later in 2010 or early 2011, then questions may arise over the company’s road map for supporting multiple operating systems running on a variety of devices. (source: eWEEK)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Chinese Government shut down Biggest Hacker Training Website and arrested 3 People
China officials have shut down Black Hawk Safety Net, the country's biggest hacker training Website, and arrested three people for making hacker tools available online.
China announced it has arrested three people in connection with operating a hacker training school that distributed malware and hacking tools to its members in online forums.
According to Xinhua, "China ’s state-run newspaper, three people were arrested in connection with making the tools available online through a business known as Black Hawk Safety Net. Established in 2005, Black Hawk Safety Net is reportedly headquartered in Xuchang of the central "Province and has more than 180,000 members. Police reportedly uncovered the operation as part of an investigation into a cyber-attack in "Macheng" City in 2007.
The three suspects arrested in the case are charged with offering online hacker tools, a crime newly listed in the country's criminal law last year, the paper reported.
The announcement about the arrests came as "China and the "United States grapple over cyber-security issues. "China has been at the center of accusations involving a spate of cyber-attacks last year that affected more than 30 companies, including Google, which claimed an attack on its infrastructure originated in China. Google threatened to pull out of the country in response to the situation, as well as to concerns about censorship and what it deemed were attempts to spy on the e-mail of Chinese human rights activists.
The Chinese government has sought to discredit those claims, and has publicly denied anyinvolvement in the attacks. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has said it will press the Chinese government for answers, and the Senate passed a resolution Feb. 3 calling on the Chinese government to conduct a thorough and transparent review of the cyber-attacks.
China says hackers caused 7.6 billion yuan ($1.02 billion) in losses in the country in 2009. (source: eWeek.com)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Popularity of SMS from the 2G Era will soon end and be replaced by new services from Smartphones
With the emergence of new Smartphones such as Apple iPhone, Motorola Milestone, Nokia E-series, HTC Androit, Motorola Droid and NexusOne, Nexian Smartphones and many others, the dominance of the 2G services such as SMS will soon come to an end. Here is the latest prediction on the coming 3G or 4G services that will dominate mobile wireless services.
Weighed against any measure – impact on the industry, number of users, or revenue – SMS has been a huge success. Since its introduction more than 15 years ago, the 160-character message has revolutionized the way people communicate and use their mobile devices. With more than three billion active users, it has become the industry’s most widely used data application. SMS generates as much revenue as the combined returns from five major Internet sources - e-mail, instant messaging, social networks and chat, content, and advertising.
But, the game is changing, and operators can’t afford to be complacent. The messaging monopoly held by MNOs is in jeopardy, forcing traditional providers to rethink their business models, technology choices and the future of messaging.
The rise in mobile data services is one of the biggest forces impacting the messaging world. Analysts have been predicting for years that data services like mobile instant messaging and Web browsing will take off and become a significant piece of the mobile operator’s service portfolio. Thanks largely to Apple, those predictions are being realized.
Apple rocked the handset world in 2007 with the launch of the iPhone, becoming a catalyst for changes across the industry. But the iPhone’s greatest impact is most evident in the surge in mobile data usage it has generated. T-Mobile CEO René Obermann reported in 2008 that the average iPhone user consumes 30 times more mobile data than subscribers using other types of phones.
As more handset manufacturers move into the smartphone space, this data usage trend will increase. In a 2009 report, Investment Bank Piper Jaffray stated that the new handset market share for smartphones is set to increase from 19 to 35 percent by 2013. However, the growing popularity and usage of data-based services is creating new challenges for mobile operators.
As the competition heats up, MNOs are moving away from usage/time-based billing to unlimited voice and SMS plans. As subscriber data usage increases, the “all you can eat” model is being applied to data service as well. But, there’s a problem with flat-rate billing: as data usage increases, revenues flatten. (source: telecomasia.net)
Who has time to read a Book? FT Press gives you a Solution
Who has time to read a whole book anymore?
The FT Press, a unit of Pearson, has introduced two series of short, digital-only titles for professionals who want quick snippets of advice for $2.99 or less.
The publisher, through a new imprint named FT Press Delivers, has quietly begun selling what it is calling Elements and Shorts through the Kindle electronic bookstore onAmazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore. The Elements, which the publisher has priced at $1.99, are stripped-down, 1,000- to 2,000-word versions of already-published books, while the Shorts are newly written essays of about 5,000 words, priced at $2.99.
Titles include “Reengineering the Rules of Management,” by James Champy, the co-author, with Michael Hammer, of “Reengineering the Corporation,” one of the biggest business best sellers of the 1990s, and “Keeping It Honest, From Kitchen to Coca-Cola,” by Seth Goldman, co-founder and chief of Honest Tea, the maker of organic drinks.
Amazon.com is already discounting the prices of the Shorts to $2.39 and the Elements to $1.59. So far, Barnes & Noble has kept the publisher’s pricing.
“It’s a good idea to be able to provide people with shorter, more expedient, more time-sensitive” content, said Timothy C. Moore, publisher of the FT Press.
Mr. Moore said the company had already published 242 titles and planned to have 500 by the end of the year. For the Shorts, the company is working with New Word City, a digital publisher. Mr. Moore acknowledged that sales of the new short-form titles could cannibalize traditional book sales. But, he said, “other sources of information that aren’t books are already causing upheaval” in the book market.
Mr. Champy, a consultant, said demand for longer books had fallen. “There are people who only want to access pieces of what you write,” he said. “I don’t think they have an appetite for reading a long, serious business book.”
According to Mr. Goldman, FT Press is not paying advances to authors and is offering royalties equivalent to 20 percent of the publisher’s net proceeds from each sale. Mr. Moore declined to comment, saying that such details were proprietary.
Mr. Goldman said he hoped the new mini e-books were priced cheaply enough to lure readers. “There is size and substance to it, but it’s not a full meal,” Mr. Goldman said. “It’s a healthy lunch on the go as opposed to the seven-course meal.” MOTOKO RICH (NYT)
Monday, February 8, 2010
3G BTS Power will be boosted 4x in UK to increase coverage
Ofcom is considering allowing UK's mobile operators to quadruple the power of their 3G transmissions, to improve coverage and maybe roast a few more brain cells.
The request came from Vodafone, but when Ofcom consulted the other operators they all wanted in, so now the regulator has published a consultation (pdf) with plans to increase the permitted broadcast power almost four times (from 62 to 68 on the logarithmic dBm scale).
That's more than Vodafone, or anyone else, has asked for - existing kit can only kick out around 65dBm. But Ofcom doesn't want to be back here in a year when new kit comes out, so proposes setting the level higher. The regulator also notes that in some countries; notably Finland, Sweden, Germany and France, there are no limits at all, yet everyone seems to survive OK.
The main problem with upping the power is interfering with the neighbours, as some signal bleeding is inevitable. For 3G this means wireless cameras used by the Program Making & Special Events (PMSE) crowd on one side, and the Complementary Ground Component needed for satellite broadcast of mobile TV services on the other.
Given that there aren't any mobile satellite TV services yet, Ofcom deals with that by agreeing that, should anyone decide to build a mobile satellite broadcasting network, they too will be allowed to broadcast at 68dBm.
The PMSE crowd are used to getting a kicking from Ofcom, and this time the regulator reckons wireless cameras already suffer so much interference from 3G that this won't make much of a difference - noting that professionals already have to avoid specific bands when near a base station, so they'll just have to do the same from a little further away once the increased power is permitted.
Ofcom points out that technology has improved since the 3G licences were flogged off, enabling higher-power transmission without greater interference leaking into neighbouring bands. Indeed, the regulator makes the point that limits on out-of-band signals aren't being changed, and increasing the power will certainly enhance in-building penetration.
The decision hasn't yet been made though, and Ofcom is inviting responses, from "stakeholders", until the 19th of March. (source: The Register, UK)
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