iPhone ringtone roundup

Ringtones say a lot about you, your style, and your attitude. Yet, for some reason, the iPhone-the undisputed king of all smart phones-is limited in terms of ringtones. And they can be a helpful aural cue to alert you to exactly who is calling. You can use either the small default selection that comes on the phone or purchase tracks from the iTunes store to convert for 99 cents each.

There's also a way to create customized ringtones using GarageBand ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ), but that's a complex process that likely will not appeal to folks who don't otherwise use the program. If you're looking for ringtone variety, that's an awfully expensive way to go. Fortunately, there are alternatives in the form of standalone apps that let you create custom ringtones. These apps are specifically designed to help you easily create a new set of ringtones that make your iPhone sing the tunes you want it to. I took a few of the available choices out there for a spin: PocketMac's RingtoneStudio 2 for iPhone; Xilisoft's iPhone Ringtone Maker for Mac 1.0; Pixel Research Labs' Ringer; and AMG's Make Ringtones on your Mac.

PocketMac RingtoneStudio 2 PocketMac RingtoneStudio 2 for iPhone lets you create a new ringtone with a few clicks. RingtoneStudio exports the new ringtone to iTunes automatically, ready for syncing. Just drop a music file onto the interface (which looks like an iPhone), select the portion of the tune you want to use-up to 30 seconds, Apple says-and click Create. The current version of the product adds fade-in and fade-out options, volume boost, and a new waveform editor that looks similar to waveforms found in sound editing software. In my tests, the program worked quite well.

RingtoneStudio lets you zoom into a waveform up to 16x, and now features unlimited undos for volume adjustments. I converted about 10 music tracks, including the song In Exile by Thrice (my current favorite), and RingtoneStudio turned the MP3 into a ringtone in seconds. RingtoneStudio had trouble with a 2GB file (the movie Miracle at St. Anna, converted from DVD using HandBrake). Volume adjustments took over 15 minutes to apply, and the program became sluggish. The program supports the same formats as QuickTime, so that includes MP3, AAC, M4a and QuickTime movies-although you can't convert MPEG-1 videos (because the audio and video are stored as one file). Unlike Xilisoft's iPhone Ringtone Maker 1.0 (which I'll get to shortly), RingtoneStudio 2 shows you a thumbnail preview of the video, not just the audio portion, so it's possible to find that one jocular moment in Pink Panther 2 (and there is only one, by the way) and make it your ringtone. PocketMac says the slowdown is a result of how RingtoneStudio analyzes the file and-for volume adjustment-changes the actual sound level, as opposed to just the QuickTime setting. RingtoneStudio 2 works well, but a few extra features like zoom and video preview do not justify the slightly higher price of $20 compared to $15 for Ringer and Ringtone Maker, especially since this app has a few bugs and supports fewer file formats than Ringtone Maker.

PocketMac suggests using just a portion of the video to speed things up. Xilisoft iPhone Ringtone Maker 1.0 Xilisoft iPhone Ringtone Maker 1.0 is compatible with a much wider variety of video and music formats than PocketMac's RingstoneStudio 2. In fact, Ringtone Maker supports just about every format I can think of: MP3, WAV, Windows Media, XviD (a popular BitTorrent file format), DivX, and more. The look and feel of the program reminds me of a Windows app circa 1999, with large bulbous buttons and goofy-looking shading. Ringtone Maker gets the job done-but without any flare. But no matter: in testing another 10 audio files, including the single by Echo & the Bunneymen called I Think I Need It Too (the smooth retro-synth song works well as a ringtone), Ringtone Maker rocked: it never introduced any audio glitches and worked extremely quickly.

One complaint: you can't see video clips as you edit, although you can select a portion of the video using sliders and hear the sound from the video. The app even handled a large 2GB movie file-the same Miracle at St. Anna feature film that RingtoneStudio choked on. Another oddity: I could select any segment of music or video no matter how long, although the iPhone itself only plays the ringtone for a set length-until you answer or the call goes to voicemail. Pixel Research Labs Ringer For the same price as Ringtone Maker ($15), Ringer actually has more in common with RingtoneStudio because it supports the same file formats as QuickTime (MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V) but no specialized formats, such as XviD or DivX. Yet, like Ringtone Maker, Ringer does not show you the video clip when you want to create a ringtone from your favorite Hollywood epic. I'd prefer a warning that says the clip is unnecessarily long. One of its best and most unusual features: Ringer actually taps directly into your iTunes library.

You can use Ringer that way if you want, but it's easier and faster to just click an artist name or album and select a song. With other tools, you drop media onto the app and select the portion you want for a ringtone. You can also choose songs from your playlist or click Movies to see any and all movies on your Mac, even video files you did not remember you had. Audio files loaded in seconds. Ringer took about three minutes to load the movie Miracle at St. Anna that caused problems for RingtoneStudio.

The interface for selecting a portion of a clip is easy to use-just drag the mouse to select the portion you want. The default view on Ringer shows a large window of the audio waveform-you can make the app larger on screen to see an even closer view. Unlike Ringtone Maker, you can't select more than 40 seconds. However, the zoom functions and fade in or out controls are more limited. AMG Make Ringtones on your Mac AMG (Advanced Media Group) Make Ringtones on Your Mac is essentially a collection of loops and GarageBand songs that you can use to create ringtones.

For example, Zoom just maximizes the window without actually zooming. As such, it's a departure from the PocketMac and Xilisoft offerings, and is even different from how you'd normally create ringtones with purchased songs (by paying 99 cents and converting them). For the do-it-yourself approach, AMG has created a fun tool. Instead, they are mostly techno/dance/trance loops that work well as ringtones. The loops and samples from this collection are not recognizable songs. You can use a John Q ringtone for an easy-going vibe, or The Low End for an attention-grabbing chime.

I built several custom ringtones, and I like the loops-there's lots of variety. Make Ringtones on Your Mac also provides a tutorial on how to add ringtones to iTunes (just drag and drop), export them from GarageBand (most are already set to loop correctly and are about 30 seconds long), and set the current ringtone on your iPhone. You get a wide assortment of techno music to suit any mood, and I was impressed with the quality. You can start with a basic GarageBand song and add your own loops, either from the included library or your own samples. There are about 300 ringtones and hundreds of loops and song clips to choose from. However, AMG does not include any software, so you could just buy the loops you really like (even from AMG's own Samples-now.com site) and follow the ringtone creation steps for GarageBand.

Macworld's buying advice Choosing the best ringtone app was not easy-there is no single tool that outperformed all the others in the group I tested. You'd save plenty of cash that way. However, my nod goes to Pixel Research Labs' Ringer because it works quickly, costs less than RingtoneStudio, and lets you select songs easily. Make Ringtones on Your Mac has a lot going for it as a ringtone maker, but it's not really a program, and is more than double the price of its competitors. I wish it showed video clips, and if you really need that feature, go with RingtoneStudio.

For $40, if it included a simple song-to-ringtone converter, the package would make more sense. It even supports fade-in and fade-out and creates iPhone-specific tones. [John Brandon is a freelance technology writer based in Minnesota.] As it stands, you can buy just the loops you like online and go through the work of making ringtones in GarageBand for a lot less. (You can use its loops for other purposes, though-including creating an entire song.) For folks interested in the no-frills route to ringtones, I'd also suggest having a look at Audiko, a free, online utility that supports ringtone conversion from an audio file.

Personal data of 24,000 Notre Dame employees exposed online

In an embarrassing security gaffe, personal data on more than 24,000 past and present employees at the University of Notre Dame was made publicly available on the Web for more than three years. Files containing the data are believed to have been posted on the site in August 2006 and remained there until this October this year when they were finally discovered and reported to university officials. The breach resulted when an employee inadvertently posted files containing the names, Social Security numbers and zip codes of the employees on a publicly accessible university Web site. The files have since been removed and secured and there is no evidence that the information has been inappropriately used, said Dennis Brown, Notre Dame's assistant vice president for news and information.

All of those affected by the breach have been notified and the university has offered to pay for credit monitoring services, he said. Included in the list of those affected by the breach are a "large number" of on-call and temporary employees, Brown said. Notre Dame last suffered a data breach in January 2006 , when unknown intruders broke into a server and accessed records belonging to an undisclosed number of individuals. On Sunday, a blogger discovered online a sensitive security manual containing detailed information on the screening procedures used by Transportation Security Administration agents at U.S. airports. This is the second time this week that an organization has found itself in the news over an inadvertent data leak.

The document was supposed to have been redacted before it was posted on a government Web site, but wasn't. As with the Notre Dame incident, the document was quickly removed once the lapse was reported but not before numerous copies of the document were posted at sites all over the Internet. This June, a 267-page document listing all U.S. civilian nuclear sites , along with descriptions of their assets and activities, became available on whistleblower site Wikileaks.org days after a government Web site publicly posted the data by accident. Though data breaches involving external hackers get most of the attention, inadvertent data exposures such as these latest examples are not all that uncommon. The sensitive, but unclassified, data had been compiled as part of a report being prepared by the federal government for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In another incident in October 2007, a student at Western Oregon University discovered a file containing personal data on student grades after it had been accidentally posted on a publicly accessible university server by an employee. Numerous others breaches, including at government agencies, have also inadvertently leaked confidential and sensitive data over file-sharing networks.

Rivals mock Microsoft's free security software

Although one of the top consumer security vendors welcomed Microsoft's Security Essentials to the market, another dismissed the new free software as a "poor product" that will "never be up to snuff." Earlier today, Microsoft launched Security Essentials , its free antivirus and antispyware software suite, which has been in development for almost a year. "I think it's a good thing that they're in the market," said Carol Carpenter, the general manager of Trend Micro's consumer division. "We look forward to the competition ... and I think Microsoft's targeting of developing countries and the unprotected is a good approach." Microsoft has pitched Security Essentials, which replaced the now-defunct for-a-fee Windows OneCare, as basic software suitable for users who can't, or won't, pay for security software. And now they've decided to go for the free market, but that's a very crowded market. Not everyone, however, agreed with Carpenter. "Security Essentials won't change anything," said Jens Meggers, Symantec's vice president of engineering. "Microsoft has a really bad track record in security," he added, ticking off several ventures into consumer security that the giant has tried, including Windows Defender, an anti-spyware tool bundled with Windows Vista and Windows 7; the released-monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool; and OneCare. "Like OneCare, Security Essentials is a poor product," said Meggers. "It has very average detection rates. There's not much room to grow there." In a company blog, another Symantec employee called Security Essentials a "rerun" of OneCare , and said: "At the end of the day, Microsoft Security Essentials is a rerun no one should watch." It's no surprise that top-tier security vendors like Trend Micro and Symantec dismissed Security Essentials today.

At the time, a Symantec executive said it was a capitulation by Microsoft, which was tacitly admitting it couldn't compete . But Meggers' take today was even more bearish. "We don't like the notion of 'basic,'" he said. "That makes me very worried, because the risk on the Web today is far too high for 'basic.' Tossing a bunch of little basic tools into the computing environment doesn't make it safe." Even Carpenter had some unkind words for Microsoft. "It's better to use something than to use nothing, but you get what you pay for," she said. "But I don't think it will worry the main security vendors. They did the same thing last year, when Microsoft announced the upcoming demise of OneCare and said it would ship a free, streamlined product. If I were a free, focused security company, trying to get my upsell over time, like AVG [Technologies], then I'd be concerned." Symantec's Meggers also wondered what took Microsoft so long to come up with Security Essentials. "It takes them an entire year to remove features from OneCare, to make something even worse than OneCare?" Meggers asked. "I could have done that with three developers in three months." And that's a good clue that Microsoft won't be able to keep up with the likes of Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee, Meggers added. "Look how long it took them to build it. When was the last time that Microsoft innovated?" The free Security Essentials can be downloaded for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 from the Microsoft Web site. Security needs constant innovation.

Users nervous about Oracle's acquisition of MySQL

The European Union is not the only one antsy about Oracle taking possession of the open source MySQL database should the commercial database giant's merger with Sun Microsystems get final approval. On its Web site, Oracle merely notes that "MySQL will be an addition to Oracle's existing suite of database products." "I wish that Oracle would broadcast its intentions a little bit more" on the Sun acquisition, says Duane Kimble, a Linux technologist who works in the banking industry. So are MySQL users. (The E.U.'s executive arm has held up approval of the merger, fearing that Oracle's acquisition of MySQL could reduce competition in the database market, as well as harm the open source nature of MySQL. Sun's stockholders and the U.S. Justice Department have approved Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun.) "We've got a fair number of databases and Web applications that use those databases in MySQL. If Oracle does something that sort of makes it look like MySQL's days are numbered or something is going to change that we don't like, we'll probably look at alternatives," says Ernest Joynt, a contractor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [ Relive Sun's storied history in InfoWorld's slideshow "The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems." | Learn why attendees at the JavaOne conference were skeptical of Oracle's buyout of Sun. ] Anand Babu Periasamy, CTO of clustered storage technology company Gluster, expresses doubts that Oracle would add enterprise capabilities to MySQL. "I hope that they will retain MySQL. [But] I am doubtful [that] they will ever improve MySQL to take it mid-enterprise level, but at least it will help them compete with Microsoft SQL Server on the low end," he says. (Gluster uses MySQL for its Web site operations.) Thus far, Oracle has said little about its intentions for MySQL and declined to discuss the issue with InfoWorld.

For him, Oracle's ownership of MySQL is a specific cause for caution. His firm has begun looking at other enterprise-scale open source databases such as EnterpriseDB's Postgres database in case it has to replace MySQL. Standing to reap a harvest from unease about the Oracle-MySQL pairing are open source database vendors EnterpriseDB and Ingres. MySQL users start looking at alternatives A key issue is that Oracle is a main competitor to MySQL, notes Timothy Dion, CTO of mobile and Web apps builder Sensei. "I'm very concerned about what that means," he says. EnterpriseDB, which builds its products on the PostgreSQL open source database, has been hearing from concerned MySQL users, says Larry Alston, EnterpriseDB's vice president of product management and marketing. "They're telling us that they're nervous" about the future of MySQL, he says. Doubts remain over the fate of other Sun technologies Users remain concerned over the fate of other Sun technologies such as Java and Solaris, not just of MySQL. "We are rethinking our Solaris deployments," says Linux technologist Kimble. "We are moving swiftly toward more of an AIX and Linux environment, depending on the size or the scale of the project." Although Kimble notes it is "too early to say whether we'll move off [Solaris] or not," he does say his employer is rethinking its Solaris commitment: "Certainly, we're not going full-bore with Solaris as we were before the merger." Kimble does see a positive side to the Sun acquisition: "I think it kind of simplifies the platform offering somewhat.

Ingres also sees opportunities. "The phones ring a lot," says Ingres CEO Roger Burkhardt. Oracle is a strong company and if they keep Sun Java, which I'm sure is what they bought [Sun] for, I think it will make Java a better product." But Bryce Pier is not so sure. Another large company buying another large company reduces competition," he says. The senior systems engineer at Target sees no benefits of the buyout - at least not yet. "I'm not really certain that it's going to be good for anybody. Pier expects the acquisition to cause Target to move away from Solaris to Red Hat's Linux over time. Oracle, said Craig Muzilla, Red Hat's vice president for middleware, was very active in the Java Community Process for updating Java and has strived for openness in Java. "We don't see anything from Oracle that [would indicate that] they would do anything" that would differ with the past, he said.

One reason is the uncertainty: "We're just not sure what Oracle's commitment is going to be to the Java stack and to maintaining it as an open source project." Another is Oracle's reputation for extracting revenues from customers: "We certainly fear that all of the subscription fees are going to change for everything from Sun." At its recent conference, Red Hat sought to reassure customers about the continued openness of Java-based JBoss technology, which Red Hat owns, now that Oracle is buying Java founder Sun.

Advice to beginners

One of my colleagues asked me to substitute for her in a systems engineering course that I used to teach until a few years ago. With the instructor's agreement, I decided to discuss some beliefs, attitudes and behavior that can help students entering the workforce for the first time as interns or new employees make the best of their opportunities. The assigned topic was how students could best work effectively in software development groups.

Some of these topics may be helpful to a wider audience. The first steps to success in any new job are to observe and learn: listen, watch, think! From this point on, I'll simply address readers rather than using the past tense. 1) How to enter a new work group The worst approach a new employee can take – especially a recent graduate or an intern – is to swagger into a new workplace and start comparing the way things are done to the style at a previous workplace – or worse, to what some professor told the student in a course. Keep your opinions to yourself until you have learned more than superficial impressions about your new work environment. If you don't mind the idea, keep a notebook (file) about what you learn. 2) Making suggestions Keep your opinions to yourself until you have earned credibility by doing your job well and being thoughtful, courteous and helpful. Watch, listen, learn, and think.

If you do see opportunities for improvement, find out who is likely to be responsible for making the changes you think might be useful. Describe your impression of the current situation, define the problem neutrally (avoid emotional language), and ask your contact about what she thinks about it. Don't launch into a diatribe about how rotten the current situation is: ask the person if she can discuss the specific issue you are concerned about. Then offer your suggestion respectfully (not arrogantly, not from a position of assumed superiority, not rudely) and be prepared to listen to a different perspective. Take every opportunity to share knowledge, lend a hand, prevent an accident – you will win as a worker and as a human being. Don't assume that just because you think something ought to be changed that it will be. 3) Work (and life) is not a zero-sum game Helping someone to do better (at work, in your family, in your marriage, in your life) does not subtract from your success.

Don't believe the cynics who tell you that the individual is all that counts, that there is no valid social group beyond the family, and that everyone should maximize their gain at the expense of all comers. When we write or code, we sometimes see in our work what we want to communicate rather than what a reader or a computer will see and execute: our assumptions are often implicit and invisible to ourselves. Life does not have to consist of a battle with every person competing against every other. 4) Egoless work Suggestions for improvement to code or writing are not attacks on you. Thus an editor or a code reviewer may challenge a passage of an article or a section of code and point to improvements. For more on this topic, see an article I wrote in this column in 2006 and the essay "On Writing." 5) Don't blindside your boss Always work to make your boss look good. Be grateful, not resentful.

In particular, keep your boss informed of anything out of the ordinary: the last thing you want is to have your supervisor challenged by a superior officer demanding to know what you have been doing – and have the supervisor unable to answer. 6) Be honest Do what you say you will do: don't pretend. In Eric Berne's famous book, "Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis", the author describes the why-don't-you-yes-but game, in which someone asks for advice and then proceeds to show why every possible solution is wrong or impossible to implement. For example, if you are seeking someone's opinion, listen honestly and openly – don't go through the motions. A typical application of this game is for a dishonest manager to ask for employee opinions about a planned or existing policy and then to ignore or discount every comment as meaningless or wrong. Don't do that.

The manager is being dishonest. So endeth today's lesson. Go forth and be good human beings.

IBM aims at Google, Microsoft with new Webmail

IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, an on-demand e-mail, calendaring and contact management system meant to compete with the likes of Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, the company said Friday. IBM is aiming the software at large enterprises that want to migrate an on-premise e-mail system to SaaS (software as a service), particularly for users who aren't tied to a desk, such as retail workers. Pricing starts at US$3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year. It is also hoping to win business from smaller companies interested in on-demand software but with concerns about security and service outages, such as those suffered by Gmail in recent months.

While alluding to Google's service outages, Poulley acknowledged that no company can guarantee 100 percent uptime for on-demand applications. LotusLive iNotes is based on technology IBM purchased from the Hong Kong company Outblaze. "What we brought to Outblaze and to the marketplace is what you'd expect from IBM in terms of security, reliability and privacy," said Sean Poulley, vice president of online collaboration. But IBM has a long-standing track record of running "the world's mission-critical systems," he said. Overall, the main point of interest in IBM's announcement is price, said Gartner analyst Matt Cain. "Outblaze always sold low-cost mailboxes and that's what this is," he said. "Google's long been in it, Microsoft's long been in it. IBM will also have an opportunity to win customers from Microsoft who aren't ready to migrate to the upcoming Exchange 2010 release, given the headaches and investments involved, Poulley said. Now IBM's in it." However, that's not to say IBM's brand on the software isn't of some value, Cain added. ."From an enterprise perspective, you'd rather buy e-mail from IBM than a company called Outblaze." It's unlikely that IBM's pricing strategy will cause competitors to lower fees for their offerings, according to Cain.

For one thing, Microsoft already has a $2 per month Exchange Online option called "Deskless Worker," Cain noted.

CA looks to ease encryption key management

CA today unveiled key-management software that helps automate the storage and distribution of encryption keys for multi-vendor tape encryption purposes. According to CA's director of storage product marketing Stefan Kochishan, CA intends to add support for other vendor tape-encryption methods in the future. "This product will manage the keys," Kochishan says. "If there's a call for centralization of management of either public or private keys, that can be done. Cool new products of the week CA Encryption Key Manager is z/OS-based software (it also runs on Linux, Unix, Windows and Solaris platforms) that can support the IBM TS1120 and TS 1130 tape encryption devices as well as the CA Tape Encryption subsystems from the same interface.

You can also set up key stores in various sites and those sites will be updated when there's a change. CA Encryption Manager allows tracking and monitoring of encryption keys and digital certificates as well as deletion once a key is no longer used, Kochishan notes. It's full life cycle key management." CA Encryption Key Manager will also interface with security systems that include IBM RACF, CA ACF2 for z/OS, and CA Top Secret for z/OS for public/private key and digital certificate storage. Changes are propagated via SSL-encrypted TCP/IP. The goal is to let IT managers more easily share encryption keys across business units or with outside business partners. Mark Depathy, senior infrastructure engineer there, indicated it has simplified key distribution for business-to-business tapes and other uses. "It's something that gives you real-time key distribution," Depathy says, adding it allows for a common database related to keys. Peoples United Bank in Bridgeport, Conn., has been beta-testing the CA Encryption Key Manager for the past month.

CA Encryption Key Manager, available now, starts at $16,000.

2009 PC World 100, Listed by Category

Bluetooth Motorola T305 [#66] (bluetooth car speakerphone kit) Full review | Check prices Aliph Jawbone Prime [#49] (bluetooth headset) Full review | Video | Check prices Blu-ray Player LG BD390 [#85] More info | Check prices Broadband AirCell GoGo [#33] (in-flight Wi-Fi service) More info Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 [#19] (Wi-Fi card) Full review Browsers Google Chrome [#58] More info | Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 [#42] Full review | Download Camcorders Canon Vixia HF S10 [#41] Full review | Check prices Kodak Zi8 [#20] Full review | Check prices Panasonic HDC-TM300 [#47] Full review | Check prices Cameras Canon PowerShot G11 [#40] More info Canon PowerShot SX200 IS [#8] Full review | Video | Check prices Nikon D300s [#4] More info | Video | Check prices Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 [#30] More info | Check prices Samsung TL225 [#81] More info | Check prices Chargers Duracell MyGrid [#53] More info iGo Netbook Anywhere [#36] More info Kensington Auto Power Inverter with USB Power Port [#97] Site | Check prices E-Book Reader Amazon Kindle 2 [#15] Full review | Video Game Consoles Nintendo DSi [#99] Full review | Video Sony PlayStation 3 [#67] Full review | Check prices Games Beatles Rock Band by Harmonix [#9] More info | Check prices Uncharted 2: Among Thieves [#100] Full review | Video HDTVs Samsung LN40B650 [#18] Full review | Check prices Samsung LN46B750U [#10] Full review | Check prices Input Device Hillcrest Labs Loop Pointer Remote [#86] More info iPhone Apps App Store [#1] Site | PC World App Guide Atebits Tweetie 2 [#29] More info | Video | App info Navigon MobileNavigator [#75] More info |App info Laptops (Full-Size) Alienware M15x [#32] Full review | Video | Check prices Dell Latitude Z600 [#6] Full review HP Envy 13 [#28] Full review Lenovo ThinkPad T400s [#24] Full review | Video | Check prices Media Player Microsoft Zune HD [#22] Full review | Video | Check prices Monitors/Touchscreens HP DreamScreen 100 [#98] (Internet touchscreen) More info | Check prices HP W2558hc [#91] (monitor) Full review | Check prices Netbooks Asus Eee PC 1101HA [#82] More info HP Mini 311-1000NR [#17] Full review | Check prices Networking Kits and Hardware Belkin Powerline AV+ Starter Kit F5D4075 [#51] Full review D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router [#73] Full review | Check prices Linksys Dual-Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router WRT320N [#94] Full review | Check prices Operating Systems Microsoft Windows 7 [#11] Full review | Video | Check prices Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition [#84] More info PCs (All-in-One) Dell Studio One 19 [#80] Full review | Check prices Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 [#76] Full review | Check prices Printers HP Officejet 6500 Wireless [#44] Full review | Video | Check prices Lexmark C734dn [#72] Full review | Check prices Processors AMD Phenom II [#13] More info | Check prices Intel Core i7 [#12] More info | Check prices Projectors Samsung SP-P410M LED [#71] Full review | Check prices 3M MPro120 [#37] More info | Check prices Remote Control Sonos Controller 200 [#54] More info Search Engines Microsoft Bing [#7] More info Wolfram Alpha [#83] More info | App info Services Blip.fm [#56] (music service) More info Boxee [#25] (video service) More info | Download Digsby [#65] (message service) More info | Download Dropbox [#68] (storage service, getdropbox.com, also iPhone app) Full review | App info Evernote [#69] (content manager, also iPhone app) More info | App review | Download Facebook [#16] (social media service) More info FanSnap [#79] (ticket service) More info FileHippo Update Checker 1.035 [#93] (update-managing service) Site Google Books [#62] (searchable book service) More info Google Picasa 3.5 [#60] (photo-sharing service) More info | Download Google Voice [#2] (telephony service) Full review Grooveshark [#48] (music service) Site LastPass 1.51 [#46] (password manager) Download NinjaVideo [#95] (video-playing service) More info Qik [#39] (video service) Site Retrevo [#57] (shopping service) Site Sendmehome [#64] (identification service) More info Slacker [#96] (streaming music apps, also iPhone app) More info | App info SlideRocket [#74] (presentation service) Site Transmedia Glide OS 3.0 [#87] (content access service) More info Twitpic [#38] (photo-sharing service) Site Twitter [#5] (social media service) More info UStream [#63] (broadcasting service, also iPhone app) Site | App review Valve Steam [#52] (digital game distribution service) Site Wordnik [#89] (online reference service) Site Smartphones Apple iPhone 3GS [#27] Full review | Video HTC Hero [#21] Full review | Video Palm Pre [#14] Full review | Video RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630 [#61] Full review | Video Software Acronis True Image Home 2010 [#88] (backup software) Full review | Download Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 [#70] (photo editing software) Full review | Download Adobe Premiere Elements 8 [#78] (video editing software) Full review | Download Avira AntiVir Personal [#35] (security software) Full review | Download G-Data Internet Security 2010 [#23] (security software) Full review | Check prices | Download Intuit Mint [#90] (accounting software) More info Nova Development Parallels Desktop 4 [#45] (virtualization software) Site | Check prices PC Tools Threatfire 4.5 [#77] (security software) Full review | Download Seesmic Desktop [#34] (social media software) Site | Download Xmarks [#31] (Firefox add-on) More info | Download Storage Devices Clickfree Traveler [#43] Full review Intel X25-M Solid State Drive 160GB [#3] More info | Check prices SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash Card [#26] (memory card) More info Seagate Replica [#55] Full review | Check prices Synology DS209+ II [#59] Site

Verizon updates Droid software; Users hope it fixes echo problem

An over-the-air software update to the Droid smartphone started yesterday, but it wasn't clear whether the 14 enhancements address a voice echo problem that hundreds of users complained about in online forums. The enhancements come from Verizon Wireless, Motorola and Google, which is behind the Android operating system that runs on the Motorola Droid. The much-anticipated update went to a "small percentage of handsets" yesterday and the update, identified as ESD56, will be phased in over the next week or so, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman confirmed early today via e-mail. An update to the Droid Eris smartphone from HTC is "planned but a date has not yet been confirmed," the spokeswoman added.

However, it remains unclear whether the list of official fixes offers any relief to hundreds of customers who have complained of a voice echo heard by recipients of calls made from Droid phones. The Motorola Droid update is based on Google's release of a software developer kit for Android 2.0.2 on Dec. 6. The most noticeable modifications improve the Droid's camera autofocus capability and the phone's voice reception, the spokeswoman added. At least 300 comments at a Motorola online support forum refer to the subject, " Droid phone sound quality is not great ," and most comments refer to audio echo problems noticed by people whom Droid users are calling. Despite the many online complaints of a similar problem from Droid users, he couldn't get Verizon store officials to listen to him, he said. "Each time I returned to the store, now three times, I have been treated increasingly like an Android from out of space until [a recent] Friday when I threw a nutty in the store and screamed out for attention," he wrote. "The techs were clueless." Davis said his son, an engineer at Cisco Systems Inc., helped him decrease the echo somewhat by adjusting the phone's settings so that when the echo shows up, Davis must fidget with the speaker button to lessen the echo. One Motorola Droid user, John Davis, said he has enjoyed all aspects of his Droid except for the phone itself. "Almost from day one there has been an annoying echo primarily with the person on the receiving end," he wrote in an e-mail to Computerworld . Davis, a physician, bought his phone the first day it was available at a Verizon store near Boston.

But Davis was still awaiting the update, which was rumored to start on Dec. 11, but now appears to have started four days earlier. However, the official update documentation says only that one of the 14 improvements is listed as "audio for incoming calls is improved." A separate improvement says that Bluetooth functions are improved with "background echo ... eliminated" but only in reference to Bluetooth usage. Davis said his son believes the update is designed to address the issue, and so do many on an online forum. The full list also includes improvements to OS stability, battery life and camera auto focus. Ironically, many reviewers of the Motorola Droid found it has superlative sound quality , so the echo problem could be a function of networks as well as the Droid, many forum users have noted. Davis said he had no significant problems with his camera, but is still eager to have the update for the camera focus.

A Motorola support forums manager, identified online only as Matt, called attention to the update yesterday with a link to the separate Motorola forum on sound quality, implying that the improvements could help the echo problem. Verizon has noted that to get the free update, the Droid device needs to have 40% or more power available if it's not connected to an external power source and 20% power available to it if connected to a power source. The Verizon spokeswoman did not answer directly whether the updates fix the echo problem, saying only that descriptions of the audio problem on forums are "subjective," but she offered to provide a fuller explanation later.

Hiring budgets begin to thaw

Employers could be filling IT positions in the coming months, research suggests, as the number of positions expected to be created could begin to outpace anticipated job cuts in some industries. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports that employers in September began to detail plans to hire more workers than they did in 2008. Through September 2009, employers have announced plans to hire 169,385 workers this year, marking an 88% increase over the nearly 90,000 planned hires announced in the first three quarters of 2008. The sectors planning the most hires include the retail, government and nonprofit, and enterprise and leisure industries. Where the IT jobs are: 10 American cities Hiring budgets could be coming out of the deep freeze initiated at the start of the economic recession, according to industry watchers.

Employers in the telecommunications industry announced 6,339 planned hires for 2009, compared to 2,689 last year. Electronics companies are expecting to add 1,765 new jobs, another decline from 2008's 3,013 planned positions. Aerospace and defense employers intend to add 2,618 new position, less than the 4,709 in the previous year. E-commerce vendors reported they would augment staff with 1,572 new openings, an increase over the 500 added in 2008. And while the computer industry reportedly announced 7,717 new hires, the data Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked so far this year shows the industry isn't planning any new hires so far in 2009. "These figures represent just a tiny fraction of the hiring and available jobs out there. There simply are more job seekers than there are jobs. We track hiring announcements," said John Challenger, CEO at the outplacement firm, in a statement. 20 most useful career sites for IT professionals Challenger, Gray & Christmas also cited recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed 2.4 million job openings as of August, down from 3.9 million in 2008. And the same government agency reported that 4 million workers were hired in August, despite the unemployment rate nearing 10%.  "There is no doubt that this is a tight job market.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that no one is hiring," Challenger said. David Foote, CEO and chief research officer, said in a statement that while high-tech industry segments have been posting job losses, they are losing fewer jobs and in some cases adding positions. Separately, IT research firm Foote Partners also found cause for optimism in recent government statistics. For instance, "five IT bellwether job segments" have posted collective job losses of between 4,000 and 11,000 jobs each month (including 4,300 lost in August), but also showed gains such as 7,400 positions in July.  "Consider that according to the Department of Labor's labor market segmentation there has been a net loss of 32,600 IT related jobs since January 2009, but a net gain of 1,400 since July, it's clear that we're heading in the right direction," Foote said. "We continue to maintain optimism for the rest of the year, for IT services sector in particular." Do you Tweet? Follow Denise Dubie on Twitter

AMF bowls for customers with video sharing over managed IP

AMF Bowling Centers Inc. is wrapping up the roll-out of a $2 million nationwide network equipment upgrade that supports Voice over IP (VoIP) and video streaming, and includes turning over all network management to Verizon Business for three more years. As part of a contract with Verizon, the company is now relying on Verizon for an IP network that supports VoIP, point of sale devices and credit card transactions, and web hosting. AMF has 300 bowling centers in 38 states with more than 9,000 employees. The IP network also supports a centralized video surveillance system that is now being launched, as well as a centralized energy management system being tested in several bowling centers.

The contract with Verizon, signed early this year, will cost AMF about $800,000 a year, in addition to the $2 million equipment cost for Adtran routers in each center and cabling installations, he said. Additionally, because bowling has become a multimedia experience for customers, video and audio streaming of music videos is piped to most of the bowling centers using the IP network, said Harsha Bellur, vice president of IT at AMF. "We have extreme sound and light shows over projection screens in most locations with music videos that play while people are bowling," Bellur said. AMF's annual network services cost has gone up slightly with the Verizon managed service, but the number of IP applications and network reliability have far exceeded what was previously available, Bellur said. "The ROI was on the wall, but we had to do this and it made a lot of sense to invest, even with the recession," Bellur said in an interview. With cable modems and DSL there was not consistent bandwidth, while demanding applications like video were not possible. Before hiring Verizon for the managed IP service, AMF was using Verizon to provide a site-to-site VPN service, which relied on cable modems and DSL, and required AMF to work with 36 different ISPs. One of the biggest advantages of using a managed service from a nationwide provider like Verizon is having Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to guarantee service, Bellur said. The SLAs have already come in handy, resulting in a credit from Verizon because VoIP service in Atlanta and Virginia Beach, Va., was knocked out recently more than 3.5 hours - a provision of the SLA - due to regional flooding, Bellur said. "Verizon has kept up with its SLAs and offered a financial remedy," he said.

Because of the recent flood-related outages, AMF is planning to provision at least one analog phone line in each center to provide an automatic failover for voice services. "It's back to the future with the analog failover," he said, noting that AMF is now testing existing analog lines that were not being used to see which are resilient enough for failover duty. "The voice outages were a challenge and we learned the hard way with the floods," he said. "It caused some heartburn and was not something we anticipated, but we have options." The managed services contract with Verizon has not led to layoffs in the 29-person IT staff, although Verizon is managing all circuits, routers and cloud computing services. While the Verizon VoIP quality is generally good, one downside is that voice service goes down whenever there is a data network outage. The added Verizon support has meant AMF can strengthen its end-user computer support desk, which now is staffed by seven of the 29 in IT, Bellur said. AT&T Inc. and regional service provider Paetec also bid. Bellur and others picked Verizon partly because of its nationwide network, he said.

The centralized energy management system for AMF is undergoing trial runs now, to test the IP network automatically turning on and off heating and air conditioning according to hours of each bowling center. While AMF centers are actively using the network to support video and audio, Bellur said his team is contemplating using video displays as digital signs that would show pricing and examples of products on sale, including food and alcohol. The video surveillance system is designed to prevent theft and is just being installed to use the IP network, Bellur said. In addition, training videos could be piped over the IP network, Bellur said. Potentially, self-service kiosks for ordering food are possible, and online posting of scores could take place, shared over the nationwide network. "Teams between two cities could host a tournament sharing tournament brackets," he said. "We're brainstorming, but it all comes down to costs."

A longer term conceptual project has been discussed to stream videos of bowlers or birthday parties being held at bowling centers to relatives in other cities.

Seven tips to migrate and manage Windows 7

Enterprise IT organizations eager to upgrade aging Windows XP and Vista systems to Microsoft's just released Windows 7 could make the process a whole lot smoother by investigating a handful of management technologies and processes aimed at greasing the skids of such a major software update. 7 tools to ease your Windows rollout  "At some point, Windows users will need to transition over to Windows 7 because XP will no longer be supported and Vista just didn't take off in terms of adoption," says Steve Brasen, principal analyst at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). "The ability to manage and automate the processes around upgrading to Windows 7 will be critical for midsize and enterprise organizations." Here industry watchers share seven essential steps enterprise IT managers must take when considering a move to Microsoft's Win 7. 1. Test desktop durability. The research also shows that those considering an upgrade won't be able to take a direct path from XP to Windows 7 - which represents a few challenges. According to data from Forrester Research, even two-and-a-half years after the general availability of Windows Vista, Windows XP still runs 86% of all enterprise PCs powered by Windows.

For one, hardware could be lacking the necessary drivers, memory and other components. "Migrating XP to Win 7 will challenge many IT administrators because you can't upgrade directly. Unlike previous Windows operating systems, such as XP, Win 7 offers several editions, or options, enterprise IT departments must consider when planning to migrate to the latest software. Some are suggesting companies buy all new hardware or perform a complete refresh of the computer," explains Katherine Wattwood, vice president of product development for Persystent Software.   Persystent Suite offers customers features that test existing PCs for hard disk space and other components required in Win 7. The software can help IT managers determine which PCs could handle the updated operating systems and which would need to be swapped out or updated themselves. "Pre-migration planning and hardware compatibility testing would be critical to determine which PCs are Win 7-ready," Wattwood says. 2. Plan for licensing. Industry analysts say three should be considered by IT managers. Windows 7 Enterprise is the edition the companies have the right to deploy if they own a Windows license covered with Microsoft Software Assurance, the vendor's software maintenance program offered as an option with volume licensing. First, Windows 7 Professional - comparable to Vista Business - could be the least expensive option, according to Forrester Research, which points out this edition is available via OEM, retail or volume licensing.

This enterprise version offers additional features that global organizations might find useful, such as DirectAccess, which gives mobile users access to corporate accounts without a VPN or BranchCache, a feature Microsoft says decreases the time users at remote offices spend waiting to download files across the network. Forrester advises in a recent research report that companies take into consideration many factors when planning for Win 7 licenses. Windows 7 Ultimate, Forrester says, could be considered as more of a consumer option and isn't sold via volume licensing - but could be put to use as a media PC in a corporate environment. Existing licenses, software agreements and the upgrade path should be among the considerations. "Your historical approach to refreshing your desktops and laptops combined with the age of your infrastructure by the time you're ready to start your Windows 7 deployment will impact whether you should introduce it via a forklift or 'big bang' approach or via the natural rolling refresh cycle," the report reads. "Your license plans should not just be limited to your Windows upgrade strategy. Not only does hardware need to be tested to see if it can take Windows 7, but software applications must also be checked for compatibility with the new version. "There are a few aversions enterprise IT has to an upgrade right now," EMA's Brasen says. "One of them being there is still a big problem with proprietary applications and drivers that are just not compatible with Vista or Win 7. Until companies can reach a level of compatibility and applications are brought up to speed, a transition will be difficult." In fact, Brasen says he is "not aware of a systems management vendor that doesn't have an upgrade path for Windows 7. They know it's coming. There can be opportunities to take advantage of bundles that can drive down costs across your Microsoft investments." 3. Ensure application compatibility.

Even if their current subscribers aren't planning for it in the next few months, it is going to happen at some point." That's why enterprise IT organizations should be testing application compatibility now, and products from companies like Persystent and CA, among many others, offer application compatibility testing. Manually conducting such tests would be extremely time-consuming, analysts say. This sort of testing would point out the potential problems and foreseeable performance issues desktops could incur when running Windows 7. Applications from vendors run automatically, detect the problematic machines and applications, perform an inventory and report back to IT managers about the issues. Vendors argue by adding automation to this process, they reduce costs and time to deployment. For many companies, acquiring enterprise software to help with a migration of enterprise software might be cost-prohibitive. For instance, CA IT Client Manager uses policies to reduce hands-on labor. "Our software allows IT to set policies that allow a set of individuals to have certain applications on their systems, while another group would have a different policy applied to them," says Laural Gentry, senior principal product manager at CA. "Our product supports the decision-making, planning process by performing asset inventory, application and infrastructure compatibility tests in order to ensure the entire migration runs more smoothly." 4. Take advantage of automation.

But industry watchers argue that attempting to migrate or manage a Win 7 environment without automation technology will overwhelm IT staff and nearly guarantee problems with the implementation. "An automated system management platform, available from many vendors, could bundle up the image and send it out to many machines as part of an automated process," Brasen says. "Companies will experience a lot of pain upgrading to Windows 7 if they can't get an automated platform in place." For many larger organizations the automated features could likely already be a part of their client systems management products from the likes of LANDesk, CA, Persystent, Kace, BigFix and several others. But Microsoft has considered this and made available a free tool to address this situation. But for small to midsize organizations, automated deployment isn't a technology they already have in house. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 is software optimized to support Windows 7 deployments and includes built-in capabilities to support customers migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, the company says. The release of Windows 7 has companies considering another new technology: virtual desktops. MDT 2010 Beta 2 is currently available for free download here.  "Microsoft is offering compelling reasons for customers to migrate to Windows 7," says Benjamin Gray, senior analyst with Forrester Research. 5. Consider client virtualization.

The promise of ease of management and increased security that virtual desktop technology offers could drive customers to consider the technology when they have budget dollars for a PC refresh. But Microsoft isn't the only vendor touting virtualization as an option. For its part, Microsoft offers two products that take advantage of virtualization and could be considered a means to managing a migration to or ongoing deployment of Windows 7. Microsoft Application Virtualization, the company says, helps reduce downtime for customers by turning Windows applications into "centrally managing virtual services that are delivered to any licensed Windows desktop or laptop." And Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization allows desktop administrators to create, deliver and centrally manage a virtual Windows XP or 2000 environment (based on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007) and run legacy applications on Windows Vista desktops, the vendor says. VMware and Citrix also boast virtual desktop infrastructure and could provide viable alternatives to a full-blown Windows 7 migration, industry watchers say. "IT managers would be able to go with a virtualization solution as well. It would be as simple as setting one up and deploying it out to many," Brasen says. "Microsoft, VMware and Citrix would all have options for customers here." 6. Replace hardware.

If you are doing desktop virtualization, you can deploy your virtual container for the new desktop environment down to each one of the client endpoints. For some IT organizations, a migration plan could morph into a replacement plan. According to industry watchers, the economic recession had many IT decision-makers postponing hardware upgrades and equipment investments until a recovery was in sight. Outdated desktops and laptops could be easier to swap out than update and vendors working with Microsoft would equip new hardware with the most recent operating system. Now couple the Windows 7 availability with a need to refresh hardware, and some might just kill two birds with one stone - making the migration challenge a moot point. "Many organizations with aging infrastructure could do a massive PC refresh by mid-2010 and replace existing hardware with new desktops and laptops," Forrester's Gray says. If a customer buys a Windows 7 PC and maintains the pre-loaded optimization features, they could experience benefits such as faster reboot and shutdown times, which ultimately provide productivity improvements to end users, says Bob Dieterle, executive director of worldwide services at Lenovo. "When looking at our customer engagements, almost 40% of PCs under management are out of warrantee, and not really able to take advantage of the new features offered," he says. "Our customers would get optimized performance, battery life and even applications, which have been redesigned for Windows 7." 7. Prepare for patch management.

PC vendors have worked with Microsoft to deliver machines optimized to work with Windows 7, such as the new Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience. Any client system management plan must include patch management. Many of the vendors offering automated features in migration packages also would be able to deploy patches on a one-to-many basis for organizations adopting Windows 7," EMA's Brasen says. "IT managers want to get to the point of doing one download of the patch from the site and distributing it out internally, essentially a process that is much faster and much less intrusive on the client devices." Do you Tweet? Before migrating to a new operating system, enterprise IT managers must be aware of how the upgrade will impact existing patch management procedures and also ensure they have any new and necessary policies in place before the rollout. "Maintaining the environment would mandate proven patch management technologies. Follow Denise Dubie on Twitter here.

Cloud Engines updates Pogoplug media sharing device

On Friday, Cloud Engines introduced the second generation of its Pogoplug multimedia sharing device. The new version adds several new features. The Pogoplug is designed to plug into your home or small office network and let you access and share content of USB hard drives over the Internet using a standard Web browser.

First off, it now has four USB 2.0 ports instead of one so you can connect multiple USB hard drives or flash drives without the need for a USB hub. It works with H.264 video, as well as common photo types, but doesn't support DRM media. Along with that, there's now support for global search across multiple drives. (It still connects to your router using gigabit Ethernet.) Also new are improved transcoding and wider support for streaming movies on the Web or to an iPhone app; the ability to automatically sync photos, music, videos, and other content from apps such as iTunes and iPhoto; tighter integration with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace; automatic organization of your music, photos, and videos; and an address book that remembers the e-mail addresses with which you've shared content for future sharing. (Many of the enhancements will be available to current Pogoplug owners as well.) Pogoplug supports OS X 10.4 and higher as well as Windows XP and Vista, and Linux; Safari, Firefox 3, IE 7, IE 8, and Chrome Web browsers; and hard drives formatted as NTFS, FAT32, Max OS Extended Journaled and non-Journaled (HFS+), and EXT-2/EXT-3. Although there are no specific bandwidth requirements listed, the company says that a typical DSL connection (with 512 Kbps upload speed) works fine. Cloud Engines expects to ship the new Pogoplug before the end of the year for $129, and is currently taking pre-orders.

RemoteSight turns an iSight into CCTV

Do you wish your iSight were more like the unblinking, ever-vigilant Eye of Sauron? RemoteSight can act as an integrated camera source for Ben Software's SecuritySpy, which aggregates video feeds from multiple cameras into a heads-up multi-video display. Then you might be interested in Ben Software's new RemoteSight, an application that turns an iSight camera into a CCTV-style security camera, accessible over a network via Web browser.

RemoteSight captures both audio and video from the host Mac's iSight camera (or any attached video input device), and streams it out through an integrated Web server; video is accompanied by a live timestamp. Any Web browser has the ability to connect to the Web server across an internal network, and Internet remote viewing should be possible if the nonstandard additional ports used by the Web server are opened on the router to allow this traffic. The Web server also provides an option to remotely view what is happening on the Mac's monitor as well. Administrative users can turn off monitoring feeds individually, and you can protect all connections to the Web server by username and password registration. RemoteSight costs $27, and a fully functional demo is available as well, so you can give it a try.

RemoteSight runs as a faceless application, with no indication in the Dock that it is operating; however, a menu-bar item appears that cannot be easily removed, and (where available) the iSight LED light is turned on to indicate that the camera is in use. System requirements call for OS X 10.4.11 or later, 512GB of RAM (I'll assume that's a typo and you only need 512MB), and a video input device, such as a built-in iSight camera or external FireWire or USB camera.

Ex-Ford engineer charged with trade secret theft

A former product engineer at Ford Motor Co. has been charged with stealing sensitive design documents from the auto maker worth millions of dollars. Yu, 47, was charged with theft of trade secrets, attempted theft of trade secrets and unauthorized access to protected computers. Xiang Dong Yu, of Beijing, also known as Mike Yu, was arrested Wednesday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport upon his entry into the U.S. from China where he is working with a Ford rival.

Each of the theft-related charges carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Yu faces a maximum of five years and $250,000 in fine on the charge of accessing a protected computer. According to the indictment papers, Yu was employed at Ford between 1997 and 2007. In his role as a product engineer at Ford, Yu had access to trade secrets contained in Ford system design specification documents. The arrest was announced by Terrence Berg, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. The documents contained detailed information on performance requirements and associated testing processes for numerous major components in Ford vehicles. According to the indictment papers, Ford has spent "millions of dollars and decades on research, developing and testing" to create the requirements in the system design documents.

The documents are created and maintained by subject matter experts at Ford and are used by Ford design engineers when building new vehicles and by suppliers providing parts to the company. In June 2005, Yu is alleged to have traveled to China in an attempt to find a job in the automotive industry. Yu resumed his job search in August 2006 and was offered a job with electronic and automobile component manufacturer Foxconn, PCE Industry Inc. in November of that year. Before leaving on the trip, Yu is alleged to have downloaded several system design specification documents, including those unrelated to his work, onto an external hard drive which he took with him to China. A few days after Yu accepted the job in December 2006, he is alleged to have downloaded more than 4,000 Ford documents to a hard drive.

Later that same month Yu left to work at Foxconn, PCE's facility in Shenzhen, China, with the stolen Ford documents in his possession. The documents included information on Ford's engine and transmission mounting subsystem, electrical distribution system, front and rear side door structure, steering wheel assembly and instrument panel and console subsystem. Yu did not inform Ford about his new job until January 2007. Slightly more than a year later, Yu apparently attempted to use the stolen trade secrets when applying for a new job with an automotive company in China. It is not clear from the indictment papers how authorities learned about Yu's attempts to use the stolen information in his job search in China. When those efforts proved unsuccessful, he accepted another job offer at Beijing Automotive Co., which was described in court documents as a Ford rival. It is not apparent, for instance, whether the companies that Yu applied to for jobs, informed Ford.

It's also not clear whether any of companies where Yu worked used any of the information that Yu allegedly had stolen. The court papers also mention that Ford's security controls included "marking" sensitive documents. A call requesting comment from the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Michigan was not immediately returned. Earlier this month, Hong Meng, a former research scientist at DuPont USA was indicted on charges related to the theft of trade secrets. The incident is similar to other trade-secret thefts involving users with privileged access to corporate systems and data. Meng is alleged to have downloaded sensitive trade secrets pertaining to DuPont's new, thin-computer display technology called "organic light emitting diode" or OLED. The company charged Meng with attempting to profit from the information by using it to commercialize OLED products in China in conjunction with Peking University in Beijing.

Companies should be implementing risk-based access controls to sensitive data where the focus should be on understanding what an individual's role is and then making sure that individual only has access to the specific information needed for the job. In 2007, Gary Min, another former scientist at DuPont admitted to stealing an estimated $400 million worth of proprietary company information . He is serving an 18-month sentence in federal prison . Brian Cleary, vice president of marketing at security vendor Aveksa said the incident is another reminder of why companies need to implement a "governance framework" for managing, monitoring and logging all access and activity involving sensitive data.

N.Y. AG in 'witch hunt' for Intel, says think tank

An advocacy group today slammed the New York Attorney General's office for filing a federal antitrust lawsuit against chip giant Intel Corp. Intel quickly received some vocal support from the Competitive Enterprise Institute , a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates for free enterprise and a limited government. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday filed the suit which alleges that Intel threatened computer makers, made payoffs and engaged in a "worldwide, systematic campaign of illegal conduct." The suit's charges resemble those listed in a 2005 federal lawsuit filed against Intel by AMD that's expected to go to trial this coming spring. Calling New York's lawsuit a "witch hunt," the group noted in an e-mail statement that "few markets are as vibrant and innovative as the processor market." "Mr. Cuomo's suit is just the latest example of the New York Attorney General using his authority to make headlines at consumers' expense.

By objective measures, the performance of the processor market has been nothing short of spectacular," he added. This baseless attack against Intel will only delay innovation in the computer chip market," said Ryan Radia, associate director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a statement. "During the very period that Mr. Cuomo alleges Intel was engaged in 'anti-competitive' behavior, desktop computer processors more than doubled in performance per dollar every two years. The New York suit isn't the only set of antitrust charges leveled at Intel - just the latest. Intel is facing similar charges in Korea, Europe and Japan, as well as class-action cases and the lawsuit leveled by AMD. But Radia contends that the New York attorney general is simply off base in this suit. "Mr. Cuomo's suit rests on the fundamentally flawed assumption that Intel's high market share is indicative of market control," he added. "In fact, Intel and archrival AMD have been competing fiercely for over a decade, and both firms continue to invest billions of dollars each year in researching and developing faster, more efficient chips."

Lenovo founder shares slogans, tells tales of 1980s China

The chairman of Lenovo, the world's number four PC maker, shared Chinese revolution-spirited slogans and the unlikely story of his company's growth out of a government-managed economy in a motivational speech to Chinese small business owners on Friday. Lenovo faced tough odds even though its founders were from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Chinese state-controlled institute for national research projects. Liu Chuanzhi, one of 11 former government researchers who founded the predecessor to Lenovo in 1984, recalled how the company fought through trade barriers, high component prices and domination by foreign brands in a talk that highlighted how fast China's economy has grown in the last three decades. "In 1993 almost the whole market was foreign-branded computers," Liu said at the forum for small and medium businesses in Hangzhou, a scenic city in eastern China.

The academy gave the company founding capital of 200,000 yuan, or about US$30,000 today. Things only grew worse when the company was scammed out of two-thirds of the money, he said. "When we came out, we not only lacked funds but also had no idea what to do," Liu said. That sum, far from enough, would not have been enough to buy three computers in China in the 1980s, Liu said. Lenovo, formerly called Legend Group, was founded early in China's process of market economic reforms and had to work in a tightly regulated environment. The low quality of components such as hard drives in China also hindered the company, he said. China tried to protect domestic PC makers in the 1980s by charging a massive 200 percent tariff on foreign computers, said Liu. "The result of this protection was that foreign computers were very difficult to get into China and could only be smuggled, but China also could not make its own computers very well," he said.

Lenovo's first PC did not reach the market until 1990. Lenovo struggled with low margins even as it built market share against foreign brands like IBM and Compaq in the 1990s. Government regulation also continued to slow the industry's growth. Lenovo's global presence gained a huge boost when it bought IBM's PC unit in 2005. The company's sales in developed markets have since slumped in the global economic recession and it has restructured to bring its focus back to China and other emerging markets. Chinese residents had to register with the government to become Internet users even late in the decade, said Liu. Lenovo today is the top PC vendor in China. Liu also emphasized the importance of company culture, describing Lenovo's as an example. "Make the company's interests the top priority, seek truth in forging ahead, take the people as the base," Liu said. To succeed like Lenovo, companies must "love to battle, know how to battle, and conduct campaigns with order," Liu said, using language reminiscent of "The Art of War," an ancient Chinese book on military strategy by Sun Tzu.

Chinese president Hu Jintao has promoted the slogan "take the people as the base" as a part of socialist theory. Liu attended a Chinese military college in the 1960s and worked on a Chinese farm during the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic period when many graduates were sent to the countryside for re-education.

Riverbed looks to speed cloud applications, storage

Riverbed Technology has a plan to help companies accelerate access to applications and storage resources that are located in a cloud computing environment and delivered over the Internet to private data centers, distributed branch offices and mobile end users. 10 cloud computing companies to watch The vendor says it will deliver new products and capabilities in 2010, beginning with a software version of its flagship Steelhead WAN optimization controller. When enterprises consolidate and virtualize IT infrastructure and applications in their own data centers and deliver applications over the WAN to remote offices and employees, Riverbed's WAN optimization gear plays a role in speeding applications and data transfers. Dubbed "virtual Steelhead for the cloud," this software appliance can run on servers located at a public cloud computing facility.

But installing a traditional hardware appliance isn't an option in most public cloud environments. "As customers move from their private cloud environments into either public environments or hybrid public/private environments, we want our technology to move with them. Riverbed is hosting a cloud launch event Tuesday in New York City, where it plans to show how the virtual Steelhead appliance works, including a demonstration of how to install it on the Amazon Web Services platform. But there's a bit of a problem because you can't get a physical box into that public cloud," says Eric Wolford, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Riverbed. "Virtual Steelhead for the cloud enables us to move our acceleration technology into that cloud environment." What customers will wind up with is "a three-way type of acceleration, with a Steelhead box at the remote site, a Steelhead box in their data center in the private cloud, and now the virtual Steelhead in their public cloud," he says. In addition, Riverbed plans to preview new technology for the acceleration of cloud storage. But concerns about latency issues, the need to rewrite applications and the possibility of getting locked into a particular cloud provider's platform are http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/101509-snw-storage-cloud-concerns.... hindering adoption.

Enterprises are interested in the potential cost savings and operational benefits of using cloud storage. Cloud storage raises tricky performance issues, Wolford says. Now Riverbed says it has addressed some of those protocol inefficiencies, specifically for iSCSI, and can boost performance enough to allow enterprises to move their storage assets to sites anywhere in the world - even thousands of miles away from associated computing resources, Wolford says. There are fundamental inefficiencies in block storage protocols that restrict enterprises from running these protocols over the WAN. "If you try to run a block protocol over the WAN, performance will grind to a halt," he says. It's similar to the way Riverbed's technology deals with application latency, by slashing the number of roundtrips over the WAN that a chatty protocol such as CIFS requires. Classic unstructured data workloads such as these lend themselves well to this technology, Wolford says.

Now Riverbed is tackling server-to-disk chattiness by cutting roundtrip block requests, Wolford says. "It's very correct to say the high-level pattern is just like we did with applications, making them feel LAN-like over the WAN. We will make storage protocols over the WAN feel SAN-like." Initially Riverbed plans to focus its cloud storage technology on unstructured data, such as files, mail and Microsoft SharePoint storage. If Riverbed can solve the performance issues associated with cloud storage in the way the vendor did for applications and data transfers on the WAN, it will open up the entire market, according to Steve Duplessie, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "High latency alone will limit the types of applications that can find a home in the cloud. Forcing new interfaces or rewriting applications to take advantage of the cloud will be another deal breaker for a lot of folks," Duplessie said in a statement. "If I can think of the cloud the way I think about a disk drive today, the possibilities become truly endless."

Novell, SAP bring together security, compliance wares

Novell and SAP Tuesday announced a partnership to integrate, certify and support their respective security and identity technology and governance, risk and compliance software. In the next 30 days, that certification will extend to the other two applications in SAP's Business Objects governance, risk and compliance (GRC) suite - Process Control and Risk Management. "We cover the entire stack of GRC from applications to IT controls," says Ranga Bodla, senior director for governance, risk and compliance for SAP. The Novell software provides user provisioning, access control and security event monitoring, while the SAP tools address risk and access management, data monitoring and compliance management and reporting. Novell has integrated and certified its Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP, Novell Identity Manager and Novell Sentinel to work with SAP's Business Objects GRC Access Control.

The two vendors hope the integration lets IT reduce costs and infrastructure by combining IT access controls and business process controls in a single integrated system. The companies also said they would optimize Novell's operating system for SAP's data center infrastructure. In essence, the two are creating a hub for defining security, identity and GRC across a network. "Users can synchronize across not only SAP applications but across all applications," says Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for identity and security at Novell. "So processes and policies in SAP Access Control can be mapped to another enterprise application with the same access controls tightly linked."The partnership between the two vendors http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031708-novell-modular-infrastructu... ">began early last year when Novell also announced a partnership to optimize SAP on SuSE Linux Enterprise and with Novell's virtualization and identity platforms. Follow John on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnfontana

Online test helps you self-diagnose H1N1 flu

Feeling sick? Face it, your doctor may not be able to squeeze you right in. Wondering if it's the H1N1 flu or just a regular old go-away-don't-come-near-me, flu?

But you may be able to figure it out using a Web-based self-assessment tool developed by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta. Have you been short of breath? The tool is now available on several national Web sites, including flu.gov , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Microsoft's H1N1 Response Center . The online test includes questions like, do you have a fever? Do you have a pain or pressure in your chest that you didn't have before? The H1N1 flu , also widely known as the swine flu, is a fairly new influenza virus that has spread around the world.

Were you feeling better and now a fever or cough is returning? The CDC reports that it first appeared in the United States this past April. With concerns about the new flu running high , health care providers expect to get slammed with a mounting wave of people rushing in to find out if they have the H1N1 virus. By June 11, the World Health Organization categorized it as a pandemic . Because its extremely contagious, hospitals and health care workers have been bracing for the H1N1 to hit hard this fall. The online test, dubbed the Strategy for Off-Site Rapid Triage, is designed to help a lot of people figure out if they need to see their doctor or go to a hospital. "This Web site is carefully designed to encourage those who are severely ill, and those at increased risk for serious illness, to contact their doctor, while reassuring large numbers of people with a mild illness that it is safe to recover at home," Arthur Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine and an associate dean at the Emory School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Hopefully, providing easy-to-understand information to the public will reduce the number of people who are needlessly exposed to H1N1 influenza in crowded clinic and ER waiting rooms, and allow America's doctors and nurses to focus their attention on those who need us most."