TechNewsWorld
Sun Apr 24 04:45:46 EDT 2011
Home: http://www.technewsworld.com
Feed: http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/syndication/rssfull.pl

Some iPhone to Watch Over Me - Let's talk about privacy. Is it a violation of your privacy if your phone knows where you are at all hours of the day and keeps detailed records without your telling it to? What if the phone never tells anyone else -- doesn't beam your location to Steve Jobs or Larry Page or the Pope or anyone at all? OK, maybe it will tell your computer where you've been, but only when you sync up.

Amazon's Cloudy Communications Make Bad Situation Worse - The collapse of Amazon Web Services' Elastic Cloud Compute left several large websites out of commission on Thursday. Amazon reportedly attributed the problems to what it called "a networking event" that caused runaway re-mirroring of Elastic Block Storage volumes. The resulting cascade took down hundreds, possibly thousands, of websites, including Foursquare, Hootsuite, Quora and Reddit.

VCs and IT Security Firms: Not Much Love in the Air - Although security breaches make the headlines regularly and Washington has plans to upgrade the security of the United States' national infrastructure, up-and-coming IT security companies are having difficulty securing investment funds. The U.S. Defense Department, for instance, plans to spend $500 million on researching new cybersecurity technologies.

Natty Narwhal About to Surface - Canonical is releasing its Ubuntu 11.04 suite of corporate and developer desktops and servers -- aka "Natty Narwhal" -- on April 28. New features include a technology preview for Ubuntu Server 11.04, which is downloadable through the Ubuntu software repositories. Ubuntu 11.04 for the corporate desktop includes the Unity interface, which debuted last year in Ubuntu 10.10, geared for netbooks.

Social Networks Are 'Huge Boondoggle for Bad Guys' - You've gotta love social networking. It lets us make zillions of "friends" all over the world, it's making corporations scramble to meet customer requirements, and it's made Mark Zuckerberg and a few other people very, very rich. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are among those other people enriched by social networking.

Mobile Health Apps, Part 2: Making Life Safer and Sweeter - For years, industry leaders have predicted the Year of Mobile -- but that was back when those in the know thought of mobile in terms of a trend. Trends have peaks. Those crests are marked by a "Year Of" label that largely heralds a forthcoming decline. Mobile will have no peak, despite its growing presence in our daily lives, because it is not a trend.

Red Hat's New Java Alternative: From Coffee to Tea - When a FOSS company gets to be the size of Red Hat, pretty much every move it makes is of interest to those of us here in the Linux community. So when said company unveils plans to create an alternative to none other than Java, well, let's just say everyone sits up and starts listening. Sure enough, that's just what leaked out into the Linux blogosphere last week.

Betrayed by My iPhone! - This whole "knowing-where-everyone-is-at-all-times-thing" that we've been experiencing in this century is getting old. We've known that our cellphone carriers keep track of our handsets as they move around, connecting to various towers and using services that require byzantine billing systems.

Facebook Security Improvements Require a Bit of Digging - Facebook has introduced a number of security improvements aimed at better safeguarding users' privacy. These enhancements came a day after Sophos published an open letter asking the site to tighten up its security. By all accounts, Sophos was not impressed. Not that Facebook hastily revamped its controls because of Sophos -- it announced these tools were coming last month.

Amazon Kindles Enthusiasm of Library Crowd - Young Kindle is getting a library card -- at 11,000 libraries. Amazon announced Kindle Library Lending on Wednesday. The new feature, which launches later this year, will let Kindle customers borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will work on all generations of Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps.

Green Data Centers Are Where It's At - It may be an increasingly digital, electronic and paperless world, but that doesn't mean it doesn't use a lot of energy. In particular, data centers -- those places that store, maintain, and manage all the bits and bytes that keep things humming -- use tremendous amounts of energy. Greening these centers, therefore, is one of the top priorities for many businesses.

Taptu: A Diverse Media Buffet Served on Tiny Little Plates - Those of us who gorge ourselves on a daily diet of bite-sized blog tapas, social media chicken nuggets and the occasional full meal of a long and deep read tend to organize our phones and computers in a highly personalized system of information consumption. It's a messy way to live, but there are apps out there that at least attempt to keep it all under control, for the most part.