Web Technology News

Businesses continued to invest in infrastructure upgrades, along with new software applications and mobile devices, including tablets. - IT spending increased by 5 percent at constant currency in 2011, despite the worsening economic situation in Western Europe and volatility in other regions, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Black Book. Emerging markets continued to lead the way, with tech spending in t...

Android OEMs Motorola and HTC are curbing their smartphone and tablet production in 2012, while Samsung holds the line. - Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) likes the boast that there are over 200 million devices, including over 300 different types of smartphones and tablets, based on its Android operating system in the market worldwide. But while consumers are dazzled and perhaps dizzy from the sheer volume of choices in fro...

Symantec provides one solution for all backups whether they are based on tape, disk, or in physical or virtual environments. - Security firm Symantec is taking aim at the often complex and time consuming process of backup and recovery services with the release of NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012 software and cloud services, as well as Backup Exec Small Business Edition for midmarket companies. In addition, the companys Ne...

Aberdeen researched nearly 300 companies to determine how well they were performing on the core business of human capital management. - iCIMS, a provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions for the small to medium-size business (SMB) market, recently co-sponsored the Aberdeen Group's January 2012 Human Capital Management Trends report. In the study, Aberdeen found that Best-in-Class companies are using recru...

Philippe Kahn, an icon in the software and overall IT industry, is slated to talk about his invention of the camera phone as part of a Best Buy commercial that will air during the Super Bowl. - IT industry pioneer Philippe Kahn is set to star in a Super Bowl advertisement during the big game Sunday evening. Kahn, who founded software tools powerhouse Borland International and other concerns, is slated to take part in a Best Buy spot focusing on tech innovators during the Super Bowl...

Researchers examined the state of security in SCADA and industrial control systems and presented an ugly picture of the vulnerabilities and challenges in addressing the issues. - CANCUN, Mexico Recent reports painted a bleak picture of the security issues plaguing industrial control systems, but the situation is exacerbated by the fact that administrators are naïve about the dangers, researcher said. Researchers presented some alarming findings about the state of secur...

Thousands of computers still infected with the DNSChanger Trojan will not be able to access the Internet after the FBI shuts down its temporary servers March 8. - Some of the major organizations still have not removed the DNSChanger Trojan from infected computers, despite the fact that the botnet's command-and-control infrastructure has been under the Federal Bureau of Investigation's control for the past few months. The primary function of the DNSChang...

Facebook has a strong ally in its growing battle against Google and its own social-networking aims: Microsoft. - Facebooks initial public offering will hand the social network billions of dollars to spend on future projects, and turn many of its employees into millionaires or billionaires. It will also intensify competition with Google, which desperately wants to establish an outsized presence in the so...

RIM will likely abandon plans to license the BlackBerry OS in favor of positioning BlackBerry 10 head-to-head against Apple and Google Android, according to an analyst. - Research In Motion will dump its BlackBerry OS licensing plans and double down on the upcoming BlackBerry 10s ability to battle toe-to-toe against Apples iOS and Google Android, according to a new analyst report. “Our checks indicate RIM is likely to move away from a proposal to the Board th...

Microsoft's week included a swipe at Google, the next version of Office in technical preview, and some leaks about Windows Phone 8. - Microsofts week saw the release of its Kinect for Windows SDK (software development kit) and Runtime, a very public broadside at Google over the latters privacy policy, the next version of Office entering technical preview, and the unexpected revelation of some crucial Windows Phone 8 details. ...

Facebook users like to get more information than they give on the world's leading social network, according to a small Pew Internet Project study. The question is how Facebook can boost user engagement beyond just power users. - Facebook's IPO will newly mint many millionaires, but many of the social network's 845 million users can't be accorded the same largesse. The majority of Facebook users receive more from their Facebook friends than they give, according to new information from the Pew Internet Project, which onl...

Motorola Mobility's troubles with the Android Honeycomb-based Xoom tablet continue as nearly 100 WiFi Xoom devices were accidentally resold with user data on them. - Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI) Feb. 3 said that it failed to wipe some user data from roughly 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Motorola Xoom WiFi tablets that were refurbished and resold via daily deals Website Woot between October and December 2011. Original owners who performed a factory data reset...

According to an analysis by IBM and the University of Southern California, Eli Manning of the New York Giants has edged out the New England Patriots Tom Brady as the top QB in the Super Bowl. - If Eli Manning doesn't beat Tom Brady on the field on Super Bowl Sunday, he has at least thus far won the battle of public sentiment, according to an analysis of Twitter traffic by IBM. In a joint effort with the University of Southern California's (USC) Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM used its analy...

NEWS ANALYSIS: The Android Market was kind of like the Wild West until Google Bouncer showed up as the new sheriff in town. - As peculiar as the after-the-fact announcement of Google Bouncer may have been, it was still good news. Perhaps Google was ramping up, trying to make sure that its Bouncer would work as intended and be able to handle the flood of new apps submitted to the Android Market. Perhaps the company just...

NEWS ANALYSIS: Google and Facebook have their gun sights set on each other. As Facebook gains huge new riches with its initial public stock offering, the competition between these two giants is likely to become fierce and even nasty. - When Facebook first launched, it was looked at as a niche social network. The site catered to college kids and seemed to be destined to live in that world. But after an increasing number of people joined the site, and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to open it up to the general pu...

The VeriSign breach is an example of how no one is too secure or too big to be attacked. Security experts said targeted attacks on "high value" companies will continue. - Companies get breached. That's the lesson of 2011. Large or small, no organization is immune to attacks. The VeriSign breach was just another day of business as usual for the bad guys. Campaigns such as Operation Shady Rat, disclosed by McAfee, and Nitro, disclosed by Symantec, showed how eve...

Adobe wants researchers to focus on mitigation technologies that make it expensive for attackers to launch attacks, not hunting bugs. - CANCUN, Mexico Security researchers need to shift their attention away from hunting for vulnerabilities and start thinking about ways to make it difficult to create exploits, according to a security expert from Adobe. There is too much focus on vulnerabilities and defects in software, Brad Ar...

Amazon's Kindle Fire remains a popular Android tablet in early 2012, according to ChangeWave Research. The firm said 54 percent of Fire owners said they were "very satisfied" with the slate. - Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) may have missed its analyst estimates for the fourth quarter, but the company's Kindle Fire tablet remains a hot ticket item. Some 6 percent of 2,607 North American consumers surveyed in January claimed to own a Kindle Fire, double the percentage of a month ago, according ...

Despite public concerns from members of Congress and European data-protection authorities, Google isn't going to slow or stop its march to whittle its product privacy policies down into one big umbrella policy. - Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) plans to move forward with its planned privacy policy changes despite resistance from a handful of U.S. congressmen and a European data-protection group. The search-engine provider, battling Facebook for supremacy of user engagement and advertising on the Web, said it pla...

Scammers are using automated techniques to generate tons of fake profiles to trick users into joining scams and clicking on malicious links, Barracuda Networks found. - CANCUN, MEXICO Cyber-crooks on Facebook are creating fake profiles on the social networking site to launch their scams, according to data released by Barracuda Networks. The fake profiles are overwhelmingly women. About 97 percent of the fake profiles collected by Barracuda Networks turned out...