Behind Your Business » E-Business

Facebook Reported Considering Ads in Mobile Users’ News Feeds

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:45:36 +0000

Speculation continues over Facebook's plans to generate even more revenue when it ultimately becomes a publicly traded company. Last week brought questions about whether the leading social media firm can resist the urge to charge membership fees or create a premium access level in the face of investor demands.

And now, inquiring minds are looking at mobile advertising as another way Facebook can cash in on its base of almost 850 million users claimed by the 8-year-old company.

It's Complicated

A published report suggests Facebook is already at work with partners creating sponsored stories and other ways to get paid content onto users' screens when they log in on-the-go.

Although Google, Apple and others are all hard at work trying to master profitable mobile ads, it's a dicey prospect because tablet and smartphone screen sizes are small, and weaker mobile devices can quickly use up their volatile memory trying to load complicated pages.

Facebook's solution could be items that show up on the users' news feed, rather than in the right corners as ads display now on the conventional Web page. The Financial Times, citing unnamed knowledgeable sources, said that "within weeks Facebook will begin showing such messages to overcome its lack of 'meaningful revenue' from mobile device users."

Twitter already features what it calls promoted Tweets. For example, the feed that results from clicking on the hashtag #superbowl produces a static Tweet from Chrysler. Google also provides clearly marked sponsored results on its search page and on YouTube.

How would an iPhone or Android user react when beer or deodorant ads start showing up among status updates from their classmates, cousins or childhood friends?

"We don't have any concrete data on mobile ad successes but I have heard that cell phone users respond positively when the trade-off is free service or a trial period associated with gaining...

CEO of Chipmaker Micron Dies in Plane Crash

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:07:37 +0000

The image Steve Appleton cultivated as a stunt pilot and off-road rally driver became the perfect metaphor for his wild, 18-year ride as the leader of Micron Technology Inc., where stomach-churning swings from billion-dollar profit to billion-dollar loss required the constitution of a business daredevil to survive.

Appleton, Micron's chief executive officer, died Friday morning when his experimental plane crashed at the Boise Airport, west of Micron's desert campus.

He was no stranger to plane crashes, surviving at least two earlier wrecks including one in 2004 that left him seriously injured. He was the only person aboard on Friday when the small Lancair crashed shortly after its second take-off attempt in Boise, according to safety investigators.

Appleton was known as a driven competitor in a volatile industry. Away from the office, he channeled that energy into high-octane hobbies, pursuing his passions as a stunt pilot, off-road racer and scuba diver.

"He lived life to the fullest, and while he enjoyed great success in business and in life, he never lost his intensity or his drive," Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said in a statement.

In the wake of the 51-year-old's death, Micron's board of directors met in Boise on Saturday and named chief operating officer D. Mark Durcan to be Appleton's successor.

Durcan was appointed as Micron's interim CEO on Friday only hours after Appleton's plane crashed. The board's action removes the interim title.

The 51-year-old Durcan had been the company's president and chief operating officer, and just last week announced his intention to step down in August.

Company spokesman Dan Francisco told The Associated Press on Saturday those plans had changed and Durcan was no longer planning to leave in August.

Corporate governance experts raised questions in the past about whether Appleton, as CEO, should be engaging in a hobby as risky as stunt piloting, but Micron's board...

HP Rolls Out OpenFlow-Enabled Switch Portfolio

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:43:35 +0000

Cisco and Brocade pushed out new cloud-minded switches last week. Now, Hewlett-Packard is answering back with a portfolio of OpenFlow-enabled switches that aim to simplify network management, performance and budget needs.

HP's new portfolio spans 16 models and includes the HP 3500, 5400 and 8200 series switches. HP also announced expanded support for OpenFlow across all switches in its FlexNetwork architecture in 2012.

OpenFlow is a network virtualization technology that promises customers flexibility and control to configure their networking environments by giving a remote controller the power to modify the behavior of varied network devices through a "forwarding instruction set."

But analysts have varied takes on how valuable the OpenFlow standard is. HP touts benefits like reduced complexity of network devices and automated tasks via simplified management. HP also points to how IT staff can better respond to changing needs in real time. But, again, analysts have mixed views.

A Data-Driven Transformation

Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, is among those who see the value of OpenFlow. HP also has attracted partners like Indiana University, Stanford University and the Global Environment for Network Innovations Project, which is operated by Raytheon BBN Technologies and funded by the National Science Foundation.

"Enterprise data centers are in the midst of a massive transformation driven by data center consolidation, server virtualization, Web-based applications and new security requirements, which our research indicates has created numerous network challenges that can't be addressed with existing legacy networks and manual processes," Oltsik said.

"OpenFlow holds the promise of breaking the logjam in network flexibility as well as paving the way for network innovation in the data center -- and vendor support from companies like HP is crucial for advancing this technology in 2012."

Is OpenFlow Really Better?

But Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, is still not sold on OpenFlow. As...

Mobile Phone Growth Slides In Fourth Quarter

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:59:52 +0000

Mobile phone shipments on a global basis reached 427.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 -- a tepid 6.1 percent rise from the year earlier period, IDC says.

The global handset market's single-digit growth in the seasonally strong fourth quarter shows that handset vendors are not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide, the firm's analysts said Thursday.

A surge in smartphone purchases led by Apple's iPhone 4S in the final three months of 2011 also caused feature phone shipments to decline faster than analysts had expected. Smartphone growth in Western Europe was not enough to offset the feature phones decline, despite successful product performances from Apple and Samsung.

With the exception of Apple, feature phones still account for a majority of unit sales at four of the five top handset vendors, said IDC Research Analyst Kevin Restivo.

"The introduction of high-growth products such as the iPhone 4S, which shipped in the fourth quarter, bolstered smartphone growth," Restivo said. "Yet overall market growth fell to its lowest point since the third quarter of 2009 -- when the global economic recession was in full bloom."

Strong iPhone Customer Loyalty

Unit shipments of Apple's red-hot iPhone 4S reached a record 37 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, which propelled the company into the No. 3 slot in the global handset market overall. During last year as a whole, Apple shipped 93.2 million iPhones.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple is on track to ship well more than 100 million iPhones during 2012.

"China is becoming a key market for Apple this year, and we expect Apple's share to grow rapidly in 2012, despite countless copycat rivals," said Strategy Analytics Director Tom Kang.

Investment firm Piper Jaffray expects Apple to ship 134 million iPhone units during calendar year 2012.

"Despite the lack of...

Brocade Execs Offer Look Under OpenScript Engine’s Hood

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:27:17 +0000

Can customers predict the future? Brocade is suggesting the notion as it launches its latest switch innovations.

This week, Brocade rolled out software advancements to its Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of cloud-optimized delivery switches. Brocade's stated goal is to help customers gain greater application control and service scalability.

The latest iteration of Brocade's ServerIron ADX comes equipped with a new OpenScript engine, an open platform that sets the stage for innovation. That is where the "predicting the future" comes in. The OpenScript engine can intelligently predict the effect of a script on a network before the script is deployed into production.

"Basically, we ported the Perl programming language to the ADX application processor so that you can use APIs to control application delivery with a script," said Greg Hankins, a global solutions architect at Brocade. "This means you get all the Perl goodness that you know and love for writing custom scripts to read or write layer three to seven headers based on your particular application needs."

Customizing Services

Keith Stewart, director of product management at Brocade, stressed that OpenScript allows network operators to bring new services to market faster, and tailor them to the specific needs of their customers and business models.

"Unlike other closed and proprietary systems, Brocade OpenScript provides the scalability that network operators need, built on top of an open, standards-based Perl platform," Stewart said. "Brocade OpenScript gives operators the flexibility they need without locking them into a proprietary implementation."

Brocade OpenScript and Brocade ADX are key elements of Brocade's strategy for next-generation data centers, according to Stewart. He pointed out that Brocade is an active supporter of the Open Networking Foundation, and is building the enabling platforms for a world where applications and data can reside anywhere in the cloud.

IPv6 Improvements

IPv6 increases the pool of global IP addresses and simplifies...

Smartphones Overtake Computers and Tablets

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:58:03 +0000

Move over, computers and tablets. For the first time, annual worldwide shipments of smartphones are larger than PCs and tablets.

According to figures released Friday by industry research firm Canalys, there were more than 158 million smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter of last year, a whopping 57 percent increase over the same quarter in 2010. For the entire year, smartphones were up 63 percent, to 487.7 million units.

'Significant Milestone'

By contrast, the global client PC market grew 15 percent last year, to 414.6 million units. This includes a huge, 274 percent growth in tablets, which are now the fast-growing segment in the client PC category.

Chris Jones, Canalys vice president and principal analyst, said in a statement that this is a "significant milestone." Jones said that, within a few years, smartphones "have grown from being a niche product segment at the high end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition."

The milestone comes as a previous report from Canalys, released earlier this week, showed that tablets are now 22 percent of all PC shipments. Coupled with Friday's report on the growth of smartphones, it's clear that the center of mobile computing is now in smartphones and tablets.

The Canalys report said that, while decreasing price points have been a key driver of the smartphone growth, there also has been an "increasing consumer appetite" for using smartphones for Net browsing, content consumption and apps.

However, the era of smart phones being more popular than computers or tablets may be short-lived. Canalys said it expects smartphone growth to slow this year, as vendors begin to emphasize cost control and profitability.

As an example, the company noted that some vendors who have focused on the low end, such as Huawei, ZTE and LG, are now turning their attention to higher-level, pricier models that cost more,...

AMD Makes Risky Move Toward ‘Ambidextrous’ Strategy

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:20:01 +0000

While not leaping into the arms of ARM, AMD is hinting it's less wedded to the traditional x86 architecture that is its history.

AMD calls its strategy "ambidextrous" and says it builds on the company's current strengths in x86 and graphics products while embracing other technology and intellectual property the company hopes will differentiate its products in a competitive market.

The Intel rival sees its future in HSA, or heterogeneous system architecture. AMD outlined its strategy at its Financial Analyst Day this week.

"AMD's strategy capitalizes on the convergence of technologies and devices that will define the next era of the industry," said Rory Read, president and CEO of AMD. "The trends around consumerization, the cloud and convergence will only grow stronger in the coming years."

Repositioning AMD

As Read sees it, AMD has a unique opportunity to take advantage of a key industry inflection point as executives continue the work they started last year to reposition the company. Read says the new strategy will "help AMD embrace the shifts occurring in the industry, marrying market needs with innovative technologies, and become a consistent growth engine."

A major part of the plan includes HSA, which promises software developers a way to program APUs by combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the graphics processing unit -- all while offering high-bandwidth access to memory at low power. AMD is working to make HSA an open industry standard for the developer community.

"The battle plan that Read is articulating isn't to go head-to-head with Intel. He's suggesting going around Intel," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, who attended AMD's Financial Analyst Day. "Read was talking about going where the market was going, using whatever technologies they have access to in order to get there, including both x86 and ARM. You had to read between...

Google’s Bouncer Searches for Misbehaving Android Apps

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:01:42 +0000

Looking to bolster confidence in the security of its fast-growing market for mobile applications, Google is posting a bouncer at the door.

The service analyzes new applications in the Android Market as well as those already posted, and even developer accounts, looking for known malware, spyware and trojans.

Google's Bouncer also looks for "behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving," according to a post on Google's mobile blog Thursday announcing the service.

The service develops a baseline of previously analyzed apps and compares it with new ones for signs of trouble.

"We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior," writes Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice president of engineering for Google's Android division.

And Stay Out!

Bouncer will also scrutinize new developer accounts to make sure those who are tossed as repeat offenders do not come back.

Bouncer works in addition to existing Android tools such as sandboxing, which builds virtual walls between applications and other software on the device so malware can't access data; permissions, which scrutinizes the capabilities of apps to help users make decisions; and malware removal tools that can remotely scrub intruders from a phone or tablet.

Still, the Android Market's growth -- it topped 11 billion downloads -- has made it a top source of malware. Juniper Networks in November announced that its Global Threat Center believes the easy process for posting apps led to a 472 percent increase in malware samples since the previous July.

"These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications," wrote Juniper on its threat center blog. Lack of sufficient screening means poorly defined, unscreened apps will only be removed if malware is reported or detected by...

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Reportedly Will Share Code

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:14:00 +0000

With Windows 8 moving toward release later this year, providing an integrated operating system for laptops, desktops and tablets, new details are beginning to emerge about Microsoft's plans for its next phone OS. Recent reports point to the ways in which Windows Phone 8, code-named Apollo, will advance the company's mobile platform and tie in with the tablet and computer OS.

The online reports began appearing this week. They build on a leaked video of a Microsoft phone executive, Joe Belfiore, which reportedly had been intended only for the eyes of Nokia executives, as well as various postings and hints by Microsoft.

Web Browsing, NFC, BitLocker

According to the reports, the Apollo OS will provide support for multi-core processors, four different screen resolutions, removable microSD cards, wireless e-commerce, and near-field communication, which allows tap-to-share functionality that will work with other phones, computers and tablets.

From the perspective of user interface and application development, the interfaces between Windows 8 and Apollo are expected to be similar, and Phone 8 is expected to reuse the kernel, network stacks, security and multimedia coding of Windows 8. As a result, applications developed for Windows 8 could potentially run, with relatively little modification, on Apollo phones.

To speed up Web browsing, Apollo will also reportedly use proxy servers that compress and deliver pages to the Internet Explorer 10 browser on the phone, a la the Opera browser. The reports also indicate that a revised Skype, now owned by Microsoft, will be integrated with Apollo, there will be automatic Wi-Fi connectivity, and Microsoft's 128-bit BitLocker will be used for full disk encryption, which is expected to appeal to businesses. Support for SkyDrive will allow data to be shared among Windows 8/Phone 8 devices.

Apollo's release schedule has not yet been announced, but it is expected to occur sometime after the coming...

Microsoft Slams Google User Data Policy in New Ads

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:51:56 +0000

Microsoft Corp. slammed search rival Google Inc. with full-page newspaper ads Wednesday, saying that recent changes at Google that allow it to internally merge the data it collects on user activity across services such as YouTube and Gmail are meant to allow advertisers to better target customers.

Google has touted the overhaul it announced last week as a simplification of detailed but obtuse policies and a way to provide a better user experience.

Microsoft offered up its own Web-based alternatives, saying for instance that users of its free email service, Hotmail, don't have to worry about the content of their emails being used to help target ads.

The attack ads appeared in newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

"Every data point Google collects and connects to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser," Microsoft says in the ad.

In response, Google published a blog post in which it refuted what it called "myths" about its new privacy policy, saying, "Our privacy controls have not changed. Period."

The company does not dispute that it serves up ads based on words in private emails written by users of Gmail, but says such scanning is automated and is similar to how many email providers filter out spam. It has operated that way since Gmail's introduction in 2004.

Both companies offer several controls to prevent advertisers from tracking users' online activity.

Online expert Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the Web site Search Engine Land, said that Google's privacy policy simplification has turned into a public relations "nightmare," but only because it again focused attention on the kind of data that Google has collected for years.

He said Microsoft is in no position to point fingers, since it also collects a lot of user data from its search engine, Bing, and will adjust search results based...