NewsFactor Business

Google Glass Raises Congressional Privacy Concerns

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:50:22 -0500

The buzz around Google Glass continues, but it's not all good. Some in Congress are raising privacy issues around the futuristic product.

Eight members of the House Privacy Caucus sent a letter to Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page. They have some questions about the privacy aspects of Google Glass. And they want answers.

"As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of average Americans," the letter says. "Because Google Glass has not yet been released and we are uncertain of Google's plans to incorporate privacy protections into the device, there are still a number of answered questions that we share."

Congressional Questions

The caucus then puts forth eight questions:

1. How does Google plan to prevent Google Glass from unintentionally collecting data about the user/non-user without consent?

2. What proactive steps is Google taking to protect the privacy of non-users when Google Glass is in use? Are product lifecycle guidelines and frameworks, such as Privacy By Design, being implemented in connection with its product design and commercialization?

3. When using Google Glass, is it true that this product would be able to use Facial Recognition Technology to unveil personal information about whomever and even some inanimate objects that the user is viewing? Would a user be able to request such information? Can a non-user or human subject opt out of this collection of personal data? If so, how? If not, why not?

4. Would Google place limits on the technology and what type of information it can reveal about another person? If so, explain. If not, why not?

5. Given Google Glass's sensory and processing capabilities, has Google considered making any additions or refinements to its privacy policy? If so, explain. If not, why not?

6. Would [device-specific] information be collected from users operating Google Glass?...

Should Enterprises Skip Over Windows 8?

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:46:04 -0500

IT will skip Windows 8 as the enterprise standard. So says a new Forrester Research report penned by David K. Johnson that goes by the same name.

"Windows 8 is the boldest release of the OS since Windows 95. Microsoft chose to discard the Start button in favor of a new look designed to tie together the PC, tablet, and, smartphone experience," Johnson wrote. But he noted that the "unorthodox offering" drives IT leaders to ask a number of questions.

Those questions include: Is Windows 8's new interface too far of a departure for some employees to learn, and will there even be any employee demand for it? Does Windows 8 offer enough new value to justify migration investments, and if so, when, and across which devices?

The report goes on to explain why Forrester believes most businesses will not adopt Windows 8 as their primary standard, but must be prepared to meet employee "bring your own device" demand. The latter point lines up with a recent Gartner report suggesting that half of companies will mandate BYOD for employees.

The UI Beef

Windows 8 started out of the gate with disadvantages. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen set the stage for the complaints with a review that tore the operating system to shreds last November.

Nielsen didn't like what he deemed a reversal of Microsoft's user interface strategy, one that differs from the traditional Bill Gates-driven style that emphasizes powerful commands. He said Microsoft has "gone soft" and "smothers" users with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features.

"One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. Windows no longer supports multiple windows on the screen," Nielsen wrote in a blog post. "Win 8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a...

Windows Phone Now No. 3 in Market, BlackBerry No. 4

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:35:26 -0500

Has Microsoft Phone moved into a coveted though distant third place for smartphone platforms behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS? A new report from IDC says it has.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker found that Android and iOS took an overwhelming combined 92.3 percent of all smartphone shipments in the first quarter, a huge increase of 59.1 percent over the same quarter last year. Separately, Android took 75 percent and iOS 17.3 percent.

Windows Phone, for the first time in IDC's reports, took third place with 3.2 percent, barely ahead of the BlackBerry OS, which had 2.9 percent. This compares with 2 percent for Windows Phone in Q1 of 2012, and what had been a more substantial 6.4 percent for BlackBerry. In January of this year, BlackBerry released its new BlackBerry 10 platform.

'Forward Motion'

Rounding out the top half dozen platforms, Linux had 1 percent and the dying Symbian, which posted 6.8 percent in first quarter of last year, now has 0.6 percent.

We asked Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team, if the Windows Phone showing in this report appeared to be just a blip, or if seemed to be a forward motion that could continue to keep Microsoft in third place.

He replied that he sees this "as forward motion" and not a blip, and the reason is Nokia. We can see now, Llamas said, "how serious they are and how serious their carrier partners are," as evidenced by their evangelizing, marketing, and steady stream of new Windows phones. Llamas said "it takes some time" to launch a new platform, and Nokia's efforts are now bearing fruit.

While other manufacturers have released Windows Phone devices, Microsoft's partnership with Nokia is the key to whether the smartphone platform succeeds. Nokia's devices accounted for 79 percent of Windows Phone shipments during Q1.

'Significant...

Domain Theft Bankrupting Small Businesses

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:56:20 -0500

Lexington, KY -- Domain name theft destroys companies, people's lives and entrepreneurs' dreams, cautions Kevin J. Wright. His first hand experience of the devastation wrought by domain theft has spurred him to outspoken attempts to educate business owners about the threat and help them protect themselves. Wright has launched a resource for victims of domain theft at http://www.StopDomainTheft.com, as well as a YouTube Channel http://www.DomainTheftVictims.com. Wright also plans to raise awareness of domain theft issues through published writings and speaking engagements.

Wright is past president of the World Religious Travel Association (WRTA), the voice of the $18 billion faith-based tourism industry. Wright watched helplessly as the organization became a victim of domain name theft, email interception and cyber squatting. Domain thieves led to the organization's Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in January 2011; liabilities exceeded $350,000 and impacted the lives and finances of staff, suppliers, creditors and stakeholders. As a result of these devastating consequences, Kevin J. Wright, is now speaking out on behalf of domain theft victims everywhere and raising urgent awareness of the issue.

"Domain theft is the hijacking of your website. It's tantamount to identity theft. Once your website is stolen, so is your company's identity," said Kevin J. Wright, WRTA's founding owner who suffered the financial consequences of domain theft as a victim. "My mission is to publicize this very destructive and novel form of business theft, because it's getting worse. I hope to decrease the number of victims and hold cybercriminals accountable."

Domain name theft occurs with regularity, according to industry experts and a 2007 The Wall Street Journal article. Small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs are among the most vulnerable victims. Domain thieves are often insiders, including rogue employees, shareholders or contractors, but can also be organized cybercriminal groups. Generally they seek...

Cloud Computing Gains Another Competitor with Google

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:24:18 -0500

Get ready, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Google is upping the services offered through its Cloud Platform.

At an event Wednesday at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the technology giant announced that its Compute Engine will now be available to any users, not only those who have Google Gold support.

To make that possible with Compute Engine, which provides a high-performance, hosted environment for running virtual machines, it will be billed in instances as small as one minute to 10-minute increments, there will be shared core instances for low-intensity workloads, and advanced routing features have been added for creating gateways and VPN servers.

Additionally, large persistent disks will support up to 10 terabytes per volume, and the company said it has completed ISO 27001:2005 international security certification for Compute Engine, Google App Engine, and Google Cloud Storage.

'All the Right Things'

Google also said that its App Engine platform, version 1.8.0, will now add limited preview support for the PHP programming language, one of the most commonly requested additions.

The 5-year-old App Engine currently supports Python, Java and Google's Go. Google said PHP was being added so that developers could run open-source programs like WordPress. In order to ease the process of building modularized applications, App Engine will also now have the ability to partition apps into components that have individual scaling, deployments, versioning and performance settings.

There is also a new Cloud Datastore service, a managed and schema-less storage for non-relational data. The company said the standalone service offers automatic scalability and high availability, and provides such capabilities as ACID transactions, SQL-like queries and indexes.

Al Hilwa, program director for Application Development Software research at IDC, said Google "is doing all the right things to become a serious cloud platform competitor." He added that the company had previously "evolved App Engine...

Lawmakers Accuse Google of U.K. Tax Trickery

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:42:26 -0500

U.K. lawmakers subjected search giant Google to blistering criticism Thursday, accusing the U.S. Internet company of playing games with Britain's tax rules to avoid paying what it owed.

In his second appearance before Parliament in roughly six months, Google Vice President Matt Brittin tried to defend his company's complex corporate structure to a committee of skeptical U.K. politicians, many of whom seemed unconvinced by his assertion that Google was being transparent about how it paid its bills.

After two hours of sharp questioning, committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge accused Brittin of "devious, calculated and, in my view, unethical behavior in deliberately manipulating the reality of your business in order to avoid paying your fair share of tax to the common good."

"You are a company that says you do no evil and I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax."

Brittin countered that his company's employees "fully comply with the law."

Google is one of several major multinationals -- including Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks -- whose convoluted corporate structures and disproportionately low tax bills have drawn increased attention in Britain and elsewhere.

Google, one of the world's most visible companies, has attracted particularly close scrutiny. The company has paid less than 0.1 percent of its billions in U.K. revenue back to the government in tax. In the first quarter of this year it made $1.3 billion in revenue from the UK, according to a Google release. The company justifies low taxes by saying that the overwhelming majority of sales actually occur at the company's European head office in Dublin.

The ins and outs of what makes a company's revenue taxable in Britain are complicated, but much hinges on where the sales take place. At his first hearing back in November, Brittin said that sales didn't take place in...

Can Electric-Car Maker Tesla's Shares Stay White-Hot?

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:39:30 -0500

Shares of electric-car maker Tesla zoomed 14.4% Monday, continuing a streak that started last week with the announcement of the company's first profitable quarter.

Tesla closed Monday at $87.80, up 57% from $55.79 a share Thursday before its first-quarter earnings report.

The investor interest in the California-based electric-car maker also follows a glowing review of its only model, the Model S sedan, on Friday from Consumer Reports magazine.

Investors are liking what they saw in the details of the electric-car maker's earnings report. The $11 million first-quarter profit shattered the assumption that no automaker can make money selling small numbers of plug-in cars. And Tesla posted a 17% gross profit margin, using American workers, in an industry in which 10% is considered outstanding.

"There's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for this car and this company," said Theodore O'Neill, founder of Litchfield Hills Research. "How far can Tesla go? As far as they want to go."

As impressive as its first quarter looked, it's going to be a long road. Tesla's fortunes are tied to its only car, the Model S, which ranges from $70,000 before tax credits to more than $100,000. The car can go 230 to 300 miles on a charge. Consumer Reports called it the best car it has tested since 2007, giving it a score of 99 out of 100.

But Tesla has to show it can be consistently profitable with a single product that is priced so high that most buyers can't afford it. There are questions, too, about whether it can keep its order books full, or whether the number of people who crave electric cars is limited.

CEO Elon Musk has noted the affordability problem and said he hopes to create a mass-market Tesla, but that it is still three or four years away.

Tesla sold 4,900 electric cars over the first...

Cisco Surges After Profit Exceeds Analysts' Estimates

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:41:08 -0500

Cisco's net income jumped 14 percent in the latest quarter as revenue at all four of its divisions rose for the first time in a year and a half.

Cisco earned $2.5 billion, or 46 cents per share, in its fiscal third quarter, which ended April 27. That's up from $2.2 billion, or 40 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding one-time items Cisco earned 51 cents per share in the latest quarter, and its revenue increased 5 percent, to $12.2 billion from $11.6 billion.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected 49 cents per share and $12.2 billion in revenue.

The networking equipment company's net income and revenue beat Wall Street's expectations and its stock gained $1.21, or 5.7 percent, to $22.42 in aftermarket trading after the release of the numbers. The stock fell 6 cents to $21.21 during Wednesday's regular trading session.

"We are starting to see some good signs in the U.S. and other parts of the world which are encouraging," Chairman and CEO John Chambers said in a press release.

Revenue in the U.S. improved and sales from emerging markets grew more than 10 percent.

As one of the largest technology companies in the world, Cisco's performance is widely regarded as a way to gauge the relative health of the technology industry. The San Jose, California, company cuts a broad swath, selling its routers, switches, software and services to corporate customers and government agencies around the world.

In addition, Cisco's fiscal quarters end a month later than most other major technology companies, giving it additional time to assess economic conditions.

The company said total orders rose 4 percent during the quarter. Orders in the Americas grew 7 percent. The company said government spending improved as local and state governments and education departments spent more money. Orders from the federal government decreased.

"We believe this balanced...

Technology and Labor Sectors Spar on Immigration

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:35:05 -0500

To the U.S. technology industry, there's a dramatic shortfall in the number of Americans skilled in computer programming and engineering that is hampering business. To unions and some Democrats, it's more sinister: The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

The answer is somewhere in between, depending as much on new technologies and the U.S. education system's ability to keep up as on the immigration law itself. But the sliver of computer-related jobs inside the U.S. that might be designated for foreigners -- fewer than 200,000 out of 6 million -- has been enough to strain a bipartisan deal in the Senate on immigration reform, showcase the power of big labor and splinter a once-chummy group of elite tech leaders hoping to make inroads in Washington.

"A lot of people agree that employers should have access to (highly trained) immigrants -- that they are a benefit to the country, and we are a country of immigrants," said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration. "I think the question is how much of a good thing is good."

The Senate immigration bill -- the result of months of quiet negotiations among eight influential senators -- is on track to nearly double the number of highly skilled foreign workers allowed to work in the U.S. under what's called an H-1B visa, from 65,000 to 110,000. The number of visas could climb as high as 180,000 depending on the number of applications received and the unemployment rate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee planned to take up the portion of the bill relating to H-1B visas on Thursday, paving the way for an eventual floor vote and setting...

Square Stand Turns iPad into Digital Cash Register

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:46:40 -0500

Mobile-payments start-up Square has designs on reinventing the cash register. On Tuesday, it unfurled Square Stand, a special piece of hardware that transforms an iPad tablet into a digital point-of-sale system that would replace traditional cash registers.

"Hardware makes software better," Square co-founder Jack Dorsey said at a press conference at a Blue Bottle Coffee near Square's original headquarters here.

"Customers of merchants (using Stand) never have to think about payments," he said.

Square Stand works with Square Register, the mobile app that turns an Apple iOS or Google Android device into a mobile payment system when paired with a credit card reader.

The Square Stand features a built-in card reader, and connects to accessories such as receipt printers or bar-code scanners. The hardware will work on second- and third-generation iPads, with a version for fourth-generation tablets arriving later this year.

The swiveling stand will sell for $299, and became available Tuesday at Square's Web site. Best Buy and other retailers will carry the 9-inch, 5-pound Stand in July.

Stand is likely to first pop up in coffee shops, where Square Readers have a strong presence and are most often used.

The pivot stand could end up at a local Starbucks as part of Square's expansive deal with the coffee giant. In October, the companies announced a technology-sharing agreement at the chain's 7,000 stores nationwide.

Square says it processes more than $15 billion in mobile payments through its service each year, and iPad usage is growing. Nearly half of processed payments come from iPad users.

The Stand arrives as more businesses are starting to use mobile-payment services such as Square and competing products from PayPal and Intuit. According to a forecast from research firm Forrester, mobile payments in the U.S. are expected to hit $90 billion by 2017.

Cash registers are "not the sexiest thing" in the world, Dorsey says....