Computing » Tactile Gaming and Telepresence Androids

Highlights from the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference.

The SIGGRAPH conference, which takes place in Vancouver, Canada, this year, is a showcase for the latest research in computer graphics, interfaces, and design.

These images were captured using a new kind of video camera developed by Contrast Optical and the University of New Mexico that is able to mimic the human eye’s ability to capture details from both bright and dark features simultaneously. The three smaller images, right, show the output from the camera’s three digital image sensors, each of which captures a slightly different range of brightness. A system of prisms directs light from the lens onto three sensors; software combines the output from the three into one image (shown at left) that captures detail in both bright sparks and dark shadows. See a video of the camera and its output.

Software developed by Thibaut Weise and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne makes a digital character mirror your facial expressions. The system uses Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing camera to track a user's face and translate its shape and motion onto a digital character. In the top image, two users show how this could enable new kinds of online interaction.

This handheld device, known as GelSight, uses transparent rubber and a camera to quickly capture the fine three-dimensional structure of a surface, such as the palm of this person’s hand. The device can capture details just two microns across and less than a micron deep. Micah Kimo Johnson and colleagues developed the system at MIT and say it could be used in forensic investigations--for example, to rapidly examine shell cases so investigators can determine which gun fired them. Watch a video of GelSight in action.

This blimp gives users a remote physical presence so they can communicate with people elsewhere. A projector inside the blimp puts the operator's face on its outside, while speakers transmit his or her voice. Microphones and a camera let the person controlling the blimp hear and see what’s happening around it. The system was created by Hiroaki Tobita and Shigeaki Maruyama at Sony Computer Science Laboratories.

A smart phone app called iFace3D, developed by Digiteyezer, can capture a photo-realistic 3-D model of a person’s head. The app captures video footage for 20 seconds as the phone is moved around a person’s head, and the video is processed by an Internet server to reconstruct the head's 3-D shape. The app can then be used to view, manipulate, and edit that model as shown here.

The chair shown here provides tactile sensations during game play. The player feels something running along his or her skin, as indicated by the red trace. A mat sitting on the chair contains a grid of vibrating devices that are carefully coordinated to re-create the feel of a smooth, moving touch. The Surround Haptics project is the work of Ali Israr and Ivan Poupyrev at Disney’s Pittsburgh research lab.

This android torso can be used to express another person’s facial expressions, body language, and voice as a novel form of telepresence. Taking control of Telenoid, as it is known, requires special software that uses a webcam to track a person’s face and head movements, transferring them to the robot along with the operator’s voice. Telenoid was developed at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute.

A camera hidden inside this mirror allows software to track and display a person’s heart rate. It does this by monitoring tiny changes in the brightness of a person's face, which betray pulses of blood moving through the skin’s blood vessels. Ming Zher-Poh, pictured, developed the mirror with colleagues at the MIT Media Lab.

Tech News » Getting People with Disabilities Back to Work

 Companies and advocacy groups are stepping up efforts to provide jobs for the rising number of unemployed people with disabilities

AT&T (T), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), and a host of other big U.S. companies will meet in November with 60 prospective employees at an event in Morristown, N.J.

This is no ordinary networking schmoozefest. These would-be staffers are capable of handling a broad range of information technology jobs—from software programming to hardware engineering. Something else these people have in common: They all have disabilities.

Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities, affiliated with the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, convened the summit to reverse what it considers a disturbing increase in the rate of unemployment for people who are battling autism, visual impairments, or other physical or psychological disabilities. "The point of these summits is to encourage students to see that there are employers out there seeking them, and for employers out there to know there are qualified job-seekers," says Alan Muir, executive director of the group.

Even as the disabled workforce shrank by 423,000 to about 4.9 million in the two years through May, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities increased to 15.6 percent from 13.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which began tracking the data in June 2008. The unemployment rate for people with no disabilities dropped to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent in that same period.

Employment Struggle

The divergence shows that more than 20 years after the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was designed to foster equal opportunities in employment, people with disabilities continue to struggle to find jobs. "The ADA and the special education laws have combined to produce the best-educated population of people with disabilities in U.S. history," Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Disability Employment Summit in April. "Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting regularly on the employment situation for people with disabilities, we have strong evidence that it has gotten disproportionately worse for workers with disabilities in the last two years," he said.

Some companies including Walgreens (WAG), IBM (IBM), and Lockheed Martin (LMT) are taking steps to improve hiring of people with disabilities. Walgreens, for example, opened a new distribution center in Anderson, S.C., in 2007. The center features simplified touchscreen computers and automated guided vehicles that could be operated by people with disabilities. The company began hiring people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Today, 40 percent of the workers in that center have a disability.

By the end of 2010, the company had hired about 850 such workers in all of its distribution centers. The aim is to increase hiring of people with disabilities to about 20 percent of its distribution center workers, from slightly less than 10 percent at the end of last year.

Creating accommodations for most of those workers cost less than $25 apiece, and they hold the same jobs, receive the same pay, and are held to the same productivity standards as other employees, J. Randolph Lewis, senior vice-president of supply chain and logistics at Walgreens, said in Mar. 2 Senate testimony.

Tech Challenge

When it comes to taking on people with issues such as vision or hearing loss, one challenge is that hiring managers may not understand what tools they’ll need to work productively. IBM has created a Web portal to help suggest specific technologies such as screen readers that blind employees may need or the type of telephone relay service that a deaf person might use. "It makes it really easy for employees to get help," says Frances W. West, director of the IBM Human Ability & Accessibility Center.

IBM hired its first blind person in 1914 and went on to develop technology for those employees, such as talking typewriters and Braille printers. The commitment to assistive technology has long come from upper management. Thomas J. Watson Jr., who became chief executive officer of IBM in 1956, suffered from depression and learning disabilities as a young man.

Lockheed Martin recruits injured veterans for jobs in information technology and supply chain management. The company operates a program called the Seamless Transition Apprenticeship Program in partnership with the U.S. Veterans Affairs Dept. and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. During the two-year program, apprentices work with an employee. They receive training and mentoring and are strongly encouraged to pursue a college degree if they don’t already have one.

While companies like IBM, Walgreens, and Lockheed Martin serve as examples of progressive hiring practices, many companies still have misconceptions about hiring people with disabilities, says Debra Ruh, CEO of (TecAccess), a risk management and accessibility consultancy in Rockville, Va.

Dispelling Misconceptions

"People are afraid of what they don’t understand," Ruh says. "People worry that if you hire a person with a disability that there’s going to be more absenteeism and the biggest misnomer is that you can’t fire them because there will be a lawsuit." She says she has fired employees who have disabilities, and that she hasn’t been sued.

When Ruh started TecAccess in 2001, she decided to hire mostly employees with disabilities. Over the years, she’s hired workers with mobility and physical impairments, including muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, quadriplegia, paraplegia, traumatic brain injuries, vision loss, and mental health issues. Ruh was inspired by the creativity and capabilities of her eldest daughter, Sara, who has Down syndrome. Sara Ruh now speaks globally about accessibility on behalf of TecAccess.

What potential employees with disabilities often do need is training and, in some cases, technology to help them do their jobs. Walgreens, for example, has worked with outside agencies to provide training and support to help employees make the transition into the workplace. "About 40 percent of people with disabilities say they’d need assistive technology to enter the workforce," says Janet Fiore, CEO of The Sierra Group, a rehabilitation engineering consulting group in King of Prussia, Pa. Those accommodations can range in cost from a few hundred dollars to $2,000, she says, adding that often companies qualify for tax breaks on those expenses.

In the past, educators often steered people with disabilities away from science and technology, fearing it would be too complicated, says Muir. Yet, about half of the students at his organization’s last two networking events in Boston and San Jose were knowledgeable about science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. "I was very surprised and pleased," he says, "and the employers were thrilled."

King is a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in San Francisco.

Tech News » Hiring Like It's 1999

 

Cities with the Biggest Growth in Tech Jobs

Michael De Frenza scans the crowd of 50 or so well-dressed professionals mingling near a bar at the W Hotel in San Francisco’s South of Market District. De Frenza, a recent transplant to the Bay Area, is here in search not of a date—but of a job. In the five weeks since De Frenza, 34, returned to the area after a two-year stint in Toronto, he has received five offers. “I’m taking my time trying to find the right fit,” he says.

I Love Rewards, which provides companies with services to motivate employees, arranges cocktail parties like this one every other week at the W Hotel to help it recruit 40 people by Sept. 30 for a new West Coast sales outpost. “Just in time for us arriving in San Francisco, the market has gotten extremely hot,” says Razor Suleman, chief executive of the company. “San Francisco is coming back to the days when candidates have two or three job offers,” he says.

Competition for cloud computing engineers, security experts, and mobile developers as well as sales professionals in the technology industry has gotten so fierce in the past six months that companies are going to greater lengths to woo prospective employees. They’re throwing lavish parties, handing out free food at conferences, doling out $50,000 signing bonuses, and offering perks such as free haircuts and medical care at the office.

MORE SIGNING BONUSES

The tech sector is fueling a job boom that stands in stark contrast to the malaise of the general job market. The nationwide unemployment rate ticked up to 9.2 percent in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At the same time, the unemployment rate for tech professionals dropped to 3.3 percent, from 5.3 percent in January. “That’s pretty close to full employment,” says Alice Hill, managing director of technology career website Dice.com (DHX).

“It’s such a thin market, it feels like everybody is employed already,” says Adam Pisoni, co-founder and chief technology officer of Yammer, which sells software and services for social networking in the workplace. The San Francisco company is doubling its engineering staff. “Engineers have 10 recruiters calling them.” The company would like to hire between 50 and 100 engineers this year, Pisoni says.

Companies are employing a variety of strategies to attract talent. Saba Software (SABA) and Digital River (DRIV) recently paid C-level executives $50,000 signing bonuses. “While signing bonuses at tech companies are not uncommon, their use has become more prevalent recently as the economy has improved and competition for talent has heated up,” says Aaron Lapat, managing director of the technology practice at executive recruiting firm J. Robert Scott. Recruiters are also circling Cisco like vultures, anticipating the August layoffs in the hope of finding qualified employees.

BELLS AND MUSIC

Recruiting tactics from the late 1990s are starting to make a comeback, too. Last year, Appirio hired a taco truck and parked it at Dreamforce, an industry conference for cloud computing professionals. Attendees couldn’t help but notice the signs on the truck saying that Appirio was hiring as they waited in line for free tacos.

When Dreamforce happens again later this month, Appirio plans to ply attendees with more food, but the company wouldn’t divulge exactly what it plans to serve. Appirio anticipates that about 25,000 people will attend Dreamforce, the cloud computing trade show organized by Salesforce.com (CRM). “We assume that 10 percent are actively looking for a new job,” says Narinder Singh, Appirio’s chief strategy officer. The company hired 110 workers in the first half of this year and is looking for another 140 by year’s end.

In 1998, when Mark Barrenechea worked for Oracle (ORCL), he hired an ice cream truck and parked it outside of then-competitor Siebel Systems. At the time, he was a senior vice-president for applications development trying to find engineering talent. The bells and music would signal employees to come outside, he says.

WATCHING FOR LAYOFFS

In his current role as CEO of supercomputer-maker Silicon Graphics International (SGI), Barrenechea uses a different tactic. “We haven’t had to resort to ice cream trucks and cocktail parties,” he says. Instead, SGI is going after employee referrals and targeting companies where there’s organizational change. The CEO says the company has found supercomputing talent at Oracle’s Sun Microsystems and may find technical sales talent from Cisco’s upcoming layoffs. SGI plans to expand its sales force 10 percent this year, adding about 25 positions. Cisco declined to comment.

Suleman at I Love Rewards also encourages employees to refer job candidates. He’s offering a luxury trip to Las Vegas in September for any employee who refers a new hire. Even though each employee will stay in a suite, Suleman says it’s 80 percent less expensive than using a recruiter.

In the end, though, some prospective employees will be wooed with competitive compensation packages that include cash bonuses. When Saba Software hired Shawn Farshchi as chief operating officer on June 1, the company agreed to pay him a yearly salary of $265,000 with an annual performance incentive bonus of up to 70 percent of his base salary. That offer also included stock options and a signing bonus of $50,000.

Farshchi previously worked at IBM’s (IBM) Coremetrics Web analytics unit and at Cisco’s (CSCO) WebEx operation, which he took from a $60 million business to more than $300 million, says Saba CEO Bobby Yazdani. Farshchi has expertise in selling a product globally, which is a skill Saba needs, Yazdani says. “He was someone that we had our eye on, and we were not going to lose that battle for $50,000.”

INCREASING CRAZINESS

As companies compete for a limited talent pool, they’re upping the ante. “There’s so much poaching going on, and now we see the rise of the crazy perks,” says Hill at Dice.com. Hill says she’s seeing companies offer a range of services, from car washes and free haircuts to onsite doctors, dentists, and notaries. “Qualcomm has a weekly farmer’s market,” says Hill.

No doubt these developments are a welcome change for workers after the recession. For companies, though, this means an increase in labor costs as salaries rise and businesses try to retain workers with perks and retention bonuses. It may also force companies to grant richer stock option awards to attract the right programming talent, according to a Fitch Ratings report released last month.

The percentage that stock-based compensation makes up of total operating expenses can serve as a proxy for technology labor market tightness, says Jamie Rizzo, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. At Adobe (ADBE), options and other stock awards accounted for 8.6 percent of total operating expenses in 2010, up from 7 percent in 2007. Intuit (INTU) saw that number increase to 5.7 percent in 2010, from 4 percent in 2007.

SKILLS WITH SHORT LIVES

The rush to find workers is symptomatic of a deeper problem in the tech industry. The supply and demand of talent is out of sync, says Professor Peter Cappelli at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Companies are looking for exactly the skills they need today to deal with their clients. “We don’t want to have to train anybody, and when those skills become obsolete, we don’t want to retrain them,” he says. Companies tend to hire people with IT engineering degrees, use those skills for five years, and then they want a new crop, says Cappelli, who researches human resource practices and talent management.

“It means they are hiring and laying off at the same time,” says Cappelli. “It’s a really bad thing for the economy and for the companies themselves, because it’s putting them at the mercy of the labor market.” It also leads to labor booms and busts, which didn’t happen as much before 1983 because companies would train and retrain people, Cappelli says.

Still, Michael De Frenza, who sold time shares until the recession, is happy to find the tech job market is on the upswing. In his last job, he traveled 80 percent of the time. He has two young children and says he’s ready to stay put for a while.

King is a writer for Bloomberg Businessweek in San Francisco.

Tech News » HTML5 Seems To Be Gaining Momentum

With Google, Pandora, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Vudu, and even Microsoft embracing HTML5, these are exciting times for vendors, developers and consumers

Sometimes I can’t help myself. After spending years in the trenches as a reporter, any time I see three or more information blurbs about a technology or a company, I immediately think of it as a trend. This time, I’m making a somewhat obvious observation—well, obvious for most of our readers, at the very least—that a set of technologies collectively known as HTML5 is finally starting to gain a lot of momentum. To me, that’s a good thing.

In the last month or so, we’ve seen some major services relaunch their websites for the iPhone, iPad, and other tablets based on HTML5 and bring them to the mainstream users—so much so that even giants such as Microsoft (MSFT) are ready to cast aside their own technologies in favor of HTML5.

Google (GOOG), whose apps keep getting better and better, is clearly leading the HTML5 charge. If that wasn’t enough, in July, Pandora relaunched its website for tablets. Earlier this month, Twitter launched an HTML5-based Web client that’s as fantastic as the dedicated app itself.

On Wednesday, August 10, Amazon (AMZN) launched Kindle Cloud Reader, which is so good, writes our Darrell Etherington, that "you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the Web app on your iPad’s home screen." Vudu, owned by Wal-Mart (WMT), launched an HTML5 version of its Web app. As we had previously noted, "more than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010, according to a new report by ABI Research."
Web Apps Driven to Avoid App Store

I find it ironic that when the iPhone first launched in 2007, the whole idea was that mobile would help reinvent the Web, but those Web apps never really materialized. Four years later, that very same idea could become a drain on Apple’s booming app business as companies deploy Web apps to avoid Apple’s 30-percent cut of the revenue for apps and content.

That said, I don’t think HTML 5 and dedicated apps are mutually exclusive. Website operators have to come to the realization that they need to be tablet-ready to provide a seamless experience for their customers. The closer they can bring the app and browser-based experience to each other, the better it is. Pandora (P) and Twitter have done a good job of providing a somewhat consistent experience across different browsers and apps. One hopes this will get easier and more commonplace.

In a post, Why HTML5 Web Apps Are Going to Rock Your World, Simon Mackie said: "As technologies like HTML5, CSS3, SVG, and WebGL start to become more mainstream, not only will the Web apps we already use become more useful, but we should also see developers building Web apps that do things that previously could have only been done by desktop applications. It’s an exciting time to be working on the Web, both for the developers of Web apps, who have a plethora of new technologies and techniques to experiment with, and for users of those apps."

With Facebook set to launch an HTML5-based Project Spartan, many of us would be able to see this first hand.

Tech News » Google to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google Inc. is buying cell phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion in cash. It's by far Google's biggest acquisition and a sign the online search leader is serious about expanding beyond its core Internet business and setting the agenda in the fast-growing mobile market.

Google will pay $40.00 per share, a 63 percent premium to Motorola's closing price on Friday.

Google's Android operating system runs smartphones that compete with iPhones, BlackBerrys and Windows-based mobile devices. Motorola Mobility was separated from the rest of Motorola in January. The company has remade itself as a maker of smartphones based on Android, but has struggled against Apple Inc. and Asian smartphone makers.

"Motorola Mobility's total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies," said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. "Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers."

The acquisition has the approval of both companies' boards and is expected to close by the end of this year or early 2012. That may be overly ambitious, however, as the deal is likely to face regulatory scrutiny. It dwarfs Google's previous biggest deal, the 2008 purchase of DoubleClick for $3.2 billion, which took a year to get approval.

What Google likely wants from the acquisition is Motorola's trove of more than 17,000 patents on phone technology. Google recently lost out to a consortium that included Microsoft Corp., Apple and Research In Motion Ltd. in bidding for thousands of patents from Novell Inc., a maker of computer-networking software, and Nortel Networks, a Canadian telecom gear maker that is bankrupt and is selling itself off in pieces

Motorola has nearly three times more patents than Nortel.

In premarket trading, shares of Motorola Mobility soared 60 percent, or $14.72, to $39.19. Shares of Google, meanwhile, fell $14.68, or 2.6 percent, to $549.95.

Internet » Software: Goldman Chops Estimates On Macro Weakness

caution sign

Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini On Friday reduced estimates and price targets for most of the companies she covers, citing signing of slowing in the broad economy.

"As the market and our economists forecast a lower global growth trajectory and stock valuations are being similarly lowered, we look across our sector to evaluate exposure to a slowing economy," she writes in a research note. "We are lowering our estimates and price targets across our coverage universe (including our Buy-rated names) as we adopt a base-case scenario for growth that assumes below-trend seasonality, although not as much of a slowing as seen in 2008. On average, we are reducing our price targets by 17%."

Bellini writes that on average she cut estimates by 2% for the current fiscal year and 5% for the following year. "After the disruption of our universe’s very regular seasonal behavior during the financial crisis, our names have returned to normal seasonal patterns," she writes. "However, we believe current macro concerns create the potential for more disruption."

Bellini did not change ratings on any stocks. Here is a rundown on her price target reductions:

• Adobe: to $24, from $32 .
• Autodesk: to $31, from $44.
• Citrix: to $67, from $78.,
• Google: to $650, from $675.
• Microsoft: to $29, from $31.
• Oracle: to $33, from $40.
• Red Hat: to 43, from $51.
• Salesforce.com: to $160, from $185.
• Vmware: to $115, from $140.

Internet » The Future of Digital Journalism is Transactions

There is a framed movie poster sitting on a radiator in my office almost directly across from my desk. I can't help but see it every day, all the time. It's an original "one-sheet" (creases and all) that was used in theaters to promote All the President's Men, the tale of Watergate, Richard Nixon, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I was a reporter for the University of Iowa student newspaper back then. It's why I got into the news business -- and probably why I'm still in it today.

For the longest time, I felt news was a calling. Report the facts. Cultivate your sources. Uncover information. Write the story for the public good. Journalism was -- and still largely remains -- a top-down, one-to-many business, with the same "voice of God" formula that one TV executive vowed to do away with but never did. I still see it as a calling, though I must admit to some cynicism after 35 plus years doing this. But I've definitely shed my arrogant journalistic upbringing. Today, I believe digital news is like the Web itself -- that is, a transactional affair.

The Web is the ultimate marketplace where ideas as well as goods and services are exchanged. It is essentially different from print, broadcast and cable. Sure, traditional media can stimulate a response, but the response is discontinuous -- it requires a separate channel, such as the Postal Service or an 800 number -- and it's never permitted to have equal weight. The Web is a channel that both stimulates and fulfills. It's one and the same because its tools help blur the line between sellers (that includes journalists) and buyers (that includes news consumers).

The Web's effectiveness has been pretty clear for commerce, especially with the arrival of Google AdSense. Advertisers are feeling the potential, too. "Brand" advertising has always been aimed at that abstraction known as the consumer market ("I know half my advertising dollars are wasted - I just don't know which half!" quips the ad man). "Fulfillment" advertising is different -- and perfect for the Web. It's aimed directly at the individual and seeks an individual response -- a transaction. The unanswered question is whether marketers will attempt to -- or could even be effective at -- using the the Web as a channel to fold brand campaigns into transaction-based fulfillment selling.

Now, journalism is not commerce and it's not advertising. But the Web's impact on the news media is not dissimilar. No longer is the journalist addressing the abstract notion of "the reader." On the Web, the author connects one at a time with individual readers, right down to the IP address. That means journalists now must engage, or "transact," accordingly. This does not at all negate our (mine, too) rich heritage. In fact, we need to draw on it to effectively practice transactional journalism.

This all became much clearer to me last week as we released a new FORBES article page -- a template for authoritative news in this unfolding era of social journalism, which is in large part transaction-based journalism. Our new page puts the journalist -- or the topic-specific expert -- at the very center of a community of followers who respect that person's knowledge or world view. Among many features, we created a new social layer directly beneath every post's headline that highlights Called Out comments, the direct transactions between our authors and their individual readers.

Our evolving contributor incentive program is built for transactions. It rewards authors who attract and build an audience around their page, effectively a "product" based on their topic-specific knowledge. Transacting helps them secure a loyal audience for their brand. Both staffers and contributors must still report, write and cultivate sources, but they also need to engage -- find and react to followers, respond to commenters and transact with the individual reader just as they do with a fellow journalist in the office, at lunch or over dinner. Each of those reader transactions will lead to smarter and better journalism.

Internet » Nokia jumps as Motorola Mobility bid rekindles M&A hopes

 

 General view of the Nokia flagship store in Helsinki July 18, 2011. REUTERS/Jussi Helttunen/Lehitikuva

Nokia's shares have fallen around 45 percent since the start of the year, prompting some speculation the stock could be getting cheap enough to tempt a bidder. The company, once the leader in smartphones, has been losing market share in both high-end devices and cheaper phones.

Google said it was paying around $12.5 billion in cash, or $40 per share, a 63 percent premium to Motorola Mobility's closing price on Friday.

"This price should ring bells on how low Nokia shares currently are. And if you think of patents, now Nokia is the one with a really strong patent portfolio," said Swedbank analyst Jari Honko. "I'd expect this will boost the speculation whether Nokia would be a takeover target too."

Nokia shares were up 8.7 percent at 4.07 euros by 1302 GMT, having risen as high as 4.28 euros.

One Swiss-based trader said the Google deal gave Nokia shares a "huge sentiment boost."

Both Microsoft Corp, which is partnering with Nokia for its new phones, and Samsung Electronics, have been mentioned as possible buyers.

Nokia officials were not immediately available for comment.

Computing » Microsoft's 'Linux Threat Level': Down to Green or Redder Than Ever?

"Those tablets and smartphones and web-based apps and ChromeOS laptops with their Google DNA and Linux underpinnings are all direct threats to the Windows OS, so I wouldn't say this is a downgrading of Linux, but an acceptance that Google is going to be the primary way that most people will adopt Linux without realizing it," said Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson.

Now that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) wants to be Linux's new best friend, there's bound to be no end of sweet nothings and touching gestures emanating out of Redmond.

After all, we're pals now, right?

Lo and behold! For all you skeptics who doubted the software behemoth's amorous words, consider a few phrasing changes it recently made in its last two annual financial filings.

'So Much for All Those Predictions'

Whereas said documents used to include Linux as a primary threat to Windows -- alongside Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) -- Redmond's documents now reportedly don't mention any competitive threat from desktop Linux at all, according to a recent article on Business Insider, which cites a tweet by Directions on Microsoft's Wes Miller.

Rather, the documents list only Apple and Google as Windows' primary threats on the desktop.

Of course, embedded Linux is still acknowledged as a problem in that arena -- not to mention servers, of course -- but author Matt Rosoff (formerly with Directions on Microsoft as well, it most certainly should be noted) comes to a very happy conclusion anyway: "So much for all those predictions that Linux would kill Windows," he writes.

Awww, isn't that nice? We really *are* friends now!

'MS Is Very Afraid of Linux'

Then again, maybe not.

"The actions 'speak' louder than the words," wrote SAL-e in the comments on Business Insider.

"Microsoft is acting like patent troll and filing law-suits left and right," SAL-e explained. "MS is very afraid of Linux, especially in the mobile arena."

Similar sentiments could be heard down at the blogosphere's Broken Windows Lounge.

"They only downgraded Linux as a threat on the desktop, so the underhanded FUD and legal attacks are likely to continue," consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack told Linux Girl.
'The Reality Distortion Field'

Indeed, "the last time I looked, the threats Google represents to both Microsoft and Apple all carried 'Powered by Linux' stickers," noted Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by "Tom" on the site.

"Those tablets and smartphones and web-based apps and ChromeOS laptops with their Google DNA and Linux underpinnings are all direct threats to the Windows OS, so I wouldn't say this is a downgrading of Linux, but an acceptance that Google is going to be the primary way that most people will adopt Linux without realizing it," Hudson explained.

"Of course, it would take a Microsoftie to tweet that this means 'Linux isn't a threat to the Windows desktop any longer,' she added, quoting Miller's words. "This proves two things: Apple and Steve Jobs don't have a monopoly on the Reality Distortion Field, and Twitter -- with its 140-character limit -- is never going to be the source of any serious analysis."
'Threat Level Is Red'

Linux is "not an operating system but a component of many operating systems, all of which are taking a slice of M$'s pie: GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, Meego and WebOS," agreed blogger Robert Pogson. "Whereas M$ used to have weak competition from GNU/Linux and MacOS, they are now surrounded and holed at the water-line."

Microsoft is "still dishonest," Pogson added. "A 'PC' is a personal computer and not necessarily one with M$'s OS. There is not much indication that demand for PCs will reduce, but PCs running M$'s OS certainly are being replaced with more functional units at lower prices.

"M$, after decades, is now having to compete on price/performance," he concluded.

Bottom line? "Threat level is Red," Pogson added.
'The Year the Desktop All But Goes Away'

Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza took a similar view.

"It looks like there won't be any year of the Linux desktop, mostly because it's going to be the year the desktop all but goes away," Espinoza told Linux Girl.

"Pundits have long predicted the virtual disappearance of the computer as we know it, and the broad acceptance of powerful smartphones seems to be putting the truth to that once seemingly ridiculous proclamation," he added.
'Filled to the Brim with Zealots'

Slashdot blogger and Windows fan hairyfeet saw it differently.

In fact, Linux really isn't a threat to Microsoft, hairyfeet told Linux Girl.

"For little shops like mine it would be really nice if it was, but it really isn't," hairyfeet said.

Linux also hasn't improved in the past two years, he added: "Drivers are just as buggy, upgrades still kill hardware, waaaay too many things are tied to what kernel version you have, and the whole thing is filled to the brim with zealots that act like you kicked a puppy if you dare to point out what is wrong.

"It has been 20 years since Linus released the Linux kernel, and it still hasn't gotten above the margin of error," he concluded. "Why? Simple -- Linux is BY geeks and FOR geeks, and not a single one with any power will listen to the users."
'Linux Will Continue to Make Inroads'

Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project, wasn't convinced that Microsoft's changed wording had much significance.

"It does represent a developing understanding that Windows is deeply entrenched in some markets and Linux as a general operating system is not really able to unseat it at the present moment," Travers said. "I think that Linux will continue to make inroads into these areas slowly, however."

In the long run, though, the real threats to Microsoft and Windows may have nothing to do with operating systems, Hudson suggested.
'The Tech Elephant Graveyard'

"It's become an ingrained truth that Microsoft cannot take the initiative; its actions are knee-jerk responses to products and services from Apple and Google," she explained.

"Nobody believes that Microsoft is capable of planning and executing anything really new and innovative, or even buying successful technology and integrating it," Hudson added. "Rather, it is the tech Elephant Graveyard, the place where other companies (Danger, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), etc.) go to die.

"Of course, a more up-front appraisal would have listed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer as the biggest threat to Microsoft," she added. "But that's a whole other story."

Computing » Is InfoSec Ready for Big Data?

"Big data" is the logical outgrowth of increased use of virtualization technology, cloud computing and data center consolidation. What organizations are finding as they centralize resources like storage is that they've produced quite a lot of data -- in some cases, even exabytes of data. We're seeing scenarios play out where traditional security tools no longer provide the kind of value they have historically.

Over the past few decades, most IT shops have followed a somewhat similar trajectory: Starting from a centralized model (i.e., the mainframe days), computing resources, much like the cosmological Big Bang, have exploded outwards to become ever-more-distributed and decentralized. This makes sense given market dynamics. Computing platforms evolve quickly, so monolithic computing platforms that require heavy up-front investment are less efficient from a depreciation standpoint (i.e., from a MIPS per dollar per year point of view) than numerous, incremental investments in lower-powered devices.

So it's natural that processing would decentralize. And in fact, there have been numerous technologies invented over the years to support exactly this paradigm.

By virtue of ever-more decentralized processing, it logically follows that storage would be (in general) decentralized as well. In fact, storage becomes a balancing act. Data is placed in such a way as to be centralized enough to be manageable, while still being distributed enough to be efficiently used by consumers of that data. That's the paradigm of recent history. But this paradigm is changing -- changing in a way that impacts how we manage IT overall from a security perspective. And that change is "big data."


What Is 'Big Data?'

This emerging paradigm -- "big data" -- is the logical outgrowth of increased use of virtualization technology, cloud computing and data center consolidation. All of these technologies have huge cost and efficiency benefits. And they all also leverage standardization, consolidation and centralization of resources to achieve economies of scale -- part of what makes that cost benefit possible. And what organizations are finding as they deploy these technologies -- centralizing resources like storage along the way -- is that they've produced quite a lot of data ... in some cases, even exabytes of data. To put that into perspective, the total number of words ever spoken by humans is estimated to be around 5 exabytes.

Smart folks (for example, observant engineers and scientists within the social network community) have discovered that having a lot of data in one place opens up opportunities to use that data to a productive purpose; it's apparently an emergent property of large amounts of data. So as the volume of data compounds, so also do opportunities to leverage the data emerge. It's starting to be transformative to business, telling us quite a bit about our customers, about how they use our services, and about how our businesses run in general.

Of course, for those of us who practice security, it goes without saying that this changes the landscape. There are upsides and downsides from a security standpoint to this shift. For example, on the one hand, it's easier to protect data when you know where it is and it's all in the same place; on the other hand, it makes for a bigger target from a hacker perspective. Going into each and every pro and con of big data from a security standpoint would likely take all day, but suffice it to say that the practice of information security as a discipline will change as a result of the transformation going on.

Why? Because the volume of data is increasing nonlinearly. But most of us don't have the tools or processes designed to accommodate nonlinear growth. Meaning, looking down the road, we're seeing scenarios play out (they're starting already) where traditional tools -- in particular, security tools -- no longer provide the kind of value they have historically.

So for organizations looking to plan ahead for changes coming down the pike (or to use alternate phrasing, "not get clocked in the head"), it behooves them to think through now how they can get out in front of the changes. You wouldn't buy a stockpile of charcoal briquettes the day before you go out and buy a propane grill, would you? So thinking about how this is likely to play out -- and paying attention to where the industry is going -- can pay off.

What Were Your Tools and Processes Designed to Do?

So, some folks might naturally ask the questions, "why does it matter?" or "who cares if there's a lot of data; how can that possibly impact our security tools?" Stop for a moment and think about what tools you use right now to support security within your environment. Now reflect for a moment on how many of them presuppose a limited volume of data to search through or transform.

Consider, for example, how difficult it is to do a malware scan across a large networked attached storage volume, or SAN. How long do you suppose it would take if the dataset were 1,000 times larger? How about 100,000 times larger? What if it was growing at a geometric rate? Would it be feasible to scan through it all every day like we do now?

What about the case where data discovery is required to support data leak prevention (DLP) or regulatory compliance? What happens, for example, when your PCI auditor wants to conduct a regular expression search for credit card numbers across the data stored in your cardholder data environment -- except the CDE contains of an exabyte of data? The search alone would be hard enough, let alone the manual post-scan vetting of gigabytes of false positives. These two controls just become non-viable -- at least using the same methods we've always used in the past.

There are a number of scenarios where data size could be a factor in the proper operation of a security control or supporting process. Consider, for example, log parsing, file monitoring, encryption/decryption of stored data, and file-based data integrity validation controls. These all operate in a manner that is a function of data volume. These controls may very well need to change to continue to be viable. So just like clever folks are designing new tools (for example, databases) to make searching manageable in the large data-volume world, so also will the tools we use in security have to change to meet this new challenge as well.

While this change won't happen overnight, it does pay for security professionals to start thinking about this now -- if only to have it in the back of their minds when evaluating new tool purchases. Knowing that a geometric increase in data might be on the horizon, rolling out a new data discovery tool based on linear search might not necessarily be the best idea -- at least not without some tough questions posed to the vendor in question. Conversely, it might hurry deployments of controls like file encryption that operate on data incrementally as it's produced. Bulk encryption of an exabyte of data might not be easy to do when it's produced en masse -- however, if that control is put in place now before the data organically grows?

Well, that might be a different story.

The good news is that we have time to prepare. We have time to make adjustments in our processes and controls before the problem gets intractable. But considering how quickly virtualization is happening in the industry, this issue could be on us sooner than one might think. So it's a useful place to put some thought.