Even with my current job as a systems analyst, a software developer/programmer, I felt a need to document my learning, so I have something to always look back to, especially with my advancing age. But no, I'm not that old yet...
Showing posts with label Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wall Street Journal. Show all posts
WASHINGTON - Apple has begun removing risque iPhone and iPod Touch applications from its online App Store, including some which had previously been approved for sale, according to reports on Saturday.
Technology blog TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal said the new policy towards adult-themed contents had resulted, for example, in the deletion of applications featuring bikini models.
TechCrunch said Apple had begun notifying application developers earlier this week that apps with "overtly sexual content" were being removed.
The Wall Street Journal said the move appeared to be part of an effort by Apple to clean up the App Store ahead of the shipping late next month of its new iPad tablet computer.
The newspaper said the App Store, which offers more than 140,000 programmes, will be an important part of the marketing of the iPad, which Apple intends to promote as a device for families and schools. AFP
SAN FRANCISCO - Coordinated cyber attacks launched from Europe and China breached computers at firms and government agencies worldwide in the past 18 months, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The Journal quoted computer security firm NetWitness as saying the attacks made mountains of data vulnerable to mining by hackers, although the damage had yet to be fully assessed.
Information bared to hackers ranged from credit card transactions to intellectual property of slightly more than 2,400 victims, including 10 US government agencies, according to the Journal.
The hacking operation began in late 2008 in Germany and has yet to be stopped, NetWitness said.
Workers at companies were tricked into visiting websites or opening email attachments that promised to clean viruses from computers but instead infected machines.
Malicious code used in the attacks allowed hackers to seize control of computers remotely. Evidence cited by NetWitness indicated the culprits may be Eastern European gangsters.
The report came in the wake of Google revealing it was targeted by a sophisticated cyber attack aimed at the US firm's source code and Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world. Computer industry specialists subsequently said more than 30 companies were hit by those attackers.
The apparent online espionage prompted Google to vow it would stop bowing to Chinese censors and shut down its China search service if it cannot operate unfettered. Google continues to filter searches in accordance with Chinese law while trying to negotiate a compromise with officials there. AFP
NEW YORK - Apple's chief executiveSteve Jobs, in his first statement since taking a medical leave of absence in January, announced on Monday that the company has sold more than one million of its new iPhone model in three days.
"Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning," Jobs said in a written statement.
He said over one million iPhone 3GS models had been sold through Sunday and six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software in the first five days since its release.
"With over 50,000 applications available from Apple's revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever," Jobs said.
Jobs's health, and the secrecy surrounding it, has been the source of intense speculation over the past year, often causing swings in the price of Apple stocks.
WASHINGTON:News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said on Thursday that the future of newspapers is digital, but it may be 10 to 15 years before readers go fully electronic.
Murdoch, in an interview with the News Corp.-owned Fox Business Network, also said that newspapers, faced with eroding print advertising revenue and circulation, are going to have to start charging readers on the Web.
The News Corp. chief said newspapers in the future will continue to make money "from our readers, from our advertisers (but) the newspapers may look very different.
"Instead of an analog paper printed on paper you may get it on a panel which would be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper over the air, (and) be updated every hour or two," he said.
"You'll be able to get the guts or the main headlines and alerts and everything on your Blackberry, on your Palm or whatever, all day long.
"All these things are possible. Some of the greatest electronics companies in the world are working on this very hard," Murdoch said.
"I think it's two or three years away before they get introduced in a big way and then it will probably take 10 years or 15 years for the public to swing over."
Murdoch, who has announced plans to charge readers of his publications online, also said "you're going to have to pay for your favorite newspaper on the Web."
The days of free news online were "going to stop," he said.
"I believe newspapers will be selling subscriptions on the Web," he said. "A (newspaper) website will be vastly improved, much more in them and you'll pay for them."
"There's a case that newspapers rushing on to the Web to try and get a bigger audience and get more attention for themselves have damaged themselves," he said. "Now they're going to have to pull back from that and say 'Hey, we're going to charge for this.'"
Asked by Fox about a government bailout for newspapers, Murdoch said News Corp. would never take government money.
"We'd give up our freedoms and everything else to criticize or to play our full role in the community," he said. "Nothing that News owns will ever take money from the government and I don't believe even The New York Times would."
The 78-year-old Murdoch announced this month that he planned to begin charging readers of the websites of News Corp. newspapers "within the next 12 months."
Murdoch's holdings include The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times of London, the Sun and The Australian, among others. The Wall Street Journal online already requires a subscription fee for access to all of its content.
Murdoch's comments came as The Atlantic magazine reported that top US newspaper executives held a "discreet" meeting in Chicago on Thursday to discuss the future of the troubled industry. - AFP/yb
THERE has been plenty of buzz online about Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com), a unique online tool that tech pundits say could beat Google Search at its own game.
Unlike conventional search engines, Wolfram Alpha does not generate links to information from across the web to answer your search query. Instead, it tries to understand what you’ve asked and presents factual data from a database of curated content (currently only 10TB in size). Thanks to its algorithmic-rich backbone, Wolfram Alpha can present its results in tables, charts, diagrams and other visual means as an answer to your query. And there’s no guesswork needed to ascertain the data since it comes from valid sources.
Here’s what we found when we compared the results generated by Wolfram Alpha with other search engines.
Search: GDP of Singapore
>> Wolfram Alpha: In its results, Wolfram Alpha presented the 2007 estimate of our GDP (gross domestic product) and charted a useful graph of our country’s GDP growth overtime. It also displayed relevant information, like the country’s inflation and employment rates.
>> Google Search (www.google.com.sg): The first link on Google’s search results was a sponsored link by a bank — hardly useful. Next in line was a link to the website for the United State’s Central Intelligence Agency, which has Singapore’s 2007 GDP figures.
Search: Earthquakes in Indonesia
>> Wolfram Alpha: It displayed a graphic map littered with dots pinpointing the areas in Indonesia that are affected by earthquakes. The dots vary in sizes to illustrate the magnitude of the earthquake. With the aid of simple drop-down menus, you can filter the earthquakes by magnitude and by the period of time they occurred.
>> Yahoo (sg.search.yahoo.com): Related links to news stories from different media outlets formed the mainstay of Yahoo’s search results.
Search: Big Mac
>> Wolfram Alpha: It’s not localised yet, so Wolfram Alpha won’t recognise food items like rojak or nasi lemak. In fact, for a little surprise, see its response when you query this: “Do you speak Malay?” So, we fed McDonald’s almost universal Big Mac into Wolfram Alpha and were treated to a detailed list of the fast food’s nutritional values.
>> MicrosoftLive Search (search.live.com): Two Wikipedia entries on the Big Mac made the top of the list on the search engine’s results, with the link to the official UK website for McDonald’s appearing at number three on the result list.
Search: Singapore weather in May
>> Wolfram Alpha: Not only did Wolfram Alpha state the average temperature and range of conditions, humidity and wind speed, it also provided charts indicating cloud cover and temperature.
>> rednano.sg (www.rednano.sg): The local search engine churned out a list of largely irrelevant results. Under its web results tab, it displayed a link to news stories on Indonesia and China, followed by a blog listing “wild happenings in singapore” while under its news results page, it listed links to technology-related sites. Huh?
Wolfram Alpha won’t quite render search engines obsolete. Its strength lies in providing you ways to crunch factual data and manipulate it to your liking. Because it lacks information on pop culture or news, users who try to use it like a conventional search engine might be disappointed.
This “computational knowledge engine” can be daunting because it isn’t very flexible with processing certain phrases or queries. We sometimes had to rearrange our queries to get the right results.
However, Wolfram Alpha holds much potential and is a step in the right direction for a web tool that serves as an encyclopedia on steroids.
Microsoft might be unveiling a new search engine next week. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Microsoft plans to demonstrate the search engine, code-named Kumo, at D: All Things Digital, a conference organised by the WSJ. Said to be a revamp of Microsoft’s Live Search, Kumo aims to provide a better web search experience by shortening and grouping search results into relevant categories.
From TODAYOnline.com, Tech – Friday, 22-May-2009; see the source article here.
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