IT NEWS
Acer
to Acquire Gateway for $710M
Acer plans to buy
Gateway in a deal valued at $710 million. The combined company
will be the third-largest PC maker worldwide, according to Acer
Chairman J.T. Wang, who also noted, "This is the biggest
acquisition in Acer's 30-year history." At least in its early
stages, the effect of the acquisition on consumers is expected to
be minor, but that didn't stop questions from flying about how
Acer will market its existing brand in conjunction with Gateway
and the eMachines line that comes with Gateway. For now, Acer
plans to keep all three brands going, and the expectation is that
it will try to bring some excitement to the Gateway and eMachines
lines, described by one analyst as "bottom dwellers." The brands
could be marketed differently in different regions, with some
combining of lines. But right now, it's all guesswork.
Source: CIO.com, PC World
Millions hit by Monster site hack
Jobs portal Monster.com has released more details about the
severity of the attack on its site.
It said confidential details of more than 1.3 million people,
mainly Americans, were stolen by malicious hackers who carried out
the attack. It said that servers in Ukraine and hijacked home
computers were used to mount the attack. Monster.com said the
information was stolen to lend credibility to e-mails sent out as
part of a phishing campaign.
Bank job
The thieves got away with names, addresses, phone
numbers and e-mail addresses of Monster.com users. The job site
said that the thieves did not get any useful financial information
such as bank account details in the attack. Monster.com told the
Reuters news agency that it first heard about the attack on 17
August thanks to security firm Symantec.
The jobs portal said it managed to shut down the rogue servers
used in the attack on 21 August after contacting the Ukrainian
company hosting them. These servers were used to get access to
Monster's database using stolen login details. The attackers
wanted to get hold of personal information in an attempt to make
e-mails supposedly sent by recruitment firms more plausible.
By getting people to open the fake e-mails and click on the
attachments the thieves aimed to steal more saleable information
or hijack an infected machine. The vast majority of those affected
by the attack are based in the US. Monster.com estimates that
fewer than 5,000 people outside the US had their details stolen in
the attack.
Monster.com said it had more than 73 million CVs in its database.
Source: Spidered news
New York Taxi
Drivers Strike over New Technologies in Cabs
At issue: GPS locators and fees for credit
card readers; city's mayor says strike has limited effect on
traveling public.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a taxi strike in the city
on Wednesday was having "limited impact, if any at all," while
strike organizers declared the protest over new GPS and credit
card technology in cabs a success.
Bloomberg said in a press conference that was broadcast over the
Web that there were 14 percent fewer cabs than usual at Kennedy
International Airport during the morning hours. The strike,
planned for Wednesday and Thursday, will not lead to talks with
taxi drivers over the new technology, Bloomberg added. "There's
nothing to talk about," he said.
Noting that there is "no really easy way to measure" how many cabs
were on the streets out of the 13,000 that are licensed, Bloomberg
added, "We don't see people being hassled or stranded at airports.
It's nowhere remotely close to that." However, at a separate
morning press conference, strike organizers with the New York Taxi
Workers Alliance claimed that 80 percent of cabbies stayed away
from work, according to The New York Times and other news media.
The organization objects to a city requirement that cabs install
by February, new credit card processing and GPS technology, as
well as systems for providing weather, news reports and
advertising. Alliance leaders and cab drivers have called GPS an
invasion of privacy that would allow employers to see where they
park their cabs when off-duty. They also object to paying 5
percent credit card fees.
Bloomberg didn't address the privacy concerns but said the Taxi
and Limousine Commission will only receive the same data about a
cab's location that it already receives via paper, including where
a customer was picked up and dropped off.
He said enabling credit card transactions will lead to more
customers hailing and using cabs instead of arranging limousine
rides ahead of time, and will increase collections because
customers tend to round off what they pay. Bloomberg said he would
not talk to the Alliance or taxi drivers because the city arranged
for two cab fare increases to help drivers in 2004 and 2005,
contingent upon their installing the technology.
"We made a deal, and we'll stick to our side of it," he said.
"Most owners and drivers think it's a good deal and will make cab
driving a good experience. "Bloomberg said a contingency plan for
flat fares may have helped limit the impact of the strike. It
calls for a zone-based fare structure, with non-striking drivers
allowed to charge each passenger a fare of US$10 per trip in a
single zone and $4 more for each zone they enter or pass through.
The contingency plan will remain in effect Thursday.
Source:Computer world
TRENDS
Google Sky, a new addition in Google Earth, turns computer into
virtual telescope, planetarium
PITTSBURGH: The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away
with Google Inc.'s latest free tool.
A new feature in Google Earth, the company's satellite
imagery-based mapping software, allows users to view the sky from
their computers.
The tool provides information about various celestial bodies, from
stars to planets, and includes imagery from the Hubble Space
Telescope and other sources. It also allows users to take virtual
tours through galaxies, including the Milky Way, from any point on
Earth they choose.
“By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we’ve
been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope,''
Lior Ron, a Google Product Manager, said in a statement.
The new software also promises users the ability to see planets in
motion and witness a supernova. There are other programs that
provide information and pictures of the universe, but Google Sky
blends it seamlessly, said Andrew Connolly, a University of
Washington associate professor of astronomy and part of Google's
visiting faculty program.
”What's unique about this is you have all of the imaging data over
the whole of the sky actually streaming. So I can look at
something that covers most of the sky, say our Milky Way galaxy,
and I can zoom right into a tiny galaxy that's in the formation
cycle,'' he said.
Google engineers stitched together ``terabytes and terabytes'' of
images and other data, Connolly said. A terabyte can hold the text
of roughly 1 million books. ”Sky in Google Earth will foster and
initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to
everyone's home computer,'' said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space
Telescope Science Institute.
Current Google Earth users must download a new version from
http://earth.google.com. The software works on computers running
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X and Linux
operating systems. Google, the leading Internet search engine,
already provides surface images of Mars and the Moon through its
Web site, along with animated and satellite-based maps of Earth.
Google Sky was developed at the company's Pittsburgh engineering
office.
Source: The News (International)
It's arrived: the feminization of the net
Women aged 25-34 spend more time online
than men in the same age group.
Forget the 20-something man playing online fantasy football and
selling motorbike parts on eBay. The internet has a new user. For
years cyberspace has been tailored to an audience of mainly young
men but for the first time women web users have taken the lead in
key age groups. At the same time an army of silver surfers has
emerged and the over 65s are spending more hours online than any
other age group.
The latest snapshot of Britain's communications market by
regulator Ofcom turns the established assumptions about web users
upside down. It also shows all of us spending more time online and
on our mobiles than ever before.
Watching television, surfing the web, making phone calls and
listening to the radio now take up an average 50 hours a week.
While TV watching, radio listening and home phone uses have all
fallen since 2002, our daily minutes on the web have doubled. The
UK has the most active internet population in Europe thanks to
widely available broadband connections that are getting cheaper
every year. The boom in web use is nothing new. But what website
owners such as newspapers, TV companies and travel agents have to
get to grips with is a new type of surfer.
One significant trend that stands out is an apparent feminization
of the internet. "Ever since it kicked off in the early 90s the
web has been male-dominated. For the first time this year women
are spending more time on the internet than men," says Peter
Phillips, Strategy and Market Developments Partner at Ofcom,
referring to web users in the 25 to 49 age bracket. "It's a big
shift and has implications for the kind of content that content
providers want to have on the internet."
Among 25 to 34 year-olds, women now spend more time using the
internet than men, according to the Ofcom report published today.
Although men account for the majority of web time in most other
age groups, women have also taken a slight but significant lead in
the 35-49 brackets.
Ofcom's researchers put the changing pattern partly down to young
women finding more sites online that are relevant to them.
"Women in that age group are also more likely to be at home and
have more time to spend online," says the watchdog's Director of
Research, James Thickett. In the teenage bracket, a growing female
presence online is being driven by the emergence of new sites
specifically tailored to teenage girls. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
some of these surfers' favourite destinations are social
networking sites where they can extend the school day's gossip
sessions late into the evening at home. Indeed, the social
networking phenomenon Bebo is taking up more of UK surfers' time
than any other website barring the auction site eBay.
Ofcom's research proves it is easier than ever for children to
conduct large portions of their life online. Almost one in six 13
to 15 year-olds now have their own webcam, for example. Mobile
phones are even more widespread, 75% of 11-year-olds have one as
well as their own TV and games console. Much has been made of the
trend among children to use various media simultaneously, such as
browsing the web while watching TV. But for all the multitasking,
their growing take-up of mobile phones and the web, where they
spend an average two hours a day, still comes at the expense of
older media. Playing on computer games and watching DVDs have both
fallen.
Radio has been hardest hit. The proportion of 8 to 15-year-olds
listening has halved to just 20% over the last two years. Luckily
for broadcasters, there is still one age group listening to more
radio. The over-55s are listening to 5.5% more than five years
ago. But more striking is the older age-group's take-up of newer
media. One in six over-65s uses the web, particularly in search of
news and local information. Pensioners have predictably come late
to the internet just as they did to mobile phones and digital TV.
But once online, they make use of their retirement to spend longer
surfing than anyone else. Their 42 hours online every month dwarfs
the 25 hours teenagers spend on the web.
Again the changing audience brings new challenges for website
owners, who had grown accustomed to a younger user.
Key trends
|
 |
Britons are the most active web users
in Europe and spend an average 36 minutes each online every day, up
from 14 minutes in 2002.
|
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Three-quarters of 11 year-olds have
their own TV, games console and mobile phone.
|
|
|
Two-thirds of children do not believe
they could easily live without a mobile phone and the internet.
|
|
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Some 15% of UK households have a
digital video recorder and 78% use it to fast-forward through
adverts.
|
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Some 16% of over-65s use the web. They
surf for 42 hours every month, more than any other age group. One
quarter of UK web users is over 50. |
|
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Two-thirds of phone owners use its
alarm function instead of a clock. |
Source: Spiderednews (The Guardian)
Video Resumes: A
nascent trend - The Pros and Cons for Job-Seekers
With the popularity of YouTube and the
proliferation of digital video, creative job-seekers are beginning
to send short clips known as video résumés presenting their
qualifications to potential employees to distinguish themselves
from the legions of other applicants
Two years ago, Sean Ebner received an e-mail from a job
applicant that included a link to a website. Ebner, the Vice
President of professional services for IT staffing firm Spherion,
was familiar with the candidate, who wanted to transfer from
Spherion in Canada to a position as an Account Executive in its
Phoenix, Ariz., office, having already received her résumé and
cover letter.
Intrigued by the link, Ebner clicked it and uploaded a 55-second
video that featured the candidate, Gina Hanson (then Perkins),
talking up her background and interest in the Account Executive
position with Spherion. The video ended with her politely asking
for an opportunity to fly to Phoenix, Ariz., to meet with Ebner
and his team in person.Ebner had never seen anything like it.
Impressed with the confidence, initiative and professionalism that
Hanson demonstrated in her video, Ebner brought her in for an
interview.
Had Hanson not followed up her résumé and cover letter with her
impressive little video, she might never have gotten an interview
with the VP.
Ebner says that when he first received her résumé, he saw that she
was a Canadian citizen and was therefore less inclined to consider
her because of the complexities around hiring foreign workers. The
video made him realize that Hanson was worth getting to know.
"She recognized that as a Canadian citizen she'd have a tougher
time getting a job and that I had other résumés to look at. She
used this technology to get me off the dime and to move herself up
as a potential candidate," says Ebner.
The video Hanson produced did exactly what she intended it to do:
It distinguished her from the other job-seekers vying for the
position, and it helped her convey why Ebner should consider her
for the job. "Creating that video and being able to have him see
me and my demeanor definitely gave me an advantage because I lived
so far away," says Hanson. "I knew I needed to impress them in
order to invest in flying me out to Phoenix, and I thought the
video would make a strong statement about my interest."
In the age of YouTube, job-seekers armed with webcams and digital
video cameras are now beginning to tap into their inner Tarantino
and take advantage of the power of video to help them score
interviews and ultimately land jobs.
They're creating one to two minute presentations, during which
they summarize their skills, experience and qualifications they
possess to make them the ideal candidate for an open position. The
idea of the video résumé is to give the hiring Manager a better
sense of the individual behind the paper résumé, so it's a
supplement to traditional Curriculum Vitae - not a replacement. As
Hanson's experience shows, it can be an effective way for
candidates to distinguish themselves, provided they create
polished, professional clips. But video résumés do have their
drawbacks: They're not for everyone, including some IT
professionals, and the emphasis they place on looks may make some
employers fearful of discrimination claims.
A Nascent Trend
The growth of online video, coupled with the prevalence
of digital cameras and video technology, has set the stage for the
emergence of video résumés. WorkBlast, a Web-based company that
launched in 2006, is looking to capitalize on the trend. Its
website, Workblast.com, hosts and showcases job-seekers' video
résumés in much the same way that Monster.com serves as a
clearinghouse for traditional résumés.
Speaking of Monster.com, a spokesperson for the online job board
says the company is exploring the use of video for job-seekers.
CareerBuilder launched a video résumé service in June 2007. Liz
Harvey, CareerBuilder's Consumer Products Director, says her
company has been considering featuring video résumés on its site
for at least four years. "We were waiting for the market to be
right to implement. With the advent of YouTube and the acceptance
of short form video and it being so easy for people to create, it
seemed like the right time to move forward with this product," she
says.
Source: CIO
STUDIES
Study shows IT employees need help with handling stress
A Canadian graduate school study suggests companies
should start investing in IT-specific employee assistance programs
and offer more peer support for technology professionals who are
struggling to manage their stress levels.
The study, "Of Races to Run and Battles to be Won: Technical Skill
Updating, Stress and Coping of IT Professionals," also recommended
companies look for optimism as a key personality trait when
recruiting for IT roles that demand intensive and constant
technical skill updating. The results of the study, which was
conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Western
Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business, will be published in a
human resources management journal later this year. In the
meantime, an overview is available.
Nicole Haggerty, an assistant professor at the Richard Ivey School
of Business who worked on the study, said the research did not
involve a large survey sample but instead focused on in-depth
interviews with 14 people, which she said resulted in more than
100 pages of transcripts. Subjects were probed on the kind of
workload they had, the amount of learning on the fly they had to
do and the coping mechanisms they used to avoid frustration or
burnout.
"We spent a lot of time with these people," she said. The
researchers found the most successful IT professionals used a
combination of problem- and emotion-focused coping strategies. An
example of the former would be taking direct action through
research to resolve an issue, while emotion-based coping relied on
seeking distraction, relaxation or social support. Not
surprisingly, emotion-focused coping can be tougher for IT people,
Haggerty said.
"Technical people are pretty good at working with their peers.
There are inherent sympathies -- everybody commiserates," she
said. "It's seeking social support outside of that group [that's
difficult."
Haggerty said she hopes to see more firms offering programs or
retreats that would give IT managers more resources to deal with
their stress. This happens within other areas of a business, she
said, including marketing and finance departments.
"When you're trained from a technical perspective, there isn't HR
101. There's database management 101," she said.
The project was originally started by Hsing-Yi (Phoebe) Tsai, a
Ph.D. student who had worked in IT at a vocational school for a
year. She said her background is in the management of information
systems, and the majority of her ex-classmates are still in the
field. She originally started looking at the notion of IT careers
becoming obsolete in 2002, but changed direction to look at
stress-related issues.
"In some way I was often surrounded by IT folks in my previous
life [before joining the Ph.D. program]. I guess that's one reason
that I am personally interested in this particular occupational
group," she said. "Writing something about them is one way for me
to say that I care about them."
Although all enterprise executives could say they're stressed out
occasionally, Haggerty said IT professionals are in a somewhat
unique position.
"In other fields, you build up skills so that they become a
capital asset that increases in value. In technology, the learning
curve can be competence-destroying," she said. "Instead of
building up their skills, they're trying to maintain them. That
increases the amount of stress they have. And the amount of stress
they have comes from outside the firm."
The study noted that heavy reliance on emotion-focused coping
strategies suggests an assessment of low changeability of the
situation. In other words, the study said, people are more likely
to use these strategies when they believe that nothing
constructive can be done about the stressor and that the problem
is something that they must endure.
Source: Computerworld Canada
Most companies planning to 'go green' in
data centers, says study
Large companies seek to stem costs associated
with data center energy use, which is predicted to soar to $7.4
billion in 2011, from $4.5 billion in 2006.
More than half of large companies are moving beyond talking and
into actual planning stages for making their data centers
"greener," according to a study that will be released next month
by data center operator Digital Realty Trust. About 55% of
companies have established detailed strategies for making their
data centers more energy efficient, according to the survey of
senior and C-level executives, including CIOs, at 100 companies
with at least $1 billion.
"Being green in the data center means saving money on the bottom
line," says Jim Smith, VP of engineering of Digital Realty Trust,
which conducted the study to evaluate how serious companies are in
green initiatives for their data centers. "Most companies will
tell you they're on the quest to be green," says Smith. "But most
are beyond just saying that," he says. More than half of those
surveyed are actually putting together green data center action
plans, have serious management support of such programs, and are
providing budgeting to green strategies, he says.
Sixty percent of those surveyed said their green strategy will
become an important factor in vendor selection over the next two
years. Strategies include design changes in new data centers, and
also operational changes and other modifications in existing ones,
says Smith. In addition to strategies like server consolidation
and virtualization that can reduce energy consumption, other
beneficial changes include "tune ups" in the data center,
including better managing open space between server racks and
bypass air flow, as well as making sure data center temperatures
aren't calibrated too cold.
"Most tune ups are simple and can help save a lot," says Smith.
For instance, safely raising the temperature in data centers three
to four degrees can lower cooling costs 10% or more, he says.
A recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found
that left unchecked, data center energy consumption by the private
and public sectors will soar to $7.4 billion in 2011, from $4.5
billion in 2006.
The Digital Realty Trust report will be released in mid-September.
Source: InformationWeek
iPhone Provides a Peek at the Mobile
Future, Study Says
Mobile Internet Devices will surf, play music and
video, take calls and pictures--and more.
A study by ABI Research says that the iPhone may be only a
precursor to what mobile Internet devices will be capable of in
the near future.The study, released this week, predicts an
explosion of MIDs that can be used for browsing the Web, listening
to music, text messaging, and shooting photo and video. In
particular, the study expects that 90 million MIDs and 5 million
ultramobile PCs (UMPC) will have been shipped to buyers by 2012.
According to ABI vice president Stan Schatt, these devices
generally will have larger screens than the iPhone and will have a
wider variety of Web browsing options than Nokia's N800 phone.
"These are going to serve as substitutes for existing portable
devices," Schatt says. "These devices could very well play the
role of a Swiss Army knife. So, say somebody's going on a trip,
and they may take one of these devices that would allow them to
watch a movie and also allow them to play a game on the
Internet."Because many of these devices would be small and have
limited battery power, Schatt says, many of them would save power
by being based on Linux instead of Windows. The most well-known
Linux-based platform is currently being developed by Intel, which
debuted its plans to enter the nascent MID market in April.
"You're going to have devices that cater to certain market
segments," says Schatt. "We see, for example, devices catering to
Generation Y social networkers. These devices would be highly
stylized, they would have Webcams, they would be optimized for
texting and [instant messaging], and they would have some phone
functionality. They would allow you to be connected all time,
enable you to connect via video, text and voice."
The study notes that the potential for MIDs isn't only in
entertainment and communications, but also in the medical field,
where they could be used as devices that monitor crucial health
indicators and send that information through a wireless signal to
doctors and family members. Schatt says he also expects MIDs to be
developed that specialize in performing very specific tasks for
people who work in isolated conditions. "Say you have a petroleum
field engineer out in middle of nowhere, and he has to be
connected to the Internet, and there's a very specific application
he needs to run," he says. "These devices would be ideal for that
sort of work."
While Schatt sees a very bright future for MIDs, he thinks the
future of UMPCs, such as the OQO Model 01+ and the FlipStart, is
somewhat cloudier. The two big problems with UMPCs, he says, are
that their processors still are taking up too much battery power,
and that they haven't done enough to differentiate themselves from
laptops."It's going to take two or three years before they have a
low-power processor that has enough juice to run one of these
machines all day," Schatt says.
Source: Network World, PC World
