Microsoft's mobile task: creating a browser you can love
With the pending 2009 release of Internet Explorer Mobile 6, Microsoft is making a major change in its approach to the mobile Web. And it's about time, according to some.
The new browser isn't a secret but it's only recently has Microsoft begun releasing details, as well as an application emulator, to give a clearer picture of what users can expect. The company hasn't even released any public videos of the browser: only OEM partners willing to sign non-disclosure agreements can get them.
[ Learn more about Microsoft's updated IE Mobile browser. And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
IE Mobile 6 will be a major improvement over the limited browser currently available on devices powered by the Windows Mobile operating system, including the most recent version, 6.1. For the first time, as part of a future upgrade to the operating system, users will be able to display standard Web pages, including Adobe Flash content.
There's a lot riding on this, in light of Apple's success with the iPhone and its Safari Web browser in showing many U.S. users that mobile access to the Web can match desktop browser access. And there are plenty of mobile browser rivals .
"Microsoft is woefully behind in the mobile space," says Carl Howe, director of Anywhere Consumer Research at Yankee Group, a technology research firm. "They don't have a full-featured, standards-compliant browser currently on their Windows Mobile products, nor will they have one for another six months or so. Further, they don't have anything approaching a dominant market share in mobile, meaning that they don't have the marketplace control necessary to force the industry to adopt a non-standard [mobile] Internet Explorer."
But IE Mobile 6, not even in beta release, is already being criticized by some as supporting fewer Web standards than the latest desktop browser, Internet Explorer 7. And it requires some muscular hardware resources: 128MB of RAM, and a 400MHz processor, according to Microsoft. Nor will it be available as a separate product: the operating system on the handheld has to be reflashed to support the new browser, so Microsoft will partner with device makers and mobile operators to supply it.
The first release will be on phones with mobile operator China Mobile, in the People's Republic of China , sometime in 2009.
Technically, IE Mobile 6 combines elements of IE 6 and 7, and of IE 8 which is now in beta test. Microsoft product managers stress the new mobile browser puts a premium on making it easy for users to transact on the Web, not just view it: to successfully complete a range of tasks such as filling in a form, securely logging into a site, and transferring funds between bank accounts.
No code has been released publicly but in November Microsoft announced a package of emulator images, which developers can add to Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 to test applications, including IE Mobile 6, for Windows Mobile 6.1.4.
Here's what you can expect in the new mobile browser:
• For the first time, a full HTML rendering engine, but it's based on the code from the older version of the desktop browser, IE 6, released in 2001.
• Support for Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, a mobile version of the Flash runtime engine that's widely used in Web sites and desktop browsers to show interactive content and video (by contrast the Safari browser in Apple's iPhone currently lacks Flash support).
• AJAX support and Jscript 5.7, from the forthcoming IE 8, which will support a "very high degree of interactivity," says Karen Wong-Duncan, product manager with Microsoft's Windows Mobile group (Jscript is Microsoft's implementation of the ECMAScript Edition 3 specification ).
• The ability to switch between full HTML browsing, and browsing of Web site content specifically designed for mobile devices.
• An array of user interface improvements, including touch (but not multi-touch as with the iPhone) with support for panning, Web search integrated with the browser's address bar, and multiple levels of zooming.
For some observers, this is not the cutting edge of the mobile Web. In part, that's because Microsoft remains focused not on the new browser war but on the mobile operating system war, according to Frank Dickson, co-founder and chief research officer for MultiMedia Intelligence, a market research consultancy.
"I would call Microsoft's current [mobile] position 'developing,'" he says. "In this new world, the classic browser and the OS seem to be tightly coupled. The big giants like Nokia , Google and Microsoft have awakened and are moving fast. The insurgents like RIM and Apple are stealing market share. 2009 will see a flurry of new offerings...2010 will be the year we start seeing some shake-out."
Web developer Bruce Lawson, with the non-profit Web Standards Project , which promotes Web standards to reduce the cost and complications of development, downloaded the Microsoft emulator, ran some compliance tests and posted the results on his blog . He was not impressed.
For example, testing the Cascading Style Sheets selectors, the results were "from the 43 selectors, 10 have passed. 1 [is] buggy and 3 are unsupported." Lawson noted that desktop IE 7 passed 13 of the selectors. Applying WSP's Acid2 and Acid3 tests (sample Web pages that test a browser's ability to use specific Web standards) resulted in screen images that were largely non-functional.
"...This is a terrible situation," he wrote. "Twenty percent of the world's population [China] are being offered an ancient, discredited browser ."
Lawson, on vacation, did not respond to an e-mail inquiry by our deadline.
"Microsoft looks to support standards whenever possible," responds Microsoft's Karen Wong-Duncan. "As you may know, we have been increasing our Web standards compliance with every new desktop version, and that's an ongoing commitment for mobile as well."
The present level of compliance, far from being an obstacle, is a benefit to Web developers who "do not have to do anything to extend their existing assets to mobile."
"Additionally, we know that standards compliance by itself is insufficient," she says. Sufficiency entails the ability to perform tasks and transactions, not just view standard Web pages. Wong-Duncan cites Microsoft's own tests, working with an unnamed third-party consulting company, that showed IE Mobile 6 had the highest number of completions for a range of Web transactions compared with several rival browsers. She didn't name the other browsers tested and Microsoft is not yet releasing the test data.
But even with the improvements and the benefits cited by Wong-Duncan, end users have a growing number of alternatives, from vendors who are pushing mobile innovation. These include two different mobile browsers from Opera Software, Firefox for Mobile ("Fennec") from Mozilla, the browser with the Open Handset Alliance's Android mobile OS (separate from Google's Chrome desktop browser), the Nokia browser for Symbian-based phones, and server-based browser introductions from Skyfire and Bitstream.
One key advance is enabling JavaScript access by mobile browsers to access a phone's GPS data, or its digital camera, says Jason Grigsby, vice president of Web strategies for Cloud Four, a Web developer in Portland, Ore. "The browsers like Android, Nokia and Opera are attempting to add features that expose specific [mobile] device properties to Web developers through browser interfaces," he says. "It's happening a bit faster than I anticipated."
If it's happening faster than Microsoft anticipated, IE Mobile 6 will be perpetually catching up.
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Google Apps still trying to win over corporate users
While Google is often cited as having a golden touch, the company's productivity application suite is still a mere bronze competitor to Microsoft's Office and collaboration tools despite upgrades over the past year that focused on evolving and securing the online tools for corporate users.
Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE), the vendor's $50 per user productivity suite targeted at businesses, has proven worthy in certain situations, most involving universities or small and midsize businesses (SMB) looking to cut costs.
[ For more analysis of Google Apps' chances of dislodging Microsoft Office, read "Can Google Apps move up market?" | And discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
The platform, however, still lacks some key features for large companies that build applications around productivity tools and demand tight integration and security, along with administrative controls.
GAPE is made up of messaging, including Google Gmail, Calendars and Talk; collaboration including Google Docs, Video and Sites; and e-mail security and compliance.
Over the past year, Google has been adding tools and APIs to satisfy customer demands, as well as Web 2.0 tools such as video that put a new twist on collaboration. But the work is far from over.
Model for success
Even critics, however, believe Google has the right model to succeed -- delivering the software as a service to corporate users.
Microsoft , whose Office suite boasts more than a 90% share of the market, is among those critics.
It endorsed the online model in October when it introduced the first online versions of fully functional Office applications available via a browser. Office Web Applications are in private testing and are slated for inclusion with Office 14. Microsoft already has its toe in the water with Office Live Workspaces and with Exchange and SharePoint Online Services.
While the future may hold promise, the current position for GAPE is the role of worthy alternative and not as serious contender to replace Office or other collaboration platforms.
Google, however, may make its mark not by rising to the top of the heap, but by redefining collaboration and carving the most innovative turns around Web 2.0.
Growing up
"The Google model is not wrong, it is just immature," says Guy Creese, a Burton Group analyst who for years has been tracking Google's efforts to produce online productivity tools. This month he is releasing a report entitled: "Is It Time to Ditch Microsoft Office?"
It is an interesting question because Google isn't lagging for lack of trying.
The company is refining its platform to include new features and controls that appeal to -- and are required by -- corporate users. And it is adding Web 2.0 twists and integrating social software.
In July 2007, Google made its biggest investment yet toward satisfying corporate users when it laid out $625 million for e-mail hygiene vendor Postini, which provided the compliance, archiving and e-mail protection GAPE lacked.
The Postini service provides security for e-mail, instant messaging and the Web; archiving; message encryption; and policy enforcement of Transport Layer Security.
And because Postini's archiving and compliance only covers e-mail, Google last month released an API to address documents.
"We let you connect your Google Docs with the others systems you use for compliance," says Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps. "We continue to mature the product set."
To further back that claim, Sheth also cites the addition of Google Sites, a wiki-based team sharing tool, and Google Video, based on capabilities inherited from its YouTube division.
Google also has added an service-level agreement and is working on an administrative dashboard that shows how its systems are running and their health. The tool comes after a string of outages that crippled GAPE in the past months.
And in November, Google earned its SAS-70 Type II certification, which public companies under the Sarbanes Oxley Act require from their hosting providers.
In addition, Google and its partners are busy ratcheting up the feature set , such as Panorama Software, which has developed a slick -- and free -- business intelligence tool called Analytics for Google Spreadsheets.
"This is not about replacing, it is about solving old problems in new ways with Google Docs," says Oudi Antebi, vice president of strategy for Panorama. Antebi, who came to Panorama after eight years at Microsoft, says one reason for lagging enterprise interest in GAPE is that many are looking at it as a replacement instead of an extension to what they already have.
Seeing is believing
One example of Google's potential power is seen in the District of Columbia government, which is using Google's productivity suite to foster cost reduction, anywhere access, mobile integration and a collaboration platform that evolves on Internet time for its 38,000 employees.
Vivek Kundra, the CTO for the D.C. government, is blazing such a path with his Google-based projects. He is rumored to be helping President-elect Barack Obama's transition team work through its technology agenda focused on "cutting-edge technologies to create a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens."
Kundra's innovations around Google Apps include a video job board, where D.C. hiring managers post descriptions of openings; a wiki built with text and video explaining and soliciting participation in D.C.'s procurement process; and his latest project where he has provided a list of contractors D.C. has hired, the projects they are working on and their pay rates.
"What we have created is transparency," Kundra says. "Taxpayers can hold us accountable."
Kundra also launched Apps for Democracy, a contest to build applications on top of the Google platform using any of the 216 data feeds from the D.C. Data Catalog, including most recent road-kill pickups.
The contest yielded 47 applications in 30 days at a cost of $50,000. Kundra estimated the price would have been $2.6 million if done using D.C.'s old form of in-house development. Seven of the applications are now running in production.
"This is the power [you get] when you greatly democratize the ability to create, publish and distribute content," Kundra says. "Before, you relied on a massive IT operation with developers, Web editors and writers. Now we shift power to the individual employee."
But Kundra recognizes Google Apps also has its weaknesses.
D.C. still uses Microsoft Office, which he says is better suited for creating complex documents, and he is still waiting for Google integration with Exchange calendars.
Climbing the mountain
One barrier to Google's success is the fact that it is a crowded race to become second fiddle and take a run at Microsoft's dominance.
Since launching GAPE in February 2007, Google has earned $4 million compared with $12.2 billion for Microsoft's Office, according to Gartner. Google won't clarify its number of paid users other than to say it has "hundreds of thousands."
And there are a host of other competitors including IBM Lotus Symphony, Corel WordPerfect Office, OpenOffice.org, Sun StarOffice, ThinkFree and Zoho, as well as lesser known vendors such as Ability Office, Celframe Office, Koffice, GNOME Office and Softmaker Office.
In a study released last month, ClickStream found that use of free versions of productivity tools such as Google Docs and OpenOffice remain low and that use of Microsoft Office showed no decline.
ClickStream spent six months tracking usage among 2,400 adults using the tools at home and found that 51 percent used Microsoft Office, while only 5 percent used Open Office, 1 percent Google Docs, and 0.3 percent Google Spreadsheets.
ClickStream concluded that "although Google Docs and Spreadsheets has been touted as a potential competitor to the Microsoft Office suite, OpenOffice is currently the more likely app to take that position, possibly indicating the value of offline and local processing enabled by installed applications."
What's missing?
Critics and Google agree there is work to do.
Burton Group's Creese says Google provides only rudimentary e-mail distribution lists, lacks the ability to do administration via roles, and does not support Office 2007 file formats.
"If you standardized on [Office 2007] you are in trouble," he says. The software also does not translate all graphics from Word documents, supports only a dozen or so fonts, does not provide in-box delegation features and imposes file size limitations when importing documents.
"If you are trying to collaborate on PowerPoint you could hit the limit," Creese says.
He thinks SMBs may be able to go completely to GAPE, but "a large corporation cannot do that. It will always have a mixed environment and you have to worry about these translation issues."
He adds that for Google Apps to take off it has to present new ways of working rather than just making software less expensive. "In the long run, we will see a movement to the software-as-a-service office suite in some form," he says.
Google's Sheth would not provide details of coming features for GAPE, but agreed with the list of issues cited by Creese and others. "I think we already have a robust enterprise offering, of course there is more we can do. We are building that list and adding more and more functionality," he says.
The challenge is clear to many.
"Google needs to keep innovating around new ways that people work," says Tony Safoian, president and CEO of SadaSystems, a consulting and development firm that is both a Microsoft and a Google partner. "I can work with five people at the same time on the same spreadsheet and get the work done. That is how people work today. Google needs to continue to move along the lines of the collaborative work environment where people find things in a few seconds instead of hours or days. That is where Google's edge is now."
SadaSystems has made a significant investment in building Google Apps implementations and will continue to move users to the cloud.
"We are betting big on this technology," Safoian says.
Now the question is whether corporate users bet big on Google and its innovations or stick with Microsoft as it moves to its hybrid world of software and services.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate
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IT ops, security pros at odds over virtualization risks
Does transitioning to virtualization increase security risks within a company? IT managers appear to be at loggerheads with IT security professionals over that question, even while sharing similar opinions on where risks might lie, according to a new survey.
The 2009 Security Mega Trends Survey from research firm Ponemon Institute -- which also looked at attitudes on other topics, such as outsourcing and Web 2.0 technologies -- shows roughly two-thirds of IT operations staff who responded said they felt virtualization of computer resources did not increase information-security risks. But about two-thirds of information security professionals surveyed felt the opposite way.
[ Find out more about virtualization's secret security threats. And learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
A full three-quarters of the survey's 1,402 respondents, all active in U.S.-based private sector firms or government agencies, said their organizations had already implemented virtualization of their computer resources, with about 90 percent in both the IT and security camps saying they were "familiar" or "very familiar" with virtualization.
The survey reflects the often upbeat attitudes about virtualization expressed by experienced IT pros about how the technology, most commonly that of VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix Xen, is bringing them the benefit of server consolidation.
"We started virtualization in a development and test environment, and now the main applications we have using VMware in production instances are file and print servers," says Rich Wagner, director of IT infrastructure at Columbus, Ohio-based Hexion Specialty Chemicals. Wagner says virtualization hasn't raised red flags as far as security requirements. The main concern, he says, is "from a performance standpoint -- the CPU and memory and disk I/O -- in sharing a large box," with database servers seen as a resource-intensive application that might not be well-suited for virtualization.
There's a far more skeptical view of virtualization security often expressed by seasoned IT security pros, who harbor doubts that vendors on the virtualization front have really sorted out or addressed the risks associated with the underlying hypervisor transformation.
"The security for the virtualization itself is way, way behind," says Nelson Martinez, systems support manager for the City of Miami Beach, who is responsible for IT security in systems used by the city's 2,000 employees. Martinez says the city does make use of VMware for some Web servers, but "I would never host any kind of database or my e-mail server in that environment." There are performance and maintenance issues in running traditional security applications for each VM host application on each physical machine, while the industry still seems to be sorting out the security role the hypervisor can play, Martinez notes.
Jim Waggoner, director of product management at Symantec, says the three primary virtual-machine software providers, VMware, Citrix Xen, and Microsoft, are each still working on new approaches to security in a VM environment that aren't yet out and available.
"We're in partnerships with all three of them," says Waggoner, noting the goal is to find ways for security applications running on virtual machines to use less CPU since users are already grappling with performance issues. "There's the expectation that security won't have an additional effect on the application," he says.
While he hasn't seen huge skepticism about security in virtualization, Waggoner says he has encountered IT staff at companies who believe that once servers or desktops are virtualized, they "don't need any malware protection at all," a stance he would argue against.
In the Ponemon survey, the 825 individuals in IT operations and 577 information security professionals who answered questions about virtualization were in general agreement that the most significant security risk associated with virtualization was the inability to properly identify and authenticate users to multiple systems.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Hackers exploit IE bug with 'insidious' Word docs
Attackers are exploiting the just-patched vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) by hiding malicious ActiveX controls in Microsoft Word documents, a security company said Thursday.
"Inside the document is an ActiveX control, and in that control is a line that makes it call out to the site that's hosting the malware," said David Marcus, the director of security research and communications for McAfee 's Avert Labs. "This is a pretty insidious way to attack people, because it's invisible to the eye, the communication with the site."
[ Related: "Microsoft fixes IE bug" and "Internet Explorer is unsafe ... still" | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
Embedding malicious ActiveX controls in Word documents isn't new -- Marcus said he had seen it "a time or two" -- but using an ActiveX control to ping a hacker's server for attack code is "definitely an innovation," he added. "They're stepping it up."
The rogue docments can be delivered as attachments to spam e-mail or offered up by hacked sites.
Attackers have been exploiting the IE bug since at least Dec. 9 , when reports first surfaced about malicious code found in the wild and on several Chinese hacker servers. McAfee was one of the first security companies to report the emerging exploit.
Since then, Microsoft acknowledged the bug , then offered up a series of advisories urging users to take protective steps until a fix was available.
Wednesday, the company released the patch .
Although other researchers continue to claim that thousands of legitimate Web sites have been compromised , then used to serve "drive-by" attacks against unpatched browsers, Marcus wasn't certain about the numbers he's seen bandied about. "But absolutely, there's been a lot of activity around this," he said. "A lot of the bad guys have embedded IFRAMES in their sites to attack IE."
According to other reports, the IE exploit has been added to one or more multistrike hacker toolkits that try several different exploits when users visit a compromised or malicious site. "If it's not in one of those yet, it probably will be," said Marcus. "Some of the exploits in those kits are years old, so a good one like this, unpatched until yesterday, will make its way into them."
Marcus recommended that users be cautious about opening Word documents, keep their security software up-to-date, and apply the IE patch as soon as possible.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Google issues first post-beta Chrome update
Only days after Google dropped the beta tag from its Chrome browser, the company issued an update that fixes more than 30 bugs.
Earlier this week, Google delivered Chrome 1.0.154.39, a developer-only build that has not been sent to all users through the browser's update mechanism. Chrome users, however, can reset the browser to receive all updates, including the developer editions, with the Channel Chooser utility.
The 1.0.154.39 build applies 31 bug fixes, none of them related to security.
[ Related: How does Google's Chrome browser fare against Microsoft's IE8? Also, check out InfoWorld's special report for all the news and commentary on Google's open source Chrome browser ]
In a post to the company's blog, Mark Larson, Chrome's program manager, highlighted a fix designed to make Chrome more compatible with Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft 's Web-based e-mail service.
Users' reactions, however, were mixed. According to someone identified as "welshsimon31," the Hotmail fix to Chrome did the trick: "I have no problem with Hotmail now, everything is working perfectly, like a charm!"
Another user, also commenting on Larson's blog entry, disagreed. "I still have the bug with Hotmail when I am trying to compose a new message," said "Apokalypse."
Google removed the beta label a week ago, when it said Chrome had met its stability and performance goals. At the time, some users expressed surprise that Chrome had left beta after just three months of testing, and disagreed with Google's contention that the browser was stable.
The current production version of Chrome is 1.0.154.36.
Chrome's market share swung up slightly after Google ditched the beta moniker, according to data from Web metrics company Net Applications. In the seven days since Google shifted Chrome out of beta, the browser has averaged a market share of just slightly over 1 percent.
Although Chrome's September debut attracted enough users to briefly put its share above that mark, it quickly slipped under the 1 percent bar. For the month of November, for example, Chrome's market share was 0.83 percent.
In comparison, Microsoft's Internet Explorer accounted for 69.8 percent of all browsers used last month, while Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox held down a 20.8 percent share. Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera, meanwhile, had shares of 7.1 percent and 0.71 percent, respectively, in November.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The SiIicon Valley tech celebrity quiz
Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Bill Hewlett. Philippe Kahn. Marc Andreessen. You know the names from the pantheon of Silicon Valley pioneers who have made the tech industry the exciting soap opera it is.
But what do you really know about them? Here's your chance to find out if you're really a close follower of the tech industry. Just answer our 20 questions and see how well you rate. Correct responses are worth 5 points.
Ready? Then put your tech-gossip insight and industry-insider lore to the test.
Take the InfoWorld tech celebrity quiz >
Looking for more ways to test your intellectual chops? Try our other quizzes:
* Windows administrator quiz
* Linux administrator quiz
* Geek IQ quiz 2008 edition
* Geek IQ quiz 2007 edition
* Programming IQ quiz
* Network security quiz
* DBA skills quiz
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You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz
Steve Jobs sneezes, and the rest of the world takes to bed with pneumonia. That's the way it seemed this week, as rumors real and imaginary swirled over the future of Apple, its savior, and the Macworld Expo. But Apple wasn't the only story. Also on the radar: Google gets into a tussle over net neutrality, Microsoft fixes yet another near-fatal flaw in Internet Explorer, and researchers discover that many women prefer browsers to trousers. Think you've got a handle on the world of tech? Show us your stuff by nailing this quiz. Correct answers are worth 10 points. Ready? Then let's get this party started.
1. A flurry of Apple rumors can only mean one thing: The annual Macworld show is right around the corner. Which of the following rumors is more than just a rumor?
a. Apple will finally unveil a netbook
b. The Mac Mini is getting an upgrade
c. A nano iPhone will be revealed
d. Steve Jobs isn't giving the keynote this year
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Linux Foundation names new CTO
The Linux Foundation has selected a new CTO, Ted Ts'o, who has been known as the first North American developer of the Linux kernel, the foundation said on Thursday.
Ts'o has served as a foundation fellow and chief platform strategist. He is considered one of the most highly regarded members of the Linux and open-source community, according to the foundation. He replaces Markus Rex, who has returned to Novell to work as acting general manager and senior vice president of Novell's Open Platform Solutions business unit.
[ Related: Take InfoWorld's Linux Admin IQ test ]
Ts'o will lead technical initiatives for the foundation including oversight of the LSB (Linux Standard Base) and workgroups such as Open Printing. He also will interface with foundation members and the foundation's Technical Advisory Board, which represents the kernel community, the foundation said.
Ts'o said he believed in the power of mass collaboration and the work that can be done by a community of developers, users, and industry members. "I'm looking forward to translating that power into concrete milestones for the LSB specifically and for Linux overall in the year ahead," he said in a statement.
Ts'o, who already has taken over the CTO position, has worked as a senior technical staff member at IBM, working most recently on an enterprise real-time Linux solution. Current plans call for him to return to IBM after his two-year fellowship at the foundation is over in a year.
He also has worked as project leader for the Kerberos authentication system used by Linux systems and Windows, the foundation said.
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Sun Web dev effort shifts to Icesoft
With Sun Microsystems having abandoned its Project Woodstock Web application development effort, Icesoft Technologies is picking up the slack.
The project, discontinued last month, featured a group of user interface components for developing with JavaServer Faces and AJAX. But citing resource constraints during tough economic times, Sun eliminated the project. Instead, Icesoft will provide its Icefaces software for users to move forward.
?The [Woodstock] component set was very well received, and we have a number of users that were very happy with it,? said Mark Dey, Sun engineering manager for the NetBeans 6.5 IDE. ?But we had to make some tough decisions as to where to put our resources.
?[Woodstock] has served us well, but it is resource-intensive, and we?ve identified a partner whose main business is developing a compatible set of user interface components,? said Dey, referring to Icesoft.
Woodstock users can migrate to open source Icefaces page technology, via an Icefaces plug-in, to the NetBeans development environment. (NetBeans 6.5 was released last month.) Developers can build Iceface pages alongside existing Woodstock pages. The company also is providing written guidance.
Users will be able to take legacy products and combine Woodstock pages with Iceface pages in the same project, Dey said. ?They?ll be able to preserve their investment.? he said.
Icefaces is freely available, like Woodstock. Icesoft sells related support services.
Icefaces features an AJAX JSF implementation, said Robert Lepack, director of marketing at Icesoft. ?Icefaces is a real pure Java implementation to build Java applications, so developers get a much easier framework to work with,? Lepack said.
Sun?s Dey lauded the Icesoft effort.
?We believe our customers will be better served by us partnering with Icesoft to provide a first-class set of UI components that can evolve over time,? Dey said. Icesoft will support both the upcoming Java Enterprise Edition 6 and JSF 2.0, which features a simplified way of declaring Web pages, said Dey.
Developers using Woodstock have built applications ranging from three-page Web applications to enterprise-level applications connected to Web services and providing database updates, he said.
Sun remains committed to supporting the Woodstock 4.2, the final version. The company plans to focus on core competencies, including tooling aspects for Web applications, such as editing and debugging support for Java, PHP, Ruby, and other Web languages.
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Red Hat offers 18-month term for enterprise maintenance
Red Hat unveiled on Thursday a new service aimed at making it more cost-effective for its customers to run and maintain one version of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) for a longer period of time, reducing management and administration costs, the company said.
EUS (Extended Update Support), a new maintenance option for RHEL customers, allows them to standardize their IT environments on a version of RHEL for 18 months instead of six months, which is the current time frame for Red Hat's maintenance contract, said Gerry Riveros, product marketing manager for EUS.
[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]
Through EUS, Red Hat will support whatever standard version of RHEL a customer is on with bug fixes and updates for 18 months, which means customers won't have to recertify or update all of their applications and hardware for a new version of RHEL until that period is over, Riveros said.
This recertification process costs money and takes up IT resources, so EUS provides an option that is more cost-effective for customers than updating every six months, which is what customers usually have to do on the current maintenance contract, he said.
"There are a set of customers who would like to be able to run RHEL as long as possible without re-evaluation," Riveros said.
Customers with mission-critical environments particularly don't like to update their OSes too frequently, he said, because they are afraid that changes they make could cause performance problems in their IT system.
Stephen O'Grady, an analyst with Redmonk, agreed that "for customers with large, highly specific, and standardized deployments, change is bad, even the kind of QAed change that Red Hat and other vendors provide." By slowing that rate of change, the customer is able to reduce its overall platform risk," he said.
With the recession in the U.S., companies also are looking to cut costs from their IT budgets, and being able to maintain RHEL for a longer period of time will help them do that.
EUS costs the same as Red Hat's current maintenance service, which varies depending on how many machines a customer has. For up to 100 machines, maintenance starts at $60,000 a year; for up to 500 machines, it starts at $80,000 a year, and so on, Riveros said.
Red Hat of course will continue to offer its current maintenance plan, which provides OS updates and bug fixes every six months, he added.
More information about EUS can be found on a blog entry on Red Hat's Web site.
Chris Kanaracus in Boston contributed to this report.
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Is it time to buy a netbook for your business?
As the economic downturn as pushes PC sales through the floor, one category stands tall: netbooks. This emergent class of mini computer boasts two obvious appeals: portability and affordability. With typical price points well below $600 per unit, a slick netbook is practically an impulse buy for those tech enthusiasts who still have a little change in their pockets. But are these cheap, slim systems right for your business? Let's see.
There can be little doubt that hard-core road warriors need more than a smartphone to really get things done. And sometimes a full-blown laptop just isn't practical for quick work. (Anyone who's had to perch their drink on their laptop's palm rest while reviewing PowerPoint presentations in a cramped coach airplane seat knows exactly what I mean.) So it can be incredibly handy to carry a tiny, 2-pound computer to handle small, simple tasks that don't require a whole lot of typing or processing power.
[ Related: "How to buy a netbook" | And stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]
Of course, netbooks come with some pretty serious drawbacks, which make them a poor stand-in for a real laptop when you need to get serious work done. As someone who does a tremendous amount of typing, I can hardly see myself ditching my 15-inch laptop altogether. For that matter, I still try to do most of my keyboard-intensive work at my desk, if only to cut down the bodily wear and tear that inevitably results from haphazard ergonomics. (If you don't think carpal tunnel syndrome is a threat to productivity, think again.)
On a typical business trip, if "typical" can even be used in this context, a mobile worker faces a complex and shifting work environment. From the taxicab to the airport terminal to the plane to the hotel to the board room, available work surfaces and power options change drastically. Ideally, you'd plug in and stretch out wherever you find the opportunity, and at those moments you want more features than a 10-inch netbook can afford. But in those intermediate spaces -- the planes, trains, and automobiles, if you will -- extracting your laptop from your bag and booting it can be more hassle than it's worth.
So it's a conundrum.
Fortunately, the cheap, lightweight nature of the netbook makes for a pretty good second or third computer, complementing your existing desktop and/or laptop. Weighing in at less than 3 pounds, a smaller netbook can sit unimposingly beside your real laptop in just about any tote. When you need to make good use of time spent in cramped traveling quarters, yank out the netbook and get to work. When you have more time and space at your disposal, go for the laptop.
It may sound like a waste of cash to add a second or third computer just to fill up your (or your workers') free time, but the regained hours of productivity can quickly offset the expense -- especially if you go in for one of the sub-$400 models.
But here's the real rub: Switching constantly between a desktop at the office, a netbook on the plane, and a laptop at the hotel can leave your files and psyche in disarray. To keep it all straight, you need a robust synching solution that can keep your systems up to date even when you can't reach the cloud. And right now, this is a relatively tall order. Cross-platform syncing services like SugarSync can get you partway there, but you'll still have to supplement them with an old-fashioned thumb drive when you're away from a network connection.
The good news is that netbooks are still coming into their own, and some of the most "net"-worthy features are just now finding their way onto the devices. Features like built-in 3G wireless service, for instance, will go a long way toward eliminating file synching hassles.
Ultimately, if you work in more than one location, it's hard to deny the appeal of the netbook. So the big unanswered question isn't should you buy one, but when. The answer is an entirely subjective one, but there are some good cues coming from the marketplace right now. The netbook category is enjoying a sweet honeymoon with tech buyers, and manufacturers are taking notice. Even Apple is rumored to be entertaining some cheaper-than-Air options. So while it can look pretty enticing to jump in and grab one in the midst of the holiday sales, it may be wiser to hold out for some of the '09 models that are bound to debut at CES in January.
Robert Strohmeyer is a senior editor at PC World. PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Opera releases fix for 'highly severe' flaws
Opera has released a security fix for seven flaws in its Web browser, Opera 9.6.
Opera follows in the footsteps of Microsoft and Mozilla, which have released security updates for Internet Explorer and Firefox, this week.
[ Related: "Mozilla issues eight patches for Firefox Web browser" and "Microsoft fixes IE bug" | Also, learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
Opera says the fix, which only applies to machines running Windows, covers two flaws categorised as 'extremely severe' and three listed as 'highly severe'. The 'extremely severe' flaws could allow a hacker to take control of a PC while those rated as 'highly severe' leave PCs open to attack if users open Web sites hosting malicious software.
In an advisory, Opera said the patch was a "recommended security upgrade."
PC Advisor is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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How to buy a netbook
Four months ago, we published a buyers guide for small, lightweight laptops titled, "How to buy a mini-laptop ."
Mini-laptops are now generally called netbooks -- a name coined by Intel -- but the devices remain popular for their small size, half to two-thirds the size of a normal laptop and far lighter. With the holidays fast approaching, we decided it was the right time to revisit this product segment and lay out the issues users will want to consider before they make a purchase.
[ For more on products in the hot netbook category, check out our hands-on looks at Asus' Eee PC 901 and 1000 and the N10 netbook, the Cloudbook Max netbook, Elitegroup's G10IL mini-laptop, MSI's Wind low-cost laptop, Giga-byte's M912X mini-laptop, HP's Mini-Note netbook and Acer's Aspire one. ]
Netbooks have caught on because they offer people a mobile, easy way to wirelessly access the Web. And over the past few months a dozen or more new netbooks have hit the market, giving people a wider range of choices.
Most netbooks sport small LCD screens, 8.9-inches to 10-inches, versus an average of 15.4-inches for normal laptops. Netbooks generally weigh around 2.2 lbs (1 kilogram) each, far lighter than most laptops, and carry batteries that last up to 8 hours. They cost between $199 and $799.
For anyone looking to buy now, here are some tips for your first netbook, compiled after reviewing about a dozen of them.
1. Make sure you want a netbook and not a full-fledged laptop computer.
What do you want to use this netbook for? Do you want a lightweight device for easy Internet access? Or are you really looking for a device to carry around that you can edit video on, play games, or use for other applications that test the computing limits of a netbook?
Don't buy a netbook if you're really looking for a laptop, it would be a mistake.
To ensure longer battery life, some key components on a netbook, such as the microprocessor, are less powerful than common laptops. That's why they're good for surfing the Internet, sending e-mails, or doing homework.
Anyone looking to do more should shop for a more powerful laptop, not a netbook.
2. Buy a netbook with an 8.9-inch screen or larger.
I tested an Eee PC with a 7-inch screen, the Surf , and found screen too small. I was not able to view an entire Web page on the cramped display. On a screen that small, you have to scroll left and right as well as up and down to see an entire Web page. Scrolling up and down is normal, but left and right was annoying.
That's less of a problem on the slightly larger-sized screens and, in the 8.9-inch screen size, the weight and size of the netbook is nearly the same as devices with 7-inch screens.
The 10-inch screens are even better, yet add size and weight to the netbook.
3. Make sure you get a 6-cell battery for your netbook, although you may have to pay $50 more and the device will weigh more.
Most companies started out offering netbooks with 3-cell batteries as the standard, but that doesn't offer a whole lot of run time, just 2 to 3 hours. A 6-cell battery doubles that, and in some devices designed around a 6-cell battery, such as Asustek Computer's Eee PC 901 , you can get up to 8 hours.
In a mobile device, battery life is vital. You don't want to always have to look around for outlets, or fight over the last available socket in a coffee shop.
Most vendors are now following Asustek's lead with 6-cell batteries. In fact, the netbooks listed on Amazon.com's bestseller list for the past month nearly all carry 6-cell batteries, Acer's Aspire One, Asustek's Eee PC 1000HA and Samsung Electronics' NC10-14GB .
Micro-Star International's Wind series, which sports a 10-inch screen, is a good example of the difference in weight on the batteries. Wind netbooks with 6-cell batteries weigh 2.6 lbs (1.18 kg), while those with 3-cell batteries weigh 2.3 lbs (1.04 kg).
Vendors generally offer 6-cell batteries for all models. But most devices come standard with a 3-cell or 4-cell battery, so if you want a 6-cell you may have to ask for it, and expect to pay a bit more.
Another benefit of the larger battery is that it props up the back of the device, putting it on a slight angle that makes typing easier. Keyboards on netbooks are smaller than normal keyboards, and comfortable typing was one area I was not willing to compromise on.
4. Try out the keyboard and make sure it's right for you.
None of the devices I tested had a better typing pad than Intel's ClassMate PC, which has a keyboard far smaller than the Eee PC 1000 . Keys on the ClassMate PC's keyboard are raised and there is a lot of space between them, making them easy to find by touch.
By contrast, the Eee PCs, Wind and Elitegroup Computer Systems' G10IL designed their keyboard with flat keys and little or no space between keys because, I was told by Elitegroup staff, it makes them look nice. The trouble is, it also makes typing more difficult.
I really liked the keyboards on Acer's Aspire One, Hewlett-Packard's Mini 1000 and Everex's CloudBook Max , but the best keyboard was on HP's Mini-Note .
5. Software: see what comes preinstalled and consider trying the Linux OS.
There are two lessons on software.
First, some vendors have skimped on including software in their netbooks on the pretense that users can download a lot of free software on the Internet. That's true, but it's a bad excuse for not going the extra distance for customer satisfaction.
Who wants to spend time downloading when many netbook makers have added lots of software so users can play with their new netbook right away?
Asustek included a lot of useful software on its Eee PCs, as has Acer, which also added a nice opening screen that boots up in just 12 seconds.
Second, it may be time to the give the Linux OS a try.
The Acer opening screen I just referred to is based on Linux, and the Aspire One comes with the Linpus Linux Lite OS, which is very user friendly. I've used Windows for most of my life but switching to Linux on the Aspire One was smooth and easy.
Most of the netbooks I tested with Linux booted up far faster than Windows XP or Windows Vista. Which reminds me, don't buy a netbook with Vista -- it's just too slow.
There are also free Linux-based word processing programs and spreadsheets available on the Internet such as Open Office , Sun's inexpensive StarOffice and Web-based software such as Google Apps .
Google also offers a nice package of free software, Google Pack , which includes several popular applications such as Adobe Reader, Skype, RealPlayer for music and video, Norton Security Scan, and two browsers, Google's Chrome and Firefox.
Of course, it would be nice to see a Web site devoted to netbooks, with software specifically designed for low-power devices and smaller screens. Netbookdownload.com, anyone?
6. Price: if it costs more than $500, start looking at a regular notebook computer.
Companies have started promoting a wide range of netbooks at ever higher prices, but once you pass $500, netbooks start to compete with laptops, and a laptop will almost always give you more value for your money.
Laptop computers have far more powerful microprocessors and other components than netbooks, and sport DVD drives. There are no DVD drives on netbooks.
If size and weight are your main concerns, there are plenty of small, full-featured laptops, including the Sony Vaio TT with an 11.1-inch screen, Lenovo U110-23042BU">Ideapad , also with an 11.1-inch screen, and of course Apple's lightweight MacBook Air .
7. Look around at what's available.
Many new netbooks have come out since I wrote my last netbook buyer's guide. There are a lot of look-alikes since newcomers have copied what the pioneers found to be the most popular configurations. The net effect is to put more good devices out there from a number of competitors. You may be able to pick up a nice machine for a very low price.
PC World has rated several of these new devices based on their specifications, performance, design and price, with Asustek's Eee PC 1000H coming out on top, followed closely by Lenovo's IdeaPad S10, Asus's N10JC, Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, HP's Mini 1000, and MSI's Wind U100.
Darren Gladstone, PC World's netbook reviewer, said he's sticking with HP's Mini 1000 until a newer model comes out, but it's not my favorite. Nor is my favorite netbook among the group PC World rated.
These are all good machines, but it should be noted that the IdeaPad S10, Inspiron Mini 9 and HP Mini 1000 do not currently come with 6-cell batteries, or at least I can't find any. To me, that's a big negative because mobility is so important.
Mobility may not be so important to you, so that's why you need to decide what you want to get out of a netbook (or laptop) before you buy one.
There were a lot of nice netbooks out there worth considering.
Giga-byte Technology's M912 is the netbook with by far the coolest technology with its touchscreen. The screen can also swivel around so you can show someone else what you're working on.
But I was quoted a price of NT$19,900 (US$632) for the device, and since I'm not really sure how much I'd use the touchscreen, I figured it wasn't right for me.
I almost decided on one of the netbooks with the bigger, 10-inch screens. My top choices were Asustek's Eee PC 1000
with the Xandros Linux OS and a 40GB solid state drive (SSD) for storage and 6-cell battery, followed by Micro-Star International's Wind U100 with a 6-cell battery.
Darren rightly pointed out that Asus's Eee PC 1002HA , also with a 10-inch screen, looks like a very nice device, but neither of us have had a chance to try one out.
In any case, the 10-inch screen devices are a little bigger and more expensive than what I was looking for. Size is important to consider in terms of weight. Ten inch screens, hard disk drives (HDDs) and 6-cell batteries add a lot of extra weight to a netbook.
All of the netbooks I tried out include wireless Internet access through Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, but only Asustek's more recent Eee PCs, including the S101, 1002HA, and 1000HA, offered the speedier 802.11b/g/n as of this writing.
Several netbooks are now on sale with built-in 3G modules and mobile phone service providers are offering them with 3G (third generation telecommunications) contracts, so people can access the Internet from anywhere on their mobile phone network.
People can also buy add-on 3G or WiMax cards for any netbook.
8. And finally, the best netbook available (for me) is....
I've tested over a dozen different netbooks and published reviews on most of them, and after trying out some pretty cool devices, I decided to buy the one that's right for me: Acer's Aspire One.
Based on the criteria above, here's why:
I already have a laptop PC, so I don't need a powerful netbook. I just want a small, lightweight device that's easy to carry around so I can surf the Web or write when I'm outside my office.
The Aspire One comes with an 8.9-inch screen and either a 3-cell or 6-cell battery, and of course I will pay a little more for the 6-cell battery. I get stranded in airports sometimes, often take trains, and simply like to sip my coffee very slowly. I need a long lasting battery.
The keyboard on the device is quite comfortable, and the software it comes with is easy to use, especially the Linpus Linux Lite OS.
The price sealed my decision.
Prices have come down for nearly all netbooks because of growing competition. Acer's Aspire One with Windows XP, a 160GB HDD (hard disk drive) and 6-cell battery sells for around $380 on Amazon.com currently, compared to around $430 earlier this year.
I plan to buy the $329 Aspire One that comes with Linpus Linux Lite OS, has an 8.9-inch screen, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom microprocessor, 512M bytes of DRAM and 8G bytes of flash memory storage and a 3-cell battery, standard. I'll add more DRAM and buy an additional flash card, as well as trade up to a 6-cell battery, which will likely raise the price to around $400, in all.
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Google launches Cross-Language Enterprise Search
Google launched on Thursday an innovative cross-language search feature that is sure to be welcomed by any global organization.
Cross-Language Enterprise Search works only with the Google Enterprise Search Appliance and will find internal documents written in any language, no matter what language was used to create the query.
With more and more companies linking their global systems, by simply pointing the search engine to each system the cross-language feature will find the documents in any one of 34 languages.
[ Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]
"Google Search Appliance is meant to mix 30 million documents, since the search appliance can do that all you have to do is point to all the servers," said Cyrus Mystry, product manager, Google Enterprise Labs[cq].
The cross-language tool also uses Google's machine translation technology to automatically translate the document if that feature is activated by the administrator through a dropdown menu. Otherwise, it can bring back the search results in the language they were written in.
While machine translation is notoriously inaccurate, Mystry noted that the Web has a vast amount of documents that are in multiple languages, and Google uses that along with statistical analysis to create a more accurate rendering of one language into another.
Recently, Google also created a translation feature that allows users to enter text or a Web URL and have it automatically translated.
Mystry said the goal of the Enterprise Labs is to develop and launch a new feature every six to eight weeks by posting innovations from over 10,000 Google engineers, and then making it available to about 55,000 visitors who can test the feature.
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Economic trouble driving green IT initiatives
Economic recession is causing many companies to ramp up the speed of green IT initiatives, while a much smaller number of companies have decided to slow down their green activities.
The lion's share of more than 1,000 companies surveyed by Forrester Research are not making any changes to their green programs. Among those who will, however, the number of companies accelerating green IT is twice as high as the number slowing down.
[ Check out the companies who have won InfoWorld's Green 15 Awards. And keep up on the latest in green IT initiatives with Ted Samson's Sustainable IT blog. ]
"The data is counterintuitive only at first glance," Forrester analyst Christopher Mines writes in a report released this week. "Companies are realizing that 'green means green' -- more sustainable computing operations are also more efficient and less costly."
Ten percent of the companies surveyed are accelerating green IT initiatives, while 5 percent are slowing down. The rest, 85 percent, are maintaining the same pace or say it's too early to know what impact the worsening economy will have on their green IT plans. Interest in the topic of energy efficiency seems to be growing, Forrester says, noting that its most recent poll in October garnered a larger response than any previous green survey the analyst firm has conducted.
The companies surveyed are distributed through the United States, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Japan, and other regions, and are mostly large, with 71 percent having at least 1,000 employees.
Naturally, saving money on energy costs is the primary motivating factor causing corporations to ramp up green IT efforts, particularly in the United States. Overseas, there is more concern about aligning IT with corporate green initiatives and using green to improve brand image.
Overall, 25 percent of companies are implementing a comprehensive green IT program, up from 15 percent last year and up from 20 percent in April. Another 27 percent are drawing up plans to go green, and another 34 percent are considering doing so.
Nearly six of 10 companies already are using green criteria in their IT procurement process, and one of ten use a professional services provider to help plan or implement a green IT program.
Previous Forrester research predicted that the worldwide market for green IT services will grow from $500 million in 2008 to nearly $5 billion in 2013, and Mines writes that the recent survey data makes the analyst firm more confident in that prediction.
"It is a very encouraging data point for all of us in the IT industry who have been promoting the energy savings and reduced total cost of ownership of more efficient hardware and software," he writes. ( Compare server products.)
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate
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