Japan considers emergency quake budget

The Bank of Japan, which has struggled to return the country to growth, said it will cut short a two-day policy review scheduled for next week to one day Monday and promised to do its utmost to ensure financial market stability.

Auto plants, electronics factories and refineries shut, roads buckled and power to millions of homes and businesses was knocked out. Several airports, including Tokyo's Narita, were closed and rail services halted. All ports were shut.

Japan's biggest quake on record occurred as the world's third-largest economy had been showing signs of reviving from an economic contraction in the final quarter of last year.

The disaster raised the prospect of major disruptions for business and a repair bill of billions of dollars.

Leaders of the ruling and opposition parties agreed on the need for an extra budget after Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked them to "save the country," Kyodo news agency reported.

Google starts letting search users block domains in results

Google is adding a feature to its search engine that lets users block out all links from specific domains in their query results. After a user clicks on a search result link and comes back to Google, the user will see a link below the result that keeps all pages from that domain out of future results.

While this feature can be used by anyone, Google will only be able to store the blocked domains for users who log into their Google accounts and confirm their blocks.

When a user runs a query and the results would have contained domains the user has blocked, Google will display an alert that says that a number of domains have been hidden and offers the option of displaying them.

Users will also have a chance to review and manage their list of blocked domains in their Google Account search preferences.

Google is also considering factoring blocks into its search results ranking process, so that a domain that has been blocked a significant number of times may see its search relevance reduced in general.

Google's Chrome 10 Browser is Lightning Fast

As Web sites become increasingly complex, streaming media becomes more common, and applications migrate from PC-client-based to Web-based, it becomes increasingly important for browsers to be as fast and responsive as possible. 

The just-released Chrome 10 comes with speed improvements that make Web sites load faster and Web-based apps run more quickly. It also offers a revamped Options interface, such as improved security and better syncing. 

Chrome has always been speedy, and with this release it gets even faster. Version 10 incorporates Google's new Crankshaft JavaScript engine. In its Chromium blog, Google claims that Crankshaft offers a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance as measured by the V8 benchmark suite.

In order to see how Chrome 10 compares to its rivals, I ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark using a Dell Dimension 9200 with a 2.40GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor and 2GB RAM running Windows Vista. I ran three sets of tests on each browser and averaged the results.

Results showed that Chrome has caught up to the long-time speed champion, Opera. Chrome 10 averaged 312.23 milliseconds (ms) to complete the tests, while Opera 11.01 averaged 309.97ms -- a virtual dead heat. Safari 5.0.3 came in at 406.933ms, with Firefox 3.6.15 well behind at an average 978.37ms and Internet Explorer 8 lagging at 5,035.07ms.

Apple patches critical Mac bugs with Java updates

Apple on Tuesday shipped a Java security update to Leopard and Snow Leopard users that patched a total of 27 vulnerabilities in the Oracle software.

Some of the bugs could be exploited to execute attack code outside the Java sandbox, Apple said, letting hackers hijack a vulnerable Mac. However, Apple did not spell out how many of the vulnerabilities could be exploited to "execute arbitrary code," its way of saying that the flaws should be considered critical.

Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, received an update that patched 16 vulnerabilities in Java SE 6 and another 11 in Java SE 5. The update for the newer Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, also patched the 16 bugs in Java SE 6.

Internet2 boosting 100Gbps network to 8.8Tbps

Internet2 has announced it will use Ciena packet-optical gear to boost capacity of its new U.S. Unified Community Anchor Network designed to give 200,000 libraries, K-12 schools, community colleges and healthcare centers access to network capacity previously reserved for big companies, educational and research organizations, and government agencies.

Internet2 says the Ciena gear will boost capacity of the national U.S. UCAN backbone network from 100Gbps to 8.8Tbps. Such capacity should enable network participants to run applications such as telemedicine and distance learning.

In November, Internet2 said it was partnering with Juniper Networks to implement its T1600 routers across 10 core network nodes and would be announcing an optical networking partner soon. Internet2 said at the time it would have a fully upgraded core backbone by 2013.

The project is being funded through a federal stimulus grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.

Apple patches 62 bugs in massive Safari update

Apple today patched a record 62 vulnerabilities in Safari 5, updating the Mac and Windows browser to version 5.0.4. 

Wednesday's Safari security update was released at the same time as iOS 4.3, which fixed many of the same flaws.

But Apple's update missed the cut-off for the Pwn2Own contest, which starts today and pits researchers against four browsers -- including Safari, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox -- as the hackers vie for $65,000 in cash prizes.

All but six of the 62 vulnerabilities patched today were accompanied by the phrase "arbitrary code execution," Apple-speak for rating the flaws as "critical."

Mozilla releases Firefox 4.0 release candidate

The Mozilla Foundation has issued the first release candidate of Firefox version 4.0, finishing a grueling and ambitious beta development cycle for the browser.

The quality assurance team will still take feedback from users over the next few weeks, but if no major bugs are found, Mozilla expects to issue the full production release of the browser by the end of the month.

Version 4 of Firefox is a major upgrade for the open-source browser, and includes a wealth of new features and enhancements. The user interface has been completely revamped and streamlined, with the menu bar condensed under a single button. The JavaScript Engine has been overhauled for speedier performance. The Add-ons Manager has been upgraded to a full-page interface.

SAP Offers Development Roadmap For In-Memory Computing Applications

SAP (NYSE:SAP) is aggressively expanding its line of applications that leverage the company's in-memory computing technology that's capable of rapidly processing huge volumes of data in real time.

The company also will adapt its existing software products to take advantage of the HANA (high-performance analytic appliance) system SAP began selling in December. HANA is based on in-memory computing technology SAP acquired when it bought Sybase in July for $5.8 billion.

Later this year SAP will debut a new release of HANA and, perhaps more significantly, will re-architect its NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW) data warehouse system to use HANA to process BW calculations, making it an alternative to database software fromOracle (NSDQ:ORCL), Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) and IBM (NYSE:IBM).

SAP executives, however, said customers would still have the option of using third-party database software to power BW.

AMD Releases Its Fastest Graphics Card Yet: Radeon HD 6990

AMD on Wednesday launched its highly-anticipated dual-coreRadeon HD 6990 GPU, its fastest graphics card to date, aimed at the enthusiast market. The latest member of AMD's highest-endGPU family, code-named Antilles, AMD's Radeon 6990 starts at $699 per unit and will compete with Nvidia's upcoming GeForce GTX 590 graphics card.

Measuring 12.5 inches in length, AMD's Radeon 6990 graphics card is also the longest GPU on the market, cramming in a variety of performance-enhancing capabilities. It consists of two Radeon HD 6970 cores on a single PCB, following the lead of AMD's mid-range Radeon HD 5970 offering, which consists of two Radeon 5870 cards connected by a PLX bridge. It features 3,072 stream processors, 192 texture units, and 64 ROPs, and a core base clock speed of 830 MHz.

The Radeon HD 6990 includes a frame buffer of 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, operating on a 5-Gbps, 256-bit memory path. It comes with a dual-BIOS switch enabling a built-in overclocking option and an increase in standard clock speed to 880 MHz, 1.175 volts, and 5.4 teraflops of compute power.

AMD Releases Its Fastest Graphics Card Yet: Radeon HD 6990

AMD on Wednesday launched its highly-anticipated dual-coreRadeon HD 6990 GPU, its fastest graphics card to date, aimed at the enthusiast market. The latest member of AMD's highest-endGPU family, code-named Antilles, AMD's Radeon 6990 starts at $699 per unit and will compete with Nvidia's upcoming GeForce GTX 590 graphics card.

Measuring 12.5 inches in length, AMD's Radeon 6990 graphics card is also the longest GPU on the market, cramming in a variety of performance-enhancing capabilities. It consists of two Radeon HD 6970 cores on a single PCB, following the lead of AMD's mid-range Radeon HD 5970 offering, which consists of two Radeon 5870 cards connected by a PLX bridge. It features 3,072 stream processors, 192 texture units, and 64 ROPs, and a core base clock speed of 830 MHz.

The Radeon HD 6990 includes a frame buffer of 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, operating on a 5-Gbps, 256-bit memory path. It comes with a dual-BIOS switch enabling a built-in overclocking option and an increase in standard clock speed to 880 MHz, 1.175 volts, and 5.4 teraflops of compute power.

Microsoft pushes anti-AutoRun update at XP, Vista users

Microsoft last week changed how it delivers an update that disables AutoRun, a Windows feature that big name worms, including Conficker and Stuxnet, have used to infect millions of PCs.

The company is now pushing the update to Windows XP and Vista users automatically.

When Microsoft first deployed the update Feb. 8, it said the patch would be offered as an optional download. To retrieve it, users had to manually checkmark the "KB971029" update in the "Software, Optional" section of Windows Update in XP, or in Vista's Windows Update panel under "Important."

But last week Microsoft changed those rules and began feeding users the update through the Automatic Updates feature of Windows Update, which automatically downloads and installs hotfixes and other software upgrades. In Windows XP, for example, users now see the AutoRun fix under the "High-priority updates" label, and the patch is pre-checked so it downloads and installs without any user action.

Microsoft Releases Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Microsoft today announced the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1) of its Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). The release was announced by S. "Soma" Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, during his keynote address at the Tech-Ed Middle East conference in Dubai.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 provides a comprehensive set of bug fixes, software tweaks and feature additions to Microsoft's flagship IDE. The improvements address responsiveness, stability and performance of Visual Studio 2010, according to Microsoft. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 has been available as a public beta since December.

Visual Studio 2010 SP 1 is available today for download to MSDN subscribers, at this location. SP1 will be available for public download on March 10 from this page.

Other additions in SP1 include a new VB Compiler runtime switch that allows VB developers to target their projects at platforms lacking the full Visual Basic Runtime. Microsoft also added native code tweaks, with new Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) APIs for Windows 7, addressing Direct2D, DirectWrite and Windows Animation Technologies.

Tests find security tools failures

A new round of antivirus testing found some products fail to detect malware that tries to infect a computer via a different attack vector, such as through a local network fileshare or a USB drive.

The tests, conducted by NSS Labs, sought to find out how effective security products are at detecting malware from various attack vectors. Malware can be delivered to a computer via rigged websites, e-mail attachments and USB flash drives, among other ways.

Although drive-by downloads remain the most common attack vector, about 15% of attacks are delivered via e-mail with a malicious attachments, such as a PDF document.

Many security products allow users to download all of their e-mail to their inbox by default and not scan it, even if it contains malware.

Cisco Foresees 'World Of Many Clouds'

Cisco has come out of its corner swinging, looking to dominate the cloud landscape.

And at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara, Calif., on Tuesday, Cisco's Cloud CTO Lew Tucker shared insight into Cisco's vision of where the cloud is going and what Cisco is doing to help its partners and customers leverage cloud environments.

According to Tucker, the massive growth of cloud computing has created an environment where "the network is the computer, once again" and that cloud computing starts with a secure infrastructure.

But, Tucker said, there is an even larger cloud on the horizon. And as the market progresses, it will determine whether there will be two or three huge provider clouds or a handful of vertical- and industry-specific clouds.

And as that larger cloud begins to form workloads move out of the data center and the number of connected devices continues to grow.

Cisco Targets SMBs with New "Unified Communications" Products

Cisco unveiled new unified communications products this week. The new UC offerings are designed to take Cisco out of its large enterprise comfort zone and deliver solutions for small and medium businesses. These products might be suitable for SMBs, but they miss the markwhen it comes to unified communications.

The Cisco Unified Communications 300 Series targets small businesses between two and 24 users. The Cisco press release describes it as a "complete" collaboration system, delivering business-class networking and voice communications.

For larger customers, Cisco has the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000. This platform is designed for up to 300 users scattered across as many as 10 different sites. 

BMW Aims For Cars to Take E-mail Dictation

BMW has developed a prototype system that allows drivers to compose full-text e-mails and text messages using voice commands. Unlike voice-activation options in existing BMWs, the technology relies on speech-recognition algorithms that offer drivers, as well as passengers, freedom to dictate original messages from over a million recognized words in the database.

The main novelty is that you can compose e-mails with the same ease of use that you would have with a PC in an office setting--without taking your eyes off of the road or using your hands. You respond to e-mail by dictating out loud what you want to say while using voice commands for editingfunctions, such as deleting, moving, or replacing text. For millions of workers who otherwise waste a large percentage of their time driving every day, being able to send and receive e-mails safely while commuting would represent an obvious boost in productivity.

The system, which BMW said in February could be sold as an option in production models within three years, is part of the company's plans to develop voice-activated commands to operate any function that drivers must otherwise activate today by hand. For example, the German luxury carmaker expects eventually to allow drivers to enter search queries on the Internet and to hear search results read out loud by using voice commands as well.

Emergence of Enterprise Software in India

Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is software used in organizations, such as in a business or government, as opposed to software chosen by individuals (for example, retail software). Enterprise software is an integral part of a Computer Based Information System (CBIS).

According to Gartner, Inc - an information technology research and advisory company - Asia Pacific’s enterprise software market revenue is predicted to touch $22.1 billion in 2010, posting a 10.2% growth. This represents an upturn from the expected 6.6 per cent growth in 2009, which is a notable slowdown compared to 2008 growth of 13.8 per cent. Within the region, the volatile economy is said to be impacting the application software segment more than the infrastructure software segment.

Even though the economic meltdown affected the growth of this market, Asia Pacific still has a positive outlook over the five-year forecast period from 2008 through to 2013. It achieved a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8 per cent, the highest of any region worldwide then.

China and India continue to benefit from a large domestic customer base and government stimulus packages, as well as relatively low market penetration. Australia and Singapore’s revenue, according to the report, is supported by a consistent maintenance revenue stream and a strong vendor channel and service infrastructure, as well as positive expectations for end-user software budget increases in 2010.

Google's Chrome 10 Beta is faster

Google has released a beta update of its Chrome Web browser -- called Chrome 10 Beta -- that is faster with both JavaScript and video, and includes a new Chrome OS-like settings interface and a password sync feature.

"Chrome's JavaScript engine V8 runs compute-intensive JavaScript applications even more quickly than before," Google said in a blog post announcing the update. "In fact, this beta release sports a whopping 66% improvement on the V8 benchmark suite over our current stable release."

The Chrome 10 Beta also has a "preliminary implementation of GPU-accelerated video," which will enable users with higher end graphics cards to rely on that hardware rather than a standard CPU processor.

"In full screen mode, CPU usage may decrease by as much as 80%," for computers with the appropriate graphics cards, Google said.

Chrome is released in three versions, which Google calls channels -- Dev, Beta and Stable. Dev is meant for developers adding new functionality to the browser, Beta is a public release with experimental featurers and Stable is the most polished (and ideally bug-free) version of Chrome.

Microsoft patches critical Windows drive-by bug

Microsoft today shipped three security updates that patched four vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.

And, as expected, Microsoft did not release patches for Internet Explorer (IE) to bolster the browser's chances of surviving Pwn2Own, the hacking contest that begins tomorrow.

Even the company called today's Patch Tuesday an easy ride for customers. "It's a light month," said Jerry Bryant, a group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), the team responsible for investigating, patching and issuing fixes.

New security tools protect virtual machines

As enterprises move towards virtualizing more of their servers and data center infrastructure, the security technologies that are plentiful and commonplace in the physical world become few and far between.

While few direct attacks on virtual machines have been observed, it is still good security practice to protect VMs from potential vulnerabilities that exist only in the virtualized world.

For example, physical firewalls aren't designed to inspect and filter the vast amount of traffic originating from a hypervisor running 10 virtualized servers. And because VMs can start, stop, and move from hypervisor to hypervisor at the click of a button, protective features have to be able to handle these movements and activities with ease. Finally, few hypervisors have the access controls that even the most basic file server has: once someone can gain access to the hypervisor, they can control all of the VMs that are housed there.

Adobe's Wallaby ties Flash to HTML

Adobe Systems is making available this evening a preview of its Wallaby technology, which enables developers to leverage Flash development skills to build HTML files that can run on systems without the need for the Flash Player, including Apple iOS devices.

Wallaby, which will be offered for free on the Adobe Labs website, helps developers convert a Flash file created in the Flash Professional development tool to HTML. Apple's iOS, which does not support Flash Player, is the primary use case for Wallaby. Output can also run on WebKit-based browsers like Safari and Chrome, said Tom Barclay, senior product manager for the Adobe Creative Suite business.

Wallaby is an AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) application for the Windows and Mac platforms. Developers can convert files to HTML5 via drag-and-drop functionality, Adobe said. Once files have been converted, developers can edit using an HTML editing tool, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, or by hand.

When and how to perform penetration testing

Penetration testing is the art of probing an application in a holistic manner, seeking vulnerabilities which would allow a malicious user to threaten the security of that application. As a quick reminder, security in its most basic form can be summarized as confidentiality, availability and integrity. With the number of data breaches around the world, most organizations tend to fixate on confidentiality, but availability and integrity are also critical pieces.

Many security experts tend to focus on penetration testing of network layers alone, but this is insufficient. As hackers have moved up the stack, they’ve become more complex. Rather than attacking a network in search of open ports, they have begun injecting their attacks into otherwise-valid Web traffic.

Penetration testing the application is best done in a methodical approach -- here, the OWASP Top Ten is very helpful. It identifies the top ten vulnerabilities based on worldwide experience and exposure. Become proficient in testing for these top ten vulnerabilities, and leverage them against your application. Work this into the manual testing portion of an OWASP Application Security Verification analysis of your application, to ensure broad coverage of your application’s security.

Google update adds automatic traffic info to Maps Navigation

Google Monday announced a beta traffic update to its Maps Navigation software. The update can automatically route drivers around high traffic areas as determined by an analysis of current conditions and historical traffic patterns.

The update, disclosed in a Google blog post on Monday, builds on previous Google Maps Navigation capabilities that allowed users to choose the fastest route or an alternate one based on their preference to, for example, use back roads instead of highways.

The latest update, explained in the blog posted by Roy Williams, a software engineer on the company's Google Maps team, includes an example of a recent trip to New York where he used Navigation to route him around traffic.

When Open Stack was first announced several months ago many people thought that it could be a major player in the cloud market. Others thought that it could be just another wannabe standard that would fade under all of the cloud hype. With Rackspace, NASA and others behind it, Open Stack had the pedigree to be a game changer. Now a few months later, if my experience is any indicator, Open Stack is going to be a dominant platform in the cloud.

Open Stack is having such an impact that it is causing softare companies to go open source so they can be part of it. That means these companies have decided that being part of Open Stack is critical to their success. If they think it is critical to their success, then Open Stack is indeed making huge progress.

Android on top in the US, Microsoft in decline

The latest quarterly statistics showing US smartphone market share show Microsoft’s task with Windows Phone 7 is daunting, as the new OS is already losing ground. The latest US smartphones figures from comScore cover November of last year through the end of January, and while the figures are largely as expected the drop of market share by Microsoft is a bit of a surprise.

Google’s Android remains on top of the smartphone pack, with a gain in share of almost 8 percent over the period. This gives Android a solid 32.2 percent of the US market. RIM rings in at second place with 30.4 percent of the market, but after a 5 percent drop in share. Apple’s share of the market (24.7 percent) remained largely unchanged for third place.

Germany identifies a secure way to deal with spam

In theory, stopping spam is easy: just make it uneconomic to send millions of messages by charging for each one sent, or make senders authenticate their identity to stop address spoofing and simplify blocking.

In practice, that would involve building a secure, parallel e-mail infrastructure linking electronic authentication with real-world identities: a daunting task. Yet that's just what Germany is about to do.

De-mail -- a play on the country-code abbreviation for Deutschland (Germany) and the word e-mail -- is a government-backed service in which all messages will be encrypted and digitally signed so they cannot be intercepted or modified in transit. Businesses and individuals wanting to send or receive De-mail messages will have to prove their real-world identity and associate that with a new De-mail address from a government-approved service provider. The service will be enabled by a new law that the government expects will be in force by the end of this month. It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages if they wish.

Eliminating spam is not the primary purpose of De-mail -- in fact, service providers will be legally obliged to deliver every De-mail message, without blocking any, just as the postal service is not supposed to throw away your mail.

Google releases security fix for Android smartphones

Google has released an Android security update after its applications store was infiltrated by over 50 malicious apps. The Android Market Security Tool March 2011 patch is being rolled out over the air, and will remove any malicious apps automatically.

The update will affect only those handsets that contain the malicious apps, and users may receive a notification on the device saying that the application has been removed. The malicious Android applications were discovered on 1 March, and take advantage of vulnerabilities in devices running Android 2.2.1 and below.

The apps were removed from the Android Market on the same day, and Google suspended developer accounts and reported the matter to law enforcement agencies. The apps allowed attackers to access the IMEI/IMSI codes used to identify individual devices and the version of Android running on the handset.

However, Google noted that the attackers may also have been able to access other information, which is why a remote removal was triggered.

Wi-Fi chugs toward 1 gig

HP has proclaimed itself to be the first enterprise-grade WLAN vendor to ship dual-radio, Wi-Fi-Certified 802.11n wireless access points with a total signaling rate of 900Mbps.

The two radios in each of the company's new E-MSM460 and E-MSM466 APs both operate in the 5GHz band, explains Roger Sands, HP director of mobility. The APs support three spatial streams and list for about $1,000 in the U.S. Another member of the family, the E-MSM430, supports two spatial streams and costs about $700.

Sands adds that the high-data-rate APs can be fueled by 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches' maximum 15.4-watt power budget without having to turn off any features.

Opportunities for higher 802.11n speeds lie in the 5GHz band, largely owing to a technology called channel bonding, which is impractical in the 2.4GHz band. Channel bonding merges two 20MHz channels into one 40MHz channel to widen the communications path. Similar efforts to further widen the path and achieve full 1Gbps Wi-Fi connect rates are afoot in two IEEE working groups, 802.11ac and 802.11ad.

Mozilla unveils Firefox Web Apps

Mozilla has unveiled the first developer release of its web applications project.

Mozilla is designing its Web Apps so that applications can run on Firefox browsers on desktops, tablets and smartphones. The move follows a similar one by Google through its Chrome Web Store.

However unlike Google's Chrome app store, Mozilla has gone a step further allowing Chrome users to run its Web Apps through the release of a plug-in. It also allows developers to create their own app stores or publish directly to users.

Applications can be built using HTML5 and Javascript, with Mozilla releasing various application programmable interfaces to get developers started.

Mozilla says that in the coming weeks it will produce a "deeply integrated in-browser experience" for the location and installation of Web Apps. Software to allow synchronisation of applications with mobile devices and provide native web browser and OS integration will also be developed.

Google releases a Chrome OS Beta channel update

Google has released a Chrome OS Beta channel update.

Days after Google released a beta of its Chrome 10 web browser with impressive speed claims, the firm has included it in a beta channel update of its Chrome operating system.

Release version 0.10.156.46 of Chrome OS has a few tweaks but its main update is better trackpad functionality for Google's pilot programme Cr-48 notebook.

Google has been faffing around with its own Chrome notebook since The INQUIRER covered the Cr-48 pilot programme in December last year. At least Google has tangible hardware, unlike its missing in action tablet that the rumour mill was touting last year.

Chrome release 0.10.156.46 is really an update so quality testers can test the user experience with added control settings and sensitivity before Google releases its own notebook onto the market.

The other updates for Chrome OS are much more general for anyone using it on other devices, including some stability and  security fixes.