General Technology

OnForce execs and partners discuss how its working with Apple, how this trend is affecting the small business market, and what we can expect from large corporations in the future.

What we have so far:CRM Watchlist 2012 Pt 1A - The Big GunsCRM Watchlist 2012 1B - The Big Guns AgainCRM Watchlist 2012 - The Winners ListCRM Watchlist 2012 -  Let the Reviews Roll: The...

Companies all over the world are looking for ways to gain some advantage due to the industry interest in processing massive amounts of rapidly changing data. Sumo Logic just emerged from stealth...

An exploit for Google Wallet enables thieves to change a user's PIN and get at the stored funds - without needing to actually hack the device.

redletterdave writes "Craig Silverstein, the first employee hired by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, will leave the search giant for Khan Academy, an online education portal based in Mountain View, Calif. Silverstein had been with Google shortly after it first launched in the garage of Susan Wojcicki, a friend of both Page and Brin, in September 1998. He had helped Brin and Page develop infrastructure when Google was just a Stanford grad school project, but when he officially joined the company, Silverstein became its technology director. The Khan Academy, where Silverstein is heading next, is a not-for-profit organization that aspires to change the education industry by providing free 'world-class education to anyone anywhere.' Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is an enormous fan of the service, telling CNN that he uses it with his kids."

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Smart Planet's Sumi Das explains how augmented reality will help museum paintings turn into talking art teachers and ordinary billboards play movie trailers.

coondoggie writes "NASA is looking for technology that could offer green rocket fuel alternatives to the highly toxic fuel hydrazine used to fire up most rockets today. According to NASA: 'Hydrazine is an efficient and ubiquitous propellant that can be stored for long periods of time, but is also highly corrosive and toxic.' It is used extensively on commercial and defense department satellites as well as for NASA science and exploration missions."

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pigrabbitbear writes "The gradual transformation of the web into an ultra-personalized, corporate-owned social space in the cloud has raised more than a few legitimate concerns about data privacy. Google, for obvious reasons, has always been one of the top cheerleaders for this metamorphosis. Touting a fresh new privacy policy that allows data about you from all of their services to coalesce, they've recently been particularly bullish about rendering that increasingly realistic digital portrait of you that lies stuffed away in their servers. It has led us again to question: How much are we comfortable with our machines knowing about us? How much is our privacy really worth? With their new program, Google is now asking those questions quite directly, and preceding them with dollar signs. Are we all on the verge of making our own information age Faustian bargains?"

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We're in for more cloud/SaaS merger and acquisitions this year; will continued innovation triumph over old guard purchase integrations, and do the customers and prospects care as much as the...

Manual typewriters are back, and they're all the retro rage. This article contains stories from leading technology journalists about their relationship with manual typewriters.

Nominei writes "The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the Syrian President, aides and staffers had their email hacked by Anonymous, who leaked hundreds of emails online. Reportedly, many of the accounts used the password '12345' (which their IT department probably warned them to change when the accounts got set up, of course)."

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In a rare, victory against software patent, a jury in the U.S. District Court in East Texas ruled that Eolas did not have a patent on the interactive Web.

clustermonkey writes "Intel Corporation and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009. Intel did not have to admit any violation of law (if there ever was any) nor did it have to admit or deny that the allegations in the complaint are true. Most importantly, the settlement does not require any changes to how the company does business. The settlement includes a $6.5 million payment that is "intended only to cover some of the costs incurred by the New York Attorney General in the litigation." Here's the full settlement, and Intel's official press release."

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Google's popular Chrome Web browser just keeps getting faster and more secure with every release.

Cutting_Crew writes "As we all know brick and mortar stores have been closing left and right recently. We had CompUSA, Borders and Circuit City all close their doors within the last 4 years. According to an article on Forbes.com, it is spelled out pretty clearly why Best Buy is next in line to shut its doors for good. Some of the reasons highlighted include a 40% drop is Best Buy stock in 2011, lack of vision regarding their online services, management too concerned with store sales instead of margins and blatant disregard for quality customer service."

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wiredmikey writes "Protests against Apple and Foxconn due to furor over reports about working conditions have gone digital. A group known as SwaggSec has successfully hacked computers at Foxconn, and posted the stolen data to The Pirate Bay website. News of the hack comes as protesters paid a visit today to Apple stores around the world to deliver petitions demanding the improvement of working conditions at factories run by Apple suppliers in China and other countries. In response to the attack, Foxconn reportedly took down a website that explains the services it offers to some of its partners, including Apple, Cisco and Acer."

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An anonymous reader writes "Doug Engelbart should be known to everyone on Slashdot — he did invent the mouse after all, among many other inventions all of us rely on today. There was one more obscure device he came up with that never really took off, though. It was called the Chorded Keyboard, and consisted of a system that allowed you to type using just one hand. The key to this system was finger combinations, which allowed up to 32 different characters — more than enough for the alphabet. Now that one-handed keyboard has been ported to work with touchscreens, and it could end up being quite popular. The key benefit is the fact you can type anywhere on the screen and don't even need to see where you are typing. The only difficulty is learning all the key combos, but once you have them cold you may be able to type faster than with two hands on your smartphone or tablet." Bonus: being software-only and open-source, it's much cheaper than a Twiddler.

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DesScorp writes "A story from UK's Guardian reports on a study of ice levels from the Himalayas area, and finds that no significant melting has occurred, despite earlier predictions of losses of up to 50 billion tons of ice. 'The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero,' said Professor Jonathan Bamber, who also warns that 8 years simply isn't enough time to draw conclusions. 'It is awfully dangerous to take an eight-year record and predict even the next eight years, let alone the next century,' he said." Readers have sent in a few other stories today relating to melting (or persisting) ice around the globe; read on for more.

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Twitter is being pumped up to save the day with the help from a couple of satellite providers.

Nuance said the quarter fell short as "our relationships with mobile customers have become more comprehensive and complex, which has resulted in delayed revenues in some cases."