Analysis: Oracle has been building for more than four years to start acquiring top-notch cloud service providers like Taleo. – Oracle’s Feb. 9 acquisition of enterprise talent management provider Taleo Corp. for $1.9 billion is a clear indicator of the all-purpose IT giant’s commitment to becoming a major-league player in the enterprise cloud services business.
For $46 per share, Oracle is now the proud owner of the worl…
The abundance of smartphones and tablets based on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems has facilitated the creation of nearly 500,000 jobs in the United States since 2007. That’s the conclusion from TechNet, a policy and political network of CEOs and senior executives that aims to stimulate the growth of technology and innovation. For this report, TechNet looked at the so-called "App Economy," noting that developers have crafted and launched nearly 1 million software applications for the iPhone, iPad and Android gadgets. Indeed, Apple’s App Store boasts roughly 500,000 apps, including 190,000 for the iPad. Google’s Android Market offers more than 300,000 apps. There are plenty of programs for gaming, workout tracking and other tools. TechNet’s position is that each app represents jobs for programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers and support staff, resulting in a boon for the overall economy. This App Economy is especially dominant in California, which accounts for nearly a quarter of all App Economy jobs, thanks to Silicon Valley’s abundance of software engineers. Here, eWEEK takes a deep dive into the numbers to show developers where they can make money or improve their programming skills to meet demand. – …
Lenovo is enjoying a moment. During the quarter that ended Dec. 31, the PC maker posted record quarterly sales and its highest-ever worldwide market share. – Lenovo, the world’s No. 2 PC maker, saw record sales of
$8.4 billion during its fiscal 2011 third quarter, which concluded Dec. 31. Growing
faster than its top-five ranking peers, it additionally enjoyed global market
share of 14 percent its highest ever.
Lenovo, which announced its quarterly r…
NEWS ANALYSIS: A DOT official’s testimony in a House Aviation Subcommittee hearing called LightSquareds data plan completely incompatible with GPS. There has also been a call for new GPS interference standards. – The House Subcommittee on Aviation, which
is part of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the U.S. House
of Representatives, held hearings Feb. 8 regarding the critical nature of
GPS to aviation in the United States, and the issues raised LightSquareds
plans to implement a broad…
Google gained search share, moving to 66.2 percent, according to comScore. Yahoo dropped to 14.1 percent while Microsoft edged up a notch to 15.2 percent. – Google
(NASDAQ:GOOG) started 2012 on a high note in search, garnering 66.2 percent
U.S. market share through January from 65.9 percent through December, according to comScore.
Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) share edged up, from 15.1 percent to
15.2 percent. Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), which is relying on Mi…
Sencha has launched a program to try to get Adobe Flex developers to move to HTML5 development using Sencha’s tools and frameworks. – Sencha, a
maker of application frameworks, tools and cloud services for developers, has
launched a new fast-track
program for Adobe Flex developers looking to develop HTML5 applications.
The new
program provides Flex developers a variety of ways to become familiar with the
Sencha suite of prof…
Application layer DDoS attacks are smaller than traditional network-based attacks, which try to exceed the available bandwidth. Organizations need to handle them differently. – When it comes to distributed
denial-of-service attacks, smaller attacks can cause just as much, if not more,
damage than enormous ones, according to a recent study.
DDoS attackers are focusing
less on bandwidth and shifting toward application layer attacks, Radware
said in its quot;2011 Global…
A new TechNet study identifies a new ?App Economy? based on the creation of mobile, enterprise, consumer and cloud apps that is responsible for roughly 466,000 jobs. – TechNet, a bipartisan policy and political
network of technology CEOs, released a new study showing that there are now
about 466,000 jobs in the so-called ?App Economy? in the United States, up from
zero in 2007.
The ?App Economy? is the
market for applications and technology products and servi…
Oracle’s acquisition of Taleo Corp. for $1.9 billion is a big step in building a cloud offering for human resources departments. – Oracle has
acquired Taleo Corp., a cloud-based talent-management provider, for $1.9
billion.
According to a
Feb. 9 statement, Oracle intends to use Taleos assets to ?create a
comprehensive cloud offering for organizations to manage their human resource
operations and employee careers.? In addi…
Apple lovers want the company to take a more ethical path when manufacturing its iPhone and iPad devices. On Feb. 9, protestors plan to hand-deliver petitions to at least six Apple stores. – Fans of Apple products are
asking the device maker to live up to its own advertising and think differently,
especially when it comes to how the company manufactures its iPhones and iPads.
After The
New York Times ran a seven-page expose quickly followed by similar
reports from CBS News and q…
“PM2.5” seems an odd and wonkish term for the blogosphere to take up, but that is precisely what has happened in China in recent weeks. It refers to the smallest solid particles in the atmosphere—those less than 2½ microns across. Such dust can get deep into people’s lungs; far deeper than that rated as PM10. Yet until recently China’s authorities have revealed measurements only for PM10. When people realised this, an online revolt broke out. Such was the public pressure that the government caved in and PM2.5 data are now being published for Beijing and a handful of other cities.But what of the rest of China? At the moment, only PM10 data are available. However, officialdom’s hand may soon be forced here, too. Though pollution data are best collected near the ground, a plausible estimate may be made from the vantage-point of a satellite by measuring how much light is blocked by particles, and estimating from those particles’ chemical composition the likely distribution of their sizes. And a report prepared for The Economist by researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, and Battelle Memorial Institute, under the auspices of Angel Hsu of Yale, does just that. It draws on data from American satellites to map out PM2.5 pollution across the entire country.
“HOW the zebra got his stripes” sounds like the title of one of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories. Sadly, it isn’t, so the question has, instead, been left to zoologists. But they, too, have let their imaginations rip. Some have suggested camouflage. (Charles Darwin pooh-poohed that idea, pointing out that zebra graze in the open, not amid thick vegetation where a striped pattern might break up their outlines.) Others suggest they are a way to display an individual’s fitness. Irregular stripes would let potential mates know that someone was not up to snuff. One researcher proposed that stripes are to zebra what faces are to people, allowing them to recognise each other, since every animal has a unique stripe-print. Another even speculated that predators might get dizzy watching a herd of stripes gallop by.There is, however, one other idea: that stripes are a sophisticated form of fly repellent. It was originally dreamed up in the 1980s, but never proved. Now, a team of investigators led by Gabor Horvath of Eotvos University in Budapest report in…
FOR as long as humans have romanced each other, others have wanted to meddle. Whether those others were parents, priests, friends or bureaucrats, their motive was largely the same: they thought they knew what it took to pair people off better than those people knew themselves.Today, though, there is a new matchmaker in the village: the internet. It differs from the old ones in two ways. First, its motive is purely profit. Second, single wannabe lovers are queuing up to use it, rather than resenting its nagging. For internet dating sites promise two things that neither traditional matchmakers nor chance encounters at bars, bus-stops and bar mitzvahs offer. One is a vastly greater choice of potential partners. The other is a scientifically proven way of matching suitable people together, enhancing the chance of “happily ever after”.The greater choice is unarguable. But does it lead to better outcomes? And do the “scientifically tested algorithms” actually work, and deliver the goods in ways that traditional courtship (or, at least, flirtation) cannot manage? These are the questions asked by a team of psychologists…
GIVEN journalists’ penchant for sticking the suffix “gate” onto anything they think smells of conspiracy, a public-relations consultant might have suggested a different name. But ResearchGate, a small firm based in Berlin, is immune to such trivia. It is ambitious, too—aiming to do for the academic world what Mark Zuckerberg did for the world in general, by creating a social network for scientists. And it is successful. About 1.4m researchers have signed up already, and that number is growing by 50,000 a month.Non-scientists might be surprised that such a network is needed. After all, the internet was originally created mainly by academics for academics and Mr Zuckerberg’s invention, Facebook, got its start on college campuses. But though the internet has speeded things up, it has not fundamentally changed how researchers are connected. Academic communities are still pretty fragmented, frequently making it hard for scientists to find others doing similar research. And results often are not shared across disciplines.To make things more efficient and interdisciplinary, ResearchGate wants to help the academic world to grow more connective tissue, as Ijad Madisch, one of the firm’s founders, puts it. As on Facebook, users create a profile page with biographical information, list their interests and research skills, and join groups. They can see what others with similar…
The Electronic Information Privacy Center is suing the FTC to get it to stop Google’s privacy policy changes, which commence March 1. – The Electronic
Privacy Information Center sued the Federal Trade Commission Feb. 8, compelling
the agency to halt Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) privacy-policy changes before they go
into effect March 1.
EPIC argued that the privacy-policy changes,
which include bringing 60 Web services under one umbre…
To potential clients, certifications can inspire confidence that contractors are qualified to contribute, manage or lead various projects. – According to the latest IT
jobs report from online recruiting and job posting service Dice, one aspect of
marketing that tech consultants appear to value is certifications. Forty
percent of tech consultants surveyed said obtaining a certification helped them
land a new gig, which is about 10 per…
A new rumor is floating around that iOS 5.1 is close to the public launch. The rumor claims that March 9 is when we will see the next version of iOS surface. Apple stores across the world are facing possible demonstrations against allegedly poor labor ethics. Apple’s manufacturing partners in China have faced a lot [...]
HANA is designed to improve decision-making and increase the speed of existing processes and accessing large amounts of data. – Enterprise application
software specialist SAP (NYSE: SAP) announced two new offerings that are
designed to deliver the benefits of the companys HANA platform, a combination
of in-memory data management software and SAP partner hardware, to small and
midsize businesses (SMBs). With analytics pow…
HANA is designed to improve decision-making and increase the speed of existing processes and accessing large amounts of data. – Enterprise application software specialist SAP (NYSE: SAP) announced two new offerings that are designed to deliver the benefits of the companys HANA platform, a combination of in-memory data management software and SAP partner hardware, to small to medium-size businesses (SMBs). With analytics powe…
The survey suggests marketers recognize the need to dedicate more resources to their social media efforts going forward. – A gap exists between
attitudes toward social media and investment in social media, a study by the
Software amp; Information Industry Association found. The report,
quot;Marketing in Today’s Economy,? the first SIIA publication to gather
business-to-business sales and marketing tactics from ind…
