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Finextra: research - The human factor
The human factor has overtaken technology as the leading IT security threat at the world's largest financial institutions, according to the 2005 Global Security Survey released by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT).
Deloitte finds the biggest threat to bank security in the past year came from both internal insider attacks and from the phishing and pharming exploits of hackers targeting gullible consumers.
Despite the rising threat, future investment plans in security show that most of the budget is assigned to technology (64%), compared to only 15% for employee awareness and training.
June 29, 2005 at 06:45 PM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (94) | Top of page | Blog Home
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By Philip Webster and David Charter
CHARLES CLARKE promised to set a maximum figure for the cost of an identity card as he hinted at a string of concessions to secure a narrow victory for the legislation last night.
In a key admission, the Home Secretary suggested that if the cards eventually became compulsory they could be made free. Facing a wave of concerns from Labour MPs he said: “It is best that we do give the assurance of a cap.”
“It would be ridiculous to have an expensive card which people were, in some sense, forced to buy. But that is not what we will have.”
A total of 20 Labour rebels joined the Tories and Lib Dems to vote against the Second Reading of the Identity Cards Bill, reducing the Government’s majority to 31. It passed by 314 votes to 283.
Labour rebels gave notice that they would fight on against the scheme during its later Commons stages. John McDonnell, chairman of the Socialist Campaign Group, said: “This is only the beginning of the battle. Such ill thought-out legislation will inevitably face difficulties throughout its passage and we will be using every parliamentary tactic available to force the Government to re-think.”
A later vote on the timetable of the Bill passed with an even slimmer majority of 27, with MPs concerned that too little time was being allowed for debate. Mr Clarke had earlier attacked some of the “fantastic” figures that had been quoted over the cost.
But his promise of a ceiling on the price of the card left open questions about how the Government would finance the scheme if income from it failed to meet the cost, which has been put by ministers at £5.8 billion, although other estimates have gone as high as £18 billion.
Mr Clarke, in a speech during which he allowed numerous interventions, was assailed with questions about the scheme and given a taste of the strong feelings when the loyalist Labour MP David Winnick (Walsall North) told him that if there were a free vote on the Bill it would be thrown out.
Mr Clarke insisted that ID cards would act as a “bulwark against the Big Brother society”, and he told critics that they would provide “real benefits to the individual and society” by limiting the scope for identity theft. He acknowledged that there were practical concerns over the legislation and offered to look at resolving them later.David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, accused the Government of chipping away at the basic liberties of its citizens.
# The ID card scheme will have benefits of up to £1.1 billion a year through reducing crime, increasing immigration control and preventing fraud, according to two documents published by the Home Office last night.
THE 20 REBELS
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington); Katy Clark (Ayrshire North and Arran); Frank Cook (Stockton North); Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North); Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe & Nantwich); Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central); Paul Flynn (Newport West); Ms Kate Hoey (Vauxhall); Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North); Ms Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate); Dr Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak); John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington); Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway); Linda Riordan (Halifax); Ms Clare Short (Birmingham Ladywood); Alan Simpson (Nottingham South); John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan); Robert Wareing (Liverpool West Derby); David Winnick (Walsall North); Mike Wood (Batley & Spen)
June 29, 2005 at 05:46 PM in Smart Cards | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home
Finextra: European banks to increase IT spending on e-banking
European banks are set to spend $3 billion on Internet banking technology by 2008, according to research by Datamonitor.
According to the study, 2005 will see banks entering the e-banking platform upgrade cycle as they will look to improve the functionality and usability of Web sites and enhance integration with other channels.
This will see investment in e-banking technology rise from $2.2bn in 2004 to $3bn in 2008, with Italy and Norway set to be the fastest growing markets.
William Conner, manager of the financial services technology sector at Datamonitor and author of the study, says: "The Internet is set to re-emerge as a priority area for technology investments. This reflects e-banking's growing effectiveness as a sales tool and banks' drive to refresh existing platforms."
Datamonitor says the best development strategy would be for banks to move to a component-based architecture that spans the entire distribution channel framework. This will involve re-engineering existing applications for re-use across multiple systems.
The technology focus areas include Web content management solutions to push out tailored, dynamic content for customers and help ensure point of sale compliance; analytical CRM tools to assist in customer profiling; and personalisation technologies to develop a more targeted service for distinct customer groups.
Conner says moving towards a process-centric multi-channel architecture will be the foremost area of technology investment for banks and it will be important for vendors to continue to demonstrate the capability to deliver a single, integrated delivery platform across all channels as well as rich functionality for the Internet channel.
Datamonitor says vendors that fail to offer component-based integration will face a challenging growth outlook, particularly those that only offer Internet-specific solutions. Enabling cross-channel process orchestration as well as basic data integration across channels is emerging as a major vendor selection criterion and this will become even more critical as banks seek to migrate towards service-oriented architectures.
While Italy and Norway will be the fastest growing markets, Datamonitor says the UK will be the largest single e-banking market in 2008, but growth will be slower here as many banks have already made significant investments in refreshing Web banking platforms.
Spend in Benelux, Spain and Switzerland will be driven by "a few innovative banks", such as Bankinter in Spain and ING in the Netherlands, but most of these have already invested in second-generation platforms and e-banking spend is therefore likely to be incremental than transformational.
Growth in France and Germany is predicted to be slower than other countries, due to the continued importance of other channels such as Minitel (France) and an ongoing focus on IT cost control (Germany), which has resulted in little strategic IT spend being allocated for new development initiatives.
June 27, 2005 at 11:50 PM in Financial Services | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home
BBC NEWS | Technology | File-sharing suffers major defeat
The US Supreme Court has ruled that file-sharing companies are to blame for what users do with their software.
The surprise ruling could start a legal assault on the creators of file-sharing networks such as Grokster and Morpheus.
The case was brought by 28 movie and music makers who claimed that rampant piracy was denting profits.
The Supreme Court judges were expected to rule in favour of the file-sharers because of legal precedents set when video recorders first appeared.
Big win
he unanimous ruling is a victory for recording companies and film studios in what is widely seen as one of the most important copyright cases in years.
Andrew Lack, chief executive of Sony BMG, said his company would pursue those who failed to comply with the law.
"The court made it very clear that we can go after damages and that we can chase them out," Mr Lack told BBC World's World Business Report.
"We will do that if necessary but my hope is that we will find new bridges to legitimise a lot of services that formerly were confused about what was right and wrong, legal and illegal."
The legal case against Streamcast Networks - which makes the software behind Grokster and Morpheus - began in October 2001 when 28 media companies filed their legal complaint.
The complaint alleged that Streamcast was prospering on the back of the unfettered piracy taking place on the file-sharing networks.
However, the attempts to win damages suffered a series of defeats as successive courts sided with the file-sharing networks. The judges in those lower courts cited a ruling made in 1984 over Sony's Betamax video recorder.
In that case, the Supreme Court said that the majority of people using a video recorder for legal uses outweighed any illegal use of the technology.
Video tape cassette, BBC
Q&A on File-sharing ruling
But in this latest ruling the judges sets aside this precedent and the lower court decisions and means the makers of a technology have to answer for what people do with it if they use it to break the law.
In the ruling Justice David Souter wrote: "The question is under what circumstances the distributor of a product capable of both lawful and unlawful use is liable for acts of copyright infringement by third parties using the product."
He added: "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."
Reaction to the ruling was swift.
Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said: ""Today's unanimous ruling is an historic victory for intellectual property in the digital age, and is good news for consumers, artists, innovation and lawful Internet businesses."
John Kennedy, head of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said: "It quite simply destroys the argument that peer-to-peer services bear no responsibility for illegal activities that take place on their networks."
Andrew Lack, chief executive of Sony BMG, said the verdict
In other decisions on Monday, the Supreme Court:
* ruled against the display of the Ten Commandments inside two Kentucky courtrooms but approved a monument to the same in Texas
* declined to hear appeals by two US journalists facing a contempt ruling by a lower court over their investigation into an alleged White House intelligence leak
* overturned a ruling that cable operators' high-speed internet lines must be opened up to rivals.
The rulings came on the last day of the US Supreme Court's current judicial session. It now breaks for a three-month recess.
One expected announcement that did not appear concerned the retirement of 80-year-old Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Justice Rehnquist is suffering from thyroid cancer, breathes through a tracheal tube and struggled to talk during a speech closing the current court term that thanked court workers.
Unseen effects
In its ruling the Supreme Court said there was "substantial evidence" that Streamcast Networks had "induced" people to use its software to illegally share copyrighted files.
It is unclear yet what action this ruling will prompt from movie studios and music makers who brought the original case. It could mean claims for substantial damages from Streamcast or moves to get the file-sharing networks shut down.
Ipod mini, Getty Images
It is unclear what effect the ruling will have on use of digital media
Wayne Rosso, former Grokster president and now head of legal file-sharing system Mashboxx, said: ""If I'm running the RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America], you're going to see lawsuits coming down like a Texas hailstorm. Don't be surprised to see an unusually large number filed immediately."
He said it would mean that users would have to get used to paying for music.
Michael McGuire, from analyst firm GartnerG2, said: "It's something of a surprise. It will be interesting to see how record labels respond. It could be argued that these peer-to-peer services were the most efficient way to deliver rich media."
The decision could also have an impact on any technology firm developing gadgets or devices that let people enjoy media on the move.
If strictly interpreted the ruling means that these hi-tech firms will have to try to predict the ways people can use these devices to pirate copyrighted media and install controls to stop this infringement.
The ruling could also prompt a re-drafting of copyright laws by the US Congress.
June 27, 2005 at 08:14 PM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft makes web feeds easier
By Jo Twist
BBC News technology reporter, Seattle
People like to get information when they want and wherever they are
Microsoft's next version of its browser, Internet Explorer 7, will make it easier for people to keep automatically aware of website updates.
IE7 will have an orange button on the toolbar which will light up when it detects a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed on a site.
Users can click on a "plus" button to subscribe to the site's feed, as they would with a bookmark.
The new browser is due to be released this summer.
It had its public debut at the Gnomedex technology conference in the US city of Seattle on Friday.
'Smarter feeds'
The open-source browser, Mozilla Firefox, already lets web users subscribe to feeds of websites they read regularly, such as weblogs and news sites.
The move is part of wider plans Microsoft has to integrate RSS formats throughout its latest version of Windows - Longhorn - which it sees as a major step forward.
"We are making sure that throughout Windows the experiences for users are easy," said Dean Hachomovitch, general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer team.
When I subscribe I can say what is interesting to me, the machine can do the work, and I can enjoy the fruits of its labour
Dean Hachomovitch
"We want RSS everywhere. I want it in more than just the browser and aggregators. We want to help RSS get even bigger and better than today."
Longhorn is expected to be released in December 2006, but a preview, or beta, could be out in the summer.
The move will make RSS clearer and easier to understand for non-technical people, across all kinds of applications, not just web browsing.
If users want to subscribe to a particular feed, they will be shown a searchable preview of the page, with no confusing bits of code on display.
Microsoft also said it had created some new extensions to the RSS format, which will be available for content publishers to use under the Creative Commons licence.
These will make feeds "smarter" and more effective at displaying different kinds of information, such as constantly updating news sites, or book wish lists.
Changing habits
Weblogs and global news sites are making much more use of RSS, and net users are becoming increasingly aware of the technology as small orange icons carrying RSS/XML text appear on sites.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates' Microsoft is having to face up to browser competition
BBC News and Sport have made their content available for online news reader programs via RSS since 2003.
Using "aggregators" - programs which automatically collect and organise website feeds - web users can stay up-to-date with site changes without having to search them out manually.
There is a plethora of free aggregator or news reader programs available online.
Browsing the web in this way has been described as similar to Japanese sushi belt restaurants. People can pick and choose which items they want to consume as they go past them.
'Getting it'
The technology also makes it easier for people to find and sort through what they want to get to on the web.
Mr Hachamovitch said that Microsoft was starting to "get it" when it came to RSS.
"Feeds are everywhere," he said.
"We are not done with search. There are still a lot of people doing great innovative stuff with search.
"But there is this other thing called 'subscribe'. It is not just a feature, it is a new approach."
"When I subscribe I can say what is interesting to me, the machine can do the work, and I can enjoy the fruits of its labour."
Being able to subscribe to all kinds of content - audio, visual, as well as text - is powerful, he added.
"It affects your web consumption habits. We believe in 'subscribe' very deeply. There is a lot of power and richness there."
Microsoft's announcement comes at a time when the browser wars are hotting up once more.
Mozilla's Firefox browser has steadily been gnawing away at IE's market dominance. Many like its features and increased security.
Because it is open source, people are free to adapt the software's core code to create other innovative features, such as add-ons, RSS news feed readers, or extensions to the program.
It recently celebrated its 50 millionth download since its official launch in November.
The Gnomedex conference runs from 23 June to 25 June and is a gathering for key players in new media.
June 25, 2005 at 02:48 AM in Browsers | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home
Microsoft Pushing Spam-Fighting System - Yahoo! News
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Wed Jun 22, 4:43 PM ET
NEW YORK - Microsoft Corp. is stepping up the pressure on e-mail senders to adopt its "Sender ID" spam-fighting technology despite problems that could send up to 10 percent of legitimate messages to junk folders.
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By the end of the year, Microsoft's Hotmail and MSN services will get more aggressive at rejecting mail sent through companies or service providers that do not register their domain names with the Sender ID system.
Sender ID seeks to cut down on junk e-mail by making it difficult for spammers to forge e-mail headers and addresses, a common technique for hiding their origins.
The system calls for Internet service providers, companies and other domain name holders to submit lists of their mail servers' unique numeric addresses. On the receiving end, software polls a database to verify that a message was actually processed by one of those servers.
Although only a quarter of e-mail messages now carry the proper Sender ID information, Microsoft believes it needs to begin requiring Sender ID to do a better job of cutting down on junk e-mail, said Craig Spiezle, director of Microsoft's technology care and safety team.
"We have a solution that works for about 90 percent of mail today," Spiezle said Wednesday. He said Microsoft will continue to fine-tune its spam filters to account for the remaining cases.
Although the standard-setting Internet Engineering Task Force dissolved a working group on Sender ID in September, partly because of a dispute over Microsoft's claims to a patent, Microsoft and other companies were encouraged to continue pushing their technologies in the marketplace.
For the past six months, Microsoft's Hotmail and MSN services have been checking Sender ID records as one test in determining whether a message is junk.
On Wednesday, Microsoft began posting a warning for users on top of messages whose numeric addresses don't match those in Sender ID records, meaning the e-mail likely came through an unauthorized mail server and could be junk.
By the end of the year, Microsoft will treat as failures cases where Sender ID records don't exist at all, increasing the likelihood those messages would be considered junk.
The Direct Marketing Association, the trade group for e-mail and other marketers, lauded the move as "a necessary step to protect both corporate brands and consumer confidence," said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president for government relations.
Use of such systems, the association said, could help protect legitimate marketers from unauthorized use of their brands online.
Indeed, Spiezle said Sender ID has helped reduce the number of legitimate messages mislabeled spam. E-mail that passes the Sender ID test is given a slight positive boost in the filtering test, and for borderline cases it is enough to push the message to the non-junk inbox, Spiezle said.
But Spiezle acknowledged lingering concerns, including the disruption of mail-forwarding services that colleges and companies offer to alumni and subscribers.
Sender ID also could break "send to a friend" features in which someone clicks on a Web link to pass an interesting item to someone else.
Spiezle said Microsoft is monitoring such cases.
June 22, 2005 at 09:51 PM in Spam | Permalink | TrackBack (39) | Top of page | Blog Home
File-Swapping May Be Here to Stay - Yahoo! News
By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer 39 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - Four years after it shuttered the original
Napster with a legal assault, the recording industry is taking a different approach to online file-swapping: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
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Recording companies have begun taking steps to legitimize the peer-to-peer technology that lets computer users share songs, video and other files with one another online.
However the
U.S. Supreme Court rules in a file-swapping decision expected as early as Thursday, the technology appears irrepressible.
In the last few months, major record labels have signed licensing deals with companies working to field file-swapping services that would block unauthorized files from being traded online.
"There's only two options here," said Michael Goodman, an analyst at The Yankee Group market research firm. "You either license it — and you find a way to license it and monetize it — or you don't license it and it gets traded anyway."
Some 330 million tracks were purchased online last year from online stores such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes. But around 5 billion were downloaded from free file-sharing networks, he said.
Meanwhile, recording companies have sued 11,700 computer users for file-swapping. Of those, 2,500 cases have been settled, typically for about $3,000 each.
The Supreme Court is considering whether companies behind unrestricted file-sharing services —
Grokster and Morpheus — should be liable for copyright infringement. The case's outcome could speed the way for licensed peer-to-peer services.
Even so, it remains to be seen whether those industry-endorsed alternatives can attract people who now tap open file-swapping networks using such programs as eDonkey, BitTorrent and Kazaa.
"When it comes down to it, why is somebody going to pay for something they can get for free?" said Mac Padilla, 21, a student who lives in Los Angeles.
The industry may know the answer at least in part as early as next month, when Peer Impact, one of the licensed file-swapping services, is slated to launch.
Its software can be used to find and purchase tracks from an initial catalog of a half-million songs from all the major labels, said Gregory Kerber, head of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based Wurld Media Inc., the firm behind the service.
After a user buys a song from Peer Impact, future buyers get it from that member — or others who have gotten it in the meantime — instead of from a central server. Users have to pay for each track they download, but sharing songs they've purchased from Peer Impact earns them credits they can spend on the service.
At launch, at least, Peer Impact will not let users share songs from their own collections.
Another company to sign licensing deals with major and independent record labels is Snocap Inc., which was founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning.
The company's software is designed to track songs being swapped online and notify record labels when someone tries to share a song that hasn't been licensed for free distribution. Snocap also has a deal with file-sharing software maker Mashboxx to block unlicensed tracks from moving through its network.
Mashboxx is set to launch a beta test version next month, said Wayne Rosso, chief executive for the Virginia Beach, Va.-based company. Rosso, who once headed the company behind the Grokster file-swapping software, says Mashboxx users will be able to search for tracks across peer-to-peer networks, upload them and share those that are not restricted by record labels using Snocap's software.
Through Snocap, the labels will be able to assign usage rules for each track, deciding whether users on Mashboxx or other peer-to-peer networks can listen to a track a few times before they must purchase it, or what sort of copy restrictions each file will have, for example.
Rosso claims Mashboxx users will be able to swap millions of tracks — such as concert bootlegs and other recordings — on which record labels have not applied restrictions.
That would help unsigned bands that use peer-to-peer networks to build their audience and established acts like Wilco that encourage their audiences to record their concerts and share bootlegs.
"If the content is not identified and registered in the database, then we can't be held responsible for it," Rosso said. "It's highly unlikely that any Mashboxx user is going to be sued."
Still, Rosso adds, once a record label finds that a bootleg recording or other track is being swapped, it can move to restrict it from being shared — or set up limited listens before purchase.
Privately, record label executives say they remain circumspect over how a licensed peer-to-peer service would actually fare in the marketplace.
Mashboxx has yet to announce licensing deals with the major labels, though it's been reported that Sony BMG Entertainment has agreed in principle to license its music.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. is testing file-sharing technology of its own that one day could be integrated in the company's dominant Windows PC operating system.
The project, dubbed Avalanche, is supposed to improve on the speed of other file-sharing distribution systems, such as BitTorrent, while also preventing unlicensed content from being traded. For now, the company says it has no plans to release Avalanche or include it in future products.
If Microsoft develops its own peer-to-peer software, it could help boost the number of music fans using licensed file-sharing services, said Goodman, the Yankee Group analyst.
"They have the opportunity to integrate it into the operating system ... so you get large-scale adoption," Goodman said. "That would make it attractive to content companies."
June 22, 2005 at 09:50 PM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (12) | Top of page | Blog Home
Longhorn Preview - Yahoo! News
Scott Spanbauer 1 hour, 48 minutes ago
The most recent build of Longhorn--Microsoft's next Windows--has some impressive visual touches, including the kinds of translucent objects found now in Apple's
OS X, and more powerful ways of finding files. But it doesn't yet exhibit any breakthroughs in productivity, or promised features such as security improvements and smarter connections to handheld devices.
We tested the 64-bit version of the latest code released to developers (Longhorn build 5048) and have also viewed demonstrations of a subsequent build. The first beta version of the operating system is due for release this summer.
Over the last several years, Microsoft has touted Longhorn's trio of significant innovations: a graphics engine dubbed Avalon; a technology called Indigo that enables programs on different computers or devices to communicate; and an indexed, searchable data storage layer called WinFS. But when faced with a self-imposed release deadline of late 2006, Microsoft decided last year to pull WinFS out of Longhorn, promising to release that component as an add-on at a later date.
Seeing through windows: Longhorn's Avalon graphics engine supports the Aero desktop theme's semitransparent window frames.
So what of the two remaining Longhorn design pillars? A new desktop theme called Aero is about the only sign of Avalon graphics in our pre-beta. Turning mundane buttons, window frames, title bars, and icons into animated, 3D-rendered, and sometimes transparent objects, Aero brings the Windows interface to life. Indigo, which supports enhanced Web services, won't be visible to end users.
Pick your properties: Longhorn lets you customize file attributes that you can then use to index documents.
But even though WinFS is now out of the mix, Microsoft has taken advantage of file attributes in the NTFS file system already available in
Windows XP to make Explorer better at ferreting out documents according to author, camera model (for photographs), or genre or album title (for music files). The operating system lets you create virtual lists based on these attributes so that, for example, you can see every photo on your system or all Microsoft Word files, regardless of where they are stored and without having to explicitly search for them.
Virtual folder reality: Longhorn's virtual folders let you view files by a specific attribute, regardless of their actual location.
Longhorn will also do a better job of connecting to smart phones (Microsoft wouldn't indicate whether the phones would have to run the company's Windows Mobile operating system), cameras, and audio players, improving their integration into Explorer and making file transfers and synchronization more consistent across device types. Still notably absent from the Longhorn builds we've looked at are new versions of the Internet Explorer browser (even though Microsoft has said it is close to releasing a beta of IE 7) or any other bundled utilities. Gone, for the time being anyway, is the desktop sidebar that lurked in previous preliminary versions of Longhorn.
And in spite of announced planned enhancements such as monitoring of outbound data (Windows XP's firewall watches inbound traffic only), protection against malware, a new type of restricted user account, and a secure startup scheme to ensure that a PC hasn't been tampered with, Longhorn so far has the same minimal security toolbox as Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
Though security remains an unresolved issue, build 5048 brings Longhorn's graphical user interface into sharper focus.
Catch-Up Eye Candy
The new Avalon graphics engine includes a programming interface that permits Microsoft and third-party software makers alike to write applications that put the latest and greatest graphics cards to work rotating, texturing, and fading windows, as well as making menus, title bars, and other elements translucent--finally enabling Windows to catch up to Apple's OS X, several years after the fact.
We managed to activate a subset of these features in our copy of Longhorn build 5048, and they're certainly welcome refinements (see top screen). Nevertheless, the integration of accelerated graphics effects into Windows is a luxury upgrade, not a must-have productivity enhancer. And although the effects in Avalon won't necessarily require bleeding-edge hardware, they will call for a graphics board compatible with the new Longhorn Display Driver Model, likely ruling out many legacy systems.
Microsoft has yet to announce minimum Longhorn system requirements, but for PC buyers seeking insurance that a new system will run Longhorn, the company advises getting 512MB of RAM and a "modern" CPU--more than Windows XP needs. As with most of the recent Windows updates, the easiest way to get Longhorn will be on a new PC, and by late 2006 most PCs will be 64-bit. Reflecting that trend, all editions of Longhorn will include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. (Microsoft officials say that they are still mulling over whether features included in the Tablet PC and Media Center editions of XP will continue to require special editions of Windows.)
Less clear in build 5048 is Microsoft's vision for searching, indexing, and grouping files. WinFS was intended to create a systemwide data-indexing system accessible to Windows and to various applications, both on the local computer system and on linked devices. With the removal of WinFS from Longhorn, indexing is scaled back, although not forgotten. Familiar folders like My Documents and My Pictures still allow you to sort contents according to attribute type, such as file date, size, author, title, subject, attached keywords, bit rate (in the case of audio files), or camera model (in the case of digital pictures).
Regrettably, Microsoft won't immediately extend virtual lists and other Longhorn search and indexing capabilities to third-party apps. Those programs will have to wait for the appearance of WinFS sometime after Longhorn's release.
Perhaps conscious that its failure to satisfactorily secure Internet Explorer has driven millions of the browser's users to switch to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox--and possibly hoping to avoid a similar exodus to Mac OS X or
Linux--Microsoft has announced several security initiatives such as a new low-rights user account that will let the owner make routine system changes (such as installing a driver) while limiting malware exposure.
Buyers of new 64-bit computers will undoubtedly opt for Longhorn's enchanting interface and new device support--especially if security improves. It remains to be seen, though, whether additional innovations will give Windows XP users more reason to upgrade.
June 22, 2005 at 09:48 PM in Microsoft | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home
Technology Finding New Ways to Pay - Yahoo! News
By CATHERINE TSAI, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago
DENVER - Quicker. More secure. More fun. Stores, credit card companies and banks are giving consumers new ways to pay in the latest evolution of cashless payments.
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Chase Bank recently rolled out credit cards with "blink" technology that lets users wave their cards near a computer reader instead of having to swipe them through a device. Cards never leave customers' hands.
Visa, MasterCard and American Express all have been exploring so-called contactless technology, whether with cards or keychain fobs. And companies using biometrics like BioPay and Pay By Touch are signing up customers who want to use their fingerprints to access checking accounts.
For now, merchants accepting the Chase cards typically are conducting small transactions that don't require customers' signatures, raising the risk they may be accepting stolen cards.
John Gould, director of bank card research for the consulting firm TowerGroup said the risk is minimal since most missing cards are reported quickly, banks and credit card companies pick up on unusual card use that can signal a stolen card, and thieves typically don't use stolen cards for small buys.
Gould said he expects there to be tens of millions of cards with contactless technology next year.
"In 2015, the magnetic stripe will be a piece of history," he said.
Privacy groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center are urging Congress to make sure safeguards are in place as technology evolves.
"In some cases biometrics can improve the authentication of individual users, but if that is compromised, then there are real problems," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the center.
Companies say contactless technology and biometrics will speed up checkout lines and tighten security to stay a step ahead of crooks.
BioPay enrollees who have signed up for the system with a photo identification, a blank check from a bank account, and a scan of their index fingers can pay by punching in an ID number and scanning their fingerprints instead of using a card.
In Colorado, Chase expects to have 1 million cards with "blink" technology in circulation in the next several months. Customers in Georgia also are getting the new cards.
The cards have chips with radio-frequency identification tags, or RFID. A special reader picks up information from the card when it's within an inch. It's the same technology used in toll collection passes like E-ZPass and with product tags to help retailers track inventory.
The new card readers typically cost $150 to $200, said Tom O'Donnell, a Chase senior vice president.
"It's all designed to get customers through lines faster," Jeffrey Green, editor of Cards&Payments magazine.
Part of the speed advantage comes from not requiring signatures from customers, so it's possible a crook could get away with using a stolen card.
The Bailey Co., a franchisee of Arby's, isn't concerned.
"Any transaction under $25, we don't take a signature. It's no different than it is now," operations controller Jeff Gordan said, noting most people report missing cards before they can be misused.
The technology can shave 10 seconds from the drive-through window experience, helping Arby's restaurants meet goals to get customers past the window in 60 seconds or less, Gordon said.
Because the cards with RFID never leave customers' hands, they also will solve the problem of people driving away without their cards, Gordan said.
There are other benefits for companies to speed up transactions, besides giving consumers what Gould calls "the fun factor" of a new way to pay.
"When someone uses a piece of plastic they spend more, so there's an uplift," Gould said. "They're combining the uplift of credit with the speed and convenience of new technology."
June 22, 2005 at 09:47 PM in Payments | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home
Ubiquitous Technology, Bad Practices Drive Up Data Theft - Yahoo! News
By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post Staff Writer Wed Jun 22, 1:00 AM ET
Call 2005 the year of the data breach.
ADVERTISEMENT
One day, tapes with the
Social Security numbers of 1.2 million federal workers are reported missing. Another day it's hackers gaining access to private information on 120,000 alumni at Boston College. Then, last Friday, comes word that 40 million credit card numbers fell prey to computer criminals.
Collectively, nearly 50 million accounts have been exposed to the possibility of identity fraud since the beginning of the year, a significant increase from last year.
Security experts, law enforcement officials and privacy advocates agree that while computer crime is on the rise, it is hardly new.
So why the apparent escalation?
In part, organizations are telling their customers or employees about incidents more than they used to, many complying with a California notification law that is being considered as the basis of possible federal legislation.
After data broker ChoicePoint Inc. reported in February that it was infiltrated by identity thieves posing as legitimate customers, the company received a second black eye when reports surfaced that it did not notify consumers about a previous breach, before California's law took effect. Now, most organizations are choosing to notify potential victims.
Experts see other factors contributing to the data-theft siege.
A boom in data collection has created a marketplace of valuable information stored on computers in thousands of places, many with weak security.
"The current fiascos in cyber-security have been occurring for the past 10 years," said Tom Kellermann, who recently left his position as senior data risk management specialist for the
World Bank.
Kellermann and others blame poorly designed software, inattention to data security and an underappreciation of the problem by top management in corporations and other institutions.
"We've used weak practices for some time," said Chuck Wade, an Internet security and commerce consultant. "The vulnerabilities are well known, and we have not been improving the security measures . . . as we should have been."
At the same time, some hackers who used to get their kicks merely being disruptive are pooling efforts with organized criminals, said Jonathan J. Rusch, a special counsel in the fraud section of the Justice Department.
"The motivation now is money," Rusch said. In addition to using stolen data for credit card or other financial fraud, a thriving black market for the stolen data itself exists online, run in large part from Eastern Europe.
Among the most extreme examples of data for sale are offerings known in the online underground as "fulls." These reports include not only Social Security and credit card numbers, but also account passwords for Web sites that a consumer might use, such as eBay or a bank.
"There's so much information that has been leaked out over the years, it may be that there are, outside of the country, criminal elements with huge databases on American consumers," Wade said.
With more and more people getting high-speed Internet connections, and participating in online commerce and banking, the targets of opportunity for criminals only grow.
Wade and others argue that many industry players have not responded aggressively enough because they are insulated from the financial consequences of breaches.
Banks and credit card companies, for example, pay nothing when a criminal uses someone's credit card for a fraudulent charge. The same is true for credit card processing companies such as CardSystems Solutions Inc., which announced last week that it housed the 40 million credit card numbers that hackers may have obtained.
Payment processors and banks collect fees for charges that are reversed.
"They are making money on fraudulent transactions," said Brian Mortensen, head of a New Jersey company that sells telecommunications equipment. "They should not be allowed to do that."
Mortensen said that as a result of fraudulent purchases, his firm has lost $12,000 to $15,000 on equipment that will never be recovered and owes several thousand dollars more in various fees.
Although consumers generally don't have to pay for fraudulent charges on their credit cards, if their identity has been compromised it can take years and thousands of dollars to restore good credit.
Some security experts say many financial companies have been slow to adopt multiple layers of customer verification, such as requiring a password and a second identification number. Many companies also are not encrypting stored data.
But many firms argue that while data protection is a top priority, such measures could make online commerce too inconvenient for consumers without adding appreciably to security. And security already is a large business expense.
Companies must monitor their computer networks and "patch" vulnerabilities in software that are discovered regularly.
That can be especially complex when firms merge and one company's system needs to be incorporated into another's, said David Thomas, head of the
FBI's computer intrusion section.
"It's very, very difficult to stay on top of it," Thomas said.
Moreover, said Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who works for an Internet security firm, "The company has to try to protect against every kind of attack. The intruder only needs to find one."
Some breaches, such as mortgage data from General Motors Acceptance Corp. that was stored on a laptop stolen from a car, leave consumers wondering how seriously companies take information security.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) (D-Calif.), one of several on Capitol Hill sponsoring identity theft legislation, said the CardSystems incident last week "is a clear sign that industry's efforts to self-regulate when it comes to protecting consumers' sensitive personal data are failing."
Thomas F. Holt Jr., an attorney who represents companies involved in breach cases, said he expects things to change when large class-action suits begin to get filed against firms for improperly protecting information.
"When that game is afoot . . . companies will begin to redouble their security efforts and reexamine a lot of assumptions they have regarding the gathering and storing of sensitive data," Holt said.
June 22, 2005 at 09:46 PM in Phishing & identity theft | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home
Car navigation sector heats up - Yahoo! News
By Niclas Mika Wed Jun 22, 1:06 PM ET
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Concerns that car navigation firm TomTom may be squeezed by cheap Asian competitors and by bigger players such as Microsoft and
Nokia are pressuring shares in the Dutch firm, analysts said.
Shares in TomTom, whose 469 million euro ($571.5 million) initial public offering on May 27 was Amsterdam's biggest in five years, have closed below their 17.50 euro issue price in six of the last nine trading days.
They stood at 17.20 euros at 1500 GMT on Wednesday, 10 percent below a high of 19.10 euros on May 30, while Amsterdam's main AEX index rose 4 percent over the same period.
"TomTom had an enormous cash cow in the form of the TomTom Go in 2004, which will probably last until 2006, but then you will see cheaper imitations coming out of Korea and Taiwan," asset manager Gert Jan Geels at broker Eureffect said.
The firm has captured a leading market share with the portable TomTom Go device that can easily be mounted on the dashboard and moved from car to car. Sales of the device accounted for about 70 percent of first-quarter revenues.
Even before the IPO, some analysts had warned of risks from competition, but the issue was forced on the table when UBS initiated the stock with a 12 euro price target earlier this month.
"UBS really made people think," Geels said.
TomTom Chief Financial Officer Marina Wyatt told Reuters that with only 6 percent of 200 million cars on Europe's streets equipped with navigation systems, there was enough space for competitors.
"I acknowledge that there will be more competition, but I also think there needs to be more competition to really drive the category," she said.
MARGINS
Analysts say they wonder whether TomTom can hold its operating margin, which stood at 22.6 percent last year.
"If you're a bit of a smart software engineer, you can do the same," Stroeve analyst Philip Scholte said. "I wouldn't be surprised if margins go down very fast in the coming two years."
Wyatt said TomTom would itself drive down prices to attract more customers while cutting costs to keep margins strong.
TomTom has forecast its revenues to double this year at stable operating margins.
There are no consensus estimates available for TomTom yet, but analysts' estimates imply a forward price-earnings ratio in the range of 21 to 26. U.S. competitor Garmin trades at 18 times estimated 2005 earnings, according to Reuters data.
Scholte said that, apart from cheaper Asian competition, established companies might also be a threat to TomTom.
He pointed to Nokia's announcement this week of a navigation pack consisting of a Nokia 6630 phone, a wireless GPS module and software from TomTom competitor Wayfinder Systems.
"I think it is a major competitive threat to TomTom if mobile phone makers start integrating navigation software onto a phone," Scholte said.
"Then I think TomTom may be in big trouble, especially if it's Nokia. They have a market share of 32 to 33 percent of the global mobile phone market."
Wyatt said companies like Nokia or Microsoft fight on many fronts. "We're focused, we've been doing this for a long time, and we understand the market." ($1=.8206 Euro)
June 22, 2005 at 09:44 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink | TrackBack (47) | Top of page | Blog Home
6/22/2005 5:00:00 PM - How collaboration technology can build walls between us
by Shane Schick
No one wants to admit they once thought a failed project had merit, but I will. The Los Angeles Times’ use of collaboration software to let readers rewrite its editorials online was an iconoclastic, provocative idea that could have changed the relationship between a publication and its
audience. And in a way, it did: it reinforced the notion that some barriers are there for a reason.
After only a couple of days of publishing what it called “wikitorials,” the L.A. Times shut the project down earlier this week. Instead of making changes that sharpened the newspaper’s argument or raised the overall level of debate, editors were dismayed to see readers flood the site with foul language and pornographic images. The fallout from this hasty retreat may be that wikis (databases based on server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any browser) will be considered to dangerous to be used for idea sharing. This would be a mistake, particularly for IT managers who haven’t yet explored it.
Though the earliest known wiki -- an acronym which stands for “what I know is,” yet for some reason is always written in lower-case -- was started 10 years ago by the Portland Pattern Repository, wikis are only slowly coming of age. This is in large part due to the success of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that has compiled more than 600,000 entries in English from various contributors. The application of wikis outside the general Web surfing community, however, has been limited so far. As a way of sharing ideas online, wikis remain deep in the shadow of blogs, which may explain some companies’ hesitation to set them up. The ethical, legal and public relations around corporate blogging have kept some enterprise executives busy enough this year. They probably see wikis, if they’ve even heard of them, as a free-for-all that could be even harder to control.
Where the L.A. Times might have opened the floodgates a little too wide, corporate wikis on, say, an intranet could become a useful way of discussing, debating and educating the workforce. I’m not the only person to think of this, naturally, and there are plently of software tools available to get started. The key decision will be which areas of the organization should be exposed to wikis, and what kind of content they could collect.
You wouldn’t necessary want to apply an open editing process to your IT security policy, for example, but perhaps users would benefit from an online resource about best practices around data protection and backup. Within the IT department itself, wikis could be used as a tool for improved asset management, allowing for a sort of encyclopedic catalogue of each asset along with updatable details about configurations and licence expiry dates. In some cases, wikis could be opened up to partner or supplier portals, allowing third parties to keep a running log of joint projects. Unlike blogs, which in some cases become a glorified branding exercise, wikis are a form of two-way communication that appeals to the vested interests of everyone involved. They are by nature only as useful as what gets contributed to them.
If you want to gauge the power of wikis, why not try this test: set up a page which offers your definition of IT’s role within the corporation. Then invite colleagues from other departments, including the CEO, to openly edit it. Employees, like the L.A. Times’ readership, could end up using wikis the way they do suggestion boxes, filling it with trash instead of good ideas. The difference with wikis is that everyone, in some sense, owns the box. We all have to live with what’s inside it.
June 22, 2005 at 08:33 PM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (1) | Top of page | Blog Home
6/22/2005 5:00:00 PM - After millions of numbers are stolen, Mastercard and Visa are forced to review their third-party relationships. Experts discuss contract limitations, the impact on technology use and the costs to banks and retailers
by Neil Sutton
Credit card companies may be able to limit the impact of hacker attacks on third-party partners, like the one reported last week, but analysts claim that there are no assurances it won’t happen again.
MasterCard said on Friday that
as many as 40 million credit card numbers may have been stolen due to an attack on CardSystems Solutions, a third-party processor of payment data in Tuscon, Ariz. The company claimed it was keeping customer card data, contrary to its agreement with MasterCard, for “research purposes.”
Of the compromised accounts, about 20 million are Visa, 14 million are MasterCard and the remainder are American Express, Discover and other brands.
Carmi Levy, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group Inc., based in London, Ont., said credit card companies have relationships with hundreds of these third-party processors. Contractual obligations are designed to prevent the CardSystems incident from ever happening, but “it’s impossible for the credit card companies -- with whom consumers and businesses have this relationship -- to validate and verify that their third-party organizations are living up to their end of the bargain,” he said.
According to MasterCard Canada, 97 card holders may be at risk and those people have all been contacted. They would only be at risk if they had recently used their cards to make purchases in the U.S.
Both MasterCard and Visa offer their customers a “zero liability” policy, making them immune from purchases that were made without their consent. No confidential data, such as social insurance numbers or dates of birth, was put at risk as a result of the leak, according to the company.
The card holders may be protected, but when credit card numbers are used illegally, it’s the retailers that end up swallowing the cost of the purchase, said Richard Purcell, CEO of the Corporate Privacy Group, a consulting practice in Nordland, Wash.
“For Amazon, maybe that’s something they can tolerate, but for a smaller (retailer), that’s something that could be really harmful to them,” he said.
“Really, I think the harm is in the system itself in an overall way. Merchants suffer harm, consumers lose confidence; the whole idea of using technology gets lowered. These (credit card companies) don’t appreciate the value of what it is they’re protecting and transacting. Information is far more valuable than they realize. And I think the reason that there was a breach is that they’ve failed to realize that it’s that valuable.”
Louise Wardrop, head of operations for MasterCard Canada, said that third-party providers are continually monitored for signs of activities that could lead to a breach.
“Luckily this does not happen often,” she said. “Any time that it does, our processors, our banks are on heightened awareness.”
Third-party transaction processors are subject to reviews, she said, and are required to fill out performance questionnaires. “When we get those questionnaires in we assess the risks and make sure that if there is a risk, we’re on site to evaluate their security procedures.”
MasterCard isn’t planning to substantially change its policies and procedures with third-party providers, she said, “but we will continue to review them and monitor then and make sure that what we do have in place is working and make any adjustments to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
The Bank of Montreal, the largest MasterCard issuer in Canada, has been in touch with all of its card holders that may have been affected by the breach, according to spokesperson Ralph Marranca. The bank will issue any person deemed at risk with a new card next week.
“The good news is that we’ve got some pretty sophisticated systems in place. Criminals . . . understand that we have some pretty sophisticated equipment. We can move pretty quickly to mitigate or limit the amount of incidents that occur,” said Marranca.
“Any time something like this happens, you sit down with MasterCard and look at your processes and make sure your processes are working as they should. And look at if there’s anything more we can do or need to do.”
Credit card companies and their issuing institutions may be doing their best to limit the effects of a breach, said Levy, but as long as there are holes to be exploited, hackers will find them.
“The weakest link is where the hacker is going to focus his or her effort, the weakest link is where the breach is going to occur,” he said. “Do I think this is going to improve? No. There’s no way to control every single level of customer data along the chain, especially if you are outsourcing to such a great degree.”
“I guess you could say, ‘Never say never,’ unless you have a crystal ball,” said Wardrop. “But the point to reinforce is that we’re out all the time monitoring.”
Last year, MasterCard and Visa created the Payment Security Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard by aligning their data security programs. PCI, also supported by Amex, Diner’s Club, Morgan Stanley’s Discover Financial Services and JCB Co. Ltd., went into effect in January 2005. PCI is designed to allow merchants and third party providers to measure the effectiveness of their security measures. CardSystems Solutions did not comply with these measures, according to MasterCard.
The rules and policies that credit card companies have in place for dealing with issuers and third-party processors are generally sufficient, said Purcell, but they may have to become more vigilant about enforcing them.
June 22, 2005 at 08:16 PM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (136) | Top of page | Blog Home
CEO Says Google Won't Compete With PayPal - Yahoo! News
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Tue Jun 21, 7:23 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt on Tuesday denied recent media and analyst reports that the online search engine leader is gearing up to compete directly with eBay Inc.'s pioneering PayPal service, although he acknowledged some kind of electronic payment product is in the works.
Although he declined to provide any details about the project, Schmidt made it clear it won't trespass on PayPal's turf.
"We do not intend to offer a person-to-person, stored-value payments system," Schmidt said during an interview with The Associated Press.
That description fits PayPal, a 6-year-old service that creates "digital cash" by accepting credit card payments from its users and then delivering the payments to a designated recipient. The recipient then can either get real cash or leave all or part of the balance in a PayPal account for future transactions.
As e-commerce has blossomed, PayPal has thrived, growing from 24 test users in 1999 to 72 million accountholders through March. Looking to profit from the fees that PayPal collects from completing online transactions, San Jose-based eBay bought the service for $1.3 billion in 2002.
The Internet industry began buzzing about the possibility of Google competing with PayPal after the subject surfaced last week during an e-commerce conference hosted by Piper Jaffray. The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported Google hoped to roll out a rival payment service later this year, quoting people familiar with the company's plans.
Other media outlets, including The Associated Press, followed up with similar stories and stock market analysts released reports mulling the possible financial consequences of a showdown between Google and eBay, one of the search engine's biggest advertisers.
Google consistently declined comment until Schmidt tried to set the record straight Tuesday.
The Mountain View-based company's recent incorporation of a subsidiary called Google Payment Corp. fed the perception that a battle with PayPal loomed. But Schmidt indicated that subsidiary is working on something that won't stray far from its search engine.
"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt said. He declined to elaborate.
American Technology Research David Edwards believes Google's payment product initially will be tied to its shopping comparison service, Froogle. The company also plans to let people view online videos stored in an index, prompting some other observers to predict the service will be designed to sell content found through its search engine.
The speculation about Google's plans have raised investor fears that PayPal's growth might taper off, squeezing eBay's profits. EBay shares have fallen by 3 percent so far this week, declining 34 cents Tuesday to close at $36.90 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
At the same time, investors have been hoping Google will develop another source of revenue besides online advertising, which accounted for almost all the company's $369 million profit during the first three months of this year. Google shares are up 2.7 percent so far this week, gaining $1.14 Tuesday to close at $287.84 on the Nasdaq.
June 21, 2005 at 10:42 PM in Payments | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Top of page | Blog Home
A Wireless World, Bound To Sockets - Yahoo! News
By Yuki Noguchi, Washington Post Staff Writer Sun Jun 19, 1:00 AM ET
Here's the paradox of the portable age: The electronic devices that free people to go anywhere but never lose touch also keep them bound by cords and plugs to electric sockets. Sophisticated devices with color screens, video and gaming features demand more of the batteries that power them and, without steady recharging, their users plunge from being in touch to feeling impotent.
"I usually have to recharge it at two-hour intervals," salesman Joe Kammerer said of his laptop computer. "Then it starts complaining that it needs food. . . . It stresses me out."
So Kammerer learned the art of socket-seeking. "I sit strategically in the corner of a conference room," which is close enough to a wall to use a plug, the Washington resident said. "Sit on the floor at the airport? I totally do that."
So do his fellow travelers. "I've gotten, 'Are you going to be long?' and I say, 'Sorry. I just got here.'"
The cycle of renewing battery life has introduced new rituals around the modern trough -- a power strip -- where devices are hooked up to charge overnight like animals watering in a stable. Handhelds and cell phones go in their cradles before bed. Bookcases and beds shift to make way for bulky chargers that cover both sockets, leaving the bedside lamp without power. The laptop, digital camera and iPod play musical chairs on the wall. Drive time becomes critical charge time.
The cycle is irksome for some. Darcy Travlos, a senior analyst for the research firm CreditSights, said she keeps her devices charged in the kitchen, where the toaster and coffee maker take a back seat to the cell phone and iPod. On the road, it's less predictable. "You're a well-dressed professional, and you end up sitting on the floor next to whatever is needing to be charged," she said.
"It's the most important and least-talked-about issue in consumer electronics," said Travlos, who carries a bag full of chargers when she travels. "Everybody's working on battery life."
Each year, batteries become more powerful and circuitry improvements make devices more energy-efficient. Still, batteries can't keep up with of rising expectations for longer life.
Thousands of consumers settled with Apple Inc. this month, after owners of early versions of the iPod complained about its built-in battery.
PalmOne Inc., Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and many others are putting muscle behind making batteries last longer. In the past few years, Intel started investing in small companies that work on prolonging or preserving battery life, and now has five such investments. Motorola Ventures, Motorola's investment unit, funded A123 Systems, a company developing more-efficient lithium-ion batteries.
Venture-capital companies are getting more interested in battery-power-related investments, said R. Philip Herget, a partner in Alexandria-based Columbia Capital LLC. The company invested in a start-up called Enpirion that manages power in devices, he said, and is looking at other companies. "Power management is critical," he said.
"Battery life is one of the most important things for our customers," said Raj Doshi, product line manager for handhelds at PalmOne Inc., which in April released the Tungsten E2 handheld, lighter and with double the battery life of the previous version. The new handheld is 4.7 ounces, compared with its five-ounce predecessor. "I tell the engineers I want the most battery in a smaller battery size," Doshi said, but that simple request requires huge technological advances.
Scientists are getting better at mixing the right chemicals to get more power out of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, but there are cost and physical limitations on how much energy can go into a small cell. Intel is testing battery technology and working with hardware manufacturers to introduce laptops usable for roughly eight hours without external power. Those computers could be on the market by 2008.
Today, people are still locked in a power struggle. David Wochner, a lawyer in Washington, last week called the tech department at his firm because his BlackBerry appeared not to be taking a charge. "I'm now down to two bars and I'm getting really nervous," he said. "The fact that you have to keep track of charging and making sure you're getting it done is a pain. The phone is driving me bananas."
In technology circles, experts sing about the promise of convergence -- phone, computing, e-mail, television, gaming and photography on one device -- yet most people still carry separate gadgets for each function. And that requires a host of different chargers.
"I have so many chargers, can I just tell you?" Kammerer said, rattling off the list: Two laptop chargers -- one at work, one in the briefcase. Another for the iPod, "although the cord is too short, so you can't plug it in and put it on the table, so it mostly stays on the floor."
He has more than a dozen chargers for his cell phone. There's one in the bedroom, where he puts his spare change, so that he won't forget to stick the phone in his pocket each morning. "I leave one in my suitcase in the front pocket. It kind of lives there" so he won't forget it when he travels. He remembers running to stores between meetings to replace forgotten chargers, or bumming one off of a client. Kammerer has "a charger graveyard" of a dozen or more spares he bought on business trips.
"If you switch [cell phone] brands, it won't work," Kammerer said of his many chargers. "I wish they were standardized. My briefcase gets heavy."
Manufacturers argue that providing their own chargers ensures the quality of the service, said Jeff Joseph, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association. Also, at $30 to $50 for a charger, "it's an important revenue source."
There is a new universal power adapter called iGo that comes with specialized tips, each about the size of a bottle cap, that can be exchanged to fit different devices -- iPods, almost any cell phone, laptops, BlackBerrys. It can also charge several devices at once.
"The average consumer carries 5.5 power devices," said Charles R. Mollo, president and chief executive of Mobility Electronics Inc., which makes the iGo. "The key problem we solve is to make life easier."
All griping about battery power aside, many users agree that today's mobile devices are an improvement on what came before. Remember the days of 20-pound "portable" computers and breadbox-size boomboxes weighted down with D-size batteries?
"There's no way I'd ever be willing to go back to the way it used to be," Wochner said.
June 21, 2005 at 10:40 PM in Wireless | Permalink | TrackBack (2) | Top of page | Blog Home
EBay shares off on talk Google eyeing PayPal rival - Yahoo! News
By Lisa Baertlein Mon Jun 20, 4:25 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shares of eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) fell almost 2 percent on Monday on worries that Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news) may offer an online payment service to rival eBay's PayPal as soon as this fall.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that the No. 1 Web search company this year may launch "Google Wallet," an electronic-payment service. Google shares rose about 2 percent.
A spokesman for Google declined to comment.
Like PayPal, the service could let users pay for purchases on Web sites by funding accounts from their credit cards or checking accounts.
ChannelAdvisor Chief Executive Scot Wingo said he heard of the potential project when larger and medium-size merchants began asking his auction management software company if and when it would support it. Wingo has not had direct talks with Google.
Separately, Google in April filed to start a new company called Google Payment Corp., according to California's department of corporations. In March, Google began testing a third-party electronic funds transfer service to send payments to Web sites that carry Google ads.
Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy said in a client note on Monday that regardless of the initial success of the product, such a launch would likely be a negative for eBay shares and a possible catalyst for Google's stock.
Rashtchy, who said the service might be launched by the third quarter, noted that Google has a history of releasing products that are superior to existing service, with new user interfaces or features.
Google already attracts both buyers and sellers to its sites. Consumers looking for things to purchase search both the main Google site and Google's comparison shopping site, Froogle, while sellers advertise on the main search site and Froogle, as well as listing items on Froogle.
Rashtchy said Google can likely subsidize the cost of transactions with advertising, so it can offer a lower price to merchants.
"A Google payment system may not compete directly with PayPal, but it could limit PayPal's expansion beyond eBay," Rashtchy said.
For the quarter ended March, PayPal had net revenue of $233.1 million -- just under one-fifth of the eBay's total quarterly revenue -- and 71.6 million account holders.
PayPal, which eBay bought in October 2002, is the Web's biggest payment service and has forged relationships with such online stores as Apple Computer's iTunes music service. It has also beaten back competing services from the likes of Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Citigroup (NYSE:C - news), which failed due to lack of adoption.
Search has long been the Achilles heel at eBay, which this month announced plans to buy Froogle competitor Shopping.com for around $620 million in cash.
Needham & Co. analyst Mark May said that while the launch of an online payment service could boost Google's revenue growth, it would take time to match the market size of PayPal.
"Any such service would take at least 12 months to contribute to earnings," May said in a note. "In order to gain traction in online payments, Google must first gain traction as a destination for e-commerce transactions."
Eric Jackson, an early PayPal executive and author of "The PayPal Wars," said Google already does a good job of putting buyers and sellers together.
"In one fell swoop you've overcome the chicken and egg problem," he said, adding that the upstart PayPal not only grew on eBay, but clobbered eBay's own online payment service.
Google could face regulatory issues in launching a new online payment service, something it might avoid by outsourcing the work and offer a Google-branded service, Jackson said.
Shares in eBay, which fell were down as much as 4 percent during the trading session, closed down 81 cents, or 2.13 percent, to $37.24 in late-day trade. Google's stock was up about 2.28 percent, or $6.40 to $286.70. Both names trade on the Nasdaq. (Additional reporting by Franklin Paul)
June 21, 2005 at 09:01 PM in Payments | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home
Google developing online payment system - CEO - Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.(Nasdaq:GOOG - news) is developing an online payment system but is not building a direct rival to eBay Inc.'s (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) PayPal, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday.
The comments from Google's CEO came after several days of heated speculation, following published reports that the company was working on potential rival to PayPal (EBAY.O), eBay's popular online payment system.
Schmidt said Google does not intend to offer a "person-to-person stored-value payments system" like PayPal's, in which money briefly resides in PayPal's control during the transaction, but he did not give details of how the Google plan would differ.
"The payment services we are working on are a natural evolution of Google's existing online products and advertising programs, which today connect millions of consumers and advertisers," Schmidt told Reuters in a brief telephone interview in which he declined to elaborate.
"We believe that e-commerce can be improved and we are working on ways to improve the user experience," Schmidt said.
Shares of Google closed up $1.14, or 0.4 percent, to $287.84. Shares of eBay finished down 34 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $36.90 prior to Schmidt's comments. Both stocks trade on the Nasdaq.
June 21, 2005 at 08:15 PM in Payments | Permalink | TrackBack (17) | Top of page | Blog Home
Hackers score big by thinking small, experts say - Yahoo! News
Mon Jun 20, 5:04 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A recent computer security breach that left 40 million credit cards vulnerable to fraud shows how online criminals are scoring big by thinking small, experts said on Monday.
Cybercriminals are increasingly crafting more focused attacks with a potential for profit as they target one or two companies at a time, rather than blasting out Internet virus attacks across the globe, according to security experts.
The payoffs can be enormous. MasterCard International said on Friday that an outsider gained access to as many as 40 million credit and debit cards from CardSystems Solutions Inc., a payment processor. A MasterCard spokeswoman said on Monday that the attacker had placed a malicious computer script on CardSystems computers.
In Israel, police are investigating a massive case of industrial espionage that used a "Trojan horse" computer program to copy confidential information from some of the country's top businesses.
Security vendors say such attacks are increasingly common.
"We have seen several examples of targeted, manually crafted Trojans that people write and implement for a very small number of companies," said Aladdin Security Vice President Shimon Gruper.
MessageLabs chief technical officer Mark Sunner said that since January the company has seen a 150 percent increase in attacks that only target one or two companies.
Experts said there are a number of reasons behind the shift. Playful hackers looking for kicks could write viruses that plagued companies and computers around the world but brought them no financial return. They have been elbowed aside by organized criminals, often based in Eastern Europe, who are motivated by profit and willing to launch a sustained, sophisticated assault.
Targeted attacks have another key advantage: they are usually small enough to stay off the radar of Internet security firms that are looking for broader attacks. That gives the high-tech criminals the time to research a company thoroughly before trying to penetrate it.
"You know there's specific technology, a piece of intellectual property, how much money is in their accounts," said RSA Security Inc. (Nasdaq:RSAS - news) CEO Art Coviello. "That's the advantage -- you have a little bit more knowledge."
Attackers can then send individual, personalized e-mails to the target company's employees, or pose as an IT administrator who needs to install a software update. Once in, they can use simple spyware programs to pick up passwords, account numbers and other valuable information.
"When you see a focused attack like this, this is kind of your worst-case scenario. These are people who are going to actually do something with those credit cards once they get them," said Mike Gibbons, a Unisys Corp. (NYSE:UIS - news) vice president and former
FBI cybercrime chief.
E-mail viruses have lost their teeth now that more people are using antivirus software properly, said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering at the antivirus provider Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC - news).
While old viruses continue to circulate, "they're background noise," he said.
At the same time, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) has patched the most gaping holes in its Windows operating system and companies have learned to install those patches quickly, said John Pescatore, a vice president at the consulting firm Gartner Inc. (NYSE:IT - news).
Identity thieves who used to go through trash bins to find credit-card receipts have learned that it's more worthwhile to extract such information from companies that collect it.
"Two years ago I would say one of the things you should do is shred your trash. Now that is completely obsolete advice," said Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer for Counterpane Internet Security Inc.
June 21, 2005 at 07:54 AM in Security | Permalink | TrackBack (10) | Top of page | Blog Home
TheStar.com - No-Internet decree is `fate worse than death'
CHRISTOPHER HUTSUL
I'm thinking about Gary McKinnon right now, and wondering how exactly the man accused of committing "the biggest military hack" in history is passing the time. He's probably pacing the streets of London, his gut churning from bad coffee, oily food, and the prospect of the maximum 70-year-jail sentence and $1.75 million (U.S.) fine he could face if found guilty.
But one thing McKinnon is not doing is using the Internet. The man who's charged with illegally accessing 97 U.S. government computers in 2002 and causing $700,000 worth of damage is out on bail, but has been banned indefinitely from going online.
Yes, banned from the Internet.
It probably shouldn't sound more painful than the jail sentence or the fine, but somehow it does. It's only reasonable that a person who's convicted of committing a crime face incarceration and/or financial penalty. But to be banned from the Internet is cruel and unusual punishment. The court ruling sent shudders through the blogosphere. As Punditguy wrote, "I broke out in a sweat when I read that . . . Getting banned from using the Internet . . . like, forever? A fate worse than death."
How deeply entrenched the Web has become in our lives and hearts in just 10 years since its popular inception. So much has changed in such a brief period of time.
Not long ago I came across a Details magazine from 1993 in an old pile of books. I found myself scanning the pages, looking for URLs and news from the Web. There were none. It creeped me out. It was different world.
Back then, in the dark ages, we used phone books. We used hard-cover dictionaries. We had to wait for the evening news, or sometimes even the next day's newspaper to find out what was going on in the world. We had travel agents, and binders full of pictures of homes for sale, and we held onto consumer product manuals because we knew we couldn't just magically pull up data on a computer screen whenever we needed to do some troubleshooting. We had to go to the library to find out what books were in the library. When we traveled, no one could get in touch with us. Not even the boss. Not even the ex-girlfriend that inspired the trek.
But things sure changed in a big hurry, didn't they? Early on, we were mesmerized by the mating call of those screeching dial-ups modems. The Web hit us in our soft spots. It gave us the power to interact with the people we loved and the people we did business with. It fed us art, smut, news, and every imaginable incarnation of each of those realms. Funny-looking people found each other in chat rooms, and fell in love for all the right reasons.
Like any new communications technology, there was a honeymoon period. We got a kick out of everything the Web could do, and all the weirdness it encapsulated. We were taking chances on this new phenomenon. Remember the anxious feeling you had the first time you typed your credit card information into an online retail site?
But we've turned the corner on that lustful affair with the Web, and find ourselves in our late 30s, married to it, still in love with it, but firmly dependent on it.
Yahoo and OMD Digital conducted a study late last year to see how people cope without Internet access for a two week period. They found that people — regardless of age, income or ethnicity — generally experienced "withdrawal, feelings of loss, frustration, and disconnectedness" when stripped of Web access.
The experiment had made a point even before it had begun. A Yahoo representative remarked that it was "extremely difficult" to find people who'd agree to give up the Internet for two weeks for the sake of science. The report concluded that a user's sense of self-worth was bolstered by an ability to control the source and pace of the information he or she was ingesting, while managing complex networks of social and professional relationships. The Internet, essentially, made its users feel confident, secure and empowered.
If you've traveled to an exotic place you may know the sense of relief that comes with the sight of an Internet kiosk in the distance. What a dizzying and pleasurable feeling it is to sit down at a keypad — next to an old electric fan — after a few days of detachment. The kiosk brings out an intoxicating sense of centeredness and has the dreamy feel of an opium den.
Mr. McKinnon, at least legally, is now trekking in a world where there is no Internet kiosk on the horizon. He might be walking through gardens full of flowers, playgrounds full of children, and malls full of eager shoppers. But to him, and to anyone who's touched the Web then lost it, the world must feel anonymous, inefficient, and lonesome.
Sneakernet scans the landscape of culture and technology. Reach Chris Hutsul at chutsul@thestar.ca
June 20, 2005 at 07:57 AM in Internet evolution | Permalink | TrackBack (3) | Top of page | Blog Home
Branding game is not an easy one to win
By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Here are four local illustrations of the notion that the traditional elements used to establish and reinforce a brand no longer work.
Microsoft, Costco, Amazon.com and Starbucks have achieved national, even international prominence, without benefit of a catchy slogan, a universally identifiable symbol or an anthropomorphic spokesanimal, to build awareness in consumers' minds.
Here's the refutation of that notion: The Clydesdales are coming to Seattle starting today.
See, I don't even need to say whose Clydesdales, and already you not only know the name of the sponsor -- a certain purveyor of beer -- you're probably also recalling the commercials, hearing the jingles and seeing in your mind the horses pulling a red wagon (with Dalmatians riding on it) emblazoned with the name of the brewer.
That, friends, is one powerful branding image.
It's the sort of branding power that most companies would love to have, particularly in an era of increasingly fractionated media channels through which companies are trying to reach ever-growing markets. A powerful brand image can be expensive to establish, but once it's established, it can accomplish far more at less cost than expensive marketing campaigns for less well-known products or services.
But how do you get the brand power in the first place?
Celebrity endorsements are at best a temporary and risky fix. Celebrities' recognition or appeal may not cross borders or may be limited to certain demographic groups. Such careers can also be short-lived and subject to self-inflicted damage that cast celebrities (and by extension the products they endorse) in an unfavorable light. Do you think Pepsi is thinking "gee, what a swell idea it would be to bring Michael Jackson back as our endorser?" The Clydesdales, by contrast, are not likely to be caught in some sort of scandal.
Slogans, symbols and logos sometimes work. Most consumers could probably identify the mermaid logo as belonging to Starbucks even if the name were stripped off. But most consumers couldn't tell you the derivation of that symbol or the connection to the company, and the stores themselves might be more identifiable by the green awnings than the logo.
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For all of Microsoft's success in the PC software business, it would be hard to argue that its market position has been aided much by the flying Windows logo or the slogan, "where do you want to go today?"
Even the company with the horses and the wagon has a slogan -- "King of beers." At best that slogan is likely to inspire quizzical looks.
But horses, Dalmatians and an old-fashioned wagon -- that's the sort of stuff to inspire warm and fuzzy feelings even among those who don't drink beer.
How well-ingrained is that image? Clydesdales are not the only breed of very large workhorse. But the same people who couldn't tell you if a Percheron is a fish, bird or mammal can instantly conjure up a mental picture of a Clydesdale -- all because of the investment of time and money the sponsor has put into establishing that image as its image.
And how valuable is image recall? The proliferation of media channels and commercial messages pushed through them means marketers have to try ever harder -- and wind up failing more often -- to stand out from the clutter. The challenge increases with interchangeable products (like beer) and marketing approaches (even blimps, once the exclusive territory of Goodyear, have multiple imitators these days)
The Clydesdales (who will be at Qwest Field Events Center from 2-8 p.m. today through Sunday as part of a national "Here's to the Heroes" tour saluting American military personnel) don't have to be louder, brasher or flashier to stand out. The closest you can come is Wells Fargo and its stagecoach -- and that's for a bank.
The very trends -- erosion of audiences in mass-market channels, limited patience for establishing a brand -- that make a powerful brand image like the Clydesdales so desirable will also make them even harder to establish.
But the rewards of having a powerful brand image are so great that marketers can be expected to continue throwing ideas at consumers, hoping something sticks so deeply in the public consciousness that people recognize it -- even if, as with this column, the sponsor's name is never once mentioned.
June 18, 2005 at 08:46 PM in Business Models | Permalink | TrackBack (9) | Top of page | Blog Home
Change has continually engulfed the payments industry, perhaps more so than ever in the past decade. In the last few years, a number of payment innovations such as smart cards, person-to person payments, check conversion and mobile payments have gained increased attention and could hinder future innovation. Yet, competition and public policy decisions are still based on assumptions and ideas about networks made several decades ago. In the midst of continuous change it has been difficult to gauge the level and importance of some of these changes. This article sets out to re-evaluate our fundamental ideas about networks and competition. It documents how these networks have changed and the implications of these changes for payment innovations for government and private sector providers.
Central to this change has been increasing use of payment networks for new or alternative payment uses. When competition and innovation policy in the credit card market was just beginning to be explored several decades ago, there was essentially just one product—the credit card—and one type of network for non-recurring consumer payments—the credit card network. However, over the last two decades the use of payment networks in the United States has drastically changed, evolving into what we term "product-independent payment networks."
Examples of Payment networks in USA
Credit Card Networks. The banking industry and national credit card associations have expanded the use of the credit card network to include signature-based debit cards. These networks are also being utilized to conduct electronic person-to-person payments.
ATM Networks. Another example of the evolution to "product-independent payment networks" can be seen in the evolution of ATM/EFT networks. EFT networks, which were previously regionally based, now extend across the country both through direct ownership and through sharing arrangements. Like credit cards, their use is evolving beyond their initial product design. A significant amount of electronic bill payments are processed through these networks. A P2P provider in Canada plans to use the EFT networks to process P2P payments and has expressed interest in extending its business model internationally. Meanwhile, the largest credit card processor in the U. S. has taken an equity interest in one network and plans to use the network to bypass the Visa and MasterCard authorization networks for some transactions.
ACH Network. End users have also expanded and changed the primary uses of the ACH network, which was initially developed to handle direct deposits. For instance, several merchants have introduced retailer-debit card programs that leverage the ACH network, bypassing the online and offline debit card networks. Pre-authorized debits, electronic check conversions and PC bill payments are already being processed through the ACH network. At the same time, industry groups are looking into ways to use the ACH network to convert and truncate check payments at lockbox locations. As a result, it is increasingly clear that the clearing and settlement business is becoming a commodity business that can be transacted over a variety of networks and clearing arrangements.
Increasing Innovation and Competition
While significant change has occurred in the use of payment networks, a number of innovations are currently under discussion or development that would continue to leverage existing payment networks new ways.
International ACH
The Federal Reserve has already expanded the scope of the ACH network to send payments to Canada. Currently, a number of different associations, government agencies and private corporations are discussing further extension of this payment system to other countries. In particular, discussions are already under way to investigate the feasibility of expanding ACH payments to Mexico and Europe. Given the large amount of money transfers sent each year from the U.S. to Mexico, a low-cost means of transferring funds internationally would potentially be in very high demand.
P2P Payments
Third party payment providers are leveraging existing networks to provide electronic person-to person payments on the Internet and at ATMs. Companies such as PayPal, Citibank and eBay are utilizing the ACH, credit card and EFT networks to provide electronic P2P payments over the Internet. While each of these companies is a network in itself, the clearing and settling of funds mainly takes place over traditional payment networks. These networks also allow small merchants to access the credit card networks.
At ATMs, Concord EFS and Money Gram are teaming up to offer electronic person-to-person payments via the electronic funds transfer network. Using a special access card and one-time PIN number, consumers will be able to send payments from person to person. In addition to domestic person to-person payments, this application could be expanded to include international P2P payments.
Mobile Payments
Significant investment and research has gone into investigating the creation of mobile payment applications. In addition to leveraging telecommunications networks, these innovations typically utilize existing payment and banking networks. In particular, Visa and MasterCard have worked closely with third party providers and telecommunications firms. While these applications achieved marginal success in Europe and Asia, the United States has been slow to adopt mobile payments.
It should also be noted that several merchants have utilized new wireless technology and the credit card networks to offer innovative new services to customers. For example, McDonald’s has used ExxonMobil’s Speed pass technology to make paying for small-value purchases with credit cards quicker and more convenient at the point of sale.
ACH and Online Debit over Internet
Recently, NACHA has spearheaded an effort by several financial institutions to promote ACH payments over the Internet. If successful, Project Action could make ACH a viable alternative to credit cards for Internet purchases. The project is still in the proposal stage. Several companies and network operators are also testing the feasibility of making payments on the Internet using PIN-based debit cards. NYCE gained significant attention the past few years for its SafeDebit project. While no definitive solution has emerged, future innovation in this area is certainly anticipated.
Internet Payment Systems in U.S. Market Place
Over the last several years there have been a number of initiatives on the Internet Payment Front. Ever since the dawn of e-commerce, Credit Cards have ruled the roost, primarily because they were already in wide circulation and used extensively by the brick and mortar business. However, credit cards, while great for the day to day purchased in the physical world, came across one big problem in the virtual world. So as you can expect, the credit card number and PIN numbers were the only proof of identity. This meant that security became a big concern, so much so that Credit card companies started to charge higher for Internet enabled merchant accounts. This meant that credit cards became too expensive for smaller purchases. This in turn brought in a host of new payment systems which have sprung up focusing on increased security on the net, or facility for micro-payments (up to 10 cents) or both.
Key Payment Systems
1.
Paypal
2.
TradEnable
3.
eCharge Phone
4.
Mondex
5.
Internet Cash
1. Pay pal
PayPal is a money transfer system that was originally launched for C2C (customer-to-customer) transactions, but recently, X.com, the company behind the service, introduced B2C transactions, by offering accounts for businesses. Paypal acts as a neutral intermediary offering low risk to both seller/receiver and buyer/sender of the money.
PayPal uses e-mail to inform the receiver that a payment has been made . It accepts money from the purchaser in one of three ways:
1.
Charging the purchaser's credit card for any transactions (payments)
2.
Debiting a checking account for any payments
3.
The purchaser sending a check to create a positive balance in his account at PayPal, and having any payments deducted from the account
Payment recipients can use the money in the account for online purchases or payments, can receive the payment from PayPal by check, or can have PayPal directly deposit the money into their checking account.
How It