Microsoft stands to benefit from Mozilla's anti-enterprise approach

Technology | Browsers | Corporate IT | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Microsoft | Mozilla | Mike Kaply | Asa Dotzler | Ari Bixhorn

The enterprise world is up in arms over Mozilla's new Firefox development cycle -- and some harsh words from Mozilla -- and Microsoft is using this as an opportunity to talk up the benefits of switching to Internet Explorer.
Mozilla released version 5 of its Firefox browser this week, three months after it shipped Firefox 4 and it plans to continue this pace. The company is planning updates every six weeks and -- more importantly -- dropping support for older versions when the new ones come out.
This works great for consumers, who can easily and happily upgrade their browser to the newest version but, as ZDNet's Ed Bott points out, it doesn't work out so well for the enterprise sector. Corporate clients need and want stability because of the time and costs involved with deploying a major browser update

Former eBay exec, movie producer lands major award

INDIA TODAY

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Jeff Skoll helped create difference makers in the world of tech (eBay) and films (An Inconvenient Truth). But it is his work in charitable causes that just landed him a major humanitarian award.
Skoll, eBay's first president and the executive producer of several Academy Award-winning films, will be honored on Oct. 20 by The Tech Awards, a program of The Tech Museum, for his "unending quest to find the answers to some of humanity's most pressing challenges, ranging from climate change to water scarcity to nuclear proliferation," award organizers say.
"Technology is the great enabler," says Skoll, 46, an electrical engineer by training who, in 1999, created the Skoll Foundation, a leading foundation for social entrepreneurs. "It gives voice to the voiceless, empowers people, and connects them. That was the underpinning of eBay."
The James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award honors individuals whose broad vision and leadership help to combat today's critical issues. Previous recipients include former Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Applied's Chairman Emeritus James C. Morgan, who inspired the award.
"I'm still amazed to be included alongside people like Al Gore and Bill Gates, whom I have looked up to," says Skoll, who, in 2009, founded Skoll Global Threats Fund. It focuses on five global issues: climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and the Middle East conflict.
Skoll founded Participant Media in 2004, and has executive produced more than 25 films, including An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman, which have garnered four Academy Awards and 18 nominations.
Next up this year: seven movies, including Page One, The Help and Contagion

Ensuring your information is safe online

28/6/2011 12:42:00 PM

The Internet has been an amazing force for good in the world—opening up communications, boosting economic growth and promoting free expression. But like all technologies, it can also be used for bad things. Today, despite the efforts of Internet companies and the security community, identity theft, fraud and the hijacking of people’s email accounts are common problems online.

Bad actors take advantage of the fact that most people aren’t that tech savvy—hijacking accounts by using malware and phishing scams that trick users into sharing their passwords, or by using passwords obtained by hacking other websites. Most account hijackings are not very targeted; they are designed to steal identities, acquire financial data or send spam. But some attacks are targeted at specific individuals.

Through the strength of our cloud-based security and abuse detection systems*, we recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing. This campaign, which appears to originate from Jinan, China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.

The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users’ emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples’ forwarding and delegation settings. (Gmail enables you to forward your emails automatically, as well as grant others access to your account.)

Google detected and has disrupted this campaign to take users’ passwords and monitor their emails. We have notified victims and secured their accounts. In addition, we have notified relevant government authorities.

It’s important to stress that our internal systems have not been affected—these account hijackings were not the result of a security problem with Gmail itself. But we believe that being open about these security issues helps users better protect their information online.

Here are some ways to improve your security when using Google products:

• Enable 2-step verification. This Gmail feature uses a phone and second password on sign-in, and it protected some accounts from this attack. So check out this video on setting up 2-step verification.

• Use a strong password for Google that you do not use on any other site. Here’s a video to help.
• Enter your password only into a proper sign-in prompt on a https://www.google.com domain. We will never ask you to email your password or enter it into a form that appears within an email message. Here’s a video with more advice.
• Check your Gmail settings for suspicious forwarding addresses (“Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, Fig. 1) or delegated accounts (“Accounts” tab, Fig. 2).

Fig. 1

 Fig. 2

• Watch for the red warnings about suspicious account activity that may appear on top of your Gmail inbox.
• Review the security features offered by the Chrome browser. If you don’t already use Chrome, consider switching your browser to Chrome.
• Explore other security recommendations and a video with tips on how to stay safe across the web.

Please spend ten minutes today taking steps to improve your online security so that you can experience all that the Internet offers—while also protecting your data.

*We also relied on user reports and this external report to uncover the campaign described.

Android google translate

When we launched the first version of Google Translate for Android in January 2010, we were excited about the year ahead. For the first time, we were bringing the capabilities supported on Google Translate—like machine translation, romanization of non-Roman scripts and spoken translations—to the Android platform. We also offered voice input to let you speak the word or phrase you wanted to translate instead of typing it in, and SMS translation so you could translate SMS messages sent to you in foreign languages.

Today, we’re refreshing Translate for Android with several updates to make the app easier to interact with. Among other improvements, we’ve created better dropdown boxes to help select the languages you want to translate from and into, an improved input box, and cleaner icons and layout.


We also want to let you in on an experimental feature that’s still in its earliest stages—Conversation Mode. This is a new interface within Google Translate that’s optimized to allow you to communicate fluidly with a nearby person in another language. You may have seen anearly demo a few months ago, and today you can try it yourself on your Android device.

Currently, you can only use Conversation Mode when translating between English and Spanish. In conversation mode, simply press the microphone for your language and start speaking. Google Translate will translate your speech and read the translation out loud. Your conversation partner can then respond in their language, and you’ll hear the translation spoken back to you. Because this technology is still in alpha, factors like regional accents, background noise or rapid speech may make it difficult to understand what you’re saying. Even with these caveats, we’re excited about the future promise of this technology to be able to help people connect across languages.

As Android devices have spread across the globe, we’ve seen Translate for Android used all over. The majority of our usage now comes from outside the United States, and we’ve seen daily usage from more than 150 countries, from Malaysia to Mexico to Mozambique. It’s really rewarding for us to see how this new platform is helping us break down language barriers the world over.

Translate supports 53 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and voice input for 15 languages. You can download the application, available for devices running Android 2.1 and above, by searching for “Google Translate” in Android Market or by scanning the QR Code below.

1/20/2011 02:00:00 PM Recent statistics have shown a decline in the number of U.S. students taking computer science AP classes, which also leads to a decline in students declaring computer science as their majors—a concerning trend in the U.S. as we try to remain competitive in the global economy. With programs like Computer Science for High School (CS4HS), we hope to increase the number of CS majors —and therefore the number of people entering into careers in CS—by promoting computer science curriculum at the high school level. For the fourth consecutive year, we’re funding CS4HS to invest in the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. CS4HS is a workshop for high school and middle school computer science teachers that introduces new and emerging concepts in computing and provides tips, tools and guidance on how to teach them. The ultimate goals are to “train the trainer,” develop a thriving community of high school CS teachers and spread the word about the awe and beauty of computing. In 2011 we’re expanding the program considerably and hope to double the number of schools we funded in 2010. If you’re a university, community college, or technical School in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Middle East or Africa and are interested in hosting a workshop at your institution, please visit www.cs4hs.com to submit an application for grant funding. Applications will be accepted between January 18, 2011 and February 18, 2011. In addition to submitting your application, on the CS4HS website you’ll find info on how to organize a workshop, as well as websites and agendas from last year’s participants to give you an idea of how the workshops were structured in the past. There’s also a collection of CS4HS curriculum modules that previous participating schools have shared for future organizers to use in their own program. Previous organizers have told us that teachers have left their workshops excited about the new materials they learned and the innovative ideas they’ve discussed with other teachers. We’re hopeful that they’ll pass on to their students not only the skills that they learned but also that passion. Posted by Terry Ednacot, Education Program Manager Permalink Links to this post Share: Labels: education

Recent statistics have shown a decline in the number of U.S. students taking computer science AP classes, which also leads to a decline in students declaring computer science as their majors—a concerning trend in the U.S. as we try to remain competitive in the global economy. With programs like Computer Science for High School (CS4HS), we hope to increase the number of CS majors —and therefore the number of people entering into careers in CS—by promoting computer science curriculum at the high school level.

For the fourth consecutive year, we’re funding CS4HS to invest in the next generation of computer scientists and engineers. CS4HS is a workshop for high school and middle school computer science teachers that introduces new and emerging concepts in computing and provides tips, tools and guidance on how to teach them. The ultimate goals are to “train the trainer,” develop a thriving community of high school CS teachers and spread the word about the awe and beauty of computing.

In 2011 we’re expanding the program considerably and hope to double the number of schools we funded in 2010. If you’re a university, community college, or technical School in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Middle East or Africa and are interested in hosting a workshop at your institution, please visit www.cs4hs.com to submit an application for grant funding.Applications will be accepted between January 18, 2011 and February 18, 2011. 

In addition to submitting your application, on the CS4HS website you’ll find info on how to organize a workshop, as well as websites and agendas from last year’s participants to give you an idea of how the workshops were structured in the past. There’s also a collection ofCS4HS curriculum modules that previous participating schools have shared for future organizers to use in their own program.

Previous organizers have told us that teachers have left their workshops excited about the new materials they learned and the innovative ideas they’ve discussed with other teachers. We’re hopeful that they’ll pass on to their students not only the skills that they learned but also that passion.

Ballmer Praises Appointment of GE CEO to President’s Jobs Council

Earlier today, President Barack Obama appointed General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The council’s goal is to serve as a catalyst for ideas and action to improve U.S. economic vitality.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer praised Immelt’s appointment as chairman to the council:
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Microsoft at National Retail Federation’s 100th Anniversary Show – Winning the Tech-Savvy Customer

Mon, Jan 10 2011

This year, the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show – now in its 100th year – will focus on the opportunities and challenges associated with engaging with today’s tech-savvy consumer.
Today’s consumer comes to every buying decision armed with an arsenal of information that wasn’t easily available just a few years ago. They know more about products, prices and where the items they want are available than ever before.
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