sincity

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/other/Onetimers/Windows%208.1%20logo%20zoom-470-75.jpgWindows 7 users may be able to upgrade to Windows 9 for "something in the region of $30" according to popular Russian Windows "leaker", Wzor. That's just under £20, or AU$35. Windows 8.1 users are likely to get it for free, something that has been confirmed by our own sources. Windows 7 was unveiled nearly five years ago and is the preferred operating system for business and enterprise users but has come to its end-of-life with Microsoft retiring it from sales channel at the end of next month. It is still by far the most popular Windows OS with more than half of the total desktop OS marketshare according to Netmarketshare, accounting for more units than all other Windows versions put together. Golden oldiesWhat's interesting is that computers running Windows 7 are expected to be able to run Windows 9 - and it's just as well. Indeed, I expect Windows Vista PCs to be able to run Windows 9 especially as Windows 8.1 is able to run on something like the Toshiba Encore 2 tablet (with a slowish Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB onboard storage and a WSVGA display). Windows 9 is expected to be revealed later today in an event in San Francisco with a special emphasis on business and enterprise. Who may have a prominent seat at the Windows 9 table?http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965327235/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965327235/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965327235/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965327235/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965327235/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3efb16e2/sc/15/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/DZRwsr-zi0A

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Microsoft/Windows%20Phone%2081%20hands%20on/Review/wp81-1-470-75.jpgMicrosoft has quietly begun shelving its Bing branding in favour of MSN when it comes to apps on the Windows Phone platform. Former stalwarts like Money, Maps, Travel, Sports and Weather have all been relabelled MSN to coincide with Microsoft's overhaul of the platform. The descriptions and title bar on each app now use the MSN name - the actual performance of the apps remain unchanged. It continues a move away from Bing that Microsoft has been pursuing during the course of this year. While the mobile updates are taking place today, only Bing Finance has been changed on Windows 8.1. It's now called MSN Money. Via Phonearena.com Meanwhile, Windows 9 is just around the corner, here's what to expect.http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965318214/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965318214/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965318214/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965318214/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965318214/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef8e116/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/XiJL1GxTE1Q

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/Windows%209/german_windows9_threshold_leak-470-75.jpgMicrosoft is holding an event in San Francisco later today (10AM PT, 6PM BST) that will give us some key pointers as to Microsoft's intentions for the next version of Windows. It's designed as a developer event, so it won't be a formal launch of the new Windows. And the Windows enhancements we see today certainly won't be completely consumer-orientated, with the juicy stuff reserved for developers that Microsoft wants to get on side ahead of a full launch of the new OS. Windows 9: Release date, news and rumorsWhat's in a name?We're pretty certain the next version of Windows will be called Windows 9. We don't even think today's event will feature the name Windows 9, instead referring to the OS as Threshold or TH. Threshold is a long standing codename for the release, so is nothing new. Indeed screen shots of a leaked version of the Windows Dev Center download site point to the OS being called Windows TH - though this just seems like a play on words with the name Threshold and we'd be very surprised if it ended up being called this. It will probably just be an interim moniker. Any new name makes it clear that Microsoft wants to banish the disastrous Windows 8 phase as soon as possible. So what will we see?This event has been long rumored. We will see the new (old) Start Menu and other developments that will change the way you use Windows if you use Windows 8. One of the key features of Windows 8 touch, the Charms bar, will no longer exist if you're on a non-touch PC. This will be a relief to some, but for many of us that have got used to how Windows 8 quirkily works on a non-touch PC, it will be another frustrating change. The new Start Menu (which is resizable) combines what you used to get in the Start Menu from Windows 95-Windows 7 with a new side panel featuring Modern UI (Metro) apps. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/software/Windows/9-420-100.jpg According to a leak of the developer build, you can pin other desktop applications, folders and contacts to the Start Menu – so it acts rather like the Start Screen on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 in that respect. Some sources say the new Start Menu can replace the Start Screen in Threshold, but we're not too sure about that, and it may well depend on whether you're using a touch PC or not. Certainly the Start Screen would be the more preferable interface for use with a touch PC. What will Windows 9 look like?Cosmetically, we probably won't see a massive change at today's event. Indeed, what we'll see will look very similar to Windows 8. As we've seen with other pre-release versions of Windows, the developer preview version is not necessarily the look and feel that we will have when it comes to the final release. Indeed, the preview versions often bear more resemblance to the previous version of Windows rather than the upcoming one. But as Windows 9 will continue the work done with the Modern UI in Windows 8 and 8.1, it may well end up looking very similar anyway. http://cdn4.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/software/Microsoft/Windows81/annoyances/app%20tile%20to%20download-420-100.jpg Some graphical work has certainly been carried out on the developer preview – Modern UI apps can float in the desktop and have a new ellipsis icon for app-specific options in the top right of the window. This basically means that the two halves of the OS can operate as one, though the main problem with Modern UI apps remains their hugely variable quality (hence Microsoft wanting to woo developers) Will there be a Windows 9 public beta?Quite possibly, but not today. At the moment there will only be a Developer Preview version, so we're some way off a beta version, let alone a public beta or release candidate. Windows 9 release dateIt's certainly too early to say about a Windows 9 release date and we're not sure we'll get a huge amount of clarity on this at the event, but we'd expect Windows 9 launch in early to mid-2015. The Spring would seem like a good bet to us. Certainly Microsoft knows that the relative failure of Windows 8 (in perception, if not totally in terms of sales) means it can't afford to hang around. I've heard Windows 9 will be a free upgrade. Will it be?That's certainly the big Windows 9 rumor doing the rounds. President of Microsoft Indonesia Andreas Diantoro seemingly confirmed it in a statement. It would certainly encourage take-up of the new OS. If Windows 9 is free it may only be for Windows 8 and 8.1 users only, although with Microsoft failing to dislodge the porridge-on-the-pan that is Windows XP, it may well go the whole hog and make it universally gratis. And why not? Microsoft can afford it – the corporation's focus to software, devices and services means it aims to increasingly make money from sources other than the sales of its venerable desktop OS. Windows 9 is completely backwards compatible with older versions of the OS and any Modern UI or desktop apps developed for Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 will work fine. Will Microsoft do several versions OSes?We may well see a version of Windows 9 called Windows 9 Pro or Windows 9 Enterprise. Certainly a lot of businesses have resisted Windows 8 because of the Start Screen (something Microsoft tried to rectify by the boot-to-desktop feature in 8.1 Update 1). One thing the Windows 8 debacle has shown is that tablet and desktop aren't entirely compatible and Microsoft has strived to make Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update 1 more non-touch friendly. As we thought when Microsoft first released Windows 8, Microsoft should release a Tablet-specific OS, probably based on Windows Phone. It won't do this, as it still wants to sell you Microsoft Office for the desktop, while Intel still wants it to make 'proper' PCs. Instead, Windows 9 will bring a whole lot more refinement to the still-uneasy Modern UI-desktop hybrid. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965413005/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965413005/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965413005/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965413005/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965413005/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef7d13b/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/ZPtCaQE4zE0

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/laptops/Apple/MacBook%20Pro%2013-inch%20review/mac-retina13-2012/P1011849-470-75.JPGApple has released an OS X patch addressing the Bash bug, also called Shellshock. The bug, discovered last week, could affect UNIX-based operating systems, Mac OS X included, potentially letting hackers overtake vulnerable operating systems. Though Apple said last week that the vast majority of OS X users were safe by default, it assured it was working on a security patch for more advanced UNIX users. That fix has arrived today. Downloads of the patch are available for Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion. Note you'll need to download the Bash update for whatever system you're using as each is system-specific. According to 9to5Mac, Apple will likely issue a patch through the built-in OS X Software Update tool before long. There is no patch for anyone running OS X Yosemite. Want to learn more about Bash? We've got you coveredhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961353019/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961353019/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961353019/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961353019/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961353019/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef4015e/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/j2VaT1aZ0gY

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/windows_81_rtm/win81%20startscreen-470-75.jpgWhen I put the rumour about Microsoft choosing Windows TH as the name for Windows 8's successor to one of our Microsoft sources, they was puzzled. "Frankly," he said, "I'd be amazed as the RT name was a disaster for them." Indeed, XP was probably the only Windows version containing letters that was successful for Microsoft; ME, Vista and RT have been relative failures even if they shipped in tens of millions of units. NT, being a server product, is excluded from this exercise. Windows 95, 98, 2000, 7 and 8 have been fairly well received by users with the first one becoming the first real standalone GUI OS from Microsoft and solidifying the status of the Redmond-based company as the biggest software company in the world. Windows 9: news, rumours and everything elseNaming the next iteration of Windows as TH will only serve to add to the confusion and could turn to a marketing acronym nightmare (TH for Thorium? THreshold? Total Howler? Top Hat?). Microsoft has enough data to make the right decision on how to name the next version of Windows (cue 98 to ME or Vista to 7) even if the actual feel and performance of the operating system will play a big role on how popular it becomes though. Windows 9 is likely to be the last version sporting a number in the name; with Microsoft's triple strategy of cloud-based, cross platform, always-connected (and updating) OS, it would make sense to simply have one Windows that simply works. Add in the fact that Windows 9 might be free for some existing Windows users and it just makes sense to abandon the antiquated system of adding a suffix to an application that has changed so much, in a technological landscape that bears no resemblance to that when Windows 95 was launched. Could other Microsoft applications like Office or Internet Explorer follow suit? That is also a tantalising option to consider. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ef0e82e/sc/4/mf.gifhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/CV-SqDuOzkM

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/Windows%209/Windows9Logo-LEAK-470-75.jpgMicrosoft has taken down a webpage containing a pair of download links pointing to its Windows 9 Technical Preview for Enterprise ahead of the company's September 30 "future of Windows" event in San Francisco. As noted by BetaNews, links to download the 32- and 64-bit versions of the build appeared on a Microsoft webpage, which is unaccessible at the time of writing. You're not missing out though: apparently they were placeholders pointing to the TechNet Evaluation Center, rather than official Microsoft code. Still, the page offered up a few new tidbits of information - mainly that the US version of the Technical Preview tips the scales at 3.16GB (for the 32-bit version) and 4.10GB (for the 64-bit version). It also offered a brief insight into what the OS entails: "The next version of the Windows client operating system will enable IT professionals to provide users with a familiar experience across multiple devices while enhancing security and manageability," it read. "It will also offer new and improved features that enable businesses to: Defend against modern security threats, Elevate employee productivity, Embrace the mobile and cloud era, Enable upgrade without upheaval." What TH?Additionally, the page referred to a version of Windows called Windows TH. Microsoft is expected to go with Windows 9 as the name for its next OS, which has also been referred to as "Windows Threshold" ahead of the official unveiling. TH could mean a number of things: from the element Thorium to it being the ninTH version of Windows. Can you think of anything a little more exciting? Let us know in the comments section below. Here's one company's Windows 9 wish listhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961380552/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961380552/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961380552/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961380552/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961380552/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ef05cf9/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/KPgtR5lnLTM

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/TRBC/microsoft-windows-9-wtp-470-75.jpgThe noise around Windows 9 is reaching fever pitch ahead of its potential unveiling at a San Francisco event on September 30, with the latest rumour once again pointing to the OS being released as a free download for certain users. This particular report comes from Indonesian online publication Detik, which quotes Microsoft Indonesia CEO and President Director Andrew Diantoro as saying that Windows 9 will be made available to download as a free update - if Windows 8 is already installed on the device. Review: Office 365It's unclear whether you will need to be on a particular version of Windows 8 to qualify for the upgrade. Earlier this year, Russian hacker group WZOR claimed that Microsoft was deciding whether to offer Windows 9 for free to Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.2 (or Windows 8.2 Update 2) or to grant a substantial discount instead. Microsoft has been coy regarding the actual name of Windows 8.1's successor, telling ZDNet.fr that while its upcoming event will focus on the future of Windows, there is no official name for what has been referred to as Windows 9, or Windows "Threshold". http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376565/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376565/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376565/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376565/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961376565/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29ef/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/94JIHfN433o

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/Windows%208.1%20Update%201/Windows_8_1_Update_1_user-470-75.jpgWhen Microsoft unveils Windows 9 on 30th September, there are few things I would hope to see. First is a shift in its pricing structure, where Microsoft moves to a model that is more akin to Apple, offering software updates for free. If that is not possible, I would at least like to see upgrades made available at a lower cost, i.e. below £50. However, what I believe is more likely is for Microsoft to announce a subscription model for its operating system (similar to what it is doing with Office 365). Secondly, I think it would be a great opportunity for Microsoft to clarify its product offering so that there is less confusion between what is offered in the home, professional and enterprise versions. And finally, it would be nice to see Cortana make its way into Windows 9. Voice is becoming more important in the ever shrinking world of primary computing devices, therefore it seems like a natural progression for them to showcase this feature on Windows 9. In addition to what I would like to see, there are a few features on Windows 8 that I would like to see 'upgraded' or changed: · Metro apps: For most people, one of the most frustrating aspects of Windows 8 was the launch of the larger tablet specific metro apps when not requested. Therefore a big step forward for Windows 9 would be to forbid metro apps from launching when in Desktop mode. While, this may be a strange feature to request, I think many, like me, would welcome the return of the old Start Menu. No one outside of Microsoft thought it was a good idea to remove it. Luckily, if the unofficial videos are anything to go by, we might see a slightly modified Start Menu design with integrated miniature metro app tiles alongside it make it into Windows 9. · Disk space: Currently Windows 8 takes up almost a sizeable chunk of space on my hard drive, which could be an issue on the smaller disk size tablets. Therefore, I would welcome a reduction in the size of Windows, whether through reducing features or other alternatives. · Charms menu and mouse movements: Another frustrating aspect of Windows 8 is the charms menu and unwelcome mouse movements which activate it. · Higher resolutions: Finally, my hope is that Windows 9 increases its support for high DPI displays such as the Samsung Ativ Book 9 plus or Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 with 3,200 x 1,800 resolution displays. Currently, they are hard to use and the excellent resolution potential is wasted. Overall, I believe that Microsoft needs to learn from their mistakes. It should avoid forcing another disaster of an operating system on a customer base which was comfortable working in a stable manner on an already adequate operating system. It should also shift their mentality and realise that the competition is not Apple but Google with its Google Docs, Gmail, Android, Chrome browser, Chrome operating system, Chromebooks and of course the Google search engine. How do you compete against free when free is actually quite good? Microsoft should take advantage of the fact that people are still content to pay for an operating system, primarily because they are familiar with it. Therefore when presenting an upgrade to Windows 8, Microsoft should strive to present a sensible and smooth solution, before they lose their entire customer base to people buying cheap Chromebooks in 12 months' time. Watch this space.... If done correctly, Windows 9 could lead to an increase in mobile device sales for Microsoft's beleaguered mobile OS. Windows Phone is doomed to fail no matter how stubborn Microsoft remains. However, a lean operating system optimised for tablets could see Windows 9 bite into Android and iOS sales. Though some of Microsoft's divisions seem to be completely different, in recent years, the company seems to be moving to a more unified platform. In the ideal world, we would write our programmes once and it could run on all products. It is in Microsoft's interest to allow developers to write a Windows Store app on a PC and then simply deploy it on Windows Phone (or vice versa). Currently there are too many Microsoft components that are struggling to keep up with the competition, e.g. Office and Google Docs, Internet Explorer and Chrome, Xbox and Playstation, through an integrated Windows 9 platform these components can succeed and potentially claw back their market share. Dr. Kevin Curran is a senior member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). He is a senior lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and group leader for the Ambient Intelligence Research Group at the university http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376564/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376564/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376564/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961376564/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961376564/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eef29fa/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/dWR1MLppJgg

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/Google/Lollipop/Google%20Lollipop%20cake%20cropped-470-75.jpgThe next iteration of Google's mobile OS was unveiled earlier this year with nothing more than the letter "L" as its designation. Anyone familair with Android will be aware that the major releases proceed in alphabetical order and are named for some kind of sweet or desert: KitKat, Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich being the last three. Well, the search giant just went a long way to confirming that Android L will stand for Android Lollipop thanks to an animated GIF the company posted for its 16th birthday. Topped with lollipops. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/mobile_phones/Google/Lollipop/Google%20Lollipop%20cake-420-90.jpg Sweet sixteenUntil 2005, Google counted its birthday as September 7 - the day it was incorporated - but now hinges it on the day it first announced the amount of pages it has indexed. While Google counts September as its birth month, October is likely to be very busy for the company with both the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 tablet rumoured to appear and the rollout of Android Lollipop. We've already seeen some of what the new OS can do from Google's I/O conference back in August, including a the new 'Material Design' look and a greater focus on voice. Early rumours have suggested an official release could be taking place on November 1. Read everything we know about Android L so far.http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3eeee589/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961335429/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eeee589/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961335429/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eeee589/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961335429/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eeee589/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961335429/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eeee589/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961335429/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eeee589/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/IarBLx-ZtTM

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/other/Home%20working/Government%20business%20by%20US%20Department%20of%20State-470-75.jpgHaving recently attended Enterprise Apps World, I thought I would share my key takeaways from the show. It's clear that most organisations are looking at the implications of going mobile and are considering how enterprise apps will work within their mobile strategy. IT teams are working to increase the productivity of their developers to build enterprise apps faster and more cost effectively, ensuring that they are multi-channel and that they are built for mobile. As a result, agile development is now a reality and as an industry we have started to move away from the old 'waterfall' development days when very big projects included long delivery times. Now businesses are looking for rapid response to change and incremental releases as well as a time-boxed development approach. Getting agile There was also quite a lot of discussion at the show around how you achieve an agile approach and whether high-productivity tools and platforms can help complement or accelerate an agile methodology. In the past, the challenge with agile has been connecting enterprise apps to multiple systems and a large and complex infrastructure. For complex systems to integrate and work seamlessly together careful planning is needed and IT teams from various parts of the business all need to cooperate. More recently however, this has changed with new tools and platforms that allow developers to build enterprise software faster, tackling it in smaller chunks. The traditional way of building software required time to be spent on what we call the 'plumbing', creating lots of underlying infrastructure before a developer can get to the useful part of the software, which needs to be extracted so developers can work on the real business functionality. Two methodsThere are two ways of doing this. One is by using a high-productivity platform that does all the plumbing for you and lets you focus on creating business functionality. The other way is the organisation builds its own platform. However in my experience this is rare, very resource intensive, and expensive. When we've talked to our customers who are doing their first project sometimes they have approached the project with an old-fashioned 'waterfall' mind set, not really realising the capability of a visual modelling environment. However, when they see and experience this visual approach, more often than not, they open their minds as they explore, learn and understand how a high-productivity platform can help them. In my experience, once you use a high-productivity platform it actually helps you to become more agile because the shortened development and release lifecycle make it easy to obtain feedback and respond to changes. Mobile mattersSo how does the debate around development methodology translate for organisations looking to go mobile? Analysts firms currently estimate that approximately 50% of enterprise apps today can benefit from going mobile. However, when enterprise apps are taken mobile, their numbers multiply by a factor of five to ten. Current mobile app dev approaches, whether that be hand-coding and/or waterfall, simply will not scale to this magnitude. Coming away from the event it is now apparent that there is broad consensus around which approach and tools are most appropriate for the different methods of mobile application development. For example, you could go down the native route, you can take a web-based (HTML5) approach, or you could take a hybrid approach. Here is where and how the industry believes these tools and methodologies should be applied: • Native Applications: When building highly specialised consumer apps, the native approach is generally the one that organisations believe they should take. Native apps are mobile applications that are written in the sometimes-proprietary language(s) prescribed or allowed by the mobile OS manufacturer. Usually these apps provide a very rich user experience, because they are built specifically for a particular device's hardware. On the downside, for each device to be supported, you'll need to build a specific version of your app. This approach tends to carry with it specific teams dedicated to each platform because of the uniqueness of each language and device or outsourcing to companies that specialise in this. • Mobile Web Applications: For enterprises whose aim is to rapidly build apps that increase staff and business productivity, utilising a web-based (HTML5) development approach helps. HTML5 is not device specific and you can develop once and deploy across multiple platforms – so it is great for mobile. HTML5 is also good for developing enterprise applications where changes need to be made often and immediately. Rapid advances in HTML5 mean that web apps can now do most of the things that native apps can do with much less overhead in terms of development and maintenance resources. The web app approach enables IT teams to use what they already have, as opposed to the native approach, which requires new skills to be learnt. • Hybrid Applications: The main goal of a hybrid application is to leverage the power of native and the simplicity of mobile web. This is achieved by building a thin native shell around a mobile web application or applications. Companies frequently use this technique to get the mobile app listed on a variety of app stores or do device-level integrations. Hybrid is becoming very popular when you need to combine elements from the native approach but you want all the benefits of web. It is quite likely that the approach you ultimately take in mobile won't be native, mobile web, OR hybrid - it will be native, mobile web, AND hybrid. We have customers using our application platform to develop and deliver all three application types as different situations always call for different approaches. A recent Forrester report addresses the growing need for new low-code development platforms that accelerate app delivery and help enterprise organisations deliver mobile and multi-channel apps. There is no doubt that mobile app development is a key priority for organisations going forward and the faster IT teams can accommodate new mobile projects into their workload, the more responsive IT will be to meeting business needs. Andrew Burgess is a solutions engineer at OutSystems UK.http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961325220/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961325220/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961325220/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961325220/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961325220/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ee181ae/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/VNmYO0VXIFE

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/Samsung/Galaxy%20Alpha/Press/GalaxyAlpha-Press-05-470-75.jpgIt may not warrant the same kind of hoopla afforded a certain new Apple device released last week, but AT&T has quietly started offering Samsung's latest Galaxy smartphone as a US exclusive on its website Friday. Following a press release last week, AT&T today slipped the new Samsung Galaxy Alpha into its online product mix, available in a trio of color schemes starting at $199.99 with two-year agreement or an oddly priced $612.99 with no annual contract. Available in black, white or gold, Galaxy Alpha is notable for being a departure from Samsung's typical flagship handsets such as the Galaxy S5, which have been widely criticized for its use of a plastic casing. The 4.7-inch display on the Galaxy Alpha is instead housed in a metal band that bears more than a passing resemblance to last year's iPhone 5S, thanks to the squared-off edges which offer a more premium look. New directionsDespite the fresh design, Samsung has curiously taken a step backward when it comes to the display, which packs a mere 1080 x 720 pixels into its Super AMOLED panel, a step down from the full 1080p on the Galaxy S5. Internally, the Galaxy Alpha isn't exactly a slouch, powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz with 2GB RAM running the latest Android 4.4 KitKat operating system. A quick spot check of local in-store availability shows plenty of inventory at AT&T retail stores across the nation, and we're guessing the lines will be a whole lot shorter than those to nab a new iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, too. AT&T Next customers are also eligible to pick up the Samsung Galaxy Alpha for a mere $25.55 per month for 24 months with upgrade eligibility in 18 months, or $30.65 per month for 20 months for those who prefer to upgrade every 12 months instead. Take a peek at our hands-on review of the Sony Xperia Z3!http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965213224/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965213224/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965213224/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965213224/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965213224/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ede50a0/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/TfdCrd6qwrQ

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/other/Onetimers/Hyperlapse%20Selfielapse-470-75.jpgInstagram's new standalone cinematic timelapse creating tool, the Hyperlapse app has been incredibly popular. Now the camera app maker has introduced a crucial feature with its latest update - selfie timelapses or "selfielapses," if you will. Ugh. The Hyperlapse app can now also access the front facing camera on their iOS device, letting users create timelapses videos of their face. For example users could shoot a timelapse themselves on a busy street as pedestrians walk by. Selfielapse shooters take footage of themselves to create a video where the camera stays fixed on users face as their surroundings go whizzing by. The developers behind the Hyperlapse apps also suggested user could document self-transformations with the new feature such as getting a haircut or putting on make up. Self-loving artJust like shooting hyperlapses with the rear camera, the app will smooth out camera shake, a particularly useful feature for users with wobbly hands. Users will also be to share their short motion clips on Facebook, Instagram and save them to the camera roll. Looking past the self-centered nature of selfies, the new Hyperlapse app update could lead to a creative new set of short motion clips. Just please no selfielapses showing the difference between duck and sparrow face. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus also have their own built-in timelapse camera modehttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175906/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175906/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175906/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175906/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965175906/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed4ae30/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/iVuN-_nVpro

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/Motorola/Moto%20X%202014/motorola-2014-13mp-camera-470-75.jpgThe weekend is nearly upon us, and Verizon Wireless customers can spend it with a new companion made of curved metal and glass as the US carrier starts serving up Motorola's latest smartphone online and in retail stores. Verizon Wireless today announced the arrival of the Moto X (2014) this Friday, September 26, with a 16GB model in either black or white available in store for only $99.99 with a new two-year activation. For a limited time, the white model will come with that swanky Bamboo back you've no doubt seen in numerous pictures of the device, and the 5.2-inch, XLTE-ready handset will also be available for order from the Verizon website tomorrow as well. Verizon's website will also offer the full complement of Moto Maker customizations including genuine woods and leathers, including models with 32GB onboard storage priced at $149.99 with two-year agreement. Moto here, Moto thereThe arrival of the Moto X at Verizon follows last week's preorder kickoff at rival AT&T, although the carrier hasn't confirmed when the device will actually go on sale, despite the company's web store showing shipments were expected to begin two days ago. Motorola's website has also been accepting preorders since September 16 for an off-contract, SIM-unlocked edition of the 2014 Moto X priced at $499.99, which the manufacturer says will work on either AT&T or T-Mobile US networks. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless is offering a limited-time bump in cellular data for customers who activate or upgrade to a new smartphone (including the Moto X) on a More Everything plan with at least 1GB of data. That deal could net new Moto X buyers an extra 1GB of bonus data each month for the next two years, or until the smartphone is removed from service - but why would anyone want to ditch a smartphone with a Bamboo back in the first place? Scope our review of the less-expensive Motorola Moto G (2014)!http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ed40175/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186165/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40175/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186165/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40175/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186165/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40175/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186165/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40175/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/206158186165/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40175/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/9qIlALjYnmY

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/internet/heartbleed_padlock-470-75.jpg The BASH vulnerability has been dubbed one of the most serious vulnerabilities ever to be discovered and like Heartbleed back in April, has left many system administrators (Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X) scrambling for cover. TechRadar Pro asked Craig Young, security researcher at Tripwire, more about what GNU's Bourne Again Shell's affliction. TRP: What is the vulnerability? CY: An Akamai researcher discovered that BASH, the dominant command-line interpreter present on Unix/Linux based systems, will improperly process crafted variable definitions allowing trailing bytes to be processed as OS commands. BASH allows users to define environmental variables which contain function definitions and a flaw within this parsing process means that commands specified after the function are executed when the variable definitions are passed to a bash interpreter. The problem can easily be reproduced by logging into BASH shell and defining a crafted variable definition with trailing commands but in this scenario there is little to know risk since the commands are limited to the permissions of the already logged in user. Where this 'shell shock' vulnerability really becomes a problem is when we consider the many ways in which BASH is indirectly exposed to an adversary. The most prominent (and worrisome) example of this is web technologies which use the vulnerable command-interpreter to generate responses to HTTP requests. Since various details from the request are stored in BASH variables and passed to the command-interpreter, a remote unauthenticated attacker can use these scripts to inject commands which will run in the context of the web server. TRP: When can this vulnerability be exploited? CY: If an attacker has control over the definition of even a single environment variable imported into a bash environment, they can trigger the execution of arbitrary commands. Although it is likely that researchers will continue to recognize new vectors for this attack, the most prominent vector is the common gateway interface (CGI) particularly when bash is used to drive the script. This process is vulnerable because various request components (header values, protocol version, etc) are provided to the underlying bash script as environment variables. For example, the Apache web server will set an environment variable HTTP_X_CVE_2014_6271 when a CGI request contains the header 'X-CVE-2014-6271: '. Specifying a header value with the form '() { :; }; command;' will then be presented to bash as something like: HTTP_X_CVE_2014_6271 = () { :; }; command; The result is that 'command' is immediately executed rather than being contained within the variable definition. In general any scenario in which untrusted user-input is placed into a BASH variable opens the door for exploitation. Beyond web sites, Red Hat's security team has highlighted several other vectors including network exploitation through a rogue DHCP server and privilege escalation by way of SUID scripts using variables set by an untrusted user. TRP: What can an adversary do? CY: Successful exploitation of the CVE-2014-6271 'shell shock' vulnerability allows execution of arbitrary commands as whatever user the BASH script is processed as. The impact therefore will vary based on the attack vector with the most severe impact of course being when an attacker can influence variables used in a privileged script such as the case with a rogue DHCP server. Administrators will more likely be concerned with the web based attack vector due to the ease of anonymous remote exploitation but by itself. In this scenario, an attacker may be able to disclose source code, delete entire web sites, or access an interactive shell. Fortunately best practices for web server configuration dictate that servers run as a low privileged user such as 'www-data' which will limit what an attacker can do. The risk of course becomes much more serious when coupled with a local privilege escalation vulnerability. Many administrators are slower to patch vulnerabilities which are only exposed to local users so this multi-staged attack scenario is in fact very realistic. TRP: What can administrators do for protection? CY: Patches are available to resolve the behavior by fixing the way in which BASH parses function definitions. Deploying these patches should be very high priority especially on Internet facing systems which make use of BASH to handle HTTP requests. If there is anything we learned from heartbleed however it is that it can be daunting to find all the places a vulnerability may be exposed and some web servers are so inconvenient to update that patches can be delayed for a prolonged period of time. In this situations, other technologies can help minimize risks. Intrusion prevention systems (IPS) for example can prevent malicious looking data streams from reaching a server and file integrity monitoring (FIM) can alert administrators if an attack does reach the server. TRP: Now for the big question, 'worse than Heartbleed?' CY: The broad range of potential attack vectors makes it very difficult to directly compare heartbleed to shell shock. The question of whether heartbleed is worse than shell shock is entirely dependent on the role and configuration of affected servers. While the OpenSSL vulnerability could be readily exploited on any system with a web server running an affected OpenSSL, it does not hold true that all web servers running an affected BASH version are vulnerable. (Web servers must have a vulnerable bash interpreter as well as some server-side script which uses BASH with attacker controlled variable definitions.) Although typically I would call a command injection a far more serious risk than a buffer over-read, it does depend on the how the server is used. Heartbleed can easily and stealthily be used to expose private key material and passwords which may not be directly accessible in an unencrypted format to a shell shock exploit. Heartbleed can also expose session tokens and account credentials used to gain administrative access without the presence of other vulnerabilities whereas the BASH issue alone will not generally lead to root access through a web request. The threat model however completely changes when considering an attacker positioned on the network to do things like setting up a rogue DHCP server but generally speaking there are a lot of malicious actions which can be performed from this privileged position on the network. So in conclusion, my answer to the question of 'Is shell shock worse than Heartbleed,' is an emphatic "It depends." Speaking of Heartbleed, can't believe it's nearly six months since it was first discovered. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ed40186/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186161/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40186/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186161/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40186/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186161/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40186/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158186161/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40186/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/206158186161/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed40186/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/8YhL7KcWigU

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/people/salesforce/woodsonmartin-470-75.jpgWe caught up with Woodson Martin, CMO of the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, during the Salesforce ExactTarget Connections 2014 conference in Indiana. We spoke with him about the convergence of marketing and IT and why mobile will force marketers to rethink the customer experience. TechRadar Pro: Where is the marriage between marketing and IT heading? Woodson Martin: This is a massive transformation. The CMO has always considered themselves owner of the brand. But the experience of the brand is delivered through service, through the salesperson in the retail store, through the popcorn vendor at a concert venue. Every touchpoint is an experience that impacts perception, loyalty and interest. Because of the technology available, [brands have] the ability to collect interaction data, and because of the power of the phone, brands can know who and where I am and what I just did. If I grant permission to the brands I trust they can use that information to create an experience that motivates me to continue on that journey and to buy more. That is an unprecedented opportunity for the CMO and the brand. TRP: Does this mean a smaller role for the IT department? Should we expect consolidation in IT as tools become easier and more intuitive to use? Martin: People in IT have a very safe future. Tech doesn't become less important in the industry. If you're in tech and have expertise with specific tech, you need to constantly evolve your skills and adapt to new tech. If you don't you probably will become irrelevant. IT is a disciple and continues to be a safe career investment. We're excited about giving IT and developers the tools to make amazing things happen. TRP: A lot of what you have discussed this week revolves around mobile. Where do you expect mobile marketing to head in terms of how fluent marketers will need to be with the technology? Particularly with wearables entering the mix? Martin: Marketers need to pay attention to what's happening with these technologies. None of us know which one will become the next iPhone. The iPhone and smartphones have changed everything about marketing. Where is the next revolution coming? Which technologies are hitting the market now? I don't know yet. I can tell you that wearable tech is a trend, not a blip. We have the average American today with five or six device categories of wearables that can be interesting, but most still don't take advantage and still rely on phones and apps. Some of the categories are becoming big and converging, like health and fitness devices. We're seeing health and fitness stuff on new devices like the Apple Watch. Marketers need to have these devices and understand these experiences and how manufacturers are integrating these experiences. That's coordinated in a way that would make any traditional marketer say "Oh, wow, we need to rethink our customer journey. What is the unboxing experience of our brand when someone opens that smartwatch?" We have so much to learn from these new technologies and devices. TRP: Salesforce has done a lot to add to its social expertise with the acquisitions of Buddy Media, Radian6 and ExactTarget. Is there any room for additional improvement or investment? Where should we look? Martin: These things are hard to predict. Social is a rapidly changing landscape. We will keep our eyes open and meet with young companies that are innovating. We're always looking for good integrations with existing tech. We are really excited about our platform becoming a place where the CMOs and IT want to put all the data about their customers, regardless of channels. When they can put that data in and use it, then customers win and we win. We want to work with any technology brands are using to collect valuable information. TRP: For many, email seems to be old hat, but the technology is constantly evolving. Can you talk about where email is and where you see it going in the next couple of years? Martin: It's the workhorse of digital communications. The bulk of information still travels through email. Email notifications are generated by apps. Email is unsurpassed as a channel for asynchronous communication. It's not going anywhere. Email evolves because the devices evolve, because the challenges of deliverability and relevance are evolving. That continues to be a major focus for us. But it's only one of the channels that are important. Consistency across channels is where we're most excited. TRP: How does Salesforce1 fit into everything you've been discussing this week? Does mobile app deployment figure to be a significant driver of growth for Salesforce or is it supplementary to web-based apps? Martin: Salesforce1 is our platform for building apps and mobile apps. I think about it as the tech that allows me to run my business from my phone. I think of Heroku and Journey Builder for Apps as the deliverers of those experiences for my customers. I can use Journey Builder for Apps to enhance the experience of using my app, to customize and personalized the app I built for my customers. The benefit of the SalesForce1 platform is the amazing variety of things I can build. There is no easier way to deploy these apps across phones and tablets, PCs or anything else. We are super excited about bringing together all of these ideas to drive together the applications. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961272538/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961272538/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961272538/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961272538/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961272538/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed3b8fd/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/V52BHedmW3o

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mikebushong-470-75.jpgThe "big" in big data is enough to make most IT architects worry about the possibility of an increased load on an already taxed infrastructure. As enterprises move from experimentation to wide deployment of big data and other clustered applications, the network that underpins the entire thing becomes both more critical, and more loaded, than ever. IT leaders need to ask themselves one simple question: Is my network ready for big data? Big data is big, but not how you thinkWhen most people think about big data, they imagine massive applications spanning thousands of nodes in support of the largest web-scale companies. While it is true that these deployments do exist (Yahoo! notably has more than 40,000 Hadoop nodes), the average enterprise big data deployment is actually in the 100 to 150 node range. So, if the average deployment is relatively small, is scale even an issue? For most enterprises, scale isn't going to be about one or two big data applications. Today, enterprises already experimenting in this field are really just dipping their toes into the proverbial big data water. The deployments are small because they are more of an experiment than a business-critical application. However, if these initial forays into the space yield business success, expect the addition of other applications to quickly follow. The likely course this will take is the proliferation of small big data applications, each consuming a few hundred nodes. While most companies will never experience the complexity of a 10,000-node deployment, they will start to experience the aggregate load of a few dozen smaller applications. The role of bandwidth for big dataThe entire premise of big data is to break large workloads into smaller, more consumable chunks. To do this, data has to be replicated to servers in a cluster. Since most big data applications make three copies of every piece of information (two in the rack, one in another rack for resiliency), the load on the network becomes large very quickly. Traditionally, handling load on a network is done with a technology called Equal Cost Multi-Pathing (ECMP). Essentially, ECMP distributes flows across a small number of equal cost paths in the network. So, even though there might be many ways to get from point A to point B, ECMP will select the shortest path and load balance across those. For big data flows, this can create problems. When you send a lot of traffic across the same few paths, you can get congestion in the network. Most big data applications deal with congestion by simply resending the request. But, during times of congestion retransmissions only exacerbate the problem. The hottest trend in networking is a technology called software-defined networking (SDN). SDN's core architectural tenet is the separation of control and forwarding. By creating a central control point, SDN is able to intelligently look at the network in its entirety. This makes it possible to intelligently forward traffic along longer but less congested paths. It could be that the adoption of non-equal-cost multi-pathing is one key to successfully scaling infrastructure for big data. More than bandwidthWhile SDN can help alleviate the bandwidth issues by utilizing more of the available paths in the network, scaling big data is not only about bandwidth. If the growth of big data in enterprise datacenters involves multiple applications, that means the more looming scaling concern is how the network can account for different applications with different requirements. Most networks today are built to be agnostic to the applications running on them. That means the network is designed to be general purpose, treating all applications in roughly the same way. But not all big data applications are the same. Some are very bandwidth heavy (as with data backups). Others are more latency sensitive (like recommendation engines in AdTech). Others are sensitive to jitter or loss. And still others have strict compliance requirements (PCI or HIPAA). The point here is that it is impossible for a single network to treat these applications differently if that network is not at least somewhat application aware. SDN has the potential to support application requirements via abstract policy expression. In other words, users can define an application and attribute to it the things that are most important. If bandwidth is important, the controller can dynamically create high-capacity links when necessary. If latency is important, the controller can help ensure the shortest possible path is always used. If isolating traffic for compliance reasons is critical, the controller can create tunnels. The future of enterprise IT is changing dramatically, led by applications like big data. Fortunately, technology advances in the underpinning infrastructure should offer relief for enterprises looking to take advantage. However, IT architects will need to plot their infrastructure courses carefully and deliberately to ensure that the underlying infrastructure intersects the applications they want to run. Michael Bushong, VP of Marketing at Plexxihttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ed239af/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158178601/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed239af/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158178601/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed239af/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158178601/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed239af/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158178601/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed239af/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/206158178601/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ed239af/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/4X-ycGsejIU

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/events/Amazon%20April%202014%20video%20event/amazon-fire-tv-release-date-470-75.jpgAlthough Amazon has thrown its hat into the tablet, set-top box and smartphone arenas, each type of device shares a common goal: Making it easy to buy things from the mothership, an objective which could soon expand across the entire home. Reuters today reported that Amazon's secretive Lab126 division is apparently hard at work on the next generation of hardware to help shoppers consume more of the e-tailer's goods at the push of a single button. According to an unnamed source, the estimated $55 million plans involve development of internet-connected "smart home gadgets" capable of notifying consumers when consumables or repairs are needed, and then "order products like detergent by pressing a button." Exactly how Amazon customers might conduct such purchases remains somewhat murky, but a second unidentified source claims the e-tailer is "interested" in some form of wearable device, as well as sensors which could facilitate such technology. Now hiringApparently an expansion beyond existing Kindle Fire, Fire TV and Fire Phone hardware, the report claims Amazon intends to beef up engineering staff "by at least 27 percent" at the company's Sunnyvale and Cupertino facilities over the next five years for a total of "at least 3,757 people." The sources are in agreement that Amazon's ambitious plans may never bear fruit, while company spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall offered little insight as to what Lab126 is up to beyond the current 2014 hardware lineup. "We will continue to invent and create new features, services and products, and to support this innovation," Pearsall told Reuters in a statement, adding Lab126 was moving "incredibly quickly" while growing at an equally accelerated rate. Unfortunately, the engineering group's most recent endeavor - the four-year odyssey known as Fire Phone - has thus far failed to live up to hype, with a steep price cut from $199 (about UK£122, AU$224) to less than a dollar with a two-year AT&T contract. Revisit our review of the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite!http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965137333/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965137333/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965137333/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965137333/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965137333/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ecb17ca/sc/36/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/TqCrbWfZbO4

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/Windows%208.1%20hands%20on/3rows_POR-470-75.jpgFrom what I have gleaned so far, it looks as though Windows 9 offers some positive benefits for enterprises over Windows 8, although there will be a few checks and balances that organisations will need to make, particularly in the often thorny area of security. We will see a return to a more desktop-focused environment, meaning that Windows 9 will be much closer in design to Windows XP/7 than Windows 8. This will make the traditional desktop easier to configure and use than Windows 8's default Metro interface. There are a few APIs marked as deprecated in Windows 8 that we can probably expect to see removed in Windows 9 and replaced altogether. What is unclear at this stage is how much of an impact this will have on application compatibility. I doubt that we will see another XP-Windows 7 migration scenario: it's likely this will be more of an iterative than transformative transition, which bodes well for enterprises. The Windows store will point to a corporate internal app store. This will come into its own only when it's populated with corporate applications. Check our TechRadar's coverage of Windows 9 so far However this raises the question of how many enterprise environments will make the leap to self-service published applications - and the associated expansion of licensing costs. Another factor to consider in this scenario is how to effectively control application spread within the organisation. The Start Menu is back in Windows 9 and the start screen is gone - at least for desktops. The Windows 8 Charms bar is going and will be replaced with an additional window control in the top right, although I imagine that this would only be used for Metro apps. In addition, accessing multiple desktops will become easier using Windows 9, making it easier to categorise workspaces by tasks and easily flick between them. The Windows key is still the recommended way to start applications. Microsoft continues to promote the flat graphical style with Metro applications and is aiming to maintain the same Metro user interface metaphors across phones, tablets and desktops. There's a notifications bar adding a phone-style list of things that have recently happened on the system: new messages, hardware insertions, available updates, etc. to the system notification area. These will all be of benefit to enterprises. Maintenance and management will still be through GPOs (Group Policy Objects) as in almost all enterprise environments. The update methodology appears to be constant incremental tweaking rather than gold image, patch cycles and service packs. This should improve management/update capabilities in the enterprise. Microsoft may also choose with Windows 9 to introduce the Cortana personal assistant (Microsoft's version of Apple's Siri) to Windows devices other than Windows phones. As with Siri, Cortana will take requests and questions using voice recognition. You can ask Cortana to do simple things, like setting alarms and calendar appointments, as well as ask it to alert you about likely events and schedules based on patterns of usage and by place-watching your contacts, appointments and other information. However I'm not sure how useful or functional this would be in a busy office environment in a fixed location. Finally, a desirable additional feature would be enhanced integration between the Metro and desktop versions of Internet Explorer to aid in the sharing of favourites/bookmarks/history etc. We will have to wait and see whether this is forthcoming. There will be the capability within Windows 9 to store data in a variety of ways: locally, on the network and in the cloud. Storage spaces will show your collected storage in one consolidated view, regardless of where the data is actually stored. The flexibility here is good, but how this is deployed by enterprises is uncertain. Enterprises will first need to set in a place a number of important measures in order to ensure that configurability and security are not compromised. Windows 9 also goes further than previous OS in a bid to entice people into a Microsoft ecosystem outside of work, with its focus on linking people in via Xbox, Microsoft Outlook, and the cloud. This is another area where we expect to see access controls put in place by enterprises to minimise the risk of any security glitches involving corporate data. Finally, it would seem that the Windows close/minimise/maximise buttons will be present on the metro apps, allowing them to coexist with true desktop applications. As yet though, there is no information on how much copying/pasting or data sharing will be possible between the different styles of applications. In conclusion, I believe that Windows 9 will bring in a lot of positive enhancements for enterprises for the future. However, given that many enterprises are only now in the process of migrating from XP to Windows 7, it will be a while before Windows 9 adoption becomes mainstream. Damian Dwyer is Practice Director, End User Computing Practice at British IT consultancy ECS.http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235156/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235156/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235156/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235156/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961235156/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f137/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/YVRZiubXFvI

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/internet/Hacking/hacking-usethisone-470-75.jpgWe can trace the history of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks back at least 14 years. In the final days of the 1990s, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon warned of a new threat: tools that used distributed technology to create large networks of hosts and launch coordinated packet flooding attacks. Few paid attention to the warning. Ever since that initial red flag from CERT, we've seen the missions and methods of DDoS attackers mature. DDoS incidents now occur frequently, but companies have failed to do more than perform perfunctory risk analyses, except in the instances in which there is a major political or economic risk (instances which are becoming more frequent as well). Claiming budget pressures, businesses continue to cling to hope-and-pray approaches when it comes to DDoS, rather than deploying effective prevention technology. Unfortunately, as any student of history knows, if you ignore the past, it will revisit you in the future. The short, escalating history of DDoS attacksSince DDoS first cropped up in 1999, attackers' motivations have rapidly evolved: 2000: Criminals use DDoS for their own amusement and vanity.2003: Attackers leverage DDoS for extortion and competitive gain.2007: DDoS plays a role in political opposition movements.2008: Hacktivists use DDoS attacks to make idealistic statements.2013: DDoS grows up through the use of new vectors.2014: DDoS becomes a tool for cyberterrorists.Modern attacks include those against US financial institutions, which have reportedly exceeded 50 Gbps in volume. Earlier this year, an NTP distributed reflection denial of service (DrDoS) attack larger than 400 Gbps prevailed. NTP attacks are a type of DrDoS where an attacker spoofs the target IP address and sends malicious requests for time synchronization to open NTP servers. Large telecommunications carriers are seeing DDoS incidents affect their infrastructures. Just this summer, Code Spaces, a code hosting service, was forced to permanently close its business after a multifaceted cyberattack – DDoS included – resulted in hackers deleting the majority of the company's data and backups. Even more recently, cyber attackers brought down Sony's online gaming network through a DDoS attack, and grounded a plane carrying the company's president by issuing a bomb threat. What's it going to take for organizations to recognize the gravity of these attacks and move more decisively on DDoS prevention? When attacks occurAs these attacks continue, the kinds of victims affected grow, as well. Today's sophisticated DDoS attackers collect as many as tens of thousands of infected or poorly-configured clients and servers. With the ability to control or manipulate those servers and make them inaccessible on the Internet, attackers can take a system or even an entire network offline. The targeted organization might be the primary victim, but it's not the only one. When these sites go down, consumers can't rely on the Internet for commerce, and companies take a hit to their reputations and sales numbers. Internet infrastructure providers suffer latency, saturation and outages as malicious traffic saturates peering points and transoceanic cables. At the government level, law enforcement agencies and military organizations spend billions of dollars to protect public infrastructure, diverting tax revenue and defense resources from other projects. When hacktivist groups target these political bodies or financial institutions, making aggressive demands to accompany their cyberattacks and acting on extreme impulses, it becomes a matter of national security even beyond that of the initial profit and productivity concerns. In the broadest view of victims, DDoS impacts whole societies, which struggle with destabilized Internet access and the potential for wider economic catastrophe. Taking precautions to deal with inevitable DDoS attacksInformation security managers routinely evaluate these kinds of risks and determine the potential costs of mitigating them. Surprisingly, many teams still decide to ignore these threats, adopt prevention plans that aren't strong enough to be effective or put off investments until they are attacked. For infrastructure providers in particular, these so-called strategies are particularly dangerous. Too many of these companies erroneously believe that they can protect themselves from DDoS by dropping customers that court attack through abusive behavior. However, debilitating DDoS attacks can affect any company, regardless of its business practices or size. One need only look at the experience of an Internet relay chat (IRC) company in the fall of 2013.The company was targeted by a 243.79 Gbps (63.78 million packets per second) DDoS attack, an onslaught that few businesses could withstand without a previously-established DDoS prevention plan. Luckily, the company had proactively implemented DDoS mitigation technology, and it was able to quickly clean and send authentic traffic to its network without any outages. Had this IRC waited until it needed DDoS prevention, it might have found it far too expensive – in several ways – to survive the attack. Consider this typical series of post-DDoS events. A company's website might begin to slow and then quickly come to a complete halt. Within two minutes of an attack's start, the IT team scrambles to determine the cause of its website troubles, commerce on the site ends and revenue begins to fall. In the meantime, escalation teams focus on the Web server and network routers in search of an explanation for the outage, while an engineer goes to the data center to examine the edge router. That's likely the point at which he calls the carrier, but usually without success, since lines go down due to the volume of emergency calls coming in. In this scenario, customers panic within the first hour of the outage. They share rumors and frustration across social networks. In response, the company's management team makes a move for mitigation services, and finds that emergency rates are heavily inflated. However, they have little choice but to pay. Even if the mitigation company restores service within three hours of the attack, the damage is done. A company in this situation might lose $2 million in revenue during those three hours. At a 40% margin, that three-hour outage costs $267,000 in lost profit and $360,000 in emergency mitigation services. That cost doesn't include staff time or long-term reputation damage, which can be significant. DDoS attackers have quickly matured in their motivations and their technological prowess, no longer satisfied with fulfilling personal vendettas but now pursuing larger political agendas with more drastic goals. Potential victims need to mature, as well. Companies can't continue to rely on the same non-prevention they clung to in the past. Because moments matter from the very beginning of a DDoS event, organizations need to increase their prevention capabilities before they need them. "It's not in the budget" or "it won't happen to us" are no longer viable reasons for delay. Jeffrey Lyon is Co-Founder of Black Lotus Communicationshttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235154/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235154/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235154/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961235154/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961235154/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec9f13e/sc/1/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/nRh04B7n_IE

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/people/salesforce/bryanwade-470-75.jpgThe ExactTarget Marketing Cloud will introduce a content creation tool on October 6, said Bryan Wade, SVP & Chief Product Officer of the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud at Connections 2014 in Indiana. The new tool includes asset and workflow management features designed to improve digital and content marketing efforts. ExactTarget's website says its content management tool provides intuitive search across all content formats, personalized email creation and real-time, personalized coupon and offer distribution. Users will be able to drag and drop files from their desktop into the application, and set files to expire at a later date. IntegrationsHe also announced an integration between ExactTarget and other Salesforce acquisitions, Buddy Media and Radian6, called Social Studio. The three tools will offer ExactTarget customers a social listening and social publishing platform across major social networks. McDonald's Digital Marketing Manager David Martinelli said the fast food chain uses Social Studio to connect with consumers. McDonald's will be looking to integrate social advertising, real-time and local content across its social platforms, he said. Wade also said ExactTarget's Marketing Cloud is now fully integrated with Salesforce's Sales and Service Clouds. Journey BuilderYesterday, Salesforce launched an updated version of its Journey Builder tool to include compatibility with apps. Journey Builder, a campaign planning and automation tool, now provides personalization and real-time marketing updates for mobile apps. Other features of Journey Builder for Apps include a Javascript tag that enables marketers to gain real-time access to mobile data, as well as a beacon connection that can ping customers that are in the proximity of retail or office locations on their mobile devices, Wade said. Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion (around £1.5 billion, AU$2.7) in June of last year. It is the company's largest acquisition. Which are the 10 CRM systems you should know?http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ec93224/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965227715/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec93224/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965227715/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec93224/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965227715/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec93224/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965227715/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec93224/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965227715/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ec93224/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/YSXl0wkT4no

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/TRBC/Generic/future-data-centre-470-75.jpgWhat is a storage bottleneck? And how can you avoid it? Thomas Pavel, EMEA Storage Sales Director at Avago Technologies, told us about the strains caused by the data deluge and how your organisation can avoid them. TechRadar Pro: What are the biggest challenges of the data deluge? Thomas Pavel: The volumes of published information and data continue to grow unabated, fuelled by demanding applications like business analytics, social media, video streaming and grid computing. Many organisations, regardless of their area of business, want insight from new and unstructured sources such as news reporting, web usage trends and social media chatter. The ability to access and retrieve data quickly is also a major factor contributing to business success and/or customer satisfaction. But there's a lot of data to handle. Just keeping up with this relentless growth and storing of data is challenge enough, but how to deal with such vast volumes of data cost-effectively? And perhaps most importantly: How to maintain or even improve storage performance? TRP: What is a storage bottleneck? Where and when do bottlenecks tend to occur? TP: As the volume of data increases, so too can the time it takes to access it. This is known as a 'bottleneck'. There are many potential locations for 'pain points' or bottlenecks in an enterprise system, so locating the bottleneck is not always simple. Addressing the bottleneck and maintaining performance is the rationale behind continual advances in storage technologies today. When designing storage systems for performance, it is essential to understand where the bottlenecks can occur. This is especially true given that the bottlenecks change with each new generation of technology along the data storage path. The three most critical elements that affect storage performance are the server's Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe®) bus, the SAS solution as implemented in host bus adapters (HBAs) and expanders, and the disk drives themselves, which can have either a SAS or a SATA interface. Storage bottlenecks migrate among the successive generations of the various technologies involved end-to-end. With the advent of third generation PCIe, for example, second generation SAS became the new storage bottleneck. Third generation SAS is now able to take full advantage of third generation PCIe's performance, making PCIe the new bottleneck in systems using 12Gb/s SAS. TRP: What guidelines can we use to maximise storage system performance? TP: When designing a storage system for high performance, it is necessary to understand the throughput limitations of each element. Critical applications must also scale easily over time while remaining both highly protected and easily manageable. SAS is now in its third generation, and the performance has doubled with each new generation from the original 3Gb/s to 6Gb/s and now 12Gb/s. SAS, like PCIe uses lanes and high performance storage systems normally aggregate multiple SAS lanes to support high data rates. TRP: Does the storage bottleneck change with different system configurations? TP: This table provides a summary of some sample configurations showing where the bottleneck exists when configured with a "full complement" of disks (the slowest element in the system). As shown, the need to support more disks (for capacity) requires the use of later generations of SAS and/or PCIe, and/or more SAS lanes. Looking at it another way, in systems with a small number of disks, their relatively low aggregate throughput becomes the bottleneck, so there is no need to "over-design" the configuration with later generation technologies and/or more SAS lanes. The disks referenced in the table example all have a 6Gb/s interface with a throughput of 230MB/s and 550MB/s for the 15K RPM HDDs and SSDs, respectively. Note that the table assumes all drives are operating at their maximum throughput simultaneously, and this does not always occur. It is also important to note that IOPs is often more critical than throughput in many applications today, depending on the circumstances. For these reasons, each configuration is normally able to support many more disks than indicated. TRP: So how can SAS third generation improve performance for businesses? TP: Being able to move at 12Gb/s means that measurements of over one million IOPS can be achieved. 12Gb/s SAS is an evolutionary change and a big step forward for the market. For the first time IT managers will be able to exploit the full potential of PCIe 3.0. This in turn will benefit businesses that rely on mission-critical data in a variety of environments, including transactional databases, data mining, video streaming and editing. TRP: What are the issues in migrating to SAS third generation? TP: The primary issue in the migration to third generation SAS is a familiar one: investment protection. Most organisations have made a significant investment in SAS disks, and want to preserve that investment when migrating to 12Gb/s SAS technology. The problem is: The third generation SAS standard maintains backwards compatibility by throttling down to the slowest SAS data rate in the system. In small-scale point-to-point configurations, this is not always an issue because the migration would require upgrading both an Initiator and its Target. But in most organisations, such point-to-point configurations are rare. The system-level "slowest data rate" performance limitation, therefore, means that in organisations without point-to-point configurations would not be able achieve the 12Gb/s performance boost until all disks support this new standard. TRP: How can this issue be overcome? TP: Fortunately there is a way to overcome this limitation, and that requires understanding a little about how SAS expanders function. A SAS expander makes it possible for a single (or multiple) Initiator(s) to communicate with multiple Targets concurrently. Expanders help make SAS remarkably scalable, and because each is capable of supporting multiple disks, expanders also makes it possible to aggregate the throughput of those disks. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961151212/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961151212/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961151212/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208961151212/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208961151212/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc6d72/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/U3wZzVBiazY

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/events/Apple-sept2014/screengrabs/applepay-24-470-75.jpgOver the years, Apple has been accused of many things. Right from the inception of the company – known then as "Apple Computer" – critics have lambasted the executive team, products and vision. Even today, "haters" take to the comment sections of blogs in their droves to take aim at earnings, new products, changes to management and so on. The death of Steve Jobs, co-founder and the visionary behind what Apple is today, rocked the company to its core leading to speculation that the firm could never return to creating blockbuster, market-leading products. Check out these other Apple Pay opinion pieces Apple Pay: A tipping point in retail?Will Apple Pay pave the way for more secure mobile payments?Apple Pay, a catalyst for the contactless industryHas Apple just opened up the world to mobile wallets?Will Apple Pay work when it comes to the crunch?Mobile payments: Why a mobile phone needs to be more than a fat credit cardCould Apple disrupt the merchant banking space with the Watch?Apple NFC service offers a big bite for businessesCooking up profitsTim Cook, Jobs' replacement, has taken a mild mannered approach, by all accounts, preferring a cool, calm and collected attitude over Jobs' often rash and angry behaviour. So far, Cook has taken Apple to places of even more profitability – in fiscal 2013 Apple made $171 billion (around £105 billion, AU$193 billion) in revenue, of which $37 billion (around £23 billion, AU$42 billion) was profit – but he has brought no new products to market, beyond refinements to the existing stable. At least, that was the case until September. The dust has just settled from the keynote event earlier this month, held in the same location Jobs used to unveil the original Macintosh in 1984, during which Cook revealed two new iPhones in two sizes, the Apple Watch and Apple Pay. The mainstream press has paid the majority of attention to the new iPhones – now in larger sizes to compete with Samsung – and the Apple Watch, which will be available in "Spring 2015" and costs $349 (around £215, AU$395) upwards. What has been omitted from this coverage is Apple Pay, one of the most exciting projects Apple has ever launched. Many expected Cook to simply unveil a watch and some new iPhones – both of which are set to sell at record levels, and indeed the iPhones did so, shifting in excess of 10 million units over the first weekend – and not much else. They were wrong. Analyst concernsFor analysts, only introducing new iPhones and the Apple Watch was worrying: Apple, as a company, needs to diversify its portfolio, they say, before the market for smartphones – especially high-end models – stagnates. The iPhone makes up nearly 60% of Apple's revenues so the concerns are somewhat legitimate. Expanding into the larger screen space does open Apple up to a large amount of new customers and, most importantly, cannibalises the sales of Samsung's Galaxy Note and other Galaxy devices, which have long since taken sales away from the iPhone. As for the watch, whether Apple can lead the "smartwatch" space and entice people away from their own watches is still up for debate – and that won't be decided until 2015. Enter Apple Pay. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Tim Cook spoke about how the features and devices released now are going to be used by Apple in different ways over the coming years. While they may look standalone at launch, in the future they will be utilised in different ways and will be integrated with new products. Apple Pay is one such thing. The premise behind Apple Pay is simple: instead of having cash or a card, you use the NFC chip inside your iPhone (and Apple Watch) to pay for things over the counter. Apple has partnered with all of the major American banks and has signed up hundreds of thousands of retailers. Apple Pay works because customers will likely buy the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus - and, later, the Apple Watch - unaware of Apple Pay. They will buy the new iPhones because they like Apple products, are due an upgrade or thought the iPhone was the best phone on the market and so on. Over the coming months, Apple will heavily promote Apple Pay and more and more retailers will sign up. People with the new iPhones - over 10 million, according to Apple - will then sign up to Apple Pay and start actively using it. Apple could be the oneWhile many companies have tried to get virtual wallets off the ground before – Google Wallet being the most famous example – Apple could gain the critical mass needed to bring cash- and card-less transactions to the mainstream. As we already mentioned, in the first weekend, Apple has sold over 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets, which means that the company effectively has over 10 million people equipped to use Apple Pay right out of the gate. Apple also created a large incentive for retailers to make their checkouts Apple Pay compatible. Instead of taking a cut of the retailers' profits – as Square does – Apple instead negotiated with the banks to take a 0.15% commission from their side, an unprecedented move. "We want to invest in programs that respect our role in the ecosystem," James Anderson, senior vice president for mobile product development at MasterCard, told the New York Times. The incentive for the banks to cooperate with Apple Pay is, according to the Times, because banks will now be opened up to transactions that usually would've occurred using cash. Many shops have a "minimum spend" limit on credit and debit cards whereas Apple Pay would enable a customer to spend as much or as little as they wanted using just their phone. Security firstIn the name of security, Apple is using TouchID to authenticate transactions with Apple Pay. As long as a finger or thumb is in contact with the TouchID pad, the transaction will commence – when the contact is broken, the transaction fails and must be restarted. This system is attractive to the banks as it cuts down on credit card fraud. A pin number or signature can be faked or stolen, a card can be found and used online, and cash can be spent, but a fingerprint is invulnerable to all of these failings. Of course, whether Apple Pay will be a success remains to be seen. All previous attempts have failed and getting people to ditch cash will be a tough task for Apple. But as more and more retailers sign up, and more and more iPhone users invest, Apple Pay can only get better and better – and the money Apple will make can only grow and grow. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175209/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175209/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175209/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965175209/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965175209/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3ebc3c03/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/KCsOf4pTYVQ

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/logos/Beats%20Music-470-75.jpgApple is ready to forget about Beats Music, the streaming service it picked up as part of a blockbuster Beats acquisition four months ago. According to multiple sources of TechCrunch, Apple plans to shut down Beats Music, though exactly when isn't clear. With Beats Music engineers apparently already turning their attention to other projects (including iTunes), no built-in app on the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, nor any mention of integration during the Apple Watch announcement, it seems Apple is ready to press pause permanently on the brand. It's widely thought Apple's multi-billion dollar buy of Beats was never about Beats Music, not least because its user numbers are paltry. Bringing co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine into the Apple fold was much more of a coup, not to mention Beats' high-profile headphone business. Throw in the fact Apple is all about brand continuity, and keeping Beats Music running alongside iTunes doesn't mesh with the Cupertino modus operandi. Soooo, now what?We've heard for months that Apple's download model has struggled to keep up as streaming music competitors like Spotify, Pandora and Google Music rack in users. Beats Music tried to attract listeners with its curated playlists and free trials, but it failed to catch more than 250,000 subscribers. While Apple may be done with Beats Music, it's very unlikely it's done with music all together. It still has a huge iTunes following as well as iTunes Radio. One TechCrunch source said Apple may tie streaming into iTunes; imagine pressing a "Play" button, for example, situated next to a "Buy" button. While iTunes isn't going anywhere, Apple may have a major music announcement lined up for 2015. Until then, we'll wait for official word on the fate of Beats Music. We've asked Apple for comment, but a straight answer isn't likely forthcoming. What can you expect with the iPad Air 2?http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158066663/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158066663/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158066663/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/206158066663/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/206158066663/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb9108f/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/wrzQAGYkjZc

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-28-470-75.jpgThe coolest projects from Maker Faire NYCMaker Faire, the greatest show and tell in the world graced New York this past weekend with its biggest display yet. This year's event brought a new slew of start-ups along with the usual lineup of giant 3D printers, massive robots, new development boards and a cast of costumed characters. Whether you're with a start-up looking for a technological solution, a tinkerer in search of new toys or just a kid at heart who wants to learn something new, Maker Faire is a show that has something for everyone. So come with us as we look back at the coolest things from the World Maker Faire NYC show. x86 computing on a postage stamphttp://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-33-420-90.jpg Intel has long slept in the maker world, letting Arduino and all its variants shape the microcontroller landscape. The PC processor giant recently announced two development boards, called the Galileo and Edison to catch the attention of self-starter developers. Released just last week at IFA 2014, Edison is essentially a mini-computer. It comes equipped with a 500MHz dual-core Atom processor that can run x86 applications and most Linux distributions. If the specs weren't impressive enough, we got our first in-person look at Edison and it's no bigger than an SD flash card. Onboard this tiny computer there's also a low-power 100MHz Intel Quark processor designed for wearables. Edison is a fully packed, standalone system complete with 1GB of RAM, 4GB of eMMC storage and built-in Wi-Fi as well as low-energy Bluetooth 4.0. Intel demoed Edison at Maker Faire booth by building it into a hard hat-mounted emergency alert system made for construction workers. The Intel researchers demonstrated how the system worked by swinging a baseball bat onto the hardhat. The impact then triggered motion sensors to activate a GPS signal, which would in turn help rescuers on the location of the construction worker in peril. Arduino branches out to Linux and connected homeshttp://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-10-420-90.jpg Since hitting the maker block in 2005, Arduino has spawned thousands of microcontrollers. Now nine years later at a Maker Faire NYC talk Arduino Project co-founder Massimo Banzi said the platform is maturing into a more user-friendly platform. Banzi shared Arduino Tre is almost ready for its big release as the "most powerful Arduino to date." The Tre will be Arduino's first microcontroller powered by ARM Cortex-A8 processor made in partnership with Texas Instruments. On top of the more powerful hardware, Tre is also slated to be the first Arduino capable of running a full version of Linux. Meanwhile, Banzai said the Arduino team has been hard at work developing a stack of software, which will make it easier for everyone to use especially if they aren't Linux geeks. Banzai also touched on the Arduino Connected Apartment - an internet-connected home experiment the microcontroller team is running in collaboration with futurist Bruce Sterling. The apartment is actually a mock living space located in Arduino's Turin, Italy headquarters. Along with Sterling's lavishly designed Italian furniture, the apartment is furnished with the latest technology made for the maker community including many Atmel based devices. "All of the houses of the future are fake, but you'll be able to rent ours on Airbnb," Banzi said at his Maker Faire presentation. Raspberry Pi becomes the backbone of deviceshttp://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-9-420-90.jpg Speaking of computers on a stick, Raspberry Pi's Director of Hardware Engineering James Adams was at Maker Faire to present the future of the credit card sized PC. Moving beyond the classroom and educational uses the Raspberry Pi foundation introduced a B+ model. The main highlight of this new computer board is it has more connectors including a 40-pin GPIO header and four USB 2.0 ports. Along side the model B+, the foundation also launched its Compute Module Development Kit in April. With these new additions Raspberry Pi has become a platform for developers to create new inventions such as the Slice media player and the recently announced ProtoCam. Despite moving into a new market of makers and device creators, Adams clearly stated the Raspberry Pi is still a charity and will put education first. "We [the Raspberry Pi Foundation] are and will continue to spend all of our money on creating educational resources," Adams said. Scan yourselfhttp://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-7-420-90.jpg The new Kinect for Windows might not be here yet, but when it's finally released users will be able to scan their face and have a plastic copy sent to their house. On September 16 Microsoft announced a new R5 version of its 3D Builder, which gave households without a 3D printer a new option to buy a print and have it sent home. At Maker Faire the Redmond company had a custom PC connected to a Kinect for people to scan themselves into a 3D model. The process was so simple anyone could do it. All it required were a few clicks and then panning the Kinect horizontally across the subject. At another table, Microsoft also set up a Kinect that would scan booth visitors transforming them into Xbox One avatars. I witnessed the Kinect create a virtual selfie of a child in just a few seconds using three simple scans. A company spokesperson explained that the imaging sensor first creates a wardrobe for the user's virtual self by detecting what color their clothes are. The depth-sensing camera then photo copies a user's face, noting facial structure - from the shape of their nose to the distance between their eyes - all while recording their skin color. The Microsoft spokesperson also said the team had been working on the technology for some time, but could not share whether the feature would come to Xbox One. The spokesperson declined to comment on an exact release date for the new Kinect for Windows. World Maker Faire NYC 2014 in pictures.Scenes from World Maker Faire NYC 2014http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-3-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-2-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-4-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-20-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-30-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-31-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-21-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-8-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-15-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-16-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-17-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-14-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-13-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-18-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-23-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-25-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-36-420-90.jpg http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/events/Maker%20Faire%20NYC%202014/World%20Maker%20Faire%20NYC-34-420-90.jpg What is this internet of things anyway?

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/BlackBerry/Passport/Blackberry_Passport_apps_scale_credit_n4bb-470-75.jpgTo paraphrase The Beatles, BlackBerry has a ticket to ride this week, and they don't seem to care if US carriers are on board with those plans or not as the onetime Canadian smartphone giant thinks square for its latest handset. The Wall Street Journal today reported that BlackBerry Ltd. plans to launch its latest smartphone this Wednesday, that bizarre 4.5-inch square known as Passport, which will sell without carrier subsidies for $599 (about UK£366, AU$676). BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer John Chen figures that's a bargain compared to hot new smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 or Apple's iPhone 6, which can be purchased in the US off-contract for as little as $649 (about UK£397, AU$732). Passport marks BlackBerry's first global launch for a handset since the ill-fated arrival of BlackBerry 10 last year, during which time rumors of a uniquely shaped smartphone with the company's classic physical keyboard in tow first began to surface. Aiming for enterpriseChen claims Passport, which is being marketed more to BlackBerry's traditional enterprise crowd than consumers, will offer battery life of 36 hours, plus a "large antenna" capable of better reception than rival handsets. Despite the unconventional form factor, Passport isn't exactly a slouch in the specs department: Details of the 1440 x 1440 display with a pixel density of 453 ppi were first made public last month, and Chen says the higher resolution "allows users to view 60 characters on each line," far more than the typical rectangular smartphone. BlackBerry is also throwing everything but the kitchen sink into Passport's internals, with to a quad-core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, expandable to 64GB more by popping in a micro-SD card. BlackBerry plans to introduce Passport to world this Wednesday with a simultaneous launch in Toronto, London and Dubai, followed by immediate availability in many stores and additional markets including Asia within one or two weeks. Feast your eyes on our enormous review of the iPhone 6 Plus!http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965157566/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965157566/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965157566/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/208965157566/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/208965157566/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/3eb79c90/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/-KuCub1pD_w