lundi 7 juillet 2014

Firefox falters, falls to record low in overall browser share

Apple's Safari also sheds combined desktop-mobile share, while Google's browsers gain impressive ground

Computerworld - Firefox's user share on all platforms -- desktop and mobile -- has plunged in the last two months as its desktop browser continued to bleed and its attempt to capture users on smartphones failed to move the needle, new data shows.

Apple's Safari fared almost as poorly since April, also losing significant user share, with a continued decline on mobile and a sudden slide on the desktop to blame.

During June, 17.3% of those who went online surfed the Web using a mobile browser, according to Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications. Mobile browsing's climb of nearly 6 percentage points in the last 12 months represented a growth rate of 52%.

As in April, when Computerworld last analyzed desktop + mobile browser user share, June's numbers put the hurt on Mozilla most of all: Firefox's total user share -- the combination of desktop and mobile -- was 12.9% for June, its lowest level since Computerworld began tracking the metric five years ago, and 1.2 percentage points lower than just two months before.

Mozilla's problem remains an inability to attract a mobile audience. Although the company has long offered Firefox on Android and its Firefox OS has begun to appear on a limited number of smartphones, its mobile share was just seven-tenths of one percent, about three times smaller than the second-from-the-bottom mobile browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Firefox hasn't helped itself of late, either. For the eighth straight month, the desktop version lost user share in June, falling by 1.3 percentage points to end with 15.4%. In the last year, Firefox's desktop user share as measured by Net Applications has dropped 3.6 percentage points, representing a 19% decline.

The timing is terrible, as Mozilla's current contract with Google ends in November. That deal, which assigned Google's search engine as the default for most Firefox customers, has generated the bulk of Mozilla's revenue. In 2012, for example, the last year for which financial data was available, Google paid Mozilla an estimated $272 million, or 88% of all Mozilla income.

Going into this year's contract renewal talks, Mozilla will be bargaining from a much weaker position, down 43% in total user share since June 2011.

Apple remained behind Mozilla in desktop + mobile browser user share, with a cumulative 12.3%, down from 13.1% two months earlier. Nearly two-third of its total was credited to Safari on iOS.

But the browser was hit by a one-two punch in June: Safari on iOS continued to shed share in June -- it's dropped 7.8 percentage points of mobile-only share in just the last 90 days, a 14% decline -- and the desktop version fell by four-tenths of a percentage point. Even so, the gap between Firefox and Safari has narrowed in the last two months, with the latter, even as it lost share, making up ground on the former.

Google was again the main beneficiary of the losses suffered by Mozilla and Apple, adding to its lead over both in June, when it had a combined desktop + mobile user share of 22.6%, 1.5 percentage points higher than in April.

Together, the stock Android browser and the newer Chrome -- primarily, though not exclusively on Android -- accounted for 39.4% of all mobile browsers by Net Applications' count. With Safari's downward trend and Google's pair on the upswing, the latter could take first place from Apple on mobile as soon as October.

But it was Chrome on the desktop that powered Google's rise in combined user share for June. The browser added 1.6 percentage points to its desktop-only number, averaging 19.3% for the month. That was a record for desktop Chrome, which debuted in September 2008.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) continued to dominate the desktop, where its user share was 58.4% for June -- the highest since February 2011 -- but on mobile, IE remained stuck in the low single digits: 2% for the month. That put IE's combined share at 48.4%, the same as in April.

Overall, IE remained in a much stronger position than Firefox, as Microsoft has managed to reverse a long-running decline in IE's desktop share. But Microsoft faces the same dilemma as Mozilla: Without tablet and smartphone traction, which will rely on Windows gaining ground on the platforms, IE will slowly lose influence as mobile gradually erodes the personal computer's decades-long position as the first choice for browsing.

Norwegian browser maker Opera Software held a combined user share of 2.2% in June, up from 1.8% in April. Its mobile browsers, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, accounted for 62% of the total. A recent deal that places Opera's Android browser as the default on new Nokia-branded, Microsoft-sold smartphones powered by an Android variant may fuel further increases.

Net Applications measures browser usage on smartphones, tablets and personal computers by tabulating approximately 160 million unique visitors each month who browse to the sites it monitors for customers.

When desktop and mobile browser data are combined, Google has a solid lock on second place, with almost as much user share as Mozilla and Apple put together. (Data: Net Applications.)

Google Founders Eye 'Fully Reasoning' AI

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Google Founders Eye 'Fully Reasoning' AI

Google hopes to one day develop "fully reasoning" artificial intelligence, but despite its acquisition of robot, satellite, and AI firms, the real-life Skynet is still a few years off, co-founder Sergey Brin said recently.

Computer scientists have been promising AI "for decades," and have not yet delivered, so it would be "foolish" for Google to put a hard date on when Google Now might become self aware, Brin said during a joint fireside chat with Google CEO Larry Page hosted by Khosla Ventures.

Still, advances have been made, so "you should presume that some day we will be able to make machines that can reason and think and do things better than we can," Brin said.

For now, however, a big area of focus for Brin and his Google X team is the self-driving car. Ideally, the idea of individual car ownership will one day be a thing of the past, he said.

"You don't need one car per person; they just come get you when you need them," Brin said. And once they're on the road, these cars can "make more efficient use of the space and peoples' time."

When asked by moderator Vinod Khosla what car makers might think of this scenario, Brin suggested that manufacturers that produce self-driving cars would be quite pleased. Though Google recently showed off its own self-driving car prototype, Brin speculated that Google will eventually work with "multiple partners or companies" - some car makers, some service providers.

But, "this is all pretty speculative," he warned, since Google is still very focused on getting the basics of the self-driving tech in order.

A self-driving car might seem like an odd project for a company's whose bread and butter is Internet search. But Brin and Page said that the role of a large company is to take on these projects that go outside the main purpose of the firm.

"I always thought it was stupid if you had this big company and you could only do five things," Page said. If you have 30,000 employees and they're all doing the same thing, that isn't very exciting for them. "Ideally, a company would scale the number of things it does with the number of people, [but] as far as I can tell, that never happens."

Brin chimed in to say that he has actually removed certain projects from Google X if they are too in line with Google's core mission.

One person who did not agree with this approach? Steve Jobs. "He'd say, 'you guys are doing too much,'" Page recalled. "And he was right, in a sense," but the approach is working for Google for now. "If you do something less related, you can actually handle more things."

Meanwhile, in a discussion about the effects of tech on the workforce, Page suggested that shifting work schedules might help alleviate unemployment: an extra week of vacation here, or a shorter work week there.

When asked about the protests in San Francisco regarding income disparity and high-tech workers leading to an increase in rent and housing prices, Page said it was largely a "governance issue," and the city failing to provide enough housing.

Check out their full discussion in the video below.

IFTTT master chef secrets: Get important news fast with this Feed Rinse super-recipe

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IFTTT master chef secrets: Get important news fast with this Feed Rinse super-recipe

t’s difficult to get real-time alerts about articles with specific headlines on specific subjects from specific websites.

News reader applications like Feedly or Flipboard are great for browsing and even searching through news items, but they lack the ability to send notifications proactively. Emails from Google Alerts can be tardy, and at other times, articles can slip by completely.

Never fear! Used together, two web applications, IFTTT and Feed Rinse, solve this problem easily.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use Feed Rinse to combine and filter RSS feeds for use with IFTTT. IFTTT is a web application that automates common tasks like posting to social media or sending emails. If you’re new to IFTTT, check out this tutorial on how to get started.

1. Set up the IFTTT SMS channel

To get our alerts, we’re going to use IFTTT’s SMS channel. To activate the SMS channel, you’ll have to enter your mobile phone number.

Activating IFTTT SMS channel — Once you activate the SMS channel, you can use it in any IFTTT recipe.

After you enter your mobile number, IFTTT will send you an SMS with a confirmation code. Enter the confirmation code in the text box labeled PIN, and the channel will be activated. Be sure to label the IFTTT phone number in your address book, so you’ll know where the SMS messages are coming from.

2. Import feeds into Feed Rinse

Feed Rinse is a free web application that filters RSS feeds according to user-specified criteria. After signing up for an account, log into the web service. On the welcome screen, you’ll see an empty list with two tabs. We’ll deal with those soon enough, but first we need to add our news sources.

Feed Icon — A basic version of a feed icon.

Most news websites and blogs supply links to their RSS news feeds. The links are usually at the top or bottom of the page. Try looking for the feed icon, which looks like a dot with two larger quarter circles, resembling radio waves.

For our example we need to locate the feeds for PCWorld’s website.

First, open up the PCWorld website in a new tab. Next, find the link to PCWorld’s RSS feeds near the bottom of the webpage.

PCWorld footer RSS link — Most blogs and news websites have RSS links on the front page. The links will often be near the top or near the bottom of the page, as shown here in PCWorld’s footer.

When you click the link, you’ll find that PCWorld has several feeds. We’re going to use the main news feed. That way, Feed Rinse will search every article that gets published.

PCWorld RSS feeds — Some websites may offer more than one RSS feed for you to use, often separated by section or subject matter.

After you click the link to the feed, copy the feed URL from the address bar or your browser.

PCWorld RSS URL — Most RSS feeds are simply XML files with links to a website’s new content.

In Feed Rinse, click the Add feeds button. On the left side, you should see a text box labeled ‘Enter your subscription url(s) here.’ Paste the feed URL that you copied from the PCWorld browser tab.

You can add multiple feeds at once by adding each feed on a separate line. In this example, we’ll add the URLs for the TechHive and GreenBot RSS feeds as well.

Add feeds to Feed Rinse — You can add multiple feeds to Feed Rinse at once by entering one URL per line in the text box, or uploading an OPML file.

Click Import to add the feeds to your collection.

3. Create a Feed Rinse channel

Next, we’re going to create a channel in Feed Rinse that will lump all the posts from your chosen feeds together into a single feed. We’ll need this feed link for our IFTTT recipe.

You can filter individual feeds in Feed Rinse as well, but by using a channel, you can filter several feeds at once.

Click Create a channel to create a channel. Give the channel a name and click Continue.

Create a Feed Rinse channel — Feed Rinse allows you to combine several RSS feeds into channels that you can then filter as a single RSS feed.

On the next screen, we need to add the feeds to the channel in the section labeled ‘Select included feeds.’ Select the name of the feed you want to include using the drop-down menu. To add or remove feeds from the channel, use the plus and minus buttons, respectively.

Add feeds to Feed Rinse channel — Feed Rinse channels must have a minimum of one feed.

When you’re done, click Save changes.

IFTTT master chef secrets: Get important news...

PC shipments could reach around 317 million in 2015, increasing from 308 million units expected to ship this year, the research firm said in a study. Shipments this year are expected to decline by 2.9 percent compared to 2013, which is lower than previous yearly declines.

The “revival” of the PC market will be driven by upgrades of old business PCs with Windows XP, which are no longer supported by Microsoft, said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. He estimates that roughly 60 million PCs will be upgraded this year.

Businesses are largely upgrading to Windows 7 and avoiding Windows 8, which is viewed more as a tablet OS. Microsoft could release a new OS sometime next year, which could supplant Windows 7 as the OS of choice for businesses. However, it takes time for companies to test and deploy PC OSes, as happened with Windows 7, which took more than a year to find a foothold in businesses.

Counting PCs, tablets and smartphones, Gartner said overall shipments of computing devices are expected to reach 2.4 billion units this year, increasing by 4.2 percent compared to the previous year. Shipments will further increase to 2.6 billion units in 2015.

Tablets in the passing lane

After the first iPad shipped in 2010, tablets were increasingly adopted as alternative computing devices to PCs. Gartner is projecting tablet shipments to increase to 256 million this year, up from 207 million last year. Tablet shipments will reach 321 million in 2015, overtaking PCs, Gartner said.

Tablets will get cheaper and more functional, Atwal said, adding that these trends will continue to drive adoption in the coming years.

Worldwide mobile phone shipments will be 1.86 billion units this year, rising by 3.1 percent compared to the previous year, Gartner said. The worldwide growth will continue in 2015, with shipments totaling 1.95 billion units.

Android will continue to be the dominant OS across devices, according to Gartner. The OS will be installed in 1.17 billion devices shipped this year, an increase of 30 percent. Apple’s iOS will receive a boost from the new iPhone due later this year, and the company’s iOS and Mac OSes will be in 271 million devices shipped this year, increasing by 15 percent compared to the previous year. Microsoft’s Windows desktop OS and Phone OS will be in 333 million devices shipped this year, rising slowly from 326 million the previous year.

But Windows will be in 373.7 million devices shipped in 2015, overtaking the combined shipments of Apple’s iOS and Mac OS, which will be in 301.4 million devices, Gartner said. Android will remain the dominant OS, installed in 1.37 billion devices shipped next year.

Beta Versions of Microsoft Office Available for Free, Will Reach Touch-Enabled Devices with Windows 8 OS

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Beta Versions of Microsoft Office Available for Free, Will Reach Touch-Enabled Devices with Windows 8 OS

If Microsoft Office has been a user's main productivity software for a very long time and he or she is considering to try future versions of this office suite, here's something which can be looked forward to.

Redmond has released a beta program for Office that enables users to try out future versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, and Access before the stable versions are to be released. While the service is completely free of charge both for individual and corporate use, the company still expects participants to send feedback and support its own team of developers to update these software suite in order to provide improved stability and features when released to users.

Microsoft is getting a few pretty exciting products ready for Office users. This includes a touch-optimized version that's designed especially for devices running with Windows 8 an later. This latest version will enable Windows 8 to make and edit documents right in the Modern UI of their devices. According to the people close to the development strategies, this step is very crucial towards a broader strategy, which also includes Windows 9 that is supposed to be released some time in 2015.

The next Windows operating system is supposed to be dumping the desktop on ARM tablets. However, this would rather include a touch-enabled version of Office. This offers consumers the power to work with documents, whether they are using a desktop or a mobile PC.

Among the first apps that will arrive in the touch-optimized Windows 8 UI are Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Microsoft has already featured a presentation during the BUILD developer conference last April. The only thing that's yet to be known is the date of availability. However, there are reports that said that Microsoft could launch the new Office suite for Windows 8 later this year, most likely after the Android build will officially be released on the market.

CISOs Look to Hire White Hat Hackers to Head Off Security Breaches

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Click Here!

CISOs Look to Hire White Hat Hackers to Head Off Security Breaches

The best defense is a good offense and savvy CISOs are searching for security professionals such as certified ethical hackers. However, the demand for these highly skilled workers is skyrocketing.

CIO — Many companies continue to struggle to secure their data and identify and address system vulnerabilities. But chief information security officers (CISOs) are finding the best way to defend against hackers might be to hire a hacker of their own.

However, that expertise and security assurance comes at a hefty price, according to Matt Comyns, global co-head of search firm Russell Reynolds Associates' cybersecurity practice in this recent article.

CISOs themselves can command between $500,000 and $700,000 a year, with compensation at some technology companies reaching as high as $2 million, with generous equity grants included, Comyns says. In comparison, CISOs who have been with a company for five or more years are on average receiving $200,000 to $300,000 per year, Comyns said.

Hackers for Hire

"If you're a CISO and you're looking to build a great security team, one of the best places to start is with a white-hat hacker, or a certified ethical hacker," says Ryan Lee, COO of online IT skills training firm CBT Nuggets.

"Of course, some companies shy away because these folks are expensive, but without an emphasis on proactive security, the costs to a company could be even more disastrous," Lee says. Certified ethical hackers can command salaries upwards of six figures, he says, though the specific range depends on each company individually.

[Related: Serious Flaw in GnuTLS Library Endagers SSL Clients and Systems]

The demand for CISOs and security specialists like white-hat hackers is somewhat anecdotal, but overall the IT community is becoming increasingly nervous about security issues and there is an uptick in interest in security and ethical-hacking related content, says IT security expert and training professional James Conrad, who develops and teaches security and ethical hacking courses for CBT Nuggets.

"One of the things I've noticed is the escalating need for security pros at all levels, especially in the last few years," Conrad says. "When the Web was young, security was a secondary priority, but as unscrupulous people found ways to exploit vulnerabilities, it moved quickly to the top of the list, and it has stayed there," he says.

However, while the demand for highly skilled security pros hasn't lessened, the available talent pool has, especially among specialized talent like vulnerability testers, penetration testers and white-hat hackers, he says.

[Related: 4 Lessons CIOs Can Learn From the Target Breach]
[Related: Target CIO Resignation Puts Retail CIOs on Alert]

"Most IT security pros are already working between 40 and 60 hours a week maintaining, building, patching systems and otherwise putting out fires," Conrad says. "They just don't have the time to do much more, especially in the area of finding new vulnerabilities. Sure, there are teams of security personnel, and in an ideal world they could devote their time to these issues. But in the real world, that stuff is pushed aside in favor of day-to-day routine work," he says.

Complacency Is Costly in the Security Biz

And that complacency is all a hacker needs to enter and exploit a company's systems, data and information. That's especially true when dealing with large organizations with less-secure branch offices or with small businesses that don't have huge security budgets in the first place, Conrad says.

Unfortunately, many companies don't understand the value of having hackers working for them, even as security breaches, data loss and state-sponsored cyber attacks dominate the headlines, says CBT Nuggets' Lee.

"The highly publicized Target and Neiman Marcus security breaches [and] the discovery of the Chinese hackers targeting the U.S. are the kinds of advanced, persistent threats companies face every day, and it can be expensive and time-consuming to proactively fight against them," Lee says. "But that's how these threats have to be handled," he says.

[Related: Businesses Can Do More in Battle Against Gameover Zeus Like Botnets]

Education is the best weapon, Lee says. Certified ethical hackers can help businesses understand both the nature of the threats and the potential for disaster by discovering potential vulnerabilities and stopping attacks before they begin.

"The goal of most of the honest, white-hat folks is to become a penetration tester, to perform legal hacks on systems to determine vulnerabilities," says CBT Nuggets' Conrad. But many times ethical hackers' hands are tied, so to speak, by the legalities of contracts, privacy statutes and compliance concerns.

A License to Hack

"When an ethical hacker is contracted, oftentimes they must sign a legal contract based on an attorney's advice that defines the scope of the work they're doing, what data and systems they can and can't access, as well as the length of time they can devote to these hacks," Conrad says. In most cases, ethical hackers are given a few weeks in which to work, and that's just not enough time.

"It's such a challenge. Black-hat hackers sometimes take months and even years to create and deploy attacks; it's not like they are bound by traditional ethics codes," Conrad says. "The longer you can give a white-hat to work within your systems, the better, but many companies bury their heads in the proverbial sand and don't want to spend the money on doing so -- until it's too late," he says.

While some of the most obvious hacks and attacks can be found and exploited within a week, many of the more sophisticated attackers will ignore the "low-hanging fruit" and simply wait out businesses for weeks, months or years in order to gain the data or the access they desire, Conrad says.

While many businesses that employ white-hats will feel they're adequately protected because they've kept up with patches, antivirus, anti-spam and software updates and have hired an ethical hacker to address blatant vulnerabilities, they often find they've missed more complicated, less obvious vulnerabilities.

"One of the most important jobs an ethical hacker has is to educate companies on how hackers can leverage their way into the systems," says Conrad. "They have to prove their own ROI, in a sense, and justify why it's worth a business paying them the six-figure salaries they can now command," he says.

Is There Honor Among Hackers?

Of course, this begs the question: How do you know for certain that the ethical hackers you've hired are, in fact, ethical? Unfortunately, you can't ever know for sure, says Conrad, since the entire profession of white-hat and ethical hackers is based on a code of personal integrity and an 'honor system.'

"When you become a certified ethical hacker, you do have to sign a legal document agreeing that you will use your powers for good, not for evil," Conrad says. "But that's no guarantee, and, unfortunately, there's really no way to be absolutely sure. It's one of the built-in risks companies have to take in order to address these threats," he says.

CBT Nuggets currently offers version 7 of its Ethical Hacking course and is in the process of finishing version 8 of the class, which will be released in its final form in June 2014. CBT Nuggets' Lee says version 8 has already amassed more than 12,000 views, and expects that number to keep growing as security concerns and highly publicized attacks dominate headlines.

"Security as a whole is a huge area right now, especially with news of Target, eBay, Neiman Marcus and others," Lee says. "It is key to educate and open people's minds to the dangers and the cyber security threats out there, and that's what we're trying to do," he says.

To become a certified ethical hacker, candidates should have a minimum of helpdesk-level IT skills, some server experience and familiarity with Linux, says Conrad. Obviously, the more experience the better, but resources like those available at CBT Nuggets can help developers quickly get up to speed, he says.

"The market's wide open for certified ethical hackers, especially as attacks become more sophisticated and vulnerabilities less obvious," Conrad says. "There's not a lot of folks out there doing these kinds of hacks -- yet. But the damage they can do is monumental and the need for these skills will continue to grow," he says

lundi 7 juillet 2014

Firefox falters, falls to record low in overall browser share

Apple's Safari also sheds combined desktop-mobile share, while Google's browsers gain impressive ground

Google Founders Eye 'Fully Reasoning' AI

IFTTT master chef secrets: Get important news fast with this Feed Rinse super-recipe

1. Set up the IFTTT SMS channel

2. Import feeds into Feed Rinse

3. Create a Feed Rinse channel

Sponsored Links

Microsoft's Windows to aid PC market revival in 2015

Tablets in the passing lane

mercredi 4 juin 2014

CISOs Look to Hire White Hat Hackers to Head Off Security Breaches

The best defense is a good offense and savvy CISOs are searching for security professionals such as certified ethical hackers. However, the demand for these highly skilled workers is skyrocketing.

Hackers for Hire

Complacency Is Costly in the Security Biz

A License to Hack

Is There Honor Among Hackers?

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