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Bonaco Systems Announces New Web Site Development
Bonaco Systems, has begun Development of a New Website geared towards .NET Development and Best Practices of Code Design along with Technical Review of Existing Sites. The Website, nathantrasoras.com, which Stands for: Not Another Technical Hypothesis And New Technical Realites About Service Oriented Related Architecute and Software Will be Deployed later this Year and assist other Developers working with new .NET Technologies.
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Tony Buonopane Now Instructing MCTS Candidates.
Bonaco Systems is pleased to announce that it's President, Tony R. Buonopane, has taken on a Position at New Horizons in Providence, RI. instructing Prospective MCTS Students .NET along with Web Design and Sharepoint.
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Bonaco Systems Launches New Music Player!
Bonaco Systems has Launched a Web Music System that is Set up to be Customized for Individual Customers. A sample of this Technology is Available on our Web Site. (Under the Linked In Logo)
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Welcome to Bonaco Systems
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Adobe buys EchoSign for electronic PDF signatures
Adobe Systems, creator of the Portable Document Format standard use for digital documents, has acquired EchoSign, a company specializing in electronic signature technology.
The move means Adobe will get new abilities for its document-handling software. Electronic signatures have held promise for years for letting people sign documents without having to resort to the paper-based hassles of scanning, faxing, and mailing, but haven't made major inroads.
EchoSign and Adobe hope to change this, naturally. Adobe has been working hard to embed its products as deeply into business computing as Microsoft Office, and EchoSign is part of that effort.
"Together, our aim is to make electronic signatures the standard way for people to sign documents and automate contracting," said EchoSign chief executive Jason Lemkin and Kevin M. Lynch, general manager of Adobe's Acrobat business, in a statement Sunday night. "Adobe's PDF solutions and document exchange services platform have helped organizations turn inefficient, paper-based workflows--like overnight envelopes--into streamlined electronic ones."
EchoSign has a subscription service for small and medium-sized businesses and also offers an application programming interface (API) to let companies integrate the signature technology with their own procedures for sending, tracking, and signing documents.
EchoSign's technology will be built into several Adobe products. "The EchoSign solution will be integrated with Adobe's other document services including SendNow for managed file transfer, FormsCentral for form creation, and CreatePDF for online," the executives said.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
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Facebook bans Google+ ad
Ingenuity is surely something to be admired. Commercial ingenuity is something to be revered.
Sometimes, though, it seems that certain tech companies only revere their own ingenuity. That seems to be the case with Facebook, which, as reported by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, has removed a piece of fine commercial ingenuity from its site.
App developer Michael Lee Johnson, conscious of the need to be big on Google+ or be nobody, wondered what the best way to levitate his Google+ circles might be. He hit upon a fine idea: he placed an ad on Facebook. It was a simple thing that was headlined: "Add Michael to Google+."
The copy read: "If you're lucky enough to have a Google+ account, add Michael Lee Johnson, Internet Geek, App Developer, Technological Virtuoso."
If those words weren't enough to persuade Facebook users that Johnson was a must for their Google+, he added a fine picture of himself wearing a jaunty cap.
The offending ad
(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
You're not guessing what happened with the ad, are you? You know what happened, don't you? Facebook didn't, according to Johnson, merely erase this heinous horse of Troy from its pages. It reportedly banned all his other campaigns too.
The message he received read as follows: "Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions."
Because my life's purpose is to be helpful, I scanned Facebook's Terms of Use and Advertising just to see what specific clause might have been besmirched by Johnson's chutzpah.
Perhaps it was Clause 11 in the "Special Provisions Applicable to Advertisers" section: "You will not issue any press release or make public statements about your relationship with Facebook without written permission." Johnson had shamefully declared on Google+ that he was placing the ad.
Perhaps it was Clause 4d of Facebook's Advertising Guidelines: "Ads cannot insult, harass, or threaten a user." He was, some might say, harrassing and insulting Facebook loyalists by his mere suggestion that there might be another place to socially network.
Or perhaps Facebook, its nose feeling tweaked, merely decided to reach for 6a of the same Advertising Guidelines: "We may refuse ads at any time for any reason, including our determination that they promote competing products or services or negatively affect our business or relationship with our users."
Still, ejecting all of Johnson's campaigns seems a touch cruel. Perhaps Johnson will consider an action against Facebook for emotional distress and, well, damage to his reputation.
This he will have to place, so Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities tells me, in a court in Santa Clara County. For now, Johnson's only public statements have been: "LOL." Oh, and "Facebook. You Suck."
1,460 people currently have Johnson in their Google+ circles. I cannot find Google+'s No. 1 personality, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among them.
(Facebook did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.)
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Redesign set to make Firefox more responsive
Mozilla has begun turning the Firefox crank faster with a rapid-release development cycle. So what's in store now that we can expect a new version every six weeks?
A lot, including 64-bit support on Windows and a plan to reduce the open-source browser's memory usage. But the most far-reaching change probably is a project called Electrolysis that splits Firefox into multiple somewhat-independent processes.
Electrolysis holds the potential to improve responsiveness, smooth graphics performance, take better advantage of multicore processors, and tighten security. Mozilla already added one Electrolysis element to Firefox 3.6--the separation of plug-ins to their own patch of memory--but now programmers are spinning up the project again to tackle more.
It took a little while, but there's no doubt now that the Firefox team has woken up to the newly competitive browser market. Firefox, once the obvious alternative to pokey Internet Explorer, now must reckon
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Friend or Fraud? Security and Social Networks
Back in January, friends of Seattle, Wash., resident Bryan Rutberg were stunned when they read e-mails from his Facebook account accompanied by his photo. In the messages, Bryan appeared to claim he was in big trouble and that he needed their help.
At least one friend wired him money. However, Rutberg wasn't really in trouble and was in no need of assistance -- his Web page had been hijacked by cybercriminals.
This is just one of the cyberscams that have hit Facebook, the world's leading social networking site.
Facebook's size and rapid rate of growth attract cybercriminals the way honey attracts flies. However, it's not only everyday users who are at risk. Because Facebook has tie-ins with several vendors offering software to the business community, corporations are at risk too.
Social networking sites are vulnerable to cybercriminals because they need to be open in order to attract more members. That sometimes runs in opposition to the general philosophy of data security, and that makes it difficult to secure social networking sites.
Other Facebook Scams
In cases like Rutberg's, a criminal tricks a user into giving up personal information like passwords (a practice known as "phishing"), then uses that info to gain control of the person's account. From there, the phisher can make all sorts of plays -- convince that person's friends to send money, for instance, and intercept it once it's sent. Between April and May of this year alone, there were three major phishing attacks on Facebook involving large numbers of users.
February saw spammers hijack the "5,000,000 against the new version of Facebook" page on the Facebook site. They sent various "spamvertisements" to the page's more than 1.5 million members.
Malware authors have also struck at Facebook -- since last year, the Koobface worm and at least one variant have repeatedly hit the site.
Why Social Networking Sites?
Facebook is certainly not alone in this. LinkedIn , a social networking site for professionals, has been hit too. MySpace used to get hit quite regularly -- until Facebook's growth left it in the dust.
Why have social networking sites become such prime targets for hackers, malware authors and other cybercriminals?
One reason is that people love them. Social networking sites account for 10 percent of all the time people spend on the Internet, according to research firm Nielsen Online. Two-thirds of people on the Internet (the digital universe, so to speak) in the U.S,. Europe, Brazil and Australia visit social networking or blogging sites.
The numbers are staggering: the so-called digital universe totals almost 156 million people in the U.S., Nielsen spokesperson Michelle McGiboney told TechNewsWorld. In the UK, more than 29 million people go on the Internet; and in Brazil the number is more than 25 million. If two-thirds of these people visit social networks, the numbers are just too large for many scammers to ignore.
Gotta Keep Growing
Another reason cybercriminals love social networking sites is that these sites have to remain easily accessible in order to grow their memberships.
"It's critical to a social networking site's success and popularity to let members share data and Web tools and dynamic gadgets," Ryan Barnett, director of application security research at Breach Security, told TechNewsWorld.
Security experts generally prefer the exact opposite -- they would rather make it difficult for people to get into a network.
"From a security perspective, however, this increased flexibility means increased risk of abuse of functionality."
Can these conflicting forces be resolved and social networking sites made safe?
The Path of the Righteous Is Hard
Facebook has been working to secure its site, spokesperson Barry Schnitt said.
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Google App Engine suffers availability problems
Nice financial results notwithstanding, Google had some trouble late today with its App Engine service for online applications.
Overall availability of the cloud-computing foundation, which can run online applications written in Python or Java, dropped at least as low as 88.1 percent, according to the Google App Engine status dashboard.
The dashboard showed problems serving Java programs--more than half of attempts to request an app's Web page resources produced errors at one point--and in the delay to use a programming interface to manage tasks.
The problems appeared not to be permanent, though, and Python applications didn't show the same troubles. According to the dashboard, problems began after 9 p.m. PT and were back to normal at about 11 p.m. The problems began earlier at least for some, though, starting with a maintenance outage several hours earlier.
"We were taken down for several hours tonight by this," said Jason Cahill, a You vs. the Internet engineer who works on the Wordament game. "We had a lot of unhappy users and we felt powerless to do anything about it."
After the problem faded, so did two question-mark icons that had been on the App Engine status dashboard indicating that Google was investigating what was going on.
After CNET asked why the dashboard didn't reflect the problem, Google apparently had second thoughts. "The team is investigating the cause of the issue last night. The status dashboard has been updated to reflect a service outage," Google said in a statement.
Cahill had this description of the outage:
We've been available to customers since April 1, and we've only ever had one outage before--which was planned weeks in advance by Google and on their blog. This time, there was almost no warning at all: They posted less than 3 hours before going offline. And, while their scheduled downtime was only supposed to be for 1 hour, they took us out from 5 p.m. until 11 p.m. PST. Our service was limping to life and then falling over for some of it; and then completely dead from 9 p.m. until 11. Even with our best attempts to harden our app for downtime, this was producing errors unlike we've ever seen or expected. The whole thing was handled very poorly by Google.
He wasn't the only one to notice the problem: "Microsoft very graciously reached out to us tonight and offered to help us move to Azure. Since we are Windows Phone exclusive today, they are extra interested in helping us succeed," Cahill said. "There's no way we could have gotten this big and successful without a cloud platform, but this event made us think twice about 'cloud redundancy.'"
App Engine can host applications written in Java, Python, and later, Google's own Go programming language. These programs can tap into Google services such as online storage.
Its services are intermediate between Amazon Web Services, which provides a lower-level interface to computing nuts and bolts, and some higher-level services such as Google Docs or Spotify, which provide finished products that consumers can use over the Net.
Moving applications to the Net can cause problems, as shown by a massive, long Amazon Web Services outage in April. But the pitfalls of cloud computing must be balanced against the convenience and power--App Engine, AWS, and other services let customers ramp up operations very quickly and spend money only for resources used--and against the expenses and risks of running in-house network services.
Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the problems.
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Apple's A6 chip in pilot production
Apple has consigned trial production of its future A6 processor to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and not Samsung, its traditional manufacturing partner, according to a Reuters report.
The A6 processor is still a distant destination on Apple's chip road map. It isn't expected to appear in products until 2012, and analysts believe it will be quad-core, a first for an Apple A series chip. The A5, used in the iPad 2, is a dual-core processor.
After the A5 comes the A6, which may mark a shift to TSMC and away from Samsung.
(Credit: CNET)
Talk of Apple jumping to Taipei-based TSMC has been driven, in part, by the legal skirmishes between Apple and Samsung. The latter has been Apple's sole manufacturing source for A4 and A5 processors.
Linley Gwennap, who heads the Linley Group, a chip consulting firm, told CNET last month that he expects Apple to continue to consign production of the A5 processor to Samsung but switch to TSMC for the A6. A possible alternative scenario would have Apple getting TSMC to make a "shrink"--a version of the chip with smaller geometries--of the A5 too. That version of the A5, for example, could be used in a future iPhone 5.
Of course, the most significant development would be for Apple to actually contract with TSMC for commercial, high-volume production of the A6. That hasn't been decided yet, according to Reuters. That said, TSMC is the largest contract chip manufacturer in the world and it seems likely that the relationship with Apple would move forward.
Intel's name is popping up, too. Piper Jaffray analyst Gus Richard told CNET last month that Intel, the largest chipmaker in the world, is aggressively seeking business with Apple. But that relationship is much more speculative at this point than the Apple-TSMC ties.
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Windows tablets on parade, but the crowd has iPads
LOS ANGELES--At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference here, Windows tablets were on display tables but not in attendees' hands.
Many Windows 7 tablets, like PCs, have a host of connectors, and large heat vents.
(Credit: Brooke Crothers/CNET)
Windows 7 tablets from Fujitsu, Motion Computing, TabletKiosk, and others occupied a sizable swath of display area inside a pavilion devoted to Microsoft hardware and software partners. But walking the floor for five hours made it quickly apparent that iPads--being used by attendees--occupied the entire pavilion.
To be fair, Windows 7 tablets exist because they meet a need. For example, the retail and health care industries are big customers. And companies like Fujitsu and Lenovo will likely continue to provide hardware to those markets.
But the classic Microsoft tablet PC design does not--and never will--appeal to the much larger consumer market, where Apple and the Android camp now dominate.
There are plenty of reasons why consumers--including the "businesspeople" attending WPC 2011--don't buy Windows 7 tablets. And, conversely, why they do buy Apple's iPad. Two big reasons are the fact that Windows 7 has not been optimized for tablets and the popularity of iOS apps versus older "legacy" Windows applications. But design also plays a big role.
Windows 7 tablets are essentially designed to be PCs. And they look a lot like PCs, just without the keyboard. Or, in some cases---like the Lenovo X220 or HP EliteBook 2760--they already have a keyboard.
As jaded as I am, I am still mildly shocked to see, in the summer of 2011, so many large, thick, PC-like products that seem to defy contemporary tablet design. Instead of extreme portability, you get thick, heavy hardware laden with connectors and heat-venting grills.
And, yes, there are people who buy these tablets because they run all of their favorite Windows applications. But that's not where the lion's share of the consumer tablet market is headed. And it's not just Apple that's headed in the opposite direction; it's companies like Samsung and Motorola. And others like Amazon will follow.
Let's hope Windows 8 moves Microsoft into that market. The sooner the better.
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Netflix customers are angry birds
Customers are not happy that Netflix increased subscription prices for its DVD and streaming video combo plan. Customers who want access to DVDs and streaming video must pay $15.98, up from the $9.99 they were used to paying. The 60 percent price hike didn't go over so well in the digital world; new community pages such as "I Unlike Netflix Today" sprung up to get the masses to quit Netflix. But CNET's Greg Sandoval argues that there's a way out of this mess.
• CNET's Roger Cheng got the scoop that Sprint is confirming a LightSquared network deal, adding a key element to Sprint's major 4G push. Sprint's network will be used in LightSquared's 4G Long-Term Evolution network, which could help Sprint compete against AT&T and T-Mobile, which have been aggressively expanding their HSPA+ wireless networks. Sprint is expected to confirm the network-sharing agreement with LightSquared on July 28.
• Senator Jay Rockefeller seeks an inquiry into admitted phone hacking by News Corp. publications, with allegations that victims of the September 11 attacks were targets of the phone-hacking scandal that went down last week.
• The popular note-taking service Evernote today announced it has raised $50 million in a new round of funding by Sequoia Capital and Morgenthaler Ventures. Since the software company's inception, Evernote has grown to 11 million users--adding a million in the past month.
• Some police departments will start using a handheld facial-recognition device. The gadget works by snapping a photo of a face from five feet away or scanning a person's irises, so the person's face can be matched against a database of people with criminal records. The device can also collect fingerprints. Privacy groups are already getting worried about the use of this technology in law enforcement.
• After months of speculation, U.S. consumers will be able to get their hands on Spotify's music-streaming service beginning tomorrow. The European company said late this afternoon that it would launch stateside tomorrow and that it would divulge more details at 5 a.m. PT. Look for more news on that, plus CNET's early impressions of the service then.
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