Skype’s future under Microsoft: integration everywhere?
Microsoft has big plans for Skype; we just don’t know exactly what they are. But with Microsoft gaining both US and European regulatory approval for its $8.5 billion acquisition, the merger is likely to be completed in the near future, letting Microsoft integrate Skype into various product lines.
The most obvious places for integration are Lync, Microsoft’s unified communications platform, and Windows Phone. But over time, Skype could be baked into more products like Outlook, Windows Live Essentials, and Xbox Live, or even become a pre-installed component of Windows on the desktop, analysts are speculating. While users of the current Skype service probably won’t see any major changes immediately, future versions integrated with Microsoft products could get the Metro interface that dominates Windows Phones and the upcoming Windows 8 desktop software.
via Skype’s future under Microsoft: integration everywhere?.
Typo-squatting domains can harvest corporate emails
Typo-squatting domains might easily be used to intercept misdirected corporate emails, according to new research.Domain typo‐squatting has long been used as a means to expose butter-fingered users who accidentally misspell a legitimate domain to malware. So-called doppelganger domains take advantage of an omission instead of a misspelling, for example missing the dot between host/subdomain and domain.Security researchers at Godai Group profiled companies in the Fortune 500 for susceptibility to attacks based on this ruse, and found that 151 30 per cent were vulnerable.
via Typo-squatting domains can harvest corporate emails • The Register.
Air, Food, Water, Internet – Cisco Study
The second annual Cisco Connected World Technology Reportexamines the relationship between human behavior, the Internet, and networkings pervasiveness. It uses this relationship to provoke thoughts around how companies will remain competitive amid the influence of technology lifestyle trends. The global report, based on surveys of college students and professionals 30 years old and younger in 14 countries, provides insight intopresent-day challenges that companies face as they strive to balance current and future employee and business needs amid increasing mobility capabilities, security risks, and technologies that can deliver information more ubiquitously – from virtualized data centers and cloud computing to traditional wired and wireless networks.
Dont be fooled by these 10 PC performance myths
Computer lovers are always looking to get more speed out of their computers. Unfortunately, a number of incorrect or outdated performance tips have been around long enough to become myths. Here are 10 of these myths — and the truth about them. As always, I am sure you’ll be able to think of plenty more. So be sure to post your own myth-busting in the forums!
via Dont be fooled by these 10 PC performance myths | TechRepublic.
Google bypasses admin controls with latest Chrome IE
Google has released a new version of Chrome Frame – the Internet Explorer plug-in that turns Microsoft’s browser into a Google browser – letting users install the plug-in even when they don’t have administrator privileges on their machines.
The new version runs a “helper process” when IE starts up that can then load the Chrome Frame plug-in when it’s requested, and you don’t need admin privileges to do so. “Yay for clever technical hacks that help users circumvent ossified IT bureaucracy,” said one commenter on href=”http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2674583″ target=”_blank”>Hacker News. But admins aren’t likely to feel the same.
Google is well aware of this. But the company says that if admins don’t like it, they can use separate admin Google tools to stop it from happening…….
Google bypasses admin controls with latest Chrome IE • The Register.
Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware
The software company has been selling computers preloaded with the custom Windows image since at least October 2009 under the a program called Signature, according to this article from CNET News. But over the past few weeks, Microsoft has reinvigorated its marketing of the program with stats designed to show the benefits of buying PCs that come with a Signature image compared with the default image supplied by the Dell or one of the other PC makers.
via Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware • Channel Register.
World mobile data traffic to explode by factor of 26 by 2015
Anyone who thinks that the Internet revolution is in anything but its early phase had better take a look at Cisco’s latest Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast(PDF). There are so many startling predictions and observations in the report that we’ll just begin with these headlines:
- There will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users by 2015.
- Global mobile data traffic will increase by a factor of 26 by 2015.
- World mobile data grew by a factor of 2.6 in 2010 from 2009.
- Average smartphone usage doubled: 79 MB per month, up from 35 MB per month in 2009.
- Android operating system data use is rapidly catching up to the iPhone.
- In 2010 almost a third of smartphone traffic was offloaded onto fixed networks via dual-mode or Femtocells.
- Millions of people around the world have cell phones but no electricity, and by 2015 a majority in the Middle East and Southeast Asia will live “off-grid, on-net.” ….
World mobile data traffic to explode by factor of 26 by 2015.
Microsoft Wiffler lets smartphones use free WiFi from moving vehicles
Microsoft Researchers have been working on a technology that would let mobile phones and other 3G devices automatically switch to public WiFi even while the device is traveling in a vehicle. The technology is dubbed Wiffler and earlier this year, researchers took it for some test drives in Amherst, Mass, Seattle and San Francisco.
Mind you, WiFi was available only about 11 percent of the time for a mobile……
Microsoft Wiffler lets smartphones use free WiFi from moving vehicles | NetworkWorld.com Community.