Khidr Suleman, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 18:25:00

Search firm rounds off IFA 2010 with prediction of ubiquitous mobile computing

Google made a number of key announcements to round off IFA 2010 in Berlin, including an addition to its Translation app that allows two people who do not speak the same language to have a conversation by sharing an Android handset.

Hugo Barra, product management director at Google, was on hand to preview the experimental feature that could be seen as a breakthrough in translation.

A conversation between two people was demonstrated on stage with one speaking in English and the other German. The Google app translated parts of the conversation in turn so that the pair could communicate.

The demonstration required a couple of phrases to be repeated, but was largely successful and could be a valuable tool for business travellers.

The possibility of Google translating mobile phone conversations live over the air was also hinted at by chief executive Eric Schmidt in a Q&A session.

"Live translate is the next logical succession, and may be possible in the future," he said.

The conversation translator is currently in the experimental phase and an exact roll out is yet to be determined.

Google also showcased improvements to its voice search app, and Barra was keen to note that the app is being optimised so that it can understand language in context.

Barra asked the software to "navigate to a museum with Egyptian stuff", and the device was able to find out that the Pergamon Museum was the location required. It was able to successfully carry out the search because the device knew it was in Berlin, and related this to thousands of pages on the web about the museum.

However, a reporter was adamant that this particular museum is not known to house Egyptian artefacts.

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:43:00

Kristian Segerstråle and Roland Steindorf join LoveFilm to improve its offering via technology

LoveFilm has appointed two new non executive directors: Kristian Segerstråle in the UK and Roland Steindorf in Germany, to help the firm advance its digital strategy.

Segerstråle is the co-founder and CEO of social gaming company Playfish, which was recently acquired by Electronic Arts for £260m.

Steindorf is currently head of the supervisory board of Versatel AG, one of the largest DSL operators in Germany, and also co-founder of investment and consulting firm ORAD. He also developed Kabel Digital, a German digital cable pay TV platform.

"Kristian and Roland bring tremendous knowledge of the gaming, mobile and digital media sectors at a time when LoveFilm is rapidly advancing its digital services to televisions, PCs and handheld devices,” said Charles Gurassa, chairman of LoveFilm.

Segerstråle described LoveFilm as being in the midst of a transformational growth opportunity in home entertainment through new distribution and consumption models similar to that taking place in computer games.

LoveFilm has recently launched a direct-to-TV service on new ranges of Samsung TVs and Sony Bravia TVs and Blu-ray players.

It also recently tied up a UK distribution deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) to enable its members to watch MGM titles online and on internet-enabled devices through the LoveFilm web site.

Stuart Sumner, Computing, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:39:00

Following TalkTalk's rebuke from the ICO, the ISPA encourages members to provide safety assurances for their users

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has given TalkTalk a warning after the organisation was found to be tracking its customer's internet usage in a trial of its malware software.

Information commissioner Christopher Graham sent the ISP a letter to warn the organisation that its activities had not gone unnoticed.

The letter has been released under the Freedom of Information Act by whatdotheyknow.com.

"I am concerned that the trial was undertaken without first informing those affected that it was taking place," Graham said.

The Internet Services Providers' Association (ISPA) is the UK's trade association for providers of internet services. Computing spoke to a spokesperson from the organisation today.

Computing: Aren't ISPs supposed to be monitoring users under the Digital Economy Act?

ISPA: Regarding the monitoring it will be the rightsholders who will do that and then notify the ISP. Ofcom is still consulting on the initial obligations code, which is due to come out in January 2011. The code will define what ISPs responsibilities are in relation to the Digital Economy Act. ISPA responded to Ofcom’s consultation in July.

Doesn't it make sense for ISPs to offer anti-malware services since they process the traffic first?

Many members do offer users services to protect themselves and recognise the importance of ensuring that users can access the internet and be assured that they are protected. ISPA encourages members to provide users with the appropriate information to protect their online safety.

Are other ISPs doing the same, if so how are they complying with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and other acts?

ISPs are required to retain subscriber information but in line with data protection regulations. ISPs will not share subscriber details with any third party unless specifically instructed to do so by a court order.

However, it seems that the ICO is not finished with TalkTalk yet. A spokesperson for the ICO said: "The ICO is currently looking into the process by which TalkTalk collects data about web sites visited on its network. We have requested further details about how data is used and will continue to monitor this service to ensure that it complies with the Data Protection Act."

Dawinderpal Sahota, Computing, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:31:00

Rollout across sales, marketing and pre-sales teams will soon be followed by a general deployment

SAP has rolled out almost 1,500 iPads for users across its business, according to CIO Oliver Bussmann.

He revealed in conversation with Computing that the company has deployed the tablet PCs with email access, access to a virtual private network (VPN), Citrix software to enable access to server-based applications and business intelligence tools via BusinessObjects.

SAP employees are also piloting the Mobile Sales for SAP CRM app built by SAP's recent acquisition Sybase.

And the SAP CIO said that he intends to make the device generally available to all SAP employees as soon as possible. The company currently has 17,000 BlackBerrys rolled out across the organisation and Bussmann said that within 12 months, there will be as many iPads in use by SAP employees.

“We saw that the iPad presented a huge opportunity [to improve our sales environment], and it made sense that SAP should be ready to support the iPad and that we should embrace the mobile mindset,” he said.

The CIO said that the tablet device's reboot time, weight, 3G support and size made it work in the corporate environment.

“All of the executives take it into meetings, it gives immediate access to all information, through access to email, the VPN, business intelligence and CRM,” he explained.

“In terms of user experience, it's the best device on the market right now.”

The iPads have been distributed across SAP's sales, marketing and pre-sales teams. In addition, SAP's mobile app development team is also using the device, as are those piloting the Mobile Sales for SAP CRM app.

Bussmann also revealed that Apple offered SAP “good help and support” in rolling out the iPad, and said that the two companies have a good relationship as Apple is an SAP customer.

David Neal, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:17:00

European internet shoppers account for more than a third of the total spend

Global e-retail trade is expected to hit €550bn this year, with Europeans accounting for more than a third of this spend.

In anticipation of the continued growth of e-commerce, the e-Business Strategy Europe 2010 event will be held for the first time in October, with industry members coming together to discuss strategies for boosting online retail.

The conference comes at a key time, according to its organisers, which released statistics showing just how far the market has come.

Roughly 30 per cent of the world's population is online, and around 85 per cent buy goods and services via the internet. The organisers estimate that, while making up a quarter of the net population, Europeans account for 35 per cent of all online spending at roughly €200bn.

The conference is being held in Lille on 20 October, the same month that the number of internet users is supposed to hit two billion, just 16 years after the birth of the World Wide Web. It is being led by UK e-commerce industry group the IRMG, and was set up to be a "brains trust" for discussion and thought on policy and strategy.

"Digital commerce demands our urgent attention. However, in this rapidly changing space, with its multi-layered interdependencies, nobody can have a clear view of where digital innovation may be taking us, or when," said IRMG chief executive James Roper.

Participants will be given a range of topics to chew over, including whether towns will need to be planned differently because of e-commerce, whether internet access should be considered a human right, and whether territorial pricing of products can continue in light of the global transparency of e-commerce.

Daniel Robinson, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:02:00

InSync 4.0 backs up laptops to the datacentre over the internet

Data protection firm Druva is bringing application-aware de-duplication technology to its laptop backup software, greatly reducing the bandwidth and storage capacity required and allowing remote backup of a company's laptop fleet.

Druva's inSync 4.0, available immediately, is designed to provide backup protection of corporate data held on laptops, which tend to connect to the company network infrequently and often at irregular intervals.

This has become a major issue, according to Druva chief executive Jaspreeet Singh, because as much as 38 per cent of corporate data could be stored on laptop hard drives, and many businesses admit they cannot back them up.

"Users with laptops hop networks frequently, so the old methods of incremental network backup just don't work any more," he said.

InSync addresses this problem by providing near continuous data protection, with the inSync agent sending back changes to a central repository whenever the laptop has an internet connection.

In this respect, inSync is similar to Mozy's online backup service, launched earlier this year. But, while Mozy backs up to its own datacentre, inSync operates from an on-premise server behind the customer's firewall.

Druva has also introduced an application-aware de-dupe technology that significantly reduces the bandwidth and storage required for backups.

It does this by applying de-duplication globally across every laptop user, according to Singh. This means that a specific file or email message will be backed up just once, no matter how many users have a copy on their system.

Administrators can also limit how much of each laptop's bandwidth and CPU resources the inSync agent can use so that it does not get in the way of the employee's work.

InSync supports a number of restore methods, including self-service recovery of individual documents by users. For larger recovery sets, administrators can create a password protected archive and send it to the user, and if the worst happens a bare-metal recovery CD can be created to restore the entire laptop.

Druva's inSync 4.0 runs on Windows or Linux servers and inside a virtual machine, with a one-off fee of £500 for the server software itself. End-user licences are about £60 per user for the first year, with subsequent years charged at £12 per user.

Andrew Charlesworth, Computing, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 17:01:00

ACTA workings published after Washington DC negotiating round

The latest text of the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA), currently being hammered out in negotiations between national and supra-national governments, including the US and EU, has been leaked onto the web.

The draft of the international copyright trade agreement has been published by Knowledge Ecology International after the latest round of negotiations in Washington DC.

The Agreement goes beyond regional legislation, such as the UK’s Digital Economy Act and the Digital Agenda for Europe, in that it deals with intellectual property rights in the physical world, for example pharmaceuticals and luxury goods, as well as rights in the digital realm.

Nevertheless, Article 2, section 4, concerning enforcement of intellectual property rights in digital networks, remains the most controversial area, with a proliferation of parentheses and footnotes added by individual countries’ negotiators.

This was the section that originally contained the “three strikes” measures, which required ISPs to monitor their subscribers’ activity and to cut internet access for repeat offenders.

These measures have since been diluted. The wording now refers to generic “expeditious remedies to prevent infringement and remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringement”.

However, ISPs will be obliged to disclose subscribers’ details to rights holders who have good evidence of infringement, as per Article 2.18.4, which reads: “Each party may provide, in accordance with its laws and regulations, its competent authorities with the authority to order an online service provider to disclose expeditiously to a right holder, or to a person authorised by the right holder, information sufficient to identify an alleged infringer, where that right holder has filed a legally sufficient claim of infringement of [intellectual property rights] and where such information is being sought for the purpose of protecting or enforcing the right holder's [intellectual property rights].

The text also provides for the prosecution of those who deliberately circumvent digital rights management and similar technologies or make, import or export equipment expressly designed for such circumvention or equipment that has limited commercial value other than to circumvent DRM technologies.

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 16:50:00

Early bird rate for How Big Is Your Footprint? lecture available for one more week

BusinessGreen.com has today extended its special offer to readers for the upcoming How Big Is Your Footprint? Carbon and the Future of Business Management lecture evening by one more week.

Readers now have until 5pm on Tuesday 14 September to take advantage of the special early bird offer of £35.

The evening of short lectures will take place on Wednesday 29 September at the London School of Economics Wolfson Theatre and will feature presentations from the Committee on Climate Change's chief economist Adrian Gault, Paul Simpson of the Carbon Disclosure Project, Leo Johnson, co-founder of Sustainable Finance and a partner at PwC, and Christopher Norton, partner at leading law firm Hogan Lovells.

Each of the lectures will address how carbon is redefining the role of modern accountancy, ask how and why firms should measure their environmental impact, and explore some of the management techniques progressive businesses are deploying to encourage executives to deliver against carbon targets.

They will also provide executives with a valuable insight into the carbon regulations for which they need to prepare, and how new rules can help their business save money and exploit new low-carbon business opportunities.

The lectures will be followed by an interactive question and answer session, and then networking and drinks.

Khidr Suleman, V3.co.uk, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 16:31:00

Extra bandwidth demands may overload company systems, warns Blue Coat

New features in the BBC iPlayer could place significant extra demand on business networks, according to security and management firm Blue Coat.

The ability of the iPlayer to support HD content and automatically download programmes when marked as a 'favourite' are likely to have the most impact, Nigel Hawthorn, vice president of EMEA marketing at Blue Coat, told V3.co.uk.

Large chunks of an organisation's bandwidth could be used up with a one-hour HD TV show at up to 1.5GB in size, the firm warned.

"The additional iPlayer features have the potential to slow business-critical content, making companies less efficient and possibly meaning that a firm has to buy extra bandwidth," Hawthorn said.

"If a company employing 1,000 workers has a 100Mbit/s connection, this realistically means that every user has 100Kbit/s of bandwidth each. If 30 people in the workforce were to download HD content from iPlayer, all the bandwidth would be taken up."

Hawthorn explained that the streaming of World Cup games had a negative impact on businesses, and that some networks were unable to cope. Network managers should be aware of the potential problems, and determine what the bandwidth is being used for.

"The ability to monitor the network connection is important, and there are various programs available to do this," he said.

"Businesses can also download programs to split data between users. This means that if multiple users download the same program from iPlayer, the business network would only have to put in one request to the BBC."

Finally, companies may have to ban such features at work, Hawthorn added.

The latest figures from the BBC (PDF) suggest that there were 130 million iPlayer requests in May 2010, an increase of 60 per cent year on year.

Other catch-up services such as 4OD and ITV Player are also likely to add similar features, Blue Coat warned.

Dave Bailey, Computing, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 16:24:00

CASPAR project rescues old, diverse datasets and information

The EU has released open source software tools to access its mountain of digitally stored data.

The EU's CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) research project will sort and make accessible the mounds of data stored in EU archives.

Funded by an €8.8m (£7.3m) grant from the EC’s Sixth Framework Programme, the €15m (£12.5m) CASPAR software will see formerly inaccessible old data in different formats being rescued, viewed and used by the state and private sectors.

CASPAR will also be used to preserve the EU's digital data for future posterity.

Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes said of the release: "Digital information is extremely vulnerable and also extremely valuable. Anyone who has lost access to family photos or old documents will know the frustration of dealing with incompatible technologies.

“I am very excited by the potential of CASPAR's tools and techniques to ensure sustained quality of and access to valuable data in the future," she added.

CASPAR also ensures that data can be understood and linked with other datasets in whatever format, and for whatever research, scientists in the future might wish.

The CASPAR open source software is available for free download from the sourceforge web site, and for further development into commercial applications.

The software methods have been tested successfully with data from science, cultural heritage and contemporary performing arts.