How the Yahoo! homepage predicts your clicks
We! Know! You! Want! To! Click! Here!
In the summer of 2008, at an artificial intelligence confab deep in Silicon Valley, Yahoo! senior research scientist Deepak Agarwal revealed that the web giant was using automated algorithms to select news stories on its famous front page. These algorithms, he said, had boosted click-through-rates by 25 to 30 per cent, driving …
HP dumps Apotheker for Whitman
'After careful and thoughtful deliberation'
HP has named Meg Whitman as its new president and chief executive officer, parting ways with Leo Apotheker, who took the reins at the IT giant just ten months ago.
In a press release, the company also said that non-executive chairman Ray Lane – a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – is now …
OpenStack adds web dashboard to 'floating Linux kernel'
Devil code does authentication too
OpenStack – the open source "infrastructure cloud" project founded by Rackspace and NASA – has released a new version of its platform, adding over 70 tools to the existing code while unveiling two new creations: a web "dashboard" for both administrators and users, and an authentication system that spans the platform.
Codenamed " …
Schmidt ducks antitrust questions lobbed from Congress
'I'm not sure Google is trying to maximize profits'
When Google's Eric Schmidt testified before Congress on Wednesday, the first question came from Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights. And Schmidt responded with the sort of holier-than-thou attitude you find only at Google.
"Google has acquired or …
DataStax goes 'open core' with Facebook's Cassandra
NoSQL meets the enterprise
DataStax – the outfit that commercialized the Cassandra distributed database originally open sourced by Facebook – will soon release two new software packages based on the "NoSQL" platform.
Yes, one is free a "community" package, and one is a for-pay "enterprise" offering. But in moving to an "open core" business model – where …
Google+ opened to world+dog
You too can embrace Google's Facebook envy
Google has allowed world+dog onto Google+, its latest attempt to turn itself into Facebook.
Mountain View launched a "Google+ field trial" in late June, letting users join by invitation only. But after making "99" different improvements to the social networking service, the company has announced that anyone can now sign up …
Google opens digital Wallet on Nexus S phones
Tap-phone-to-pay tech goes live
Google and Sprint have officially unveiled Google Wallet, an Android "digital wallet" that enables payments with a smartphone in much the same way people use credit cards today.
Rather than swiping a credit card at the cash register, you tap your phone on a retailer's NFC (near-field communications) reader. The Wallet app can be …
Intel extends JavaScript for parallel programming
Google meets the Anti-Native Client
Intel is developing an extended version of JavaScript that brings parallel programming to web applications.
Codenamed River Trail, the project was revealed this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, and the company has open sourced an early version of the technology in the form of a Firefox add-on.
For the most …
Google's Native Client goes live in Chrome
The C++ code Mozilla never wants on web
Google has officially launched Native Client – a means of securely running C and C++ code inside a browser – as part of a new stable version of its Chrome browser that activates this rather controversial sandboxing technology.
Mountain View turned on Native Client, aka NaCl, in the Chrome beta last month, and on Friday, it …
Facebook plugs developer site into Heroku code cloud
Sky-high app host debuts PHP, Python
Facebook has plugged its developer site into Heroku, giving coders direct access to a "platform cloud" where they can deploy, host, and readily scale their Facebook applications.
According to Heroku founder Adam Wiggins, this is a first for both companies. "We've spent the past four years building a platform for instant …
Microsoft bans all plugins from touchable IE10
Joins Jobsian jihad against Flash
Windows 8 will include a version of Internet Explorer 10 that uses Microsoft's "Metro" touch interface, and this new-age browser will not allow plugins – at all. The move is yet another blow to Adobe Flash, which is famously banned from Apple's iPhone and iPad.
With Internet Explorer 9 and its successor IE10 – which is currently …
Joyent arms cloud for death match with Amazon
Son of Solaris hypervisor locked and loaded
A month after open-sourcing what it calls "the first major hypervisor" to arrive in half a decade, cloud computing pioneer Joyent has added this hypervisor to its flagship service, allowing Linux and Windows applications onto the Joyent Cloud for the first time.
The Joyent Cloud – an "infrastructure cloud" along the lines of …
TomorrowNow pleads guilty to illegal Oracle slurping
Defunct SAP outfit agrees to $20m fine
TomorrowNow has pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it illegally downloaded copyrighted Oracle software in an effort to pry customers from the database giant between December 2006 and April 2007.
According to a statement from United States Attorney Melinda Haag, the former SAP subsidiary – which was shut down in 2008 – has …
Pano Logic woos SMBs with 'one-step' VDI
Size of step may vary
Desktop virtualization outfit Pano Logic has uncloaked two new server contraptions that feed virtual desktops to its "zero clients", curiously small silver cubes meant to replace big and beefy client PCs.
With these server bundles, the Redwood City, California outfit is wooing all those small- and medium-sized businesses that …
Google flight search engine lifts off
Soars into antitrust airspace
Google has launched its flight search service, five months after sealing the acquisition of flight-data outfit ITA Software.
Unveiled on Tuesday with a blog post, the service is a means of searching airline schedules. If you type "flights from Chicago to Denver" into Google's main search engine, for example, a "Flights" link ( …
Stonebraker's VoltDB adds catastrophe protection
'NewSQL' 2.0
VoltDB – the new-age database outfit founded by industry high priest Mike Stonebraker – has unveiled version 2.0 of its flagship distributed database, offering new logging tools designed to protect users from catastrophic system failures.
The new version also offers a browser-based tool meant to facilitate the development of …
AppFog dev cloud envelops Ruby, Node
PHP maven takes fight to Heroku
This summer, PHP Fog changed its name to AppFog, vowing to expanded its "platform cloud" beyond PHP. And now it has.
On Tuesday, the Portland, Oregon-based startup announced that its online service – a means of building, deploying, and readily scaling applications – now handles Ruby and Node.js as well as PHP. "We've spent a …
MongoDB 2.0 debuts with shrunken indexes
'25% smaller, 25% faster'
The MongoDB community and its 10gen overseers have released version 2.0 of the distributed "NoSQL" database, saying the new incarnation improves concurrency while reducing the size and boosting the speed of indexes.
According to a blog post from Eliot Horowitz – chief technology officer at 10gen, the outfit that founded MongoDB …
Google Native Client: The web of the future - or the past?
This time, it's Mozilla v Google
Chad Austin believes in Google's Native Client because he believes in the web.
He sees the web as the ultimate programming platform – something that spans not only disparate devices but the competing interests of the world's corporate tech giants – and he sees Native Client as a way of bringing most any language to the platform …
Microsoft inks new patent pacts over Android...and Chrome
'Helps address IP issues' at Acer, Viewsonic
Microsoft has inked patent-licensing deals with Acer and Viewsonic that cover devices running both Google's Android operating and its browser-based Chrome OS.
The Acer deal covers smartphones and tablets running Android, while the Viewsonic pact applies to tablets and phones running Android as well as Chrome OS. Officially, …
Google feeds patents to HTC for assault on Apple
After Motorola gave them to Google
Android phone manufacturer HTC has sued Apple using nine patents it bought from Google. And Google acquired four of the nine from Motorola.
As reported by Bloomberg, Google transferred the nine patents to HTC on August 29, and HTC filed suit against the Jobsian cult on Wednesday. The suit marks a turning point for Google, which …
Oracle suit outs Google's closed source Android tactics
'Do not develop in the open,' Google tells self
Oracle's lawsuit against Google over its Android mobile operating system has turned up an internal Google presentation that plainly shows how the web giant shares closed source Android code with select partners to ensure they play by its rules.
"If we gave [Android] away, how do we ensure we get benefit from it? [We] create …
Yahoo! fires! CEO! Carol! Bartz!
Over the phone
Carol Bartz is no longer the CEO of Yahoo!, according to a report citing sources at the company, and she has apparently confirmed the news with a brief note to company employees.
The company has not yet responded to a request for comment.
AllThingsD reports that chief financial officer Tim Morse has been tapped to serve as …
NSA open sources Google database mimic
Crypto masters incubate Son of BigTable
The US National Security Agency is open sourcing a distributed "NoSQL" database based on Google's proprietary BigTable platform.
Known as Accumulo, the platform has been in development at the NSA for over three years, and it's built atop Hadoop, the open source distributed file system and distributed number-crunching platform …
Apple's ex-cop and the case of the lost iPhone 5
Update Prototypegate II continues...
Update: This story has been updated to reflect that the SFPD has apparently changed its story about the iPhone 5 search.
The San Francisco Police Department has told a local paper that plainclothes police accompanied two Apple security officials to the home of a local man in search of a lost iPhone 5 prototype.
According to SF …
Coders howl over Google's App Engine price hike (natch)
Spotlight on 'lock-in'
Google's decision to increase the price of its App Engine has sparked the inevitable.
On Wednesday, as it announced that App Engine will officially lose its "preview" tag in the second half of September, Google also rolled out a tool that lets existing users calculate how much they'll pay under the service's new pricing setup. …
Judge kneecaps Oracle's $1.3bn triumph over SAP
Industrial espionage award 'grossly excessive'
A federal judge has tossed out a November jury award would have seen SAP pay $1.3 billion to arch-rival Oracle for theft of its intellectual property.
As reported by the AP, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the US District Court in Oakland, California, called the original award "grossly excessive," and said that the damages should be …
Antitrust nemesis accuses Google of 'WMD program'
Algorithm update 'targets vertical search rivals'
Foundem – the UK-based vertical search engine that sparked antitrust investigations into Google on both sides of the Atlantic – has accused the web giant of demoting vertical search competitors with the latest major update to its famous search algorithms, an update officially aimed at reducing "webspam".
In a document (PDF) …
IBM borgs UK 'big data' outfit
Big Blue echoes HP (The New Big Blue)
IBM is to acquire the Cambridge, UK-based "big data" analytics outfit i2, echoing HP's $11bn purchase of Autonomy Corp. earlier this month.
This is Big Blue's twenty-fifth analytics acquisition in the last five years. It spent about $14bn on the previous 24, but terms of the i2 deal were not disclosed. According to The FT, the …
DoJ files antitrust suit to block AT&T's T-Mobile buy
Deal will 'substantially lessen competition'
The US Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of fellow wireless carrier T-Mobile USA.
In a press release that hit the wires on Wednesday, the DoJ said that the $39bn deal would "substantially lessen competition" for wireless services in the US. AT&T runs what is likely the …
Google rolls out offline Gmail (for Chrome only)
Offline Docs and Calendar imminent
Google has released a new version of Gmail that operates without an internet connection, and it plans to offer similar offline versions of Google Docs and Google Calendar over the coming week. But these tools will only work in tandem with Google's own Chrome browser.
The company had promised offline versions of its Google Apps …
Java arrives on Heroku code cloud
J2EE containers snuffed
Heroku – the multi-language "platform cloud" owned by Saleforce.com – is now running Java applications.
Akin to Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, or VMware's Cloud Foundry, Heroku is an online service for building, deploying, and readily scaling applications. It was originally designed for Ruby on Rails apps, but has since …
PHP lands on VMware's Cloud Foundry
Open source code cloud multiplies
PHP has come to VMware's Cloud Foundry project, an effort to create a standard open source platform for building "developer clouds".
On Thursday, a Portland, Oregon startup known as AppFog open sourced code that allows PHP applications atop VMware's platform. Previously, Cloud Foundry was limited to Java, other JVM frameworks, …
Apple shares drop after Jobs resignation
Trading suspended before reveal
Apple's share price has dropped over 5 per cent in after hours trading, following the news that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO.
The company released a statement announcing Jobs's resignation at about 3:30pm Pacific, after the markets had closed in New York, and as of 5pm Pacific, Apple's share price had fallen from 376.18 to 356 …
Apple wins (another) Samsung Android injunction in EU
Dutch court blocks phone trio
A Dutch court has warmed the hearts of Apple's patent Nazis, issuing a preliminary injunction against the sale of three Samsung Android phones: the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II, and the Ace.
As noticed by the ubiquitous Florian Mueller, the injunction is due to take affect in the middle of October, but it only applies to certain EU …
Google settles illegal drug ad probe for $500 million
One of the largest forfeitures in US history
Google has agreed to pay $500 million to settle a US Department of Justice investigation into allegations that it allowed Canadian pharmacies to advertise on its US search engine, facilitating the illegal importation of controlled and non-controlled substances into the country.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Department …
Open source cloud-builder respawn: Eucalyptus 3.0 looms
Mickos & Co craft 'hot spare' NASA-proof cloudware
Marten Mickos and Eucalyptus have pumped new life into their build-your-own–cloud platform, revamping its approach to open source while adding new code designed to protect users from catastrophic failures.
On Wednesday, Eucalyptus unveiled version 3.0 of its eponymous platform, a means of building Amazon-like "infrastructure …
VMware turns shrink ray on open source dev cloud
A really tiny Google mimic for your laptop
VMware has created a really tiny version of its open source developer cloud.
On Wednesday, the virtualization giant introduced Micro Cloud Foundry, a free downloadable version of its Cloud Foundry service that runs on a single laptop. This past spring, when VMware unveiled Cloud Foundry and open sourced the code behind it, the …
Ruby on Rails cloud envelops PHP shop
Orchestra plays in the Engine Yard
Engine Yard – a San Francisco startup offering a "platform cloud" for Ruby on Rails applications – is buying Orchestra, a Dublin-based outfit that provides a similar service for PHP applications.
On Tuesday, Engine Yard announced a definitive agreement to purchase Orchestra, saying it intends to expand its existing platform to …
Samsung says Apple lifted iPad from Kubrick's 2001
'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't run Adobe Flash'
In courts across the world, Apple has accused Samsung of pilfering ideas from the brains of Jobsian fondleslab engineers. And Samsung has now responded by accusing Apple of pilfering ideas from the brain of Stanley Kubrick.
As noticed by inveterate Android watcher Florian Mueller, Samsung recently filed a court brief in …
VMware's open source doppelganger gets cloudy
Convirture does Amazon, Eucalyptus, OpenStack
Convirture – an outfit that has long offered tools for managing open source hypervisors – will soon release a new version of its (partially) open source software that also oversees the use of various "infrastructure clouds", including Amazon EC2 as well as similar but private services based on platforms such as Eucalyptus and …
Coders breathe Android into dead HP fondleslab
Resuscitation by Google desserts
If you bought an HP TouchPad, you bought a tablet whose operating system has, shall we say, an uncertain future. But a group of independent developers is working to give your purchase a new lease on software life.
Under the aegis of Rootz Wiki – an online community of Android developers – a quartet of coders has launched a …
HP chief bows to Jobsian cult
The tablet Apple effect
Why is HP killing its webOS tablet and hoping to spin-off its PC business?
Apple.
During HP's quarterly earnings call with reporters and analysts on Thursday afternoon, company CEO Leo Apotheker explained the company's unexpected about-face with an admission that may seem paradoxical on the surface, but ultimately makes perfect …
HP murders webOS tablets, phones
Confirms PC biz spinoff 'discussion'
HP has announced that it will discontinue its webOS TouchPad and webOS phones, just weeks after the arrival of the TouchPad and a little more than a year after the company acquired the webOS mobile operating system from Palm in a $1.2bn purchase.
In a press release floated before the company's quarterly earnings call, HP also …
Nimbula 'cloud operating system' spans data centers
Ex-Amazon man transcends geography
Nimbula – the build-your-own-cloud outfit founded by Amazon's former vice president of engineering – has announced a new release of its Director platform, saying it will allow businesses to run a unified "infrastructure cloud" across geographically separate data centers.
In short, this means that those using such a cloud can log …
Google squashes Google Analytics bug
Traffic report snafu nipped in bud
Google has released a fix for Google Analytics that corrects a traffic reporting bug introduced by an update to the service last week.
On August 11, Google changed the way Analytics calculates user sessions on websites. But the change also added a bug that misrepresented traffic in some situations.
Since the update arrived, UK- …
Ubuntu erects stairway to VMware code cloud
vOpenSourceness
Ubuntu 11.10 will ship with both the client and server components of Cloud Foundry, the "platform cloud" VMware open sourced this spring.
On Wednesday, VMware and Ubuntu guardian Canonical announced that the next incarnation of the Linux distro – due for official release in October – will include Cloud Foundry packages built by …
Google Apache mod speeds into outside world
Fastsoft on Gooroids
Though Google is loath to open source the foundations of its massive online infrastructure, it does share code for tools at the edge of its network, tools designed to accelerate the actual delivery of web stuff. Mountain View doesn't want Facebook rebuilding the Googlenet. But it is intent on accelerating the web as a whole. …
Google's Android Dev Kit for Dummies™ sent home
App Inventor returns with maker
Google and MIT have built a new home for App Inventor, the Android-programming-kit-for-non-programmers that was just jettisoned from the Mountain View mothership.
On Tuesday, the two announced the creation of the MIT Center for Mobile Learning, which will be "actively engaged in studying and extending" App Inventor under the …
Mozilla strokes coders with Firefox 6
JavaScript Scratchpad
Mozilla has officially released Firefox 6, offering a new JavaScript editor and several other tools aimed at web developers.
Over the weekend, the open source outfit posted the latest stable version of Firefox to its FTP servers, but the browser wasn't formally released on the web until Tuesday.
Firefox 6 is the second …
