Shopper Alert: Price May Drop for You Alone
It used to be that with dedication and a good pair of scissors, one grocery shopper could get the same coupons — and cheap prices — as another. Now going to the grocery store is becoming a lot less egalitarian. ...

The Biggest Thing To Happen To WiFi Has Just About Arrived
Wireless networks will soon get a big boost in speed. A new standard supporting the 60 GHz band is coming next year and it will allow wireless networks to be much faster than those that run on today's current 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. The standard, known as 802.11ad, will create wireless networks that operate at a whopping 7 gigabits per second. CORRECTED: In comparison today's 5 GHz WiFi can work as fast as 600 megabits per second. ...

Adaptive Planning Offers Visual Discovery Add-on
Adaptive Planning has introduced Adaptive Discovery, a cloud-based data visualization system that works with the company's budgeting and corporate performance management system. The new add-on features visual dashboards and scorecards to help managers access, analyze, and explore key financial and operational data, enabling them to gain insights into underlying trends in the business. The system is able to compile financial and operational data from multiple systems and lines of business, present it visually in graphs and charts, and allow CFOs and other managers to drill down for further information. The system includes alerts that show, for example, when gross margin falls into a "warning zone." Trend analysis features indicate patterns such as rising material costs by vendor and changes in the sales pipeline. The system runs from the cloud to accelerate deployment and allow access from mobile devices. ...

Catalina: Brands must micro-target buyers, not demos
Demographic targeting is an "incredibly wasteful and inefficient way to do business," says Todd Morris, executive vice president of brand development and marketing innovation at Catalina Marketing, which has released a study on the subject. Catalina says that treating of all people within a demographic alike, rather than targeting the most active purchasers within the demo, wastes ad dollars. Their report shows that only 36% of TV ads reach the 98% of active consumer packaged goods purchasers. ...

Decade of the Cloud? Tech Leaders Say It's Working Out That Way
There are several common threads running through the SIIA report, packed full with the views of 49 technology CEOs and VPs. All agree that cloud computing — converged with mobile and big data analytics — is the single biggest game-changer in this decade, both for technology providers and consumers. Will the 2010s be remembered as the "Decade of the Cloud"? The decade is actually still young, so who knows? It was too early to predict in 1992 that the 1990s would become the decade of the Internet, or in 2002 that the 2000s would be the decade of social media. But the signs were all around of something big in the making during those times. And we see a new type of economy coming out of the economic hurricane that hit full-force in 2008-09. ...

These Newly Funded Start-Ups Are Hiring
-Adaptive Planning, based in Google's hometown of Mountain View, Calif., is going to hire 65 new employees this year as it looks to scale up its budgetary planning software business. In March, the company raised $22 million from investors including Norwest Venture Partners. Adaptive is looking to hire engineers with experience in Java as well as quality assurance. There will be sales positions open across the U.S. ...

Putting People First
In 2007, Jim Braun was CFO of OmniTrax, a regional railroad operator that was making a lot of money by leasing and selling the land and buildings it owned around its tracks. The real estate market was on the brink of an historic collapse that year, but "I'd be lying if I told you I knew it would get that bad," he says. Still, Braun, who is now a consultant in business information management at Capgemini, had kept a gimlet eye on industry trends, drawing on data that indicated an increase in inventory and a slowdown in development. When he modeled that information with business intelligence (BI) tools and saw red flags popping up, he urged the railroad's board to slow its real estate purchasing. ...

Adaptive Planning gets $22M for cloud-based performance management
Adaptive Planning, a business performance management company, announced Wednesday that it has raised a cool $22 million in venture capital. Unless you work in accounting or as a business manager, you probably won't find Adaptive Planning's services all that exciting. But for small businesses, services like Adaptive Planning can help track which decisions were a huge mistake and which ones really paid off. Founded in 2003, the company started out offering software for companies to plan and report business performance to figure out if their decisions were paying off. When cloud computing became popular, Adaptive Planning created a software-as-a-service product with dashboards, analytics, and other visual data representations. ...

A New Coupon Source: Your Account Statement
Consumers typically scan their online checking and credit-card-account statements just to see what they've spent. But these days a closer look may turn up some great opportunities to save -- or more enticements to shop. ...

Venture capital deals
Adaptive Planning, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of cloud-based corporate performance management solutions, has raised $22 million in fifth-round funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, and was joined by return backers Cardinal Venture Capital, Clairmont Capital, Monitor Ventures and ONSET Ventures. www.adaptiveplanning.com ...

Clickatell CEO on why SMS remains king of communication
When South African Pieter de Villiers and his three associates put their heads together to create a business plan for their last minute holiday deal service, they soon realised there was one major flaw in their masterplan. "At the time in 2000, people read email two or three times a week. We couldn't send you a 24-hour expiry deal if you weren't going to read it for days. In getting information to a consumer, SMS is much better, but there wasn't this capability," Clickatell joint-founder and CEO Pieter de Villiers says. "So we threw up a business plan and started Clickatell. We weren't geniuses, we had a problem that no one could solve and we went about trying to solve it." ...

A Look At The Motives And Myths Behind Transaction Driven Marketing
Visa and MasterCard kicked up major controversy in October when plans to start selling marketers and advertisers data on customer transactions leaked to the press. The idea of transaction-driven marketing isn't all that new, but finding a way to implement the practice in a way that benefits companies while protecting consumers' personal information is partly why it gets consumers (and regulators) so riled up. It's a fine line Lynne Laube, president of Cardlytics, has been toeing ever since she co-founded the company four years ago....

The Spectacular Mobile Phone Revolution in AfricaThe expansion of mobile phones is likely to revolutionize Africa, a land plagued by poverty, disease, wars and political corruption. International Business Times spoke with one of Africa's top mobile phone executives about the future of wireless service on the continent. South African-based Pieter de Villiers is the chief executive of Africa's largest mobile messaging provider, Clickatell. ...

An Upbeat Finance Poll?
Each week, it seems, I see a new poll that charts the glum outlook of corporate executives and their fears about a double-dip recession and, not so long ago, a depression. So you can imagine my surprise when one arrived that had glimmers of hope sprinkled throughout it.
The poll, conducted by the Business Performance Innovation Network and corporate performance management software/service provider Adaptive Planning, found that more than a quarter of 180-plus finance executives surveyed plan to hire more staff in the next six months. Respondents were from an array of industries that ranged in size from under $10 million to more than $1 billion in revenue. With the U.S. unemployment currently at 8.3%, this optimistic outlook is just in time....

Egasti joins Catalina Marketing as CEO
Catalina Marketing Corp. has named Jamie Egasti, former chief executive officer of The Folgers Coffee Co. and president of Procter & Gamble Co.'s global snacks and coffee unit, as its new CEO.

Which Are The Five Most Innovative Tech Companies in America?
There are plenty of attempts to list the most innovative companies in America and worldwide. Fast Company for example has an annual 50 most innovative companies globally. MIT has its list of 50 too. What connects these lists is the discretionary power of the editor – these are opinions. Very well informed opinions of course. But can we go a step further and use data to judge which really are the most innovative companies in America (or the world)?

TXT2GET Launches in the US
TXT2GET has launched its web-based, self-service mobile marketing platform that connects advertisers with customers, prospects and social followers, via text and QR code campaigns, and email. The platform is well established in New Zealand and Australia, where clients include Samsung, McDonalds, HP, Coca Cola and Red Bull....

Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. Streamlines Budgeting and Reporting with Adaptive Planning
Adaptive Planning, Inc. announced that Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. has implemented Adaptive Planning's solution, moving two foreign subsidiaries and more than 100 sales offices onto a single platform for budgeting, forecasting and reporting. Prior to rolling out Adaptive Planning, Konica Minolta relied on Excel for budgeting, forecasting and consolidations, and SAP for U.S. reporting.

Finance Executives See Rosier Economy This Year
A survey of financial executives found that though they're still pessimistic about job growth in the United States, most of them expect the economy to do better in 2011 than 2010. The study, by Adaptive PlanningbizWatch Adaptive Planning Latest from The Business Journals Finance execs report record optimismAdaptive Planning: Finance execs report record optimism levels for 2011Finance execs predict double dip recession Follow this company and the Business Performance Innovation Network, found 64 percent of finance executives quizzed in December expected a better overall economy this year. ...

Financial Execs See Economic Improvements
Nearly two-thirds of finance executives predict the U.S. economy will fare better this year than last year, according to a new survey. The survey, by Adaptive Planning and the Business Performance Innovation Network, found that 64 percent of the finance executives they surveyed expect the overall economy in 2011 to improve over last year—an optimistic outlook reflected by reports of improving economic conditions, reduced fears of a "double-dip" recovery and lower levels of economic uncertainty. ...

Green vision shines through gray skies

CFE Federal Credit Union Goes Virtual, Replaces 300 Desktop Computers

Thin is In at McHenry

Silicon Valley Airport Finally High-Tech
San Jose International Airport's quaint Terminal C had long seemed at odds with the place surrounding it, California's tech mecca.

Travelers frequenting this 1960s-era relic may have been charmed by the walk across the tarmac to board or deplane. But the low ceilings, tight gate areas, two-station security checkpoint and puny baggage claim area often made for a miserable airport experience and poor reflection of Silicon Valley.

But Terminal C is no more, after the opening last month of a gleaming new Terminal B, the centerpiece of a $1.3 billion face-lift that airport spokesman David Vossbrink says establishes the facility as "the most technologically advanced airport in the world."

New Baggage Screening Gets Test in San Jose
SAN JOSE—Later this month, the Transportation Security Administration will begin a formal testing period for a new baggage screening system at Mineta San Jose International Airport. The state-of-the-art baggage-screening system, made by Morpho Detection, could be rolled out to airports across the U.S. if the machines perform well.

The system is part of a federal initiative to replace older baggage-screening machines in U.S. airports with more efficient and accurate models. After a formal 45-day evaluation period, the agency will determine whether to purchase additional Morpho systems and at which airports they will be deployed, says TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball.

Since the $45 million system began a trial run in June, some problems have cropped up. Airport spokesman David Vossbrink says software issues led to dozens of lost bags and some delayed flights one weekend in June. In addition, baggage mishandling incidents—for example, when airport employees place a child car seat on a conveyer belt sideways instead of lengthwise—have slowed the system on several occasions, he says.

Fast Company: iYogi, Support.com, Geek Squad Battle for the Tech Support Title
Tackling computer glitches yourself is so 2008. "About 15% of home computers are infected with malware so fixing them has gone the way of lawn-mower service -- it's no longer a do-it-yourself thing," says Kurt Scherf, a technology analyst with Parks Associates. Scherf estimates Americans spent a whopping $4 billion on tech support last year. That number should grow to at least $6.4 billion by 2013, and remote help is poised to drive much of that expansion….Final take: iYogi is a low-cost leader, ahead of Support.com and Geek Squad.

WSJ: Tech Start-ups Cope With Data Flood
While datacenters aren't necessarily their customers, two companies on the list are looking to improve how vast stores of data are structured so the load can be used in more interesting and useful ways by businesses and consumers.

ParAccel Inc., No. 18, makes database software that businesses such as retailers and financial-services firms use to mobilize many servers to query their data 10 to 20 times faster than they could in the past.

"It's been very apparent that the amount of information out there that needs to be analyzed to make real-time decisions in companies is growing far faster than the traditional database architectures have been built for," says Barry Zane, ParAccel's founder. By tweaking how data is structured and changing the architecture, "we get a lot more performance out of smaller number of computers."

Bloomberg: San Jose Mayor Reed Discusses Governmental Insolvency: BLAW
Chuck Reed, mayor of San Jose, California, talks with Bloomberg Law's Lee Pacchia about the fiscal crises facing the governments of many U.S. cities. This is the fifth installment of the BLAW series on governmental insolvency.

Bloomberg: Goldman-Backed Pano Gets $20 Million to Take On PCs
Pano Logic Inc., a startup trying to persuade companies to dump personal computers and use cheaper desktop terminals connected to servers, raised an additional $20 million to pursue what it says will be a $65 billion market. Pano said in a statement that it got the money in a deal led by Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California. Mayfield, which backed companies including Compaq Computer Corp. and Silicon Graphics Inc., joined Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as investors.

WSJ: Wal-Mart's Web Site Offering Remote Tech-Support Services >WMT
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), which launched new technical support services in its stores last month, is now offering its online shoppers remote tech-support services--such as virus removal, diagnostics, and repairs--through an India company. Privately held iYogi has 10 services for sale on Walmart.com, and starting this week, it began offering free computer setup and support on all Windows PCs purchased on the site for the holidays, said Vishal Dhar, iYogi's co-founder and marketing president. The service, which iYogi is hoping will create repeat customers, includes connecting peripheral equipment, connecting to the Internet, optimizing settings for power efficiency, and free antivirus software, Dhar said in a telephone interview...

International Business Times: A look at Windows 7 after its first week
"If you are downloading and installing Windows 7, we recommend that that you burn the DVD at the slowest speed," said Vishal Dhar, co-founder and President of Marketing of iYogi, a tech services company.

NYT: Q&A: Which Windows 7: Full or Upgrade?
If you'd prefer a more automated approach, migration aids like Laplink's PCmover or iYogi's Windows 7 service might make...

CNN Money: USA: Geek Squad rivals: Bring 'em on!
There's PlumChoice and iYogi. Meanwhile, phone companies are getting in the game. Support.com CEO Josh Pickus says that Verizon (VZ), Dell (DELL), ...

Investor's Business Daily: Windows 7 Might Be Coming Up Sevens
Microsoft's release next week of Windows 7, the new version of its flagship computer operating system, appears well-timed, as signs point to a refresh cycle starting in personal computers. A poll of more than 500 consumers by tech support company iYogi found that 61% of respondents said they plan to upgrade to Windows 7 at some point, most before the end of 2010...

VENTURE BEAT: Reply! claims 50-100% better ad conversion rates than search or display ads
Targeted search and display ads are the bread and butter of online advertising today. But ad networks like Reply! are learning how to deliver qualified leads — in Reply’s case, potential buyers for cars, homes, home improvement, and insurance deals — whose self-selected qualifications that result in up to double the conversion rate from ad to purchase. Since adding publisher tools and more refined categories into which leads can be segmented for automated buying and selling through Reply, the company has seen conversion rates climb to 50-100% over the rates for search and display ads. Reply works by collecting pre-qualifying information from Web surfers — “I’m looking to buy a home in 94145? — then selling their click-throughs on an ad to a buyer looking for a matching profile. The genre is called lead generation or just “leadgen.” ...

Do the Athletics Know the Way to San Jose?
Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff ran into opposition from locals when he tried to move his team to Fremont, Calif. This time, he's found a willing partner in downtown San Jose. The city's mayor cites a redevelopment-agency report released last week that says a new stadium could bring in $135 million annually and create about 1,000 jobs. Mr. Wolff says he isn't sure if the report will help sway MLB into allowing a move into what is technically part of the San Francisco Giants' territory.

The A's May Find A Way To San Jose
A new report gives the go-ahead for new stadium. Will Major League Baseball bless the deal? The beleaguered Oakland Athletics appear a big step closer to getting a much-needed new ballpark in a brand new hometown. The San Jose, Calif., Redevelopment Agency released a report Thursday on the economic impact of building a new park on 14 city-owned acres downtown, touting baseball over alternate development plans like retail and residential units, more complex projects that would take far longer to begin. The study estimates that baseball would bring enough people into the downtown area to stimulate $86 million annually in new direct spending, plus close to 1,000 jobs.

Athletics Owner Wolff Says He Wants to Move Team to San Jose
Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff said he'd like to move the Major League Baseball team to San Jose, California, which would get $130 million a year in economic benefits from a new stadium, according to a study released today. The A's, who dropped plans to move to Fremont, California, this year, have thesecond-lowest home attendance in the major leagues this season and have been seeking a new stadium to help generate more revenue from suites, luxury seating, parking and concessions. The Athletics have played in Oakland's Coliseum -- now the McAfee Coliseum -- since 1968, and are committed through 2010 under their lease agreement.

Social networking poll reveals users at risk
A new survey has found the widespread use of social networks at home and work is increasing the risk of identity theft and infection, yet most social media users do not take the proper precautions to protect themselves. The online survey conducted by AVG and the CMO Council of over 250 online consumers has shown that while most are concerned about their security when interacting on social media sites, less than one third are taking action to protect themselves online.

Social network users not taking security steps
NEW YORK Sure everyone is Tweeting, friending one another on Facebook and getting LinkedIn, but at what cost? A survey released today by the CMO Council and security software maker AVG found that less than a third of social community members are taking steps to prevent cyber attacks..

Rogers Cup lets tennis players take a swing at Web-based rankings
The annual tournament marks the debut of a system that will let amateur players compare themselves to the likes of Monica Seles and other tennis greats. Also read all about why the "chess method" was applied. The tennis data will be hosted by The Planet, a managed services firm with data centres in Houston, Tex. Urvish Vashi, the firm's general manager of hosting services, says the Rogers Rankings presents IT issues similar in nature to those of other, more traditional enterprise environments.

'Virtual' computers span the digital divide
NComputing is out to span the digital divide with a version of cloud computing called "virtualization," which essentially turns one machine into many.

Small Businesses Falling Short In IT, Security
The Planet releases the early findings of a milestone small business IT effectiveness audit. According to the IT Effectiveness Index, a midyear report issued this week, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are falling further behind in IT as the economy worsens. Nearly one in four SMBs received a "failing grade" in IT effectiveness, the study says. This failure can be seen in a lack of security, a high level of downtime, and the absence of disaster recovery programs, the ITEI says. About 37 percent of SMBs received a "C" grade, which indicates they are just barely getting by.

LG to produce monitor with virtualization technology
LG's new liquid crystal display SmartVine N-series monitors will include embedded "virtualization" technology from U.S.-based NComputing Inc…

China's Haier eyes overseas PC markets with US partner
In an alliance with NComputing, a California-based provider of virtual desktop technology, China's Haier plans to target large-scale government auctions in up to 20 developing countries with cut-price computing solutions.

SaaS-Based Budgeting Helps Manufacturer Fight Downturn
Electronics manufacturer Vicor is using a SaaS-based tool from Adaptive Planning to come to grips with fast-changing demand.

The Case For Shorter Budget Turnarounds
A shrinking economy is reason enough to get a handle on budgets, says William Soward, chief executive of Adaptive Planning, a private Web-based maker of budget software.

Can Green Jobs Save the Economy?
San Jose, Calif., Mayor Chuck Reed is on the front lines of the battle for clean technology and other sectors that aim to support the environment. In a recent interview he pointed out a major challenge: "We've got to create not just green jobs but green careers."

San Jose's Cleantech Officer on Renewables, Recession and the Stimulus
The city has long been a force in computing, and many semiconductor makers call it home; in the future, it hopes to be similarly important as a base for renewable energy companies.

IT's Time to Trim: Some CFOs see the downturn as an opportunity to revamp how their companies manage IT.
At Dubai World Centre, a $33 billion commercial-development business, a new scenario planning programme uses "hosted" software from Adaptive Planning.

Why a Startup Shunned Venture Capital
Frank Zamani, founder of Caspio—a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that sells a database program that enables companies to create Web applications—has found unique ways to keep costs down in lieu of tapping VC financing.

PC Movement: How Green Is Your Computer?
Techforward, a Los Angeles-based financial-services company that works with electronics recyclers, lets consumers lock in a trade-in value for their devices. The company will begin selling plans through electronics retailer TigerDirect Inc. and CompUSA next week.

Zume puts care in the patient’s hands
Zume Life Inc. offers a small, handheld device ("Zuri") and a Web portal that help people with chronic diseases manage their self-care. Individuals use Zuri to remember and record various health-related activities. They and their caregivers use the Web portal to review ongoing health patterns and to respond quickly to changes in health. The Zuri can be either a unique device or an application on a smartphone.

Getting Personal: Tech Cos Develop ‘Self -Care’ Health Tools
The Zuri, an iPod-sized device, sends patients reminders to take their medications and records their compliance, which users and, if they choose, their doctors can track through a companion Web page. The Zuri's maker, ZumeLife, Inc., is a San Jose start-up company.

America’s Unhealthiest Grocery Shoppers
While we all indulge every now and then, new data show that shoppers in certain portions of the country are more prone to regularly buying unhealthy items at the grocery store than others, due in part to a mix of regional, community and familial influences. To determine the country's unhealthiest grocery shoppers, Forbes.com used data compiled by St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Catalina Marketing, a company that specializes in developing behavior-based marketing strategies.

Richard Arnold, chief operating officer and CFO at Phoenix Technologies, says the portable-computer market, which is the company's largest customer segment, is growing at a compound annual rate of 30 percent. "We don't see any weakness at all in our market," he says. Still, Phoenix was recently able to buy a portfolio company from a venture-capital firm even as the target was in the middle of raising a new round of financing from its backer.

'Majority of our sales are from outside America'
Now, US-based NComputing claims that with its technology, the cost per seat for a computer could be below Rs 4,000. NComputing uses a model which helps share computing resources to offer the low-cost option. Negroponte says the kids will learn how to fix the machines themselves.

Microsoft to make Windows, Linux available on OLPC: but will it work?
Nicholas Negroponte made much of his idea that every child should have a computer costing $100. In truth, it has not worked out like that and there was very little possibility that it ever would. Stephen Dukker is CEO of NComputing, which provides virtual desktop solutions for education in the U.S. and in developing countries. He said, 'We don't particularly think laptops are a terrible idea; they're a very good idea for people who can afford them. 'The real objection to OLPC is that they're trying to be a PC company without being a PC company. They are pushing back support, integration, deployment onto governments without extensive experience.' Every OLPC deployment has failed because of post-trial support issues. Negroponte says the kids will learn how to fix the machines themselves.

More computer brands chase the '$100 laptop'
Meanwhile Ncomputing in Redwood City, Calif., may be the current price leader for student sales, although its product isn't a laptop. The company's device connects "dumb" terminals to a central computer. That core machine then shares its processing power with each of the networked computers.

Phoenix Technologies to buy TouchStone Software for $18M
Phoenix Technologies Ltd. has agreed to acquire TouchStone Software Corp. in a deal worth about $18 million. Milpitas-based Phoenix (NASDAQ:PTEC) will pay TouchStone stockholders $1.48 for each share, representing a 29 percent premium over the closing price on April 9. North Andover, Mass.-based TouchStone (OTCBB:TSSW) provides software designed to diagnose personal computer problems and specializes in system update technology.

Phoenix Technologies to buy TouchStone Software for $18M
Phoenix Technologies Ltd. has agreed to acquire TouchStone Software Corp. in a deal worth about $18 million. Milpitas-based Phoenix (NASDAQ:PTEC) will pay TouchStone stockholders $1.48 for each share, representing a 29 percent premium over the closing price on April 9.

North Andover, Mass.-based TouchStone (OTCBB:TSSW) provides software designed to diagnose personal computer problems and specializes in system update technology.

Phoenix Technologies to Acquire TouchStone Software
Phoenix Technologies (NASDAQ:PTEC) Ltd. Thursday said it agreed to acquire Touchstone Software (OTCBB:TSSW) Corp., a provider of computer problem-solving utility software and supporting products and engineering services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Phoenix Technologies said the acquisition will enable the company to develop a 'strong' online presence and infrastructure for Web-based service delivery. Phoenix Technologies also said it plans to offer services based on Touchstone technology.

Phoenix Technologies to Acquire TouchStone Software
Phoenix Technologies (nasdaq: PTEC - news - people ) said the acquisition will enable the company to develop a 'strong' online presence and infrastructure for Web-based service delivery. Phoenix Technologies also said it plans to offer services based on Touchstone technology.

Phoenix, Alcatel-Lucent to Offer Enhanced Laptop Security
Phoenix Technologies (NASDAQ:PTEC) has joined forces with Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) to ensure that the Phoenix FailSafe theft deterrence service is interoperable with Alcatel-Lucent's OmniAccess 3500 Nonstop Laptop Guardian (NLG).

Micron and Phoenix, Stocks for the Stout-Hearted
Last week, Phoenix announced a deal to acquire BeInSync, which provides seamless backup of crucial files to servers operated by Phoenix. The idea is to make data backup a core part of the computing experience -- and to create a steady revenue stream. Like FailSafe, use of the software would entail a modest monthly fee. A third new initiative, called HyperCore, would allow your laptop to provide key functionality outside of Windows.

Virtualization In A Box: NComputing's PC Virtualization
NComputing has caught onto the trend of barebones machines, but it has taken an approach that circumvents the data center. Instead, it sells a system that allows companies to run several virtualized PCs on a single desktop machine. As many as 10 employees can split the power of a typical PC and work on individual computing terminals. Each terminal has just enough power to surf the Web, edit word documents or perform other low-bandwidth tasks.

NComputing expects LatAm to represent 30% of 2008 sales - Regional
US desktop virtualization solutions provider NComputing expects to triple sales in Latin America in 2008, representing 30% of global revenues, the company's founder Stephen Dukker told BNamericas.

NComputing Opens LatAm Headquarters
US desktop virtualization solution provider NComputing has a new office in Mexico City, which will serve a headquarters for operations in Central and South America, the company said in a statement.

Phoenix Technologies 2008 Sales May Top Forecast, Chief Says
Phoenix Technologies Ltd.'s revenue this year may beat the software maker's forecast of $70 million by several million dollars, helped by a record number of new contracts in the fiscal first quarter, company officials said. The $70 million projection, made in a Jan. 7 press release, "is a conservative number," Chief Executive Woodson "Woody" Hobbs said yesterday in a telephone interview. Sales might be a "few million" higher, he said.

Touch and Go
One of life's little annoyances is typing in your Windows password when you boot up. Instead, touch the fingerprint reader built into the U.are.U Fingerprint Keyboard Ditto for logging into websites and programs. The ergonomic design includes a palm rest and all the usual qwerty keys, as well as five programmable keys to speed up application launch. The keyboard's audit trail provides individual accountability for company desktops, and lets managers enforce access policies.

BlueRoads CEO Heads Upstream
The co-founder and former CEO of e-mail security startup Postini Inc., which Google Inc. bought this summer for $625 million, is a pioneer in on-demand computing, or "software as a service," an important shift in how companies and consumers use technology. He is now in charge of BlueRoads Inc., a provider of on-demand "partner relationship management" software that on Monday, Sept. 17, is set to announce a $9 million Series C round of funding. Participating in the round are previous investors ArrowPath Venture Capital of Redwood Shores, Calif., and Cardinal Venture Capital and El Dorado Ventures, both of Menlo Park, Calif., bringing the total amount BlueRoads has raised since launching in 2001 to $25 million.

A Breed Apart
Mark N. Clemente has seen these forces at play in the business performance management (BPM) space in the past 12 months. He's the director of strategy and programming at the BPM Forum, an organization that helps to advance the understanding of business performance management techniques, technologies, and processes in global enterprises. Corporate decision-makers are thinking, "I need to have available systems that I can use for day-to-day, near-term decision-making as well as for slightly longer-term strategic planning to help me run my business better, but also to ready my organization for shifts in the marketplace, which come from all sources -- including government regulators," he reports.

Intel Inside The Third World
For a California company called NComputing Inc., the solution to the world’s Digital Divide lies in “collective computing.” NComputing CEO Stephen A. Dukker boasts that, for as little as $11 per user, schools or governments can deploy a network of “thin clients” – desktop machines that have no central processing units but are connected to a server, solving the problem of servicing laptops when they break down. “You require a complete, well-thought-out ecosystem to avoid winding up with stacks of these machines with broken screens, just collecting dust,” Dukker says.

We Keep Sharing Passwords
Most of us, I think, aren’t dumb enough to advertise our passwords on post-it notes around the computer (though it’s tempting). But how many of you have actually shared passwords with a colleague? Quite a few, it turns out. A new “Password Pain Poll” byDigitalPersona and theBusiness Performance Management (BPM) Forum found that 68 percent of C-level executives say network passwords have been exchanged with colleagues in their organization. About half of them listed ease of use and increased productivity as their top security priority this year. And what could be easier than just spreading your password around?

Schools Learn a Lesson in Desktop Alternatives
Schools are always looking for innovative ways to do more with less. One way value-added resellers are helping to address that need is by providing alternative desktop PC options. NComputing, a company started by eMachines founder Stephen Dukker, provides a solution that enables three to four users to work off one host PC. For schools, the system can help cut costs and simplify support

Internet & Technology - Spam Is Still Rising, But So Are Abilities To Cope With Issue
Americans get more spam than ever, but it's not annoying them as much. E-mail users are coping with junk messages better than they once did, according to a new study that finds wide use of filters and other tactics to dodge the unwanted missives. The amount of spam traversing cyberspace has risen by about 2.65 times over the past 12 months, according to privately held Postini, which runs a spam-filtering service for businesses that process billions of messages a day. "The historical trend is about a 10% increase per quarter in the amount of spam," said Dan Druker, an executive vice president at the company. "Starting in September it was a very vertical rise. It was a hockey stick."

Business Insurance: Industry Focus
In the first six months since sweeping changes altered the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for federal court cases, some large insurers are making progress in revising their operations so they can preserve and produce electronically stored information—if and when needed. The new federal rules are especially important to insurers, because "the insurance industry is significantly more litigious than any other industry," said Marie-Charlotte Patterson, vp of market strategy for AXS-One Inc. in Rutherford, N.J. About 40% of the software company’s clientele is in the insurance or financial services industries.

The Most Dangerous Job in Business
The chief marketing officer, or its org-chart equivalent, may be the riskiest job in the American C-suite. But the new reality is that CMO jobs are incredibly perilous. Today's marketing chiefs are shape-shifting beasts who grasp not only advertising and promotions but also public relations, IT, finance, manufacturing, customer service, and branding across global markets. That challenge helps explain why "we're seeing CMOs getting ambushed," says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, an international peer-support network whose 3,000-plus members control more than $70 billion in annual marketing spending.

Million-Dollar Starter Homes
The National Association of Realtors estimates that 80% or more of home buyers start their search on the Internet, a far cry from, say, 10 years ago when a consultation with a real estate agent was the norm. Today, it’s easier to log on to Web sites like Zillow.com and Reply.com, which provide comprehensive neighborhood information from median age and income levels to public and private school information.

CMOs under pressure to develop new skills Increasing influence in corporate strategy brings new expectations, responsibilities
While expectations are high for CMOs, there is often a gap between what CEOs expect from their top marketing leaders and actual performance, according to a study released last month by the CMO Council.
The study found that nearly three-quarters of CEOs and board members consider the marketing organization "highly influential and strategic" in the enterprise, but nearly two-thirds say that their top marketers don't provide adequate ROI with which to gauge marketing's true performance. The study also found that only about 40% of CMOs received an "A" grade from CEOs on their performance.

Beyond Passwords: 3 Alternate Security Devices
Computer security is one of the highest priorities for IT departments, and every major corporation has staff devoted to maintaining a secure computing environment. The standard toolkits include firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, anti-malware and any number of software systems that protect the contents of computers against would-be intruders. While each offers robust security, each takes a different approach to the identity verification criteria. AccessSmart's Power LogOn uses a smartcard, Digital Persona uses a fingerprint scanner, and SensibleVision's FastAccess uses facial recognition via an attached webcam. I found each to work as advertised, denying or allowing access appropriately.

Study Says CMOs Misunderstood
A survey, done by the Chief Marketing Officer Council and sponsored by MarketBridge, a sales and marketing consultant for Fortune 500 companies, polled nearly 1,500 CEOs, CMOs and other executives. The study found that a big gripe among C-level execs is that many CMOs don't have the financial acumen and global and strategic mind-set to be top management players. Nearly two-thirds also say their top marketers don't give enough evidence of return on investment on which to gauge their work. In a sign of the key role played by CMOs, nearly 70% of the CMOs in the study report directly to their CEOs. However, only 40% of them get an "A" for performance from their bosses.

CMO Council Study Finds Gap Between Expectations and Performance of CMOs
A gap exists between the expectations that CEOs have of CMOs and senior marketers’ actual performance, according to a new study by the CMO Council. “Typically, you have senior marketers who are hired who are not ultimately synching up with the objectives and expectations that the CEO and board members expect the CMO to have,” said Brian Regan, senior VP at the CMO Council. “We have been advocating defining the role and putting the right person in there—not just marketers that have marketing and brand-building skills, but those with cross-functional expertise. They have to be partners in strategic decision-making.”

Mobile Campus Announces Rollout of Free Emergency Alerts System
With US universities seeking an immediate solution to emergency campus alerts in the wake of the Virginia Tech University tragedy, Mobile Campus has announced the availability of its free service capable of immediately and simultaneously alerting students, university employees and others via text message. While the system can be used for a variety of important communications and notifications, including promotional offers, Mobile Campus has decided, in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, to make the service available to students and others who want to opt into the system only for emergency alerts.

Neat Ways Round a Portability Problem
MojoPac, is a downloadable software package that can be installed on any USB 2.0 storage device including iPod, USB hard drive, USB flash drive or mobile phone (www.mojopac.com). I found a mini USB hard drive is ideal. Once installed, MojoPac allows applications and files to be carried on a device that fits in a pocket.

Bearable Lightness of Laptops
MojoPac, is a downloadable software package that can be installed on any USB 2.0 storage device including iPod, USB hard drive, USB flash drive or mobile phone (www.mojopac.com). I found a mini USB hard drive is ideal. Once installed, MojoPac allows applications and files to be carried on a device that fits in a pocket. So, for example, with sufficient capacity on the storage device you can load up personal versions of Microsoft Office and most other programs and access them simply by plugging the USB device into any PC anywhere in the world. Language settings are stored on the MojoPac enabled device, so you can connect to a Japanese PC and still have everything in English. MojoPac costs $50 but comes with a 30-day free trial.

ALL BUSINESS: CEO homes as stock gauge?
Liu and Crocker culled data on 488 principal residences from CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index at the end of 2004 for their study, entitled "Where Are the Shareholders' Mansions?" The 12 CEOs not included may be renters who own no property or live outside the United States. The researchers' sources of information included property deeds, tax records, online databases such as Zillow.com and Reply.com, Google searches, employment contracts and voter registration data.

E-file precautions: One typo can get you into trouble; heed these tips to stay safe online
If you're using a wireless home network, make sure your firewall is on and that your transmissions are encrypted. Otherwise hackers "can pluck information right out of the air and they can do that from over 100 miles away," said Stu Elefant, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based senior product manager with McAfee Inc., a security technology company based in Plano, Texas. "They can see all the data that's flying through the air."

SMBs Eye Managed Services
Doug Turpin, information and technology director for Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group, in Virginia Beach, Va., heads a four-person IT staff. For several years, Atlantic Bay has contracted with Web-hosting company The Planet, of Houston, to handle the mortgage company's e-mail and other critical servers. "Typically what I look for, for places to outsource, are spots where our core competency is not x," Turpin said.

Mar 13, 2007

RingCube Technologies Scores $12 Million Investment
Mountain View, California-based RingCube announced that they have raised a $12 million Series B round of funding. "MojoPac is experiencing phenomenal growth month to month across multiple channels," said Shan Appajodu, CEO and Founder of RingCube. "This round of funding will enable us to accelerate our consumer and enterprise market growth and to service our customers across the globe."

From .Ru with Love
Everyone knows Russia isn’t exactly crime free, but here’s a tip: Even if you’re going to visit Russia online, you’d best travel with security. That’s just one tidbit from a report released today by McAfee (MFE), “Mapping the Mal Web,” which notes that “the two riskiest large country domains to visit are Romania (.ro) and Russia (.ru), while the two safest are Finland (.fi) and Ireland (.ie).” Nice to see Ireland in the headlines for being peaceful.

Surf At Your Own Risk
Enjoy the beaches of Tokelau. But beware the South Pacific island nation's Web sites.
That's the message from security software company McAfee, which released a survey Monday ranking the world's most dangerous Web addresses. McAfee says more than 10% of all Web sites registered out of Tokelau, identifiable by the ".tk" at the end of their Web address, will expose users to spam, viruses and spyware.
McAfee's survey was based on data from SiteAdvisor, a Boston-based company that the security company bought last April. SiteAdvisor's free online tool assigns Web sites a safety score based on whether they send spam, infect surfers with malicious programs or deliver excessive pop-up ads.

RingCube - Changing The Way We Compute On The Go
RingCube received $12 million in expansion funding from NEA and MDV.  The company intends to use the funding to expand its services worldwide.
What's interesting about the company is it's MojoPac technology.  It allows a user to take all of his/her files, applications and settings onto a portable USB storage device (stick) and simply plug it into any Windows XP computer anywhere and immediately have access to their customized and private computing environment.
While I haven't personally tried the system, it sounds like a great tool for business travel.  If you don't need your laptop for a presentation and you have access to a company or other computer at your destination, you don't have to lug your laptop through the airport security check anymore.

RingCube to use $12M round to take product global
The Mountain View software company, which lets users suck their PC's contents onto USB storage devices for transport and use on iPods, cell phones and other gadgets; started last year and now employs 45 full-time employees and consultants. Fifteen or so more employees will be added by year's end.

Mobile Computing Software Developer RingCube Draws $12M
Mobile computing software developer RingCube Technologies Inc. has connected with venture investors for a $12 million second round. Its first product is an application called MojoPac, which allows users to transfer programs and files from a desktop computer to any device with a USB port.

Mobile Computing Software Developer RingCube Draws $12M
Mobile computing software developer RingCube Technologies Inc. has connected with venture investors for a $12 million second round, with Mohr Davidow Ventures joining as the lone new investor. The deal follows widespread interest in the Mountain View, Calif.-based company from venture firms following its first product launch, according to RingCube founding chief executive Shan Appajodu. RingCube introduced its first product in September, a software application called MojoPac that received significant attention at the time.

MDV backs RingCube in $12M round
Mobile computing software developer RingCube Technologies Inc. has connected with venture investors for a $12 million second round, with Mohr Davidow Ventures joining as the lone new investor. The deal follows widespread interest in the Mountain View, Calif.-based company from venture firms following its first product launch, according to RingCube founding chief executive Shan Appajodu. RingCube introduced its first product in September, a software application called MojoPac that received significant attention at the time.
MojoPac allows users to transfer programs and files from a desktop computer to any device with a USB port, then simulate one’s own home computing experience on any other machine by re-connecting the mobile device.

RingCube raises $12M for virtual PC service
RingCube Technologies, the Mountain View company that sells the “MojoPac,” which is a software to store a virtual PC in your pocket via a USB device or iPod, has raised $12 million in a second round of financing. RingCube will use the capital to expand into other regions, including South America, Europe, Asia, and the BRIC nations. It will also seek to serve corporate users, allowing employees to carry a virtual private network product on their MojoPac device, so that they can access their corporate networks from other machines. In places like Brazil, China and India, for example, many people use Internet cafes or kiosks, and the MojoPac is a good way to store their data, said chief executive Shan Appajodu.

RingCube Raises $12M For App Mobility Tech
Mountain View, Calif. -- RingCube Technologies Inc. has raised $12 million to ramp up sales of its technology allowing users to untether themselves from their personal computers.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, founded in 2004, has developed software that virtualizes users' Microsoft Windows operating systems, allowing it to be carried on any USB 2.0-compliant storage device.
Its technology drew new investor MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and previous investor New Enterprise Associates to the company's Series B round. As a result of the investment, Jim Smith, a general partner with MDV, will take a seat on the RingCube board.

RingCube Technologies Receives $12 million
Mountain View based RingCube Technologies – recipient of a $12 Million Series B financing - offers a solution to the memorable problem lamented by Ann Cole and Muddy Waters:  "Got my mojo working, but it just won't work on you." Transferring "mojo" – defined by RingCube as an individual's digital lifestyle – to various computing devices is a problem plaguing a number of groups including gamers, college students, parents, and developing world citizens without abundant computer access.  With assistance from new investors Mohr Davidow Ventures and existing New Enterprise Associates, RingCube hopes to eliminate mojo compatibility issues and fuel the worldwide trend toward a ubiquitous computing environment.   

RingCube raises $12M in second round
Software company RingCube Technologies Inc. said Tuesday it raised $12 million in its second round of venture funding.
|The Mountain View company has raised a total of $16 million in venture funds.
MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and New Enterprise Associates gave the money. Jim Smith of MDV took a seat on RingCube's board of directors as part of the investment. Krishna Kolluri and Forest Baskett of New Enterprise Associates already sit on the company's board following NEA's first round investment in RingCube. Kolluri is the company's chairman.

USB computing company RingCube closes $12M round
RingCube Technologies Inc. said Tuesday it secured $12 million in second-round funding.
Mountain View-based RingCube said funders were Menlo Park-based Mohr Davidow Ventures and first-round investor New Enterprise Associates, which has an office in Menlo Park.
The company's total financing is now at $16 million.
RingCube said that in connection with the round, Jim Smith of Mohr Davidow Ventures will join the board of directors.
Founded in 2004, RingCube has a software platform that lets users plug into any USB-compliant storage device, including iPods, flash or hard drives, to securely access personal programs, data and settings.

RingCube to Announce Series B
RingCube CEO Shan Appajodu, is expected to announce that his nearly 3-year-old company has raised $15 million in a Series B funding from returning investor New Enterprise Associates and new backer Mohr Davidow Ventures. The deal brings the company’s financing to $16 million. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company sells MojoPac, a travel storage software platform that transforms users’ iPods or other mobile devices into portable and customized PCs. Just install MojoPac on any USB 2.0 device, upload your applications and files, and you’re good to go.

The Human Factor of Financial Security
Solutions like fingerprint authentication have been around for a while now, though only recently has the buzz truly begun to build. United Bankers’ Bank of Bloomington, Minn., a correspondent bank in the Ninth Federal Reserve District, was one of the first to roll out a truly extensive biometric deployment starting in 2001 with its initial solution from DigitalPersona, based in Redwood City, Calif.

Junk the ''Junk Email'' Law?
John Mello asserts that to combat unwanted electronic messages, the United States could do much better than the CAN-SPAM Act. Though three years have passed since Can-SPAM, electronic spam has an even longer shelf life than the luncheon meat.

IN THE PIPELINE: Vendors Plans Consumer Identity Protections
Several top software companies are aiming at one of the Internet's most pressing online problems: identity theft. For the first time they are targeting identity-protection software at consumers instead of the companies that run web sites and manage consumer records. However, these vendors, including Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Symantec Corp. (SYMC) and McAfee Inc. (MFE), could find themselves entangled in a new round of competition, just as rivalries over anti-virus and other security programs heat up.

The Bottom Line on Bots
Sometimes my computer seems to have a mind of its own. It inexplicably changes from a dutiful servant to a willful spirit capable of cruelly holding a document hostage. To rid my computer of any offending malware, I ran a scan using security software. But I wanted to get to know more about what may have possessed the machine, so I spoke to Stu Elefant, senior product manager at McAfee, one of the leading security-software firms. He says the behavior could be a sign the machine was affected by a "bot," a malicious program that lets an outsider take control of another person's computer and use it for illicit purposes, such as sending spam and other viruses or committing click fraud.

Don't Call It Spam
Everyone hates spam. But like the canned meat product it's named after, it's hard to say exactly what it is. Andy Greenberg debates the legal meaning of spam and recounts some notable court battles that resulted from the openness of the term.

The Battle for Mobile Search
In fact, slow service was one of the most frequently cited causes of customer frustration, according to the CMO Council's Global Mobile Mindset Audit, a study of 15,000 consumers in 37 countries unveiled on Feb. 12. (The study was supported by Palm.)

Managing For Success: Overwhelming IT Overload Problems
Middle managers, for example,spend more than a fourth of their time just hunting for information to do their jobs. When they find what they're looking for, it's often wrong, according to an Accenture (ACN) survey of 1,009 managers in the U.S. and Britain.
The new Web survey shows that managers often spend up to two hours a day searching for data. Yet they say more than half of what they find has no value.
Worse, 59% of those surveyed miss information that might be valuable to their jobs on an almost daily basis. They know the information exists somewhere in the company, but they can't find it. And 42% of respondents say they accidentally use the wrong data at least once weekly.
Moreover, just 26% of executives say their companies have formal, well-defined processes and practices for decision-making. That's based on a poll of 300 managers in the U.S. that was done by the Business Performance Management Forum on behalf of Cognos. (COGN)

Low-Cost Not Full Story in Developing Regions
People in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia express much more interest in and willingness to pay for advanced features and services than users in North America and Western Europe, says the study commissioned by the CMO Council, a marketing trade group. These consumers' needs can be as sophisticated as their tastes. Most respondents said they would like to use cell phones to make financial transactions online rather than to watch videos or play games. "Cell phone makers and service providers need to recognize there's a huge opportunity for advanced services and multifunctional devices in those (developing) markets," said Dave Murray of the CMO. Brian Regan, CMO vice president, presented the study findings at this week's 3GSM wireless conference in Barcelona, Spain.

Toons Hijack the Cell Phones
The Cartoon Network on Wednesday introduced CallToons, a mobile application that will enlist the network’s stable of characters to help cell phone users navigate the overabundance of functions on their phones.  CallToons comes on the heels of a report from the CMO Council’s Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience that found “function fatigue” tops the list of consumer issues impacting the adoption of new wireless devices.  The CMO Council surveyed 15,000 consumers in 37 countries and found that “too many functions I did not use” is the No. 1 device problem in all regions of the world.

Web Hosting: This Host Has the Most
For a small e-commerce business – or a big one for that matter – the company that provides your Web hosting services is your most important supplier, bar none. You look for reliability, connection speed, scalability (the ability to increase capacity seamlessly as Web operations grow) and responsiveness. The Planet also offers self-managed servers that sit in one of its data centers but are managed remotely by the client. Dodds wasn’t tempted. “You have to have real IT gurus on staff to do that,” he says. “If you’re not doing all the patching, and doing it the same day [the patches are released], you can get in trouble.” He’s more than willing to pay extra for the management services.

Mobile Device Users in Developing Countries Surpass Those in the Most Developed Countries
Mobile device users in developing areas, such as Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, surpassed users in the most developed countries and regions in every mobile use category, according to preliminary results from The CMO Council's Global Mobile Mindset Audit, which was presented at the 3GSM show on Monday. Seventy-three percent of users in Latin America, 69% of users in Eastern Europe and 63% in Asia considered themselves to be very technology savvy with mobile devices, compared with 50% of U.S. respondents and 58% of users in Western Europe.  The CMO Council surveyed more than 14,000 mobile users in 37 countries. An executive summary is available at www.insightcafe.com. A full report and accompanying data will be available in early March

Developing regions take lead on mobile devices
Mobile phone users in developing regions such as eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America are far more advanced in their use of mobile technology than their counterparts in the most developed countries and regions, a study published Monday revealed.

Mischief-Proofing Your PC
The bigger players—Symantec (SYMC), McAfee, and a newcomer to this field, Microsoft—offer users a much better experience. I tried Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2007 ($70), McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 ($50), and Microsoft OneCare ($50). All run on Vista or XP, include a year of updates, and can be used on up to three computers.

Reverse the Brain Drain of Aging
It is true that as we age, our brains age, too. The memory loss and slower cognitive thinking that begin to affect people in their 40s are a natural part of the aging process. But just as we can alter our diets and include exercise in our daily routines to reduce our risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, new research shows that there are things we can do to slow, and perhaps even reverse, the aging process in our brains. According to Dr. Eric Braverman, author of "Younger You: Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Brain to Look and Feel 15 Years Younger," the key is understanding the role of the neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, which acts as a preservative for brain function.

Samsung Phones to Get Device Management Offering
Users of Samsung mobile handsets may not have to worry about these common problems as InnoPath Software announced Feb. 7 that it has signed an agreement with Samsung to deliver its iMDM (integrated Mobile Device Management) offering to Samsung mobile handsets. InnoPath's iMDM consists of client software used and a server suite deployed by mobile operators and carriers to manage subscribers' handsets. iMDM allows Samsung operators to deploy device management functionalities to remotely troubleshoot and fix problems, and manage software on its mobile products.

Phoenix Tech CEO Buys Shares of Firm
Mr. Hobbs bought $456,000 of his company's shares even as the Milpitas, Calif., software maker prepares for a contested board election. Ramius Capital Group LLC, which owns about 13.7% of the company's stock, is seeking to place two representatives on the company's board in a vote scheduled for the annual meeting Feb. 14.

Developing Regions Take Lead on Mobile Devices
Mobile phone users in developing regions such as eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America are far more advanced in their use of mobile technology than their counterparts in the most developed countries and regions, a study published Monday revealed. The study, prepared to coincide with the opening of the 3GSM telecommunications conference in Barcelona, Spain, provides some of the most definitive evidence yet that the US in particular lags behind other regions in the adoption and use of mobile technologies.

Biometrics Firms Scan for Growth Opportunities
Biometrics is big and getting bigger thanks to a troika of Bay Area diehards. Retinal, fingerprint and facial identification technologies (and the supporting software and integrators) raked in an estimated $2.1 billion last year. That's up $800 million from 1999 and on track to hit $7.4 billion by 2012, according to the International Biometric Group.

As 'Crimeware' Flourishes, Usual Safeguards Aren't Safe Enough
Phishing and spyware are two things to watch out for. They both aim to grab personal data for monetary gain. Phishing does it by fooling a person into thinking an attacker’s e-mail is from a legitimate company. It typically sends the recipient to a fake Web site to enter an account number and password, which the attacker can then see, copy and use – even sell. Spyware is software that worms its way onto a person’s computer, often copying what the user types and sending it off to an attacker. Anti-phishing and anti-spyware protections are still evolving. Increasingly they are being built into consumer security software products, such as Symantec’s Norton Internet Security and McAfee’s Internet Security Suite. Microsoft’s Windows Defender, meanwhile, is an anti-spyware program that can be downloaded free.

Phoenix rejects increased buyout bid
Soon after opening its new facility in Burbank, Elektrofilm started using the DigitalPersona Pro Workstation biometric authentication system from DigitalPersona, Inc. Now employees only have to place a thumb or finger on the DigitalPersona fingerprint reader, wait for it to glow red, and their identity is automatically verified over the local network and logged in to Windows and vital company databases.

Market Report -- In Play (PTEC)
Phoenix Tech Board of Directors Rejects Offer by Ramius Capital Co announces its board of directors has rejected the offer of its largest shareholder, Ramius Capital Group, to acquire all of co's outstanding shares in an all-cash transaction for $5.25 per share. Co says "... As you know, our Board of Directors met in December 2006 and specifically rejected your Dec proposal that indicated a purchase price range of $5.25 to $5.35 per share.

Put Your Finger On Security
Soon after opening its new facility in Burbank, Elektrofilm started using the DigitalPersona Pro Workstation biometric authentication system from DigitalPersona, Inc. Now employees only have to place a thumb or finger on the DigitalPersona fingerprint reader, wait for it to glow red, and their identity is automatically verified over the local network and logged in to Windows and vital company databases.

Decoding Alzheimer’s
Francesco Bellini hasn't been sleeping lately. The charged-up chairman of Neurochem Inc. (NRMX) is just months away from finding out if a drug developed by his Quebec-based company can actually slow the course of Alzheimer's disease. A clinical trial of the drug, Alzhemed, will wrap up in January, with results expected in the spring. "The summation of all our work and research for the last 12 years will happen in the next six months," he says. Those 12 years have been focused on overcoming one of the toughest challenges in medicine: keeping Alzheimer's disease from slowly, relentlessly destroying the brain, something no drug has yet done. The data on Alzhemed have been promising but scant.

Decoding Alzheimer's
Those 12 years have been focused on overcoming one of the toughest challenges in medicine: keeping Alzheimer's disease from slowly, relentlessly destroying the brain, something no drug has yet done. The data on Alzhemed have been promising but scant. In a 2002 study it stabilized the disease in nine patients over six months, but the small sample left plenty of specialists skeptical. Not Bellini, a scientist-entrepreneur who discovered one of the first effective treatments for aids. He bought a third of Neurochem and took the helm the same year the earlier Alzhemed trial was completed. "I started to feel very good about the drug as soon as I saw what it did for humans," he says.

The Complete Layman's Guide to Cyber Safety …
Get a router and lock it down. Almost any $30 Wi-Fi router beefs up your security by acting as another firewall between your computer and everybody else on the Internet. But that doesn't do you much good if you then leave your wireless connection open to your neighbor or anyone driving down your street. If you have unencrypted Wi-Fi, anybody can hop on to your network and use your bandwidth--or watch what you do or even break into your computer. To foil them, set your router to encrypt your data, advises Stu Elefant of McAfee. You usually have two choices: WEP or WPA. Choose WPA. It's tougher to break.

New E-Discovery Rules Benefit Some Firms
Many large companies "don't know what they have" and are therefore unprepared if they are sued, said Marie-Charlotte Patterson, vice president of market strategy for AXS-One Inc., a Rutherford, N.J.-based records compliance management firm. Without a better sense of what data they have and where, some companies settle lawsuits in order to avoid the costs of electronic discovery, she said. Better organization of the data can lower that cost and enable companies to avoid settling. "The need from the get-go to better manage that electronic data has become paramount," she said.

How to Stay Safe When Shopping Online This Holiday Season
… Upgrade to the latest versions of the leading Windows web browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla's Firefox 2.0, both of which warn you when a web page you're visiting appears to be phony. (The new Internet Explorer also has under-the-hood security improvements that close some of the holes plaguing older versions.) You might also consider add-on software, like McAfee's SiteAdvisor or the new Norton Confidential, which warn about fraudulent sites and, in the case of Norton, also about malicious software on your PC. On a Mac, consider using Firefox 2.0 instead of Apple's Safari, which, while very good and generally secure, lacks a fake-web-site detector.

Safety Dance
… Upgrade to the latest versions of the leading Windows web browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla's Firefox 2.0, both of which warn you when a web page you're visiting appears to be phony. (The new Internet Explorer also has under-the-hood security improvements that close some of the holes plaguing older versions.) You might also consider add-on software, like McAfee's SiteAdvisor or the new Norton Confidential, which warn about fraudulent sites and, in the case of Norton, also about malicious software on your PC. On a Mac, consider using Firefox 2.0 instead of Apple's Safari, which, while very good and generally secure, lacks a fake-web-site detector. …

The Latest Online Scams, and How to Protect Yourself
Remember when hackers were young computer geeks gone bad, in search of infamy through viruses that wreak havoc on computers worldwide? Soon, you may wish that's all you had to worry about online. These days, hackers are going ever more covert in their effort to get their hands on a new goal: Money. "It's gone from ego to economics," said Marc Solomon, director of product management at McAfee Inc., the Santa Clara, Calif.-based security software provider. That desire for money rather than notoriety makes it harder to see the danger. Now, instead of a blanket attack trying to rope in as many victims as possible, fraudsters increasingly target small groups. …

Illinois Court Cans Spamhaus
Gus Maldonado, a product manager at anti-virus and security software provider McAfee (MFE), says that his company sees increasing demand for anti-spam technology. "The threat and the demand, they are both increasing," says Maldonado. "Spam is a very insistent problem that doesn't seem to go away." (See BusinessWeek.com, 6/15/06, "Yahoo Mail Sees Spam Everywhere".) McAfee now provides roughly 22 million users worldwide with spam filtering technology. To Maldonado, spam and most bulk e-mail are the same things—unsolicited, unwanted junk. McAfee's e-mail filters block messages based on whether consumers identify it as spam, if it includes hidden text or HTML errors, or it if it has a certain image-to-text ratio present in most spam e-mails, among other things. The company also has a free SiteAdvisor that warns computer users when a visited URL is known to send unsolicited bulk e-mail. …

New Court Rules Push Better Data Retention
… Over 40% of those polled said it can take their company more than a week to dig up certain e-mails. And 36% of respondents said their firms have no firm policies for electronic records management. Business Performance Management Forum conducted the survey for compliance software maker AXS-One. (AXO) It came out in September. The survey findings collide with the new federal rules, says Thomas Bookwalter of FMDS, a compliance consulting firm based in Santa Fe, N.M. …

Putting IM Chats on the Record
… “The archiving process doesn't’t help you do your business day to day,” says AXS-One Chief Executive Bill Lyons, “But there’s an upside.” In short, every dollar spent on compliance saves companies money by avoiding legal liabilities, harm to a company’s reputation and lost productivity. Plus, archiving and retrieval software can save the CIO a lot of anguish when, one morning, he or she receives a dreaded phone call from his or her company’s general counsel, says Lyons. “It’s just the worst thing, when you hear ‘I need to get all those records immediately.’”…

Companies’ IT Systems Not Compliance Ready
… Although lawsuits are a threat, 36.4% say their companies have no technologies or policies whatsoever in place to manage a legal discovery order involving electronic records. The full report -- "CEE the Future: Building the Compliance-Enabled Enterprise" -- is available by visiting www.bpmforum.org or www.axsone.com.

Survey: IT Falls Behind on Compliance
But, fifty-eight percent of the survey respondents said their
IT spending will increase … Another solution is increasing communication between the IT department and the managers dealing with compliance, such as a company's general counsel or compliance officer, says Bill Lyons, CEO of AXS-One. The CIO needs to realize the entire scope of a company's priorities or else the IT department will likely concentrate on just one aspect of compliance, he adds. According to Lyons, when companies re-examine their policies and technologies relating to e-mail retrieval, they also need to consider all the other documents that could be asked for by a regulatory body, including instant messages, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and other company documents. Corporations need to be able to be quickly grab any document related to an investigation in a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months. …

Study Finds Companies Lacking in Compliance Readiness
… The study, titled “CEE the Future: The Compliance-Enabled Enterprise,” was conducted by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and sponsored by AXS-One Inc., a provider of records compliance management software solutions, along with the IT Compliance Institute and Chief Executive magazine. The project was designed to audit corporate America’s level of compliance readiness and offer a series of recommendations for improvement.  …

New PC-Security Software Combats Latest Scams --- Tools by Symantec, McAfee And Others Vet Web Sites, Stop 'Spyware' Programs
Other new tools are being offered by companies including McAfee Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Once installed, many of these tools will send messages or alerts pointing out that a site listed in Google's search results is known for sending out massive amounts of junk mail, for instance, or telling customers when their credit-card number is floating around on the Internet black market. Some will automatically block people from visiting sites aimed at tricking visitors into giving up sensitive information.