Top 5 IT Certifications will be in 2013

We all know that acquiring and keeping certification is an essential element of functioning in IT. Regardless of whether you are an IT Manager wanting to backup you project management skills with a PRINCE2 Certification, or whether you are a hands on Engineer aiming to prove your worth with a number of Microsoft Certifications, possessing your capabilities on paper is a crucial element of profession progression and maintaining your understanding present.

Here we will round up what we take into account to be the most worthwhile IT Certifications in 2013.

1. MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Skilled) Enterprise Administrator.
A handful of years ago, with the release of Windows Server 2008, Microsoft released a new certification track aimed particularly at job roles. This in my opinion performs way far better than the MCSE for Windows Server 2003 – it tends to make sense to go this route.

The MCITP Enterprise Administrator consists of 4 compulsory exams:

70-640 – Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Configuring

70-642 – Windows Server 2008, Network Infrastructure, Configuring

70-643 – Windows Server 2008 Applications Infrastructure, Configuring

70-647 – Windows Server 2008, Enterprise Administrator

…plus a single elective exam out of the following possibilities:

70-620 – Configuring Microsoft Windows Vista Client

70-624 – Deploying and Maintaining Windows Vista Client and 2007 Microsoft Office Method Desktops (Now Retired, but nonetheless counts)

70-680 – Windows 7, Configuring

70-681 – Windows 7 and Office 2010, Deploying.

Of course, each 1 of the above exams is a MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) Certification in their own appropriate, so you will earn multiple certifications on your way to an MCITP Enterprise Admin. Whichever track you decide on, you can be positive each you and your employer will uncover this certification very desirable and useful in your part.

2. CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator)
The CCNA has been around for some years now, but is still a very regarded certification and continues to be one of the prime certifications in IT. Obtaining held this certification myself for a number of years, I can honestly say that the subjects covered gave me the foundation for understanding and troubleshooting networks. I class this as the vital networking certification, a lot much more detailed than the CompTIA Network+ but manageable for most networking newbies.

As soon as you have obtained this certification, you can branch of into far more specific places, CCNA Wireless, CCNA Safety and CCNA Voice or you can jump onto the subsequent tier CCNP or CCSP. Every single of these can be completed by passing a single exam and your selected exam will renew your existing CCNA Certification.

For a comprehensive networking novice, I would advise taking an instructor led course. I initially completed my CCNA soon after attending a regional Cisco Networking Academy course, and I have to say, it created the course content far less complicated to digest getting capable to ask inquiries and play about on actual equipment.

Might I also add that learning the Cisco IOS comes in handy with other vendors such as HP. Their gear makes use of really comparable syntax to Cisco.

3. VCP (VMware Certified Professional).
Virtualization has been one particular of the main developments in the IT planet more than the past handful of years. There are not numerous organisations out there now that have not embraced this technologies in some type or one more and therefore it makes sense to have the expertise to be capable to install, configure and manage a virtual environment. Even though I have utilized the Microsoft Virtualization platform (and also hold certifications on it), personally I nevertheless favour VMware. VMware have constantly seemed to lead the way with this technologies, establishing one thing ahead of the pack and generating it work.

One of the requirements to obtain a VCP is an instructor led course. The disadvantage to this is that it doesn’t come inexpensive! If you don’t at the moment hold any preceding VCP’s then you are essential to take a five day instructor led class. You will be walked by means of the entire course blueprint and will have hands on exercises to total utilizing the technology. The excellent news is that after you hold a VCP, upgrading it to the newest version is easer and only calls for you to take the ‘What’s New’ course (two days) or if you are quick off the mark, you can generally just sit the exam before a given date with no possessing to sit any kind of upgrade course.

Virtualization is one particular of those technologies that I nonetheless locate amazing! The ease at which you can deploy and handle, and the failover options it provides are something that you could never ever dream of in a physical atmosphere. An intriguing certification that will prove valuable in any administration role.

4. ITIL (Foundation)
ITIL (Information Technologies Data Library) is a set of practices aimed at delivering higher good quality service management. ITIL covers the IT lifecycle of solutions for the whole IT Division. It supplies organisations with a foundation to create upon and customise to their own certain requirements.

The ITIL course (at present v3) will make certain the candidate has a solid understanding of 5 core components, which are:

ITIL Service Approach

ITIL Service Style

ITIL Service Transition

ITIL Service Operation

ITIL Continual Service Improvement

Personally, I consider this certification is far more suited to these who want to pursue a career in Network Management or a Group Leader part, nevertheless I do believe it is important for all Network Admins to have a basic understanding of the fundamentals of delivering and improving an IT Service.

I have noticed that a lot much more employers are asking for some ITIL understanding on their job descriptions, so possibly a smart decision for these wishing to progress to a senior level in an IT division.

5. MCTS
Looking back at our #1 certification for 2013, the MCITP Enterprise Administrator, I pointed out that along the way you would obtain several MCTS certifications also. The MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technologies Specialist) programme makes it possible for candidates to choose a particular technologies and master an area of it, for example, Active Directory, Configuring.

The beauty of these certifications are that you can fine tune your expertise and only find out what you want or want to know. There are many study options accessible for the MCTS certifications as you can count on including self-study, instructor led instruction, video coaching and of course the coaching manuals.

Like any hands on certification, you need to have to get encounter of utilizing the technologies. This is best obtained in a lab atmosphere where it doesn’t matter if you break issues. I have heard of men and women attempting their newly acquired certification expertise out on production machines and, well, lets just say they weren’t too well-liked amongst their colleagues!

From the newbie admin through to the senior architect, there are certifications for you!

Clearly, no 1 can give you a definite leading five certifications to go out and get. It depends on your part, what you want to accomplish and where your employer wants to you turn into skilled. Nonetheless, these are what I would take into account a very good commence for the IT assistance generalist. They cover a quantity of places of the job that will place you ahead of the crowd and will make you a better admin.

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday targets multitude of Internet Explorer faults

Untreated, Internet Explorer vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution exploits

Microsoft is issuing critical security bulletins this Patch Tuesday that affect all versions of Internet Explorer and deal with an exploit that attackers are actively working.

Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the recipients of a patch that can prevent an exploit that enables remote code execution in the browser. This affects all Windows operating systems except XP.

"We always recommend upgrading to the latest version of any software," says Paul Henry, security and forensic analyst with Lumension, "as that's typically the most secure. If your system is compatible with IE 10 and you're not running it already, upgrade now."

The vulnerabilities being addressed may include one found in IE8 running on Windows XP machines that was dealt with yesterday by a hot-fix patch issued separately to deal with a zero-day attack that was actually being exploited in the wild against U.S. government agencies, Henry says. The same vulnerabilities are rated only moderate for machines running server rather than desktop operating systems.

"The patch will include fixes for other, less critical remote code execution vulnerabilities affecting Office and Lync," says Lamar Bailey, director of security research and development for Tripwire. "These important vulnerabilities run the gamut, impacting DoS, spoofing, elevation of privilege and information disclosure."

A second bulleting deals with another IE vulnerability believed to be one disclosed in March at the annual Pwn2Own hacking competition. It raised some eyebrows when the problem was not dealt with on Patch Tuesday last month. "Usually Microsoft releases Pwn2Own bug fixes in April, but this year other bug fixes must have been higher priority," says Andrew Storms, director of security operations for Tripwire.

The rest of this month's 10 bulletins are ranked important, a step down from critical, and like the two critical ones, three others address problems that can lead to remote code execution exploits. They affect mainly Office "The most widely installed is probably Bulletin 7, which is for Word 2003 and Word Viewer," says Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys. "Bulletin 6 covers the Microsoft Publisher included in Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, and Bulletin 5 is for Microsoft's instant messaging modules - Communicator 2007 and Lync 2010."

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Microsoft opens new competitive fronts with cloud-based Windows Server

Amazon, VMware and even Microsoft partners threatened by Windows Azure move

Microsoft doesn't want to admit it, but a Gartner analyst says the vendor's decision to offer Windows Server instances in the Azure cloud is opening a new competitive front against partner hosting companies.

Before 2010 is over, Microsoft will update Windows Azure with the ability to run Windows Server 2008 R2 instances in the Microsoft cloud service. The move could blur the lines between platform-as-a-service (PaaS) clouds like Azure, which provide abstracted tools to application developers, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds such as Amazon's EC2, which provide raw access to compute and storage capacity.

Microsoft Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 on collision course

This move also improves Microsoft's competitive stance against VMware, which is teaming with hosting companies to offer PaaS developer tools and VMware-based infrastructure clouds.

But the cloud-based Windows Server instances open up a new competitive front against Rackspace and other Web hosters who are Microsoft partners, according to Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald.

Microsoft has, to some extent, downplayed the new capabilities, saying the cloud-based Windows Server – which goes under the name Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role – is primarily an on-ramp to port some applications to the Azure cloud.

"What they really want is people using Azure," MacDonald says. At the same time, VM Role "is a form of infrastructure-as-a-service," he continues. "The reason Microsoft is being so vague is they really don't want to upset their ecosystem partners, all the hosters out there in the world making good money hosting Windows workloads. Microsoft doesn't really want to emphasize that it is competing against them."

Whereas IaaS clouds provide access to raw compute power, in the form of virtual machines, and storage that is consumed by those VMs, PaaS clouds provide what could be described as a layer of middleware on top of the infrastructure layer. Developers using PaaS are given abstracted tools to build applications without having to manage the underlying infrastructure, but have less control over the basic computing and storage resources. With Azure, developers can use programming languages .Net, PHP, Ruby, Python or Java, and the development tools Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Microsoft officials have previously predicted that the lines between PaaS and IaaS clouds will blur over time, but stress that Windows Azure will remain a developer platform.

In response to MacDonald's comment, Windows Azure general manager Doug Hauger says "our partners provide a vast range of services to customers for hosting an infrastructure-as-a-service [cloud]. The VM Role does not compete with them in this space."

For what it's worth, Rackspace does view Microsoft as a cloud competitor. "The cloud market is going to be huge and there are many ways to win in it," Rackspace President Lew Moorman says. "Microsoft is serious about the market and we view them as an emerging competitor as well as partner. We are confident that our service difference will resonate to a large part of the market regardless of the technical offers that emerge from players such as Microsoft."

In an interview this week, Hauger discussed both the similarities and differences between Microsoft's cloud-based Windows Server instances and the virtual machine hosting provided by Amazon and other IaaS vendors.

"I think there is an incredibly broad, gray line between infrastructure-as-a-service pure-play and platform-as-a-service," Hauger says.

Ultimately, the marketplace will only care about the technical capabilities of cloud services, not the taxonomies used to define them, Hauger continues. With VM Role, Azure customers will have to manage and patch their own guest operating system. This is clearly different from pure PaaS, in which developers write to endpoints and services through an API, and are "abstracted from even worrying about the operating system," Hauger says.

But VM Role, when it becomes available later in 2010, will still have some of the developer tools and other benefits of PaaS, so "it's not the ground floor of infrastructure-as-a-service," Hauger says. "You're taking the elevator up a little bit."

Even though Microsoft is offering VM hosting, that does not mean customers will be able to create custom compute and storage configurations, as they might with an IaaS provider like Rackspace, Hauger says.

Custom storage configurations are "something we absolutely do not offer with the Windows Azure platform, because we've made an architectural decision to have a uniform storage pool."

On the other hand, Azure customers don't have to worry about writing multi-tenancy capabilities into their applications. Hauger argues that building applications that are resilient, scalable and automated is, while not impossible in an IaaS cloud, quite difficult when "you're staring down the throat of a VM and you have to manage that yourself."

Even with VM Role, and a Server Application Virtualization option that will let developers transfer application images to Azure, Hauger does not recommend that customers "forklift a big, monolithic application from on-premise and move it over to Windows Azure."

VM Role could be used to move some "lightweight" HPC applications to the Azure cloud, Hauger says. If a customer needs large-scale data analysis, but only for a short amount of time, it makes sense to move that app to Azure temporarily and then take it back in-house, he says. Some customers are finding that purely Web-based applications, like Facebook games, also make sense for Azure, he says.

Microsoft officials are willing to admit that Azure's capabilities are not limitless.

For example, Microsoft CTO Barry Briggs says his own team used Azure last year to build a charity auction application, but kept credit card processing on-premise "because PCI compliance is a big deal."

"There are some things that will probably stay on-premise for a while and I suspect PCI compliance will be there, because customers want to take some time to understand what the capabilities and potentials of the [cloud] technology really are," Briggs says.

Although Microsoft is expanding Azure by offering VM hosting, it's important to note that the offer applies only to Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft clearly wouldn't offer Linux VMs and offering older versions of Windows Server would not fit the Microsoft strategy, either, MacDonald says.

Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, meanwhile, offers Windows Server 2003 and 2008, eight versions of Linux and OpenSolaris.

Although Amazon does offer a billing service, load balancing, databases and a variety of other tools designed for developers, Amazon has not made any significant moves into PaaS, MacDonald says. Amazon says its approach prevents customers from "being locked into a particular programming model, language or operating system."

But Microsoft's Windows Server hosting does put the two companies into more direct competition, MacDonald says.

Perhaps most crucially for Microsoft, the VM Role service gives CEO Steve Ballmer and his cloud team a more viable way of competing against VMware, which has partnerships designed to provide both PaaS offerings and the VM hosting capabilities needed to move applications to the cloud.

"The customers need to have an easier on-ramp to cloud computing, and Microsoft wasn't providing that and their biggest competitor was," MacDonald says. "This was a gap they had to fill and I'm glad to see they've done it. I'd say it's two years late. It doesn't mean they're too late, but they should have done this from day one."

As for the Web hosters who now find themselves in competition against Microsoft, MacDonald says they will simply "have to evolve."

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Google to Microsoft on Windows Phone 8 YouTube app blocking ads: Cease and desist

Mud slinging round one million: Google CEO Larry Page warned against companies being "negative," before claiming Microsoft is "milking" Google. Microsoft zinged back about the cease and desist letter Google sent.


Last week, Microsoft incorporated Google Talk into Outlook and SkyDrive to allow users "to chat with friends stuck on Gmail." Then Google CEO Larry Page criticized Microsoft for "taking advantage" of "interoperating" with Google, "but not doing the reverse." That's "really sad," Page said at I/O, "And that's not the way to make progress. You need to actually have interoperation, not just people milking off one company for their own benefit."

YouTubeIn return, Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw stated, "It's ironic that Larry is lending his voice to the discussion of interoperability considering his company's decision -- today -- to file a cease and desist order to remove the YouTube app from Windows Phone, let alone the recent decision to make it more difficult for our customers to connect their Gmail accounts to their Windows experience."Cease and desist

Google claimed that Microsoft violated Google's Terms of Service with the YouTube app. The Verge got its hands on a copy of that cease and desist letter that Google sent Microsoft. It demands that Microsoft "immediately withdraw this application from the Windows Phone Store and disable existing downloads of the application by Wednesday, May 22, 2013." Google's real gripe stems from the fact that Microsoft's YouTube app has "features that specifically prevent ads from playing."

After the cease and desist letter went public, Microsoft responded by "saying it's happy to include advertising." However, ZDNet speculated that the Windows Phone 8 YouTube app might have been part of Microsoft's Scroogled campaign.

You wouldn't know all this background cease and desist drama from what Page said at I/O.

Every story I read about Google gives off a notion of "us versus some other company" or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero-sum. There is a lot of opportunity out there.

Opportunities on "Google Island"
Gadget Lab's Mat Honan wrote about some of those far-out and freaky opportunities in a fictional piece about "Google Island." It's an interesting and trippy read. Honan talked about arriving at Google Island in a "driverless boat" to find Page's naked "Google Being" explaining "complete openness" made possible by experimenting on an island in which no pesky government's laws could get in the way with privacy.

At I/O, Page expressed an interest in setting aside a place "where people could experiment freely and examine the effects." Honan joked that the place is Google Island, where Page would claim, "As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws-or lack thereof-apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey."

Besides Google knowing everything about a user's health, "genetic blueprint" and even "the chemical composition of your sweat," Honan's fictional Page claimed that Google has "looked at everything you've looked at online. Everything. We know what you want, and when you want it, down to the time of day. Why wait for you to request it? And in fact, why wait for you to discover that you even want to request it? We can just serve it to you."

OK, so that was fiction...but it harkens back to a time when then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." Schmidt later added, "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions...They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

Taking a page from Page, that's "really sad." Schmidt's quotes were, in part, why Leave Google Behind recommended switching to Bing. "Believe it or not, Bing's privacy policy is superior to Google's. Opt out of personalized ads."

Google is all about ad revenue and the company will never allow Microsoft to block ads on YouTube. Meanwhile, speaking of YouTube and ads, Nintendo is scanning for fan-made YouTube clips that show footage of its games, such as how to get through a level, and then "hijacks" the ad revenue. Nintendo is not blocking screencaps that feature its intellectual property; however, by using content ID match to identify game footage videos uploaded by fans, Nintendo is adding advertising "at the beginning, next to or at the end of the clips."

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Windows 8 Update: Microsoft sacks iPad in Windows 8 ad, join forces with NFL

About those lofty Windows Store app numbers…

A new ad from Microsoft mocks iPads by comparing them – unfavorably – to tablets running Windows 8, which receive live updates on their Start screens, run office apps, display two apps at a time and support Microsoft Office applications – things iPads don't do.

The ad has the hapless iPad acknowledging a string of things it can’t do until it finally asks (in the voice of iPad’s Siri interface) “Should we just play ‘Chopsticks’?”

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The ad hearkens back to an earlier iPad Mini ad in which a “Chopsticks” duet is played on both an iPad and and IPad mini.

The ad wraps up with a display of the price of an iPad ($699) and the price of a 64G Asus Vivo Tab Smart ($449) the message being that for $250 less, you can get a machine that does more.

It’s interesting that the ad doesn’t use the comparable $899 Surface Pro tablet made by Microsoft as a reference.

Low usage of Windows Store apps

Microsoft says it has more than 65,000 apps in its Windows Store inventory that are designed specifically for use on Windows 8 machines. The catch is that they don’t get used that often, according to a report by Soluto, a Web-based PC-management service provider.

Based on data gathered from 10,848 Windows 8 devices, Soluto found that users were more likely to fire up Windows Store apps if they were working on a tablet or touchscreen laptop than if they were working on a desktop or non-touch laptop (see graphic).
Windows 8

How many times a day will a Windows 8 user launch a Metro App?

Soluto hasn’t crunched the data yet about how often non-Windows Store (Metro) apps are launched, but suspects it is significantly higher, says Roee Adler, chief product officer for Soluto.

What were those apps? The most used was Yahoo! Mail, which was launched on average 26.91 times per week, followed by Social Jogger (25.98), Social Networks (21.19) and Lync MX (9.98).

Most users of desktops, laptops and touchscreen laptops didn’t average launching a Windows Store app even once per day, and 44.38% of tablet users fell into the same category.

What does Soluto make of this? “There’s a consensus in the market that Windows 7 was a good, solid operating system, and it’s unclear why the change to Windows 8 was needed for those who are happy with Windows 7,” the report says. “If you’re pragmatic about using the Windows operating system with a keyboard and mouse - there’s no rush. Wait and see what “Windows Blue” has in store for us before you upgrade.”

Look for Surface tablets on NFL sidelines

Rather than stalking up and down the sidelines referring to laminated play charts NFL coaches may soon use Microsoft Surface tablets.
Microsoft has signed a five-year, contract to pay the NFL $400 million to improve interactive features between football viewing and its new Xbox device. After that, the deal is expected to place Surface tablets in the hands of coaches, according to a story by the Associated Press.

For Microsoft this will primarily serve as a TV showcase for its technology and serve as a kind of advertising for the devices. Microsoft has already engaged Surface product placement, most notably in an episode of the ABC siticom show “Suburgatory” in which the device was actually written into the script as a love interest for the main character.

Microsoft will also place its branding on referees’ instant-replay devices and other areas along the sidelines, the AP says.

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Microsoft rushes Explorer 8 patch release

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday for May addresses 10 security issues, three of them that need to be addressed immediately

Just 11 days after issuing an advisory, Microsoft has released a patch for a bug in Internet Explorer 8 that bedeviled the U.S. Department of Labor earlier this month.

Microsoft's speedy release of this patch "is an outstanding example of Microsoft's responsiveness to the security community and their users," wrote Andrew Storms, director of security of operations for security software provider Tripwire, in an email statement.

This IE8 security bulletin (MS13-038) is one of 10 that Microsoft released Tuesday as part of its "Patch Tuesday" release of bug fixes and security bulletins that the company routinely issues on the second Tuesday of each month.

Microsoft marked MS13-038 as critical and the company, along with other security firms, are advising those still running IE8 to apply the fix immediately. Using an altered Labor Department Web page, attackers used this vulnerability in an attempt to install malicious code on any visitor's machine running IE8. Microsoft issued a temporary fix for this vulnerability last week.

The other critical bulletin, MS13-037, also affects Internet Explorer. This update resolves 11 issues that would have made it easy to inject malicious code into the browser from a specially crafted Web page, allowing the user to take control of a computer. The update covers the PWN2Own vulnerability, unearthed earlier this year.

Those running Windows Server 2012 should take an immediate look at MS MS13-039. This update fixes a vulnerability in the Microsoft Web IIS (Internet Information Services) that could be used in a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, through the use of an HTTP packet. Because it would be relatively simple to craft an attack using this vulnerability, organizations should apply this update as soon as possible, because exploits based on this vulnerability might start appearing in as little as a few weeks, according to Tripwire.

Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at the security firm Rapid7, wrote in a statement that "while DoS attacks are generally considered second (or third) tier as far as risk, this could potentially be very disruptive to an organization, since many remote services and Active Directory integrations rely on http.sys," which is the networking subsystem used by IIS.

A "successful exploit of this bug could have serious implications for public Web servers without some kind of inline [intrusion prevention system] in front of them. Essentially, any user could launch a simple attack and the server will essentially be offline," Storms noted. He also noted that any copy of Microsoft Server 2012 -- not just those functioning as Web servers -- could be running IIS, such as a server for Microsoft Exchange or SharePoint.

The seven remaining bulletins -- none critical but all deemed important -- address bugs in Microsoft's Lync, Publisher, Word, Visio, Windows Essentials, .Net, and the Windows kernel.

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Obviously, that should have been the Tab key

Excel power user flags down this passing pilot fish to help with her PC, where she has a spreadsheet open.

"She was trying to copy out information from this spreadsheet someone had sent to her," says fish. "When she pressed Ctrl+C, the spreadsheet flickered a few times, and all the data vanished.

"I replicated it a few times, and then my confused expression turned into an eye roll. I checked the list of macros in the workbook and sure enough, in very professional documented VB script, there was a macro that cleared the worksheet...assigned to Ctrl+C.

"Whoever created that spreadsheet must've thought they had invented the idea of keyboard shortcuts."

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Dell deal on Windows RT, dubious Windows 8 sales numbers

Dell deal on Windows RT, dubious Windows 8 sales numbers

Along with whatever other problems Windows 8 faces, Microsoft partners interested in making machines that show the operating system off to best advantage are handicapped by a short supply of touchscreens, the top Windows executive says.

The company is hoping the problem will be solved in time to make alluring devices in time for Christmas sales, says Tami Reller, chief marketing and financial officer for the Windows division, as quoted in this CITEworld story.

“We see that touch supply is getting so much better,” Reller says. “By the holidays we won’t see the types of restrictions we’ve seen on the ability of our partners and retail partners to get touch in the volume they’d like and that customers are demanding.”

Along with that area a slew of complaints about the Windows 8 user interface, many of which may be addressed by Windows Blue, the code name for the upgrade that is also coming out later this year, likely before the holidays, Reller says.

It’s still unclear what changes Windows Blue will include although rumors say the start button and start page so familiar in earlier versions of Windows will be restored. The specifics of Windows Blue – officially called Windows 8.1 – will be revealed at the Microsoft Build developers’ conference at the end of June, she says.

Although Reller didn’t mention it during her remarks at a JP Morgan tech conference in Boston, by the end of the year Intel’s Haswell chips should be in production offering a longer battery life, higher performance and improved graphic processing for a range of devices such as ultrabooks, convertibles and tablets.

This is a convergence of events that Microsoft no doubt would have welcomed last holiday season just after Windows 8 launched in October.

Windows RT deal
Dell has come out with a Windows RT tablet for $300 - $200 less expensive than the cheapest Microsoft Surface RT.

That’s a limited time offering and is a $150 discount off the regular price for its XPS 10, which sports a 10.1-inch display and, like all Windows RT devices, runs on ARM chips. Another short-term option tosses in a keyboard/dock for an extra $50.

At that price the bundle is still significantly cheaper than an iPad and may grab a few potential Apple customers.

When is 100 million not 100 million?
Microsoft says it’s sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses so far and seems proud of it, but the number is being picked apart by people who note that the number of licenses sold might be far higher than the number in actual use.

According to a story in ComputerWorld the count of machines running Windows 8 could be closer to 59 million.

Why would Microsoft release the higher number but not release the number of machines that have activated the software? The obvious answer: that number is embarrassingly small.

Windows 8 is bad for this business
Buffalo, N.Y. -based Synacor blames Windows 8 for a 16% drop in search-engine advertising revenues for its content-portal services.
Because Windows 8 defaults to Bing as the search engine and sets MSN as the home page, according to this story in the the Buffalo News. Part of Synacor’s business is to set its customers’ advertising pages into the start page of end users’ browsers.

“That hurts Synacor because the company generates revenue every time a subscriber uses the Google search box on the start pages that it designs, while a reduction in page views also hurts Synacor’s advertising sales on those start pages,” the News story says.

The situation has contributed to a 5% drop in revenues for Synacore.

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Microsoft's counter-attack against Windows 8 coverage makes it 'look weak'

Apple-esque communication strategy comes home to roost, argues analyst

Microsoft counter-attacked Friday, calling some media coverage of its plans to update Windows 8 sensationalist and an effort to drive website page views.

One analyst dubbed the missive by Frank Shaw, Microsoft's head of communications, as defensive. "It makes Microsoft look weak," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Not everyone is going to be fair, but that's life."

In a Friday post to Microsoft's company blog titled "Staying centered," Shaw took swings at coverage that characterized Microsoft's plans for Windows "Blue" -- this year's update to Windows 8 and the first of what will be annual refreshes of the OS -- as a retreat, and that compared Blue to Coca-Cola's 1985 pull-back from "New Coke."

Shaw singled out stories by The Financial Times and The Economist as examples of what he argued used "sensationalism and hyperbole."

He decried negative coverage of Windows 8 in general, Windows Blue in particular. "Let's pause for a moment and consider the center," Shaw wrote. "In the center, selling 100 million copies of a product is a good thing. In the center, listening to feedback and improving a product is a good thing. Heck, there was even a time when acknowledging that you were listening to feedback and acting on it was considered a good thing.

"Windows 8 is a good product, and it's getting better every day," he maintained.

Windows 8 has been panned by many commentators -- bloggers and analysts -- as well as by the mainstream and technical press, starting even before its October 2012 launch. But Shaw seemed especially upset at the recent reaction to a mini-publicity campaign last week by Tami Reller and Julie Larson-Green, the CFO and head of development for the Windows division, respectively.

Both Reller and Larson-Green touted the upcoming Blue -- without revealing any details of its contents -- as Microsoft's response to customer feedback. "The Windows Blue update is also an opportunity for us to respond to the customer feedback that we've been closely listening to since the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT," Reller said last Tuesday.

Some outsiders didn't see it that way, and instead interpreted Blue as Microsoft's tacit admission of mistakes and that it would backtrack from the radical "Modern" user interface (UI).

Shaw's rebuttal: "In this world where everyone is a publisher, there is a trend to the extreme -- where those who want to stand out opt for sensationalism and hyperbole over nuanced analysis," he said.

"What Shaw is doing is asking for patience," said Moorhead. "He's trying to set expectations. If people think Blue will be a 'swing you around the room' moment, it will not be that. Microsoft doesn't want people to get their expectations raised, and then have another cycle of maligning Windows 8."

But Moorhead also saw Microsoft's predicament as largely self-inflicted, the result of its communications choices coming home to roost.

"This is the result of a sub-optimal communications strategy that goes all the way back to Windows 7," Moorhead said. "Prior to Windows 7, Microsoft had a much more collaborative communication strategy with the press and analysts. But they saw Apple get traction with a much more closed approach, and opted for Apple's strategy. They started to create a more challenging relationship with analysts and the press."

But Microsoft, Moorhead said, is no Apple. "Microsoft doesn't make a good Apple," he said, repeating an argument he used last week, when he pointed out that Microsoft has a much larger ecosystem than Apple, with thousands of hardware partners, herds of resellers, a bigger pool of developers and both enterprise and consumer customers to keep in the loop.

What works for Apple, in other words, is not necessarily what works for Microsoft.

"Microsoft needs to return to their earlier Windows communications strategy," said Moorhead. "They were one of the biggest technology companies that pioneered social media, they were once very collaborative with the press."

But the world's changed since Windows 7, when Stephen Sinofsky took over as head of Windows development and brought the more secretive, closed communications approach he'd used when he ran Office development, to the OS group. Sinofsky was ousted from Microsoft last fall.

"It is an echo chamber," Moorhead acknowledged. "Users, bloggers and the press all have opinions they can easily express. But because Microsoft isn't as close to analysts and the press as they used to be, maybe the result [of last week's blitz about Blue] was a lot different, and more negative, than Microsoft expected."

Other analysts have also noted the changes in how Microsoft interacts with outsiders, including themselves, the press, OEMs and developers. How and what it communicated to OEMs and developers -- and when -- negatively affected Windows 8, they believe.

"The lack of high-quality apps is a direct result of their secrecy," said Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft, who knocked the Redmond, Wash. firm for not providing tools, documentation and testing systems far enough in advance of the launch, or getting OEMs on board with innovative designs for the operating system's 2012 debut.

"This wasn't the sole reason for Windows 8's problems," said Cherry, "but it is the price you pay for being secretive."

Microsoft sounds frustrated, Moorhead observed, that its broader business isn't put into perspective, but that outsiders are focused on the Windows division, which contributed 28% of the company's total revenue in the first quarter. The Business group, whose biggest money maker is Office, accounted for 31% in that same period.

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Facebook Home attracts close to 1 million downloads

The Android app has been available for about a month

Facebook has attracted "just about" 1 million downloads of its Home application in its first month of availability.

The app, which takes the place of the home screen on supported devices, puts Facebook much more at the center of the phone. Rather than an app launch or home screen appearing when a phone is woken from sleep, the user sees the Facebook Home screen and pictures and updates from their friends.

"That's very much in line with our expectations for the launch," said Cory Ondrejka, director of mobile engineering at Facebook, during a briefing for reporters. "We thought that was a large enough number to start getting data."

The users are typically early adopters who have specifically searched the Android Play Store to find the app, said the company. Facebook isn't currently using its main app to promote Home, but word has spread via the social network.

Putting Facebook updates in front of users has led to a 25 percent increase in the amount of time they spend using Facebook, Ondrejka said.

"Facebook is already the most-used app on mobile devices, so being able to bump that is something we are very excited about," he said.

A new version of Facebook Home will launch Thursday, along with the latest version of the Facebook app.

The latest version of the software addresses bugs, but Facebook is working on subsequent versions that will address feedback and complaints from those first million users. They include a new way to launch non-Facebook apps and an easier way to initiate chats.

The complaints about the app launcher were mostly related to the way it reorganized apps. If users had spent time organizing and curating their home screen, the Home app changed that.

"Any launcher that juggled apps would get this feedback," said Ondrejka. "Since I've spent time curating my apps, I don't want Facebook to move them around."

A new version of the app launcher, previewed on Thursday but due in a future update, looks much more like the traditional Android home screen.

One of the more subtle changes coming with Thursday's update is in the way the app handles loading on phones that aren't supported.

Users of unsupported devices still won't be able to download and install the app from the Android Play Store, but updates will be available to users who have installed it through a process called sideloading.

Sideloading involves getting a copy of the software from a phone that is supported and manually loading it onto an unsupported device. A software block would try to prevent that, leading users to hack the software to force it on the phone. A side effect of that is the inability to get updates.

With the latest version, users will get an alert that tells them their handset isn't supported but the manual hack to the software won't be required.

Facebook puts the number of those who have downloaded the app onto unsupported devices at "over 10,000" people, which is more than 1 percent of the current user base.

Support is not imminent for additional handsets.

"We're working on it now. We're excited about a couple of the new phones that are out there," said Adam Mosseri, product director at Facebook. "It will be months."

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Windows 8 Update: Gates: Windows 8 is about the iPad

Also, a Windows 8 tablet for less than $400 is a natural for BYOD

Windows 8 is Microsoft's best effort to catch up with Apple and grab tablet sales away from the iPad by including things iPads just don't have, according to Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

These things include keyboards and Microsoft Office, Gates says in an interview with CNBC. "With Windows 8 Microsoft is trying to gain share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device," Gates says.

He says Windows 8 was designed to wrap PCs into a tablet form, as exemplified by Microsoft's own Windows 8 hardware Surface PRO and Surface RT.

"So if you have Surface, Surface PRO you've got that portability of the tablet but richness -- in terms of the keyboard, Microsoft Office -- of a PC," he says. "So as you say PCs are a big market. It's going to be harder and harder to distinguish products whether they're tablets or PCs."

Microsoft sees customers are unsatisfied by limitations of pure tablets with touchscreens and no support for Office. "A lot of those users are frustrated," Gates says. "They can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have Office there so we're providing something with the benefits they've seen that have made [tablets] a big category but without giving up what they expect in a PC."
Small, cheap Acer tablet

A product listing for a rumored Acer mini tablet popped up briefly on Amazon.com last week for the surprisingly low price of $379.99 before the item was taken down.

But the specifications listed for the device indicate that it can support a full-blown PC version of Windows 8 on an 8.1-inch tablet.

The low price makes them attractive to consumers and increases the possibility that Windows 8 devices will become a factor in BYOD programs. At the same time these small tablets become more attractive to businesses because they can support all legacy applications that run on Windows 7 including the full version of Microsoft Office.

A separate version of Windows 8 -- Windows RT -- is designed for tablets that are based on ARM processors, but they only run Windows Store applications and a truncated version of Office. Windows RT devices also can't join domains.

The Acer product in question is the W3-810-1600, pictured below in a photo that was posted two weeks ago by the French website minimachines.net but taken down at Acer's request.

The screen resolution is 1280x800 pixels is the low end of minimum requirements for Windows 8 devices set by Microsoft, according to specifications posted by The Verge.

While it's OK to build devices to that spec, it's not without ramifications. The devices can't support snap screens, which is a feature that displays two applications at once -- one small and one large -- and to reverse which one is bigger with a simple touchscreen swipe.

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Companies explore self-detonating data as security control

Self-detonating data would put expiration dates on sensitive documents

The popular Snapchat photo-messaging app used mainly by Android and iOS mobile device owners to share images that then self-destruct after 10 seconds is the sort of security idea that businesses say can help them secure online transactions with business partners.

“It puts controls on what people see, and I can put expiration dates on sensitive documents,” says Marc McDonald, owner of Chicago-based Midland Metal Products that a few months ago started using the software-as-a-service called VIA from Intralinks Holdings that now lets the maker of store fixtures share computer-aided design files for custom manufacturing with business partners. Midland Metal Products restricts download of sensitive information and also sets a time for the files to self-destruct. McDonald says the password-controlled VIA option is simpler and has more security controls than the Dropbox option he’d previously used.

While Intralinks sometimes casually refers to the collaboration service, which is priced at $25 per user per month as a “Snapchat for the enterprise,” it’s not related to the real Snapchat, which was launched in September 2011 by Stanford students Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy as a way to share “impermanent photos” taken on mobile devices through their Snapchat app.
We've been getting a lot of inquires about Snapchat apps."
— Jason Novak, assistant director of digital forensics, Stroz Friedberg

After a short period of time, each Snapchat image is said to be deleted from the devices and the Snapchat servers. The still-evolving Snapchat service, which has started to receive venture-capital funding, is proving popular with teens and young adults that now send millions of Snapchat photos and videos each day. Snapchat is also starting to be noticed in business circles in connection with questions about whether unauthorized photos and images of sensitive business information are being sent via mobile devices.

“We’ve been getting a lot of inquires about Snapchat apps,” says Jason Novak, assistant director of digital forensics at Stroz Friedberg, the New York-based firm which focuses on cybercrime issues and providing digital evidence that will stand up in court, if need be.
One big question is whether Snapchat does leave any trail of evidence of use on a mobile device. Stroz Friedberg says its forensics analysis can detect a trail of use of Snapchat for the Apple iPhone, though not evidence of specifically what photos or videos were sent. It hasn’t yet completed forensics for Snapchat on an Android device.

In its digital forensics tests it did with Snapchat for the iPhone, Stroz Friedberg found Snapchat maintains what’s called the user.plist file which is not encrypted. The file is a way to identify, preserve and analyze that the user of the iPhone did send something to a recipient via Snapchat. Novak says it’s possible to clear the Snapchat plist file on the device if the user knows how.

He points out that other Snapchat-like services oriented toward mobile have sprung up -- such as Facebook’s Poke, as well as Wickr and Silent Circle which take advantage of encryption as well. These type of services are presenting digital forensics with new challenges, Novak notes. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that use these type of services remains a new and evolving field beyond traditional computer-based forensics which is now more automated.

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