Summertime is the season for traveling circuses and local fairs, so I shouldn't be surprised that this carnival atmosphere has spread to security. A company named Permanent Privacy just announced a $1 million prize to the person who can crack its algorithm and uncover the underlying encryption keys.
Now I realize there is some history here. In January 1999, a group of academics cracked the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard in just over 22 hours and won a prize of $10,000. That said, I am not a big fan of security showmanship like this from unknown security start-ups.
Why? First of all, this "challenge" isn't really a challenge at all. Permanent Privacy technology is based upon the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm and since no one has cracked AES, it's highly unlikely that anyone will crack AES with an additional proprietary security wrapper . Furthermore, information security is no longer an academic playground for brainiacs at Berkeley and MIT. Rather, it's serious business that impacts everything we do. Given this level of criticality, I'd rather see things like Common Criteria or FIPS certification than a publicity gimmick.
As a start-up, I understand that Permanent Privacy needs to generate buzz and all PR is good PR. Heck, I did the same thing as VP of marketing at a misguided CLEC during the boom. Security isn't like other technologies however, it's more about law, order, and safety. Oracle was dragged through the mud when it advertised its database as "unbreakable." Perhaps it's just me, but I think Permanent Privacy deserves a similar treatment in the market.
Got dial-up and don't want to give it up? You're not alone.
An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
And a lot of those people apparently see no compelling reason to change. The report indicates that those users are not itching to make a change to a speedier broadband connection in large part because, they say, broadband is too expensive.
Of this dial-up group, 35 percent cited the cost issue, while 19 percent say nothing will ever prompt them to change. Another subset--14 percent--say they're still on dial-up because broadband is not available in their neighborhoods
The Associated Press, in its posting on the report, cited this assessment by the report's author, John Horrigan: "That (resistance to change) suggests that solving the supply problem where there are availability gaps is only going to go so far."
The survey collected information from 2,251 U.S. residents, between April 8 and May 11.
Earlier this week, AOL said it would be raising the subscription fee for its dial-up service by 20 percent, starting at the end of July.
Have you founded a tech company?
Chances are, if you're a U.S. entrepreneur, you're about 39 years old and hold a bachelor's degree, and there's a good chance your company was started in the same state where you received your education, according to a study released Thursday by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researchers from Duke and Harvard universities.
Based on a study of U.S. entrepreneurs who started their companies between 1995 and 2005, the findings show the median age of U.S.-born founders was 39 years old, with only 1 percent launching their company as teenagers. For those in their 50s, there's still hope--twice as many folks in this age group founded a tech company than those in their early 20s, according to the study.
The report also noted that 92 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs surveyed received a bachelor's degree, 31 percent a master's degree, and 10 percent a Ph.D. And then, you have folks like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard in his junior year and, nonetheless, built a tech empire.
"Because entrepreneurship is an indicator of economic vitality in regions and across the country, this study raises important policy questions about how to foster greater tech entrepreneurship to boost economic growth," Robert Litan, the Kauffman Foundation's research and policy vice president, said in a statement.
Graduates with an MBA degree founded tech companies within 13 years after getting their certificate, compared with folks with Ph.D.s, who generally waited 21 years to venture out as a tech entrepreneur. Maybe those with Ph.D.s wanted more time to research the notion of becoming an entrepreneur, before sticking their neck out.
The study also found that 45 percent of tech entrepreneurs started their venture in the same state where they received their education.
And here's a little bit of quick math to consider when selecting a university to get a higher-education degree: Start-ups in 2005 averaged sales revenue of $5.7 million and employed an average of 42 workers. Tech founders with advanced Ivy League degrees had companies that averaged sales of $6.7 million with 55 workers.
So, if you're going to attend college with the idea of starting a tech company later, consider an Ivy League school in a state where the cost of living is low because chances are good you'll remain in the area upon graduating, and employees often are the greatest expense to operations. That'll help with the profit margins, since going to an Ivy League school may mean your revenue will be higher.
Intel wants to make the whole Web editable, just like a single Wikipedia page.
The chip giant on Tuesday will make a beta available of Intel Mash Maker, a free browser extension that allows users to modify Web pages and combine information from different sources. Its first beta works with Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, though at this point the features are far more mature in Firefox, Intel said.
The product, which originated in Intel's research labs, is similar to existing mash-up tools like Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft Popfly in that it has a graphical design tool.
Intel Mash Maker suggests customizations and widgets.
(Credit: Intel)What's different is that the actual mashing up of information on Intel Mash Maker happens on the client, rather than the server. So instead of making a different Web application to, say, plot real estate listings on Google Maps, Intel Mash Maker lets people add a widget that adds visualization to the real estate listing site.
... Read more
French singer Yelle is helping to usher out era of disc promos
(Credit: EMI Music)Sweet faced and playful, French electro-pop star Yelle seems an unlikely figure to stick a dagger into the heart of a much-loved but quickly disappearing staple of the music industry.
She is unwittingly helping The EMI Group, one of the four largest music companies, to push CDs further into the shadows. Already a star in her own country and a growing nightclub favorite in the U.S., Yelle was being promoted until recently in this country exclusively through digital means.
For decades, music labels trying to break in an act pressed thousands of vinyl records or CDs to distribute to disc jockeys, record stores, journalists, and fans. Those types of promotions have grown too expensive in an era of shrinking music sales, says Jeff Rougvie, general manager of EMI's Caroline Records, who is leading Yelle's U.S. campaign.
"We're definitely spending less than on a traditional campaign," Rougvie said. "It doesn't make sense when you're going out the door to spend a lot of money putting out a physical product and taking in costs before you know what (the demand is)."
For an industry that has been decimated by digital technology, this is an example of how at least one of the four largest music labels is putting it to work.
Caroline Records specializes in introducing international music stars to U.S. audiences. Naturally, this means executives are often less sure of whether a foreign performer can find a niche audience here. Spending big on untested and unknown acts doesn't make sense. As part of the digital-only promotion, EMI didn't seek radio airplay for Yelle's music and didn't buy banner or print ads in traditional music magazines like Rolling Stone or Blender.
Instead, executives took to MySpace, music widgets, and powerful music blogs like Pitchfork. The label started digital and stayed digital until it reached a critical mass. On April 1, EMI finally released a CD version of Yelle's album, Pop Up.
The movement to phase out discs as promotional devices has been around for some time. Last year, EMI drastically scaled back the numbers of CDs it sent out as promos. Just a few years ago, the label may have sent out CDs as complete albums. Now it distributes secure online access where retailers or reviewers can hear songs.
Beyond the cost savings that digital music offers, Rougvie says there is growing need for an act to obtain a "groundswell of digital support" from music blogs, download stores, and MySpace to prove to a label that it can attract fans and is worthy of a larger investment. For that reason, focusing on digital at the beginning of a promotion makes sense.
EMI says it has already seen positive results.
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Last year, the label brought Utada Hikaru, Japan's top recording artist, to the United States. EMI helped the singer find an audience in the U.S. without pressing any CDs initially. But the U.S. digital-only campaign was at best an effort to put otherwise hard-to-find product in front of her U.S. fans. Before digital music, those fans might wait months before an expensive import CD hit our shores.
Digital allows EMI to get product to niche audiences affordably as well as generate incremental income for the company. Hikaru would later go on to sell 7.2 million downloads worldwide.
Naturally, EMI is trying it again.
The label couldn't have asked for a better test case than Yelle. The 25-year-old from St. Brieuc, France, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that she grew up with the Internet and fully understands its power to promote and distribute music.
Yelle, pronounced Yeah-elle, was discovered by EMI's unit in France one week after she posted "Short Dick Cuizi," a song that took swipes at a member of a rival band. She renamed the song "Je veux te voir" and then released Pop Up, which features three songs, "Je veux te voir," "Parle a ma main," and "A cause des garcons" attracting big audiences at YouTube.
A version of "A cause des garcons" has been viewed 3.5 million times since August. Her songs have also been heard on such TV shows as "The Hills" and "Entourage."
While Yelle is a fan of digital music and technology, she says there is still a place for plastic.
"I don't know when my first EP on vinyl will come out," said Yelle, whose real name is Julie Budet. "I don't know whether it will come out. I think it's a bonus if it does. It's a plus. I think now you can download music, buy CDs, and that's what people really want. But I would be really proud if my album will be out in vinyl."
The HA-SX500 will carry a list price of $79.99.
(Credit: JVC)You remember those fold-up Sony headphones that you used to take with you to the gym? Well, JVC's added a new "high-end" version of that type of headphone to its Bi-Metal line of in-ear canal headphones. JVC's HA-SX500 will be out this month with a list price of $79.99. Oh, and it's iPhone-compatible.
Here's the news release if you want the details:
"The new JVC HA-SX500 achieves high quality sound by employing JVC's original Bi-Metal structure and a new large 16mm neodymium driver unit, offering greater power handling and sensitivity.
JVC's Bi-Metal structure is designed to enhance performance across the frequency range by housing the drive unit in a steel base wrapped in a high-specific-gravity brass ring to eliminate vibration and energy loss. The HA-SX500 also offers a vast reduction in friction noise. The headphones feature flexible rubber joints, reducing friction noise while increasing comfort, and use OFC (oxygen-free copper) to minimize transmission loss in the 0.8 meter friction noise reduction cord.
The lightweight HA-SX500 headphones are designed to provide a comfortable and secure fit while delivering superior isolation from external sounds and minimizing sound leakage. The ergonomic silicon rubber earpieces come in three sizes to provide snug, customized sizing, supported by a cushioned metallic foldable headband for a secure fit and hours of comfort.
... Read moreThere was a time when working at a start-up meant scrimping and saving one's way to untold wealth...or simply a self-inflicted pink slip. No more.
With all the VC money washing entrepreneurs' cars these days, it's hard to find much frugality in the Silicon Valley start-up.
As it turns out, however, there are great ways to save money without being an obnoxious miser, and Jason Calacanis, CEO of Maholo, has listed 18 of them. Here are a few of my favorites:
1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department....
16. Don't waste money on recruiters. Get inside of LinkedIn and Facebook and start looking for people--it works better anyway...
18. Outsource to middle America: There are tons of brilliant people living between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York who don't live in a $4,000 one-bedroom apartment and pay $8 to dry clean a shirt--hire them!
The other tips are good, too, but I find these three above highly pertinent to my own experience managing Alfresco's U.S. operations. We're a highly distributed bunch, and so the only way to measure success is through actual productivity, not face time or the number of e-mails sent back and forth. We don't have office space, though we're thinking of getting some here in the "near shoring" capital of the world, Utah--want to sublet some space to us?). We don't have a phone system. We don't have a coffee machine. Well, I don't. :-).
With all that we don't have, we're forced to, well, work. Since we spend a lot of time working, we get the best machines for people (Macs, of course, tricked out) and good mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.).
I guess this is what I'd add to Jason's list:
19. Don't bother trying to hire everyone in the same place. Hire the best people you can find...wherever you happen to find them. Development is no longer something that has to be done within the same office. In fact, there are plenty of reasons to disperse developers. (It tends to lead to more modular architectures, for one.) And open source is a classic demonstration of the power of distributed development. The rest is sales and marketing, which should be as close to the customer as possible.
What are your top tips to add to Jason's list?
CORK, Ireland--A radiation detector initially created to protect orbiting satellites has found a new purpose inside cancer patients.
The Tyndall National Institute--a scientific research institute and graduate school in Cork, Ireland--has come up with a radiation detector that fits inside an implantable medical device that measures how well radiation therapy is working. The FDA approved the use of the DVS (Dose Verification System) from North Carolina's Sicel Technologies last August for breast cancer and prostate cancer patients, said Brendan O'Neill, head of the central fabrication facility at Tyndall.
The DVS collects information about patients and then transmits the data to an outside system. It also gets its power externally via its antenna. The device is designed to last as long as the treatment. Two detectors go into each DVS, said O'Neill. Sicel also makes an external version that is applied to the skin, called OneDose, that measures radiation from the most immediate dose of radiation.
The radiation detector module was originally created for the European Space Agency (ESA) to protect satellites from radiation, said O'Neill. The aerospace market, however, consists of only a few big customers so Tyndall decided to refashion its chips, reduce the size, and cut the costs to fit into another market.
It's part of an effort by the Irish government to create a homegrown tech industry. For the past few decades, multinational companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft have come to the country to take advantage of a low 12.5 percent corporate percent tax rate. That's far lower than the usual E.U. tax rate, which can range in the 30 percent range, according to Gerard O'Brien, senior development adviser for Enterprise Ireland, a government organization charged with building local industries.
Initially, the multinationals primarily built fabrication and assembly facilities, but over the years have begun to increasingly locate design centers, research labs, European headquarters, and other so-called higher value facilities.
But the rapid evolution of the tech industry in Asia prompted a change in tech policy about five years ago. Now, the government is actively trying to get entrepreneurs to form indigenous start-ups and is priming the process by funding research, investing in venture funds that will invest in Irish companies, and trying to encourage more tech education. Tyndall, for instance, was created in 2004 out of an earlier organization, and one of its primary goals revolves around commercializing laboratory research locked inside the nation's universities and technical institutes. (The other major goal revolves around producing more PhDs, who the government hopes will stay in the country.)
The effort is in the early stages and the results of these programs likely won't be known for a while. "We haven't seen a high level of activity yet, but it has only been five years that we have been pumping money into research at this scale," said Michael Grufferty, the director of industry and innovation at Tyndall.
Still, there have been a few interesting things cropping up. Last year, Motorola invested in Anam, which has created an application for conducting money transfers via cell phones over international borders. It is targeted at the growing immigrant community here. Galway's Porto Media, meanwhile, is coming out with a kiosk that lets you download movies onto a flash memory key. (In the biggest tech deal here in a while, Ireland's Airtricity, which specializes in wind power, got bought by a Scottish utility for over $1 billion earlier this year.)
Other interesting projects at Tyndall:
• Paul Galvin is working on a handheld microelectricalmechanical system that can rapidly scan a person's DNA for susceptibility to different diseases.
• An array of silicon micro-needles that can penetrate a person's skin, but not hit the nerves. The result is, ideally, painless shots.
• High frequency diodes that will be used on the ESA's mission to study the planet Mercury in 2013. It may be possible to integrate cheaper, similar versions of these diodes into solar panels, according to Donagh O'Mahony, a research scientist at Tyndall.
(Credit:
Best Buy)
One of the nice things about using a notebook is that if there's a sudden power outage, you won't instantly lose your work. Desktop users aren't so lucky, which is why it's essential to plug everything into a battery backup (aka uninterruptible power supply). If the lights go out, you'll still have a few minutes in which to save your work and power down the machine safely.
Best Buy has a CyberPower battery backup on sale for $29.99. It includes six wide-spaced outlets, all of them surge-protected and three of them powered by the battery. The 240-watt backup promises between 8 and 20 minutes of runtime, depending on the power demands of your hardware. It also has a pair of phone/fax/modem ports to keep that gear from getting fried. CyberPower even backs your equipment with a $35,000 warranty. Battery backups can cost a pretty penny; here's your chance to get one on the cheap.
At its annual Lotusphere conference, IBM on Wednesday showed off an early version of Lotus Mashups, a tool designed to let businesspeople, rather than professional programmers, quickly assemble Web applications.
The application will let people combine, or mash up, data from enterprise applications and the Web. It uses a browser-based visual tool and a set of pre-built widgets for displaying information.
A mashup that combines mapping and storm-related information with an inventory system.
(Credit: IBM)IBM has been pursuing the idea of giving end users in businesses powerful enough tools to build their own applications.
These Web applications may be relatively simple and only be used for a short time. But IBM executives have said that it represents a significant business opportunity for its Lotus collaboration software division.
For example, a person could build a mashup that combines weather information with a retail management system to adjust inventories based on project weather patterns.
IBM first started with end user-driven software development when it introduced QEDWiki two years ago, a product with a similar goal.
Lotus Mashups will use the QEDWiki technology, which IBM's Emerging Technology group first developed, but it will be a separate commercial product, said Doug Heintzman, director of strategy for IBM's collaboration technologies.
A mashup that combines business social networking and comapny organization charts.
(Credit: IBM)Heintzman said he thought it could be possible that in the future, IT departments will analyze the applications created by end users and "harden" them for broader deployment within companies.
Last year at Lotusphere, IBM introduced other products inspired by Web 2.0-style consumer applications, including Lotus Connections, social-networking software for businesses.
Updated at 9:15 AM PT with comments from IBM. Screen shots added.
