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.
Glassdoor's data shows Yahoo's Jerry Yang became very unpopular May 14.
(Credit: Glassdoor.com)Soon after May 14, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's approval rating among an admittedly small group of Yahoo employees tanked. Not surprisingly, that was the day word spread that corporate raider Carl Icahn was launching his proxy fight against Yang and Yahoo's embattled board of directors.
I know this because of a start-up called Glassdoor.com. While Glassdoor's service, scheduled to go into a public beta at 9:01 PDT Tuesday, is certainly helpful for nosy reporters who want a read on what employees think of their bosses, that's not the 12-person company's only intention. Glassdoor executives say they want to be the TripAdvisor of the workplace.
Founded by veterans of Microsoft and Expedia (Rich Barton, the CEO of real estate site Zillow, is non-executive chairman) Glassdoor has a fairly simple goal: Make salary and workplace-quality information (the kind of stuff you'd love to have when you're interviewing for a new job) as public as possible.
It's an ambitious plan. The solution: The service is free, but in order to get information users have to provide information. If a user wants to find out how much, say, a midlevel engineer at Microsoft makes, he or she has to provide information about his or her current job and company. It's anonymous, and Glassdoor screens information that seems bogus or plain-old axe-grinding. (It will be interesting to see how that labor-intensive work scales with new users. That and maintaining the quality of salary and company information are the biggest questions that will have to be answered in the not-too-distant future for Glassdoor.)
Employees provide Glassdoor's data and provide that information anonymously.
(Credit: Glassdoor.com)Co-founders Robert Hohman and Tim Besse, along with Barton, provided the seed funding for Sausalito, Calif.-based Glassdoor, and they received an additional $3 million from venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. Hohman (who is chief executive; Besse is marketing vice president) hopes the information will be unique enough to get by on advertising revenue.
Public beta users will be able to see data from four sample employers--Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco Systems--without providing their own information. To get information on more than those four, they'll have to "give to get," as the company calls it. So far, more than 3,300 people have filed dossiers on more than 250 companies (not all of them in tech), according to Glassdoor.
Employee reviews include "pros" and "cons" of each company, leadership ratings, salaries by position, and bonus details. The site will also send out alerts for a company when reviews are added.
Glassdoor may have a unique method for gathering its data, but it's hardly the only company trying to tackle salary information. Other outfits, such as Salary.com, which claims more than 4 million visitors per month and also sells a business service, are also in the salary info business. Indeed, human resources departments have for years been gathering data on competitors to decide if their salaries are competitive.
Which brings me back to Yahoo: While the 49 people who've filled out information about Yahoo is in no way a scientific sampling, the lousy CEO approval rating is certainly illustrative of nervousness inside the company. When a corporate raider like Icahn comes calling (particularly after a potential suitor like Microsoft takes a hike), there's always reason to worry. Will executives cut costs to placate shareholders? Even worse: If the raider wins, will he gut payroll?
For a prospective employee, of course, the bigger question is: Should I work at this place?
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.
A couple of times a year, I check the list of autostart programs in Windows XP's System Configuration Utility (aka Msconfig) to see if any apps that I don't need to start automatically have snuck onto the roster.
The older my PC gets, the more important it is to avoid slowing down XP's start-ups as the OS loads programs I'll probably never use.
(Note that the $30 WinPatrol, the free CCleaner, and many other Windows utilities can be used to prevent applications from starting with Windows.
Here, I'm focusing on the tools built into XP. Also, the Software Explorer component of Vista's Windows Defender security application gives you a clearer view of the OS's autostart applications. I'll describe that program tomorrow.)
Msconfig-uring out CTFmon
To view your autostart apps in Msconfig, press the Windows key (or Ctrl-Esc), press R, type msconfig.exe, and press Enter. The last time I checked the list, I noticed an entry for CTFmon.exe. This is an extension for Microsoft Office XP, 2003, and 2007 that enables speech and handwriting recognition, as well as other language functions. Unchecking the program's option in Msconfig does no good because it returns to the list automatically the next time Windows loads.
Microsoft's support site describes a convoluted, multistep process for removing the program from your start-up list. You begin by deactivating it in Microsoft Office via the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs applet, then you change settings in the Regional and Language Options, and finally, you delete two DLLs manually from the Run box.
"There's gotta be a better way," I thought, as I read through Microsoft's instructions. There is. Gerhard Schlager's CTFMON-Remover does the trick in a fraction of the time. Simply unzip the download file, double-click CtfmonRemover.exe, and select Deactivate CTFMON.EXE. Step through the short wizard, and the program is removed automatically (the option "Is the CTFMON.EXE installed?" switches from a green "Yes" to a red "No.")
The free CTFMON-Remover utility rids Windows' list of autostart apps of this little-used Microsoft Office extension.
(Credit: Gerhard Schlager)
Pruning your list of autostart apps
Uncheck the programs on XP's autostart list that you don't need to have on all the time. Candidates include iTunes, Adobe Acrobat, and utilities for cameras, printers, PDAs, and other peripherals you rarely use. (I noticed that my system was loading control programs for a printer I replaced six months ago.)
Of course, an entry such as the one on my PC for a discarded printer indicates that you're overdue in uninstalling the program altogether, either by using its own uninstall option off the Start menu, or via Add or Remove Programs.
If an entry in your autostart list is unidentifiable, enter the name in your favorite Web search engine, and look for information about it. That's how I found out that I didn't need "point32.exe", which is for Microsoft's IntelliMouse, nor "nwiz.exe", Nvidia's program for "enhancing" my graphics display with features I'll never use.
Just be careful not to uncheck the entry for an autostart program that your system needs to function properly. Keep the entries for your antivirus, firewall, and other security programs checked. Also leave active the listings for your network and Windows itself, as well as for printer and other peripherals you use frequently. When in doubt, leave it checked, though a Web search should shine a light on any mystery file names you find there.
Msconfig craziness
Whenever you make a change in Msconfig, the program prompts you to restart your system. To prevent the message from popping up in the future, check "Don't show this message again" before you click either Restart or Exit without restarting. The next time you start your PC, you'll see a message stating that the System Configuration utility started in "Diagnostic or Selective Startup" mode. Check "Don't show this message or start up the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts," reopen Msconfig, press the General tab, and select Normal Startup > OK > Exit without restart.
Tomorrow: Pare your list of autostart applications in Windows Vista via the Software Explorer.
There 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?
The more I use Ubuntu, the more I like it. That's not to say I was happy with the operating system's default start-up settings, however. Here are three Ubuntu tweaks that speed up the start of my workday.
Do away with the log-in
I'm the only one using the ancient laptop I installed Ubuntu on, and I don't feel the need to keep interlopers off it, so I set it to start without requiring a log-in ID and password. To cancel the log-in, click System > Administration > Login Window, enter your password, and select the Security tab in the Login Windows Preferences dialog box. Choose your ID in the User drop-down menu, and click Close. The next time you start Ubuntu, the OS will load without prompting you for a username and password. You'll still have to enter your password to access Administration tools, however.
Set Ubuntu to start without prompting for a username and password via this option in the Login Window Preferences dialog box.
Add shortcuts to the top panel of the desktop
One of my favorite Ubuntu applications is the Tomboy note-taker, but opening it by clicking Applications > Accessories > Tomboy Notes takes too long. Instead, I added a shortcut to the program on the panel that runs across the top of the screen, much like Windows' Quick Launch toolbar reversed. To do so, right-click an empty area of the panel, choose Add to Panel, select the program you want to add in the list of Accessories, or scroll down the page to the Desktop & Windows, System & Hardware, or Utilities section, click Add at the bottom of the window, and close it.
Add shortcuts to your favorite Ubuntu apps by selecting them in the Add to Panel dialog box and clicking Add.
Keep your favorite app window on top
Now that I have my notepad at the ready on my desktop, I want to keep other windows I open from obfuscating it. A nice feature of Ubuntu that Windows lacks (unless you tweak the Registry or download a separate always-on-top utility) is the ability to keep a window on top of all others. Just right-click the bar along the top of the window, and select Always on Top from the drop-down menu.
Right-click the top of a program's window in Ubuntu and choose Always on Top to keep it in view as new windows open.
Bonus tip: Get a snapshot of your system performance by adding a mini System Monitor window to your panel: Right-click the panel, choose Add to Panel, scroll down to and select System Monitor, and click Add and Close. Now you can get a continuous glimpse of your system activity, though you may have to squint to make out the miniscule green blips in the tiny black rectangle that appears.
Tomorrow: Tell-tale signs of a Web site's trustworthiness.
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.
One way to get Windows to load faster is by using the System Configuration utility (aka Msconfig) to disable programs that start unnecessarily when you boot the operating system. To view this list in XP, click Start>Run, type msconfig, press Enter, and click the Startup tab. In Vista, open your Startup list by pressing the Windows key, typing msconfig, pressing Enter, and clicking the Startup tab.
Be careful not to disable a program that your system needs to start properly. Paul Collins' Startup Applications List can help you determine whether a program is required, or if it can (and sometimes definitely should) be disabled. Play it safe by disabling the programs one at a time, and restarting your system to make sure everything's copacetic before disabling another and repeating the process.
After you uncheck an entry in the Startup list, it remains there, waiting for you to change your mind, I imagine. You can remove the unselected items by editing the Registry, but a simpler way is to use the free MSConfig Cleanup utility from Virtuoza. After you download and install the program, simply open it to view a list of the deselected items in your machine's Startup list. Check those you want to remove permanently and click Clean Up Selected to give the entries the boot for good.
The free MSConfig Cleanup utility removes unchecked items from Windows' Startup list.
Stop Msconfig from starting automatically
One of my Windows XP systems insisted on starting Msconfig every time it booted. I tried clicking Start>Run, typing Msconfig /auto, pressing Enter, and checking "Don't show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts," but the Selective Startup window still popped up whenever Windows opened, requiring me to click OK>Exit Without Restart.
I found a script written by Doug Knox called xp_nomsconfig.vbs that is intended to close the Selective Startup window once and for all, but it didn't work on my system, generating an error message about needing Administrator permissions to run the script. I opened the script in Notepad (right-click it and choose Open With>Notepad), and then noticed that it removed a particular Registry entry called MSConfigReminder. After opening the Registry Editor (click Start>Run, type regedit, and press Enter), I noticed that the entry wasn't located in the key referenced by the script, but was in another: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run (one level up from the key the script pointed to). I deleted the key, restarted the machine, and was delighted to see it start without Selective Startup appearing. Note that before you make any changes to your Registry, create a system-restore point, just in case.
Tomorrow: Troubleshoot Ubuntu Linux wireless-adapter woes.
Before I was a big-shot executive, the end of a year meant rest and relaxation. Now it's crunching fourth-quarter numbers and budgeting for 2008.
A friend in Japan read my fortune and told me that 2007 was my year of "turbulence," that 2008 is my year of "reunion," and that 2009 is my year of "wealth." Supposedly, 2010 will be "peace and stabilized," but at the rate I am going I can only hope to make it that far.
One full calendar year later, I am still happy that my company (MuleSource) gives software consumers a choice about the technology they use and ultimately, we, like the rest of the open-source vendors, bet on the fact that adoption eventually equals dollars. Having been a software consumer that felt burdened by proprietary products for most of my career, I retain a strong desire to flip the software industry on its head.
There is an inevitable flow of events in which software companies will either get on the path or be left behind. If you start a software company today that is not SaaS or open source you are betting that the market will somehow revert to 1999. And I think we all remember what happened in 2001 here in the valley.
Two years after founding this company I believe more than ever that open source is a question of when, not if.
... Read more
Monday morning, Zoho, the online productivity suite, announced full offline functionality for its Zoho Writer product. Zoho had previously released partial offline functionality for Writer earlier this year, but you could only read the documents and not edit them. What good is that? Luckily, as a little post-Thanksgiving gift, we now have full offline editing, utilizing Google Gears (download Google Gears for Windows or Mac from CNET Download.com).
The offline functionality here couldn't be any easier. If you need to go offline, just hit the "Go Offline" button at the top, give Zoho permission to use Google Gears, and you are ready to go. If you make any edits to the documents offline, when you get Internet access again, you just hit the "Go Online" link and there you are! Everything is automatically synced back to Zoho's servers, and you are good to go.
I have used the offline functionality, built on Google Gears, for Google Reader on many occasions, so I am not one bit surprised at how well it works with Zoho. Google has built a killer platform for offline Web applications. Zoho is leading the way right now, offering offline functionality for its word processor, even before Google Apps does. Zoho currently offers 14 online productivity services, so maybe it's time for Microsoft to start taking note.
via VentureBeat
