news and knowledge from around the globe compiled by Global EDD Group
The group messaging battle just heated up with the announcement Sunday that Skype has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GroupMe, a group messaging service that will enhance Skype’s ability to facilitate text and photo messaging.
With this acquisition, Skype said in a press release that GroupMe will provide “best-in-class text-based communications and innovative features that enable users to connect, share locations and photos and make plans with their closest ties.”
E-discovery customers and service providers need to better understand each other to improve the state of early case assessment tools, analysts at Enterprise Strategy Group found in their latest legal technology report.
Law firms and legal departments too often underappreciate service providers’ expertise, while service providers focus too broadly on custom projects and too narrowly on research and development, analysts Brian Babineau and Katey Wood concluded in Initial Case Assessments with e-Discovery: Integrating e-Discovery Tools in Corporate Investigations.
The disconnect is a major reason why software companies rule the e-discovery market despite common complaints about legal technology being overly influenced by engineers. “In ESG’s conversations with general counsel over the last five years, many in-house attorneys found that the software market’s concept of ECA didn’t sufficiently support their approach,” the report from Milford, Mass.-based ESG states.
Microsoft unveiled new software tools and services designed to let researchers use its Azure cloud platform to analyze extremely large data sets from a diverse range of disciplines–and it’s borrowing technology from archrival Google to help gird the platform.
The software maker unveiled the initiative, known as Project Daytona, at its Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Wash., this week. The service was developed under the Microsoft extreme computing group’s Cloud Research Engagement program, which aims to find new applications for cloud platforms.
“Daytona gives scientists more ways to use the cloud without being tied to one computer or needing detailed knowledge of cloud programming–ultimately letting scientists be scientists,” said Dan Reed, corporate VP for Microsoft’s technology policy group.
To sort and crunch data, Daytona uses a runtime version of Google’s open-license MapReduce programming model for processing large data sets. The Daytona tools deploy MapReduce to Windows Azure virtual machines, which subdivide the information into even smaller chunks for processing. The data is then recombined for output.
AMEX launched a free dashboard to help customers manage social media.
Find out how this tool will help you suceed (even if you aren’t an AMEX customer).
Daytona is geared toward scientists in healthcare, education, environmental sciences, and other fields where researchers need–but don’t always have access to–powerful computing resources to analyze and interpret large data sets, such as disease vectors or climate observations. Through the service, users can upload pre-built research algorithms to Microsoft’s Azure cloud, which runs a across a highly distributed network of powerful computers
BP won two rounds in its massive oil spill litigation when the federal judge overseeing the cases ruled that lead plaintiffs in property damage lawsuits cannot include racketeering claims, and that a lawsuit from BP business partner Anadarko Petroleum must be arbitrated.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier granted BP’s motion to dismiss a consolidated oil spill complaint brought under the RICO Act, calling plaintiffs’ inability to show a direct link between BP business practices and the economic damages sought the “fatal flaw in their RICO claims.”
The plaintiffs claimed that damages to property and business losses caused by the oil spill would not have happened if BP had not “defrauded government regulators in connection with the safety of its drilling operations, its ability to respond to any oil spill, and its response to the spill at the Macondo well.”
Judge Barbier ruled that a direct relationship between the alleged fraud and the plaintiffs’ injuries was required for a RICO complaint to stand.
That ruling does not affect the hundreds of other lawsuits seeking property damages, personal injury and other economic losses still pending in Barbier’s court.
A Brooklyn-based artist has caught the attention of the Secret Service after installing software on Apple Store computers that takes Webcam photos every two minutes, and posting those images on the Internet.
The “@secretservice just stopped by to investigate … and took my laptop. please assume they’re reading any emails you send me,” Kyle McDonald tweeted on Thursday.
McDonald took the photos and posted them on a Tumblr blog called “People Staring at Computers.” He told Mashable that he got permission from Apple security guards to take photos in the store, but it’s unclear if they were aware that McDonald also meant installing software and snapping Webcam shots. Given that it attracted Secret Service attention, it’s safe to say that not everyone was excited by the project.
When asked on Twitter if he got permission from every person whose photo appeared on his blog, McDonald said no because “as i understand, photography in open spaces is legal unless explicitly prohibited.” He will, however, remove any photos if asked, he said.
It appears McDonald was committed, however; Apple wipes its computers every night, so he had to reinstall the program every day he took photos, Mashable reports. That program focused only on photos; “keylogging public machines would make me uncomfortable,” he tweeted.
via Artist Gets Secret Service Visit Over Apple Store Webcam Spying | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
Fujitsu is launching its infrastructure-as-a-service offering in North America in a few months, and will start offering interested customers a free trial next week.
Beginning on May 31, organizations can sign up for a free three-month trial of the service. On Sept. 1, the service will become generally available.
Interested customers can sign up for the service online, and Fujitsu suggests they use it to try out application testing and development as well as processing for workloads like data analytics.
Fujitsu already offers an IaaS service in Japan, Australia, Singapore and the U.K. Expanding into the U.S. means that multinational companies can access the service locally in multiple locations, the company said.
It will offer the North America service from a data center in Silicon Valley with 24-7 support.
via Fujitsu to Offer IaaS Service in North America | PCWorld Business Center.
For three pennies an hour, hackers can rent Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)’s servers to wage cyber attacks such as the one that crippled Sony Corp. (6758)’s PlayStation Network and led to the second-largest online data breach in U.S. history.
A hacker used Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud, or EC2, service to attack Sony’s online entertainment systems last month, a person with knowledge of the matter said May 13. The intruder, who used a bogus name to set up an account that’s now disabled, didn’t hack into Amazon’s servers, the person said.
The incident helps illustrate the dilemma facing Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos: Amazon’s cloud-computing service is as cheap and convenient for hackers as it is for customers ranging from Netflix Inc. (NFLX) to Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) Last month’s attack on Sony compromised more than 100 million customer accounts, the largest data breach in the U.S. since intruders stole credit and debit card numbers from Heartland Payment Systems in 2009.
“Anyone can go get an Amazon account and use it anonymously,” said Pete Malcolm, chief executive officer of Abiquo Inc., a Redwood City, California-based company that helps customers manage data internally and through cloud computing. “If they have computers in their back bedroom they are much easier to trace than if they are on Amazon’s Web Services.”
via Sony Attack Shows Amazon’s Cloud Service Lures Hackers at Pennies an Hour – Bloomberg.
Not Starting With a Kiss?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates took the stage just minutes ago to announce the Windows company’s acquisition of the VoIP company. In the hours since the deal was confirmed, it has become apparent just how far Microsoft can run with Skype, using it to power communications through the enterprise, in home computing, console and mobile worlds.
First up, it should be pointed out that Skype will continue to be offered on non-Microsoft technology. That includes Apple’s iPhone, Sony’s PlayStation Portable and other platforms/devices.
Steve Ballmer shows off the Microsoft ecosystem that Skype can thrive in
Ballmer: A Better Experience
“Today is a big day for Microsoft and Skype, bringing out the best of both,” Ballmer started, before going on to talk about communications and how it will be a seamless experience in the future regardless of device and distance. From group meetings to friends and family, Skype — so successful it has become a verb — can benefit almost anyone and Microsoft can see the opportunity for people to communicate across its products.
He also talked about engaged users, with Skype users racking up vast amounts of minutes and with over 25 million concurrent users on the service at a time. He went on to discuss how both companies already work together with Skype on Windows platforms. Talking business, he stated that Microsoft made an unsolicited offer for Skype, which was accepted in mid-April.
via Microsoft/Skype Press Conference: Service Will Still Support Non-MS Hardware.
A preliminary injunction (PDF) has been entered against the operators of the Coreflood botnet – a network of hundreds of thousands of computers infected with a malicious software program — continuing the equitable relief granted on April 12, 2011, in a temporary restraining order issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. This preliminary injunction prohibits the defendants from using Coreflood to commit fraud and to engage in unauthorized interception of electronic communications, and it authorizes the U.S. Marshals Service and FBI to enforce the injunction by using a substitute server to stop Coreflood from running on infected computers.
In support of the preliminary injunction, the Department of Justice filed papers showing that the coordinated law enforcement operation has reduced the size of the Coreflood botnet by nearly 90 percent in the United States.
According to the documents filed with the court (Read the Preliminary Injunction (PDF) or the Mem0 in Support (PDF) ) , the reduction in the size of the Coreflood Botnet was attributed to two factors. First, because Coreflood was no longer running, it was no longer able to update itself and avoid detection by anti-virus software. Second, the FBI, with the assistance of Internet service providers, has made significant efforts to identify and notify the victims of Coreflood, who in turn have taken measures to remove Coreflood from thousands of infected computers.
Red Hat (news, site) has been focusing its efforts on supporting enterprises and service providers that use Red Hat software for building and managing cloud networks. With Red Hat’s recent acquisition of Makara, the company now has the capability to act as a cloud service provider, and is set to make an announcement at the upcoming Red Hat Summit.
While Red Hat is among the more popular server operating system and middleware vendors, it doesn’t have its own PaaS offering. With the Makara acquisition in November 2010, Red Hat now has technology that enables developers to deploy cloud applications that can scale up or down as necessary. According to former Makara CEO Isaac Roth — now Red Hat’s “PaaS Master” — the Makara team is currently working on integrating Red Hat’s technology into the existing Makara service. “Makara enables applications to automatically scale down and up, so the consumption of resources happens in an on-demand fashion.”
Makara is currently integrating parts of JBoss, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Deltacloud project, in which developers can use the same code to launch instances regardless of whether these are on private clouds, Amazon EC, Rackspace or other services, making sure applications are protected from API incompatibilities.
