Microsoft tunes Windows Azure cloud for developers

Microsoft continues to position its Windows Azure cloud platform as a place for software developers, adding services on Thursday for mobile and Web development.

At its Build 2013 developer conference in San Francisco, the company announced general availability of Windows Azure Mobile Services, for creating mobile back-end application capabilities, and Windows Azure Web Sites, for building and managing "business-grade" Web applications. Mobile Services offers native SDKs for Windows Store, Windows Phone, Google Android, Apple iOS, HTML5, and REST APIs, while Web Sites supports such languages and frameworks as ASP.Net, PHP, Node.js, and Python. Web Sites also offers such features as load balancing and source control.

The natural symmetry between the cloud and developers was noted by Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president in the Microsoft Developer and Tools Business: "Certainly, one of our constituents in terms of customers that use it is certainly developers." Microsoft has focused on tooling and APIs for Azure with developers in mind. The company also is forging close ties between its Visual Studio IDE and Azure, Guthrie acknowledged. Visual Studio 2013, offered in a preview form on Thursday, offers stronger capablities for deployment right to Azure, including debugging and code editing.

Build also featured a preview of application access enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory, providing single sign-on to cloud applications. In addition, Microsoft previewed Azure's Auto Scale capability for scaling applications. "It's a really great feature that allows you to dynamically scale up or scale down your apps and services when you're hosted in the cloud," Guthrie said.

Microsoft's cloud accommodations for developers are akin to what Google has been doing on its own Google App Engine platform. Google provides for building and hosting Web applications on App Engine, with access to multiple services, scalability, and backing for different programming languages. Thursday's moves in the cloud application space follow up another Microsoft move onto Google turf, as the company expanded its Bing search platform, which could rival what Google is doing with its own vaunted search technology.

This story, "Microsoft tunes Windows Azure cloud for developers," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Mixed messages, contradictory claims trip up Gartner, Cisco, and Apple

Credit: Hemera Technologies

Reversals of fortune were on the menu this week in the tech industry, starting off with a Gartner analyst who predicted Apple OSes were set to overtake Microsoft. According to Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, Microsoft's lead in sales of products running Windows -- Windows devices handily outnumbered those running Mac OS and iOS last year -- would evaporate by 2015.

But not so fast -- Gartner soon recanted, saying the prediction was based partly on incorrect data. Milanesi now says Microsoft will regain momentum, rebound with a new category of ultramobile devices, and pull away from Apple again.

Is anyone really paying attention? After all, the consistent part of Gartner's prediction is that Android will continue to dominate the market, beating the combined sales of Apple and Microsoft products this year.

Then again, the analyst firm has a history of backtracking. Recall, if you will, the glaring about-face by a Gartner analyst who denied calling Windows 8 "bad" and subsequently pulled the offending line from his blog post, saying, "my overall opinion on Windows 8 is actually really good." More recently, Gartner had to futz with its labels when PC shipment numbers didn't quite match its claims, but it wasn't alone in that regard -- IDC had to revise its predictions too.

At least Gartner's slipups won't likely require U.N. intervention, which may yet be in the cards with news this week that Cisco's sales in China are vulnerable after state-run media said the company poses a security threat and urged a shift toward domestic suppliers. Talk about role reversal: Not so long ago, Chinese network company Huawei was hounded out of the U.S. market by security concerns. In order to clear U.S. regulatory oversight for its purchase of Sprint, Softbank reportedly agreed to remove equipment made by Huawei from Sprint and Clearwire.

The U.S. government also recently passed a law -- aimed in large part at Huawei -- that tightened scrutiny of information technology purchases from companies with links to the Chinese government. China slammed the legislation, saying it would "damage the mutual trust between the two nations," not to mention what it could do to Cisco's bottom line.

In light of this political posturing, other dubious assertions seem almost quaint. For example, Macworld UK this month trumpeted the fact that Apple's iPhone sales have "rocketed in India," quadrupling in that crucial, growing market. So what's the deal with IDC reporting this week that Apple's devices fell out of the top five in India during the first quarter of 2013? Seems contradictory -- someone's about to eat crow, right? Not so: Android handsets actually hold a staggering 90 percent market share in India, so Apple's sales could indeed quadruple -- and barely make a dent.

Tune in next week for another episode of "As the World -- and Tech Fortune -- Turns."

This article, "Mixed messages, contradictory claims trip up Gartner, Cisco, and Apple," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Cisco fixes serious vulnerabilities in email, Web, and content security appliances

Cisco Systems released security patches for its email, Web, and content security appliances in order to address vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to execute commands on the underlying OS or disrupt critical processes.

The vulnerabilities affect different versions of the Cisco IronPort AsyncOS operating system that's used in the Cisco Content Security Management Appliance, the Cisco Email Security Appliance and the Cisco Web Security Appliance.

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Releases 7.1 and prior, 7.3, 7.5 and 7.6 of the software in the Cisco Email Security Appliance are affected by three vulnerabilities, one that allows remote attackers to inject and execute commands with elevated privileges through the Web interface and two that could be used to crash the management graphical user interface (GUI) or the IronPort Spam Quarantine service and cause other critical processes to become unresponsive.

Exploiting the command injection vulnerability requires authentication via the Web interface with at least a low privilege account, but the denial-of-service vulnerabilities can be exploited remotely without authentication.

Users of the 7.1 branch should upgrade to version 7.1.5-016 or later, users of the 7.3 branch should upgrade to version 8.0.0-671 and users of the 7.5 and 7.6 branches should upgrade to 7.6.3-019 or later, Cisco said in a security advisory published Wednesday. Releases in the 8.0 branch are not affected.

Branches 7.2 and prior, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9 and 8.0 of the Cisco Content Security Management Appliance software are affected by the same command injection and denial-of-service vulnerabilities as the Cisco Email Security Appliance software.

All of the vulnerabilities are patched in versions 7.9.1-102 and 8.0.0-404, Cisco said in a separate advisory. Users of 7.2 and prior, 7.7 and 7.8 branches are advised to upgrade to version 7.9.1-102 or later of the software. The 8.1 versions are not affected.

Releases 7.1 and prior, 7.5 and 7.7 of the Cisco Web Security Appliance software are vulnerable to two authenticated command injection vulnerabilities and one management GUI denial-of-service vulnerability. Some of the vulnerabilities are the same as those affecting the Cisco Email Security Appliance software.

The software releases that include fixes for all three Cisco Email Security Appliance vulnerabilities are 7.5.1-201 and 7.7.0-602. Users of the 7.1 and prior versions are advised to upgrade to 7.5.1-201 or later.

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Update: BlackBerry suffers $84M loss on disappointing Q1 smartphone sales

BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million smartphones and recorded a $84 million loss during the three months to June 1, as it struggles to turn around its fortunes.

The first quarter of BlackBerry's fiscal year served as a referendum on how consumers and business users have received the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones. The company's quarterly earnings, released Friday, noted that 2.7 million phones running the new OS were sold, a figure that disappointed analysts.

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Shipments of 7.7 million phones would have been an "OK" result, according to IDC research director Francisco Jeronimo. The soft sales lead analysts to question the future of BlackBerry 10 and the company during a conference call on the results.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins offered various themes on the same reply as a defense: "BlackBerry 10 is still in the early stages on its transition. In fact, we are only five months in to what is the launch of an entirely new mobile computing platform," he said.

The BlackBerry Z10 is now available in 147 countries, while the QWERTY-equipped Q10 is on sale in 96 countries, with 50 being added during BlackBerry's fiscal second quarter. The cheaper Q5, which also has a physical keyboard, premiered in Dubai last week. It will be distributed more widely during the second quarter, according to Heins. More products are on the way, but the company will not have more than six new devices in the market at any time, he said.

Marina Koytcheva, an analyst at CCS Insight, isn't surprised by BlackBerry's continued struggles, but agreed with Heins' assessment.

"It remains too early to tell whether the new BlackBerry 10 platform can emerge as a credible alternative to Android or iOS with shipments of the long-awaited Q10 device and recently announced Q5 only just starting in many markets. We need to wait a couple more quarters before writing off BlackBerry's chances," she said via email.

The company may be working on new products, but a BlackBerry 10 upgrade for its PlayBook tablet is not one of them.

"Our teams have spent a great deal of time and energy looking at solutions that could move the BlackBerry 10 experience to PlayBook. But unfortunately I am not satisfied with the level of performance and user experience, and I made the difficult decision to stop these efforts," Heins said.

BlackBerry reported revenue of $3.1 billion, up 9 percent from the same period a year earlier. Net loss from continuing operations for the quarter was $84 million, compared to a net loss of $510 million a year earlier.

BlackBerry's OSes had a 2.9 percent market share during the first three months of the calendar year, compared to 6.4 percent during the same period in 2012. To grow sales, BlackBerry has to do a couple of things. "It needs strong campaigns to drive awareness of the new platform and user experience; new devices at lower price points, and to refocus on the enterprise segment where they still have a chance. The consumer segment is lost and the only chance is on the enterprise segment, particularly the large enterprises," Jeronimo said.

The smartphone market remains highly competitive, making it difficult to estimate units, revenue and levels of profitability, according to BlackBerry.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com.

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Microsoft releases disk images for Windows 8.1 beta upgrades

Microsoft yesterday released its Windows 8.1 beta as a disk image, making it more convenient to upgrade multiple devices within an organization or enterprise.

Windows 8.1 Preview launched Wednesday, but was initially only available from Microsoft's app market, the Windows Store. Each Windows 8 or Windows RT PC or tablet had to individually download the massive upgrade from the store.

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By downloading a disk image, then burning it to DVD or storing it on a USB flash drive, users can upgrade machines or devices faster or when they are offline.

The .iso files range in size from 2.7GB to 3.9GB, depending on the language and whether the upgrade is 32- or 64-bit. Microsoft has made disk images available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.

Once downloaded, the .iso file must be converted into bootable media -- typically either a DVD or a flash drive -- to upgrade Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 7, Vista or even the 12-year-old Windows XP.

In a note accompanying the .iso download links, Microsoft warned users that they would not be able to uninstall the beta if they upgraded using a disk image. The company has posted other information about upgrading in a brief FAQ on Windows 8.1 installation.

Links to the .iso files can be found at the bottom of this page on Microsoft's website.

This article, Microsoft releases disk images for Windows 8.1 beta upgrades, was originally published at Computerworld.com.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com. See more articles by Gregg Keizer. See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about windows in Computerworld's Windows Topic Center.

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T-Mobile to buy US wireless 4G spectrum for $308 million

T-Mobile said Friday that it has signed an agreement to buy 10MHz of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) wireless spectrum from U.S. Cellular for $308 million in cash.

The spectrum is meant to improve and expand T-Mobile's existing 4G LTE network coverage in the Mississippi Valley region, the company said in a news release.

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The spectrum covers 32 million people in 29 markets -- notably in St. Louis, Nashville, Kansas City, Memphis, Lexington, Little Rock-North Little Rock, Birmingham, New Orleans, and Louisville, T-Mobile said.

The deal expands the network to allow for a broader roll-out of 4G LTE, which gives customers a fast, reliable 4G connection, and spurs competition, T-Mobile said.

Securing AWS spectrum is a rare opportunity that will be put to use by both T-Mobile and MetroPCS users, T-Mobile said. The agreement with U.S. Cellular still has to be approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, it added.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, T-Mobile said.

T-Mobile completed the merger with MetroPCS in May and said earlier in June that the migration of MetroPCS customers onto its network for 4G HSPA+ and LTE is ahead of schedule. The migration frees up spectrum for deployment of the new network, which provides faster data speeds for customers with HSPA+ and LTE compatible devices, T-Mobile said at the time.

Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com.

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Facebook's Android app snags your mobile number the moment you launch it

If you've ever simply launched the Facebook app on your Android smartphone, Facebook may have collected your phone number, according to an alert from Symantec. This marks the second time in two weeks that a security company has cited the social networking site for grabbing and storing contact info from people who may not even have Facebook accounts.

"The first time you launch the Facebook application, even before logging in, your phone number will be sent over the Internet to Facebook servers. You do not need to provide your phone number, log in, initiate a specific action, or even need a Facebook account for this to happen," according to Symantec's official blog.

Hundreds of millions of devices have installed the Facebook application, according to Symantec, and some devices come pre-installed with it; thus, a significant portion of Android devices are likely affected.

The news isn't going to help Facebook's reputation for being less-than-vigilant with its vast hoard of valuable user (and non-user) data. Security company Packet Storm revealed last week that for a year, Facebook was leaking potentially private contact information collected from users who uploaded their contact lists to the site. Packet Storm later criticized Facebook for understating the scope of the leak and for failing to alert nonusers who may have been affected.

Facebook has acknowledged the issue with the Android app said it would fix it in the next release. The company claims that it neither used nor processed the phone numbers and has deleted them all from its servers. The company also said it has fixed the aforementioned "data leak" issue. But it's probably time for Facebook to revisit its data privacy policies, such as which data it collects and saves, or face user backlash.

This revelation also casts yet another shadow on the Google Play app store, which has garnered a reputation for housing insecure mobile wares. Notably, according to Symantec, Facebook for Android isn't the only mobile app in the Google Play that's leaking user data. The company says the new version of its Norton Mobile Security software is capable of pinpointing which apps exhibit similarly risky behavior.

This story, "Facebook's Android app snags your mobile number the moment you launch it," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Intel's CTO Justin Rattner stepping down

Intel's CTO and director of its labs Justin Rattner is stepping down to meet a requirement under the company's bylaws that employees cannot serve as corporate officers after the age of 65.

Rattner will, however, return to Intel at a later date in an as yet undetermined role after taking personal leave immediately to deal with a "pressing family matter," Intel said.

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The company did not immediately announce a successor to Rattner, whose exit on account of the age limit would have been expected within the company. Intel Labs will report to Intel president Renée James until further decisions related to its leadership are made, the company said.

After Rattner's return, he and the management team will decide what role he will play, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy in an email. "While we were certainly aware of Justin's age our management team will use this opportunity to evaluate how we organize our R&D efforts including Intel labs," he added.  

The company has found it difficult to make a large impact on the smartphone and tablets markets, which have been dominated by chips built around the ARM architecture.

Intel's new CEO Brian Krzanich admitted in May that the company has been weak in smartphones and tablets, but aims to improve by advancing chip and manufacturing technologies. Intel's main focus is to produce more power-efficient chips, as it also adds features for connectivity and security. Intel's upcoming chips based on its Silvermont architecture aim to outstrip ARM chips on both performance and power-efficiency.

Krzanich has thanked Rattner, who joined Intel in 1973, for "his leadership in creating one of the leading research organizations in the high tech industry", according to a statement from Intel Thursday.

Rattner was named Intel's first principal engineer in 1979, its fourth Intel Fellow in 1988 and was in the first group of Intel Fellows to be named Senior Fellow in 2001.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

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Developers ramping up for Microsoft Windows Store apps

Developers are showing interest in building Windows Store (formerly Metro) applications with tablet-style functionality, but the platform is still in its early stages as far as building a base of apps.

Metro, a name that is no longer supposed to be used because of a trademark conflict, was introduced two years ago. Now, Microsoft is referring to these apps as Windows Store apps, bearing the Modern UI interface, complete with Microsoft's live tiles for accessing functionality. "We're just doing our first Metro Windows 8 commercial application," said Jeff Torkington, CEO of retailer software developer Ontempo.

Microsoft cites about 100,000 Windows Store apps, which would pale in comparison to the more than 975,000 Android apps in the Google Play store and the estimated 850,000 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch apps in Apple's App Store. But Windows 8.1 looks like it will be a more appealing platform for users, which should boost Windows Store application development, said Wes Miller, analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "In general, the navigation is better," in version 8.1, he said. "Microsoft has made some of the right changes with [Windows 8.1]. It could be an interesting holiday season for sure." Microsoft has just begun offering a preview of Windows 8.1.

Microsoft also is leveraging XAML to try to make development easier, Miller said. Previously, the company focused on Web languages like HTML5 and JavaScript. "[With] their XAML architecture, they've got a lot better story on how you would build an app for Windows 8."

Developers thus far are giving the Windows Store application style mixed reviews. New to the Windows Store application experience, Kristofer Linnestjerna, a developer at NetClean Technologies, said he found himself confused by the platform when he took a look at it. He noted how different it is from the desktop. "It's made for touch," he noted.

Developer Robert Keiser, owner of Row Five Information Systems, has done some Windows Store app development. "It's very easy. The only problem that I have is if you program for the tablets, you have to rewrite some of the code, some of the front end, to make it work on the phone."

While developer Martin Bennedik, a freelancer in Frankfurt, Germany, has developed some Windows Store apps, he has not seen much interest in the platform from his clients so far. "They're just waiting to see where this is going." But Microsoft is making the application development process better for Windows Store, he said.

At the Achmea insurance company, developer Tom van de Meent has not built any apps for Windows Store yet but anticipates a need in the future. Thus far, there he has only seen "a little" interest in Windows Store apps from customers, he said.

This story, "Developers ramping up for Microsoft Windows Store apps," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Build 2013: Microsoft renews its relationship with developers

Microsoft is more than an operating system company. It's a platform company.

That's the overall message from its Build developer conference this week. And if it's going to remain a platform company, it needs to keep developers on its side. With much of the developer messaging over the last year focusing on the new WinRT runtime at the heart of Windows 8, it's no wonder that many developers -- especially those building enterprise Windows applications -- were feeling a little left out. Build 2013 was Microsoft's chance to reconnect with those developers and to showcase new tools, technologies, and roadmaps.

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Making WinRT more palatable -- and less central
WinRT remains an important part of Microsoft's developer story. It's the foundation for creating Windows Store apps, and it's where much of Microsoft's API attention remains focused. That's not a bad thing -- it's designed for the next generation of app development and for building smart endpoints for cloud-hosted services.

Even so, there's renewed focus on .Net. It's the heart of the server and cloud story, and if WinRT is about building endpoints for devices, .Net is about building services in the cloud and in the data center (and also for desktop apps).

So where did WinRT fall down over its first year? Firstly, it was designed to work with a limited set of use cases. That, combined with its strong sandbox, meant it was hard to build apps that worked together, and there were limited tools for connecting to external hardware and for displaying built-in help.

The Windows 8.1 refresh of WinRT begins to fix many of those issues, with improved tooling for handling communication with external devices (including Bluetooth connections, and for working with a range of USB inputs and outputs). It also introduces the concept of child security domains, which will allow applications from the same developer to communicate across the walls of the Windows 8 sandbox without using Microsoft's built-in contracts. Contracts remain the key to allowing communication between apps, giving users the ability to construct their own workflows between apps from many different developers.

Getting the evangelists out there
New features in WinRT are all very well and fine, but developer engagement is key to Microsoft's future. Recent changes at the top of its developer evangelism team are a hopeful sign, as are admissions that the company has failed to encourage developers to use technologies like Portable Class Libraries (a way of encapsulating common code so that it can be used across WinRT, desktop and server .Net, Windows Phone, and Web services).

Build put the evangelism team front and center, publishing email addresses and Twitter handles and showing demonstrations of how new tools and services would work in developers' own applications, not just in Microsoft's.

Another interesting note: This was the third Build conference, but the first to be held in the San Francisco Bay Area -- the heart of Google and Apple territory. (Prior to Build, Microsoft held a similar event called the PDC or Professional Developers Conference; the last time it was held in the Bay Area was 1996.) While Microsoft says it was a decision made around available space and hotel capacity, the choice of venue could also speak to the fact that Microsoft knows it needs to reach the large base of developers who are intrigued with -- and building for -- Android and iOS. Certainly Microsoft went out its way to show more than its own Visual Studio IDE, with cross-platform development tools like Xamarin used in many presentations, and keynotes showed Git being used to manage iOS code generated by the Azure mobile services platform.

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