‘Do Not Track’ Internet Legislation, Advances

California is a moving closer to making  into law the first Do Not Track legislation in the U.S., aimed at protecting Internet users from invasive advertising.

The proposed Senate bill, SB-761, passed a Senate Judiciary Committee vote late Tuesday, but it still has a long road ahead before having a chance of being signed into law. It now moves on to the Appropriations Committee, and must also pass the Senate and State Assembly before being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.

Still, it’s the first time such a bill has made it out of committee, and that’s a big deal, according to John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “This is the first time that a ‘do not track’ bill has actually had a hearing and been debated and then voted forward in the legislative process,” he said.

The bill would give California consumers a simple way of opting out of data collection systems that keep track of their online activities. “It puts up a no trespassing sign on our device,” Simpson said.

Opponents of the bill, including Google, the Direct Marketing Association, and the wireless industry group CTIA, say it puts an unnecessary burden on online commerce.

Online marketers love this type of data because it helps them fashion highly effective targeted advertising. But many consumers don’t want to hand marketers every detail of what they do on the Web.

Under the proposed law, users would have a way — possibly a through a browser setting — of telling Web sites not to track them. If a company disregarded this and collected data without permission, it could face stiff fines.

Read More…

Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet On Its Way

It appears that Lenovo is preparing to enter the tablet war over summer.  Apparently, the tablet will focus on serious minded business professionals.  It appears that the tablet will run Google’s popu;ar tablet OS called Honeycomb and will be equipped with Nvidia’s Tegra 2.  To make sure consumers get their monies worth, the tablet will come with a keyboard to turn it into a useable notebook more or less.  Sources are also claiming the screen size will be 10 inches and have a 1280×800 IPS and optical stylus.

Read More…

iPhone 5 May Debut In September

Apple’s next-generation iPhone will have a faster processor and will start shipping in September, several sources with direct knowledge of the company’s supply chain said.

The production of the new iPhone will start in July/August and the smartphone will look very similar to the current iPhone 4, one of the sources said on Wednesday.

The iPhone -debuted in 2007 with the touchscreen, on-demand application template now adopted by its rivals- remains the gold standard in the booming smartphone market.

Reports on the timeline of the new iPhone launch vary, though it is largely expected that Apple will likely refresh its iPhone 4 later this year.

The sources declined to be identified because the plans for the new iPhone were not yet public. An Apple spokeswoman in Hong Kong was not available for comment.

The iPhone is one of Apple’s most successful products, with more than 16 million sold in the last quarter of 2010 and the product accounted for more than a third of the company’s sales in the quarter.

The current iPhone 4 was launched by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in June last year and began shipping the same month in 2010.

Read More…

Attend VoIP Free Online Seminar

Android To Control Smartphone Market By 2016

Android will be the operating system of choice for 45% of smartphones shipped by the year 2016. It will take up most of the market share vacated by the soon-to-be exiting of Nokia’s Symbian operating system, according to figures released today by ABI Research.

Although Android will come to be the dominant player in the smartphone market, this doesn’t mean that OSes will necessarily see a big cut in their own market shares, ABI said.

In fact, the firm projects that Apple’s iOS will see its market share rise from 16% in 2010 to 19% in 2016, while Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS is expected to fall slightly from 16% in 2010 to 14% in 2016. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s Bada will also be players in the 2016 smartphone market, as ABI projects those two operating systems to take 10% and 7%, respectively.

ABI vice president Kevin Burden says that although RIM stands to lose a bit between now and 2016, the company will carve a comfortable niche for itself in the enterprise market, as enterprise users will still need the security provided by RIM’s network operations center.

“RIM’s slight loss of share doesn’t mean falling shipments,” he says. “RIM has found its niche, but the consumer market will grow faster than its portion of it.”

Read More…

Support Calls To Help Desks Are On The Rise

At a time when technology is supposed to be getting simpler, less complex and easier to manage, more people are calling help desks for assistance than ever before, according to a new report. That’s one of the findings that HDI, formerly known as the Help Desk Institute, revealed in its recently released 2010 study of help desk trends.

What HDI found is that the number of incidents reported to help desks via chat, e-mail, telephone, self-help systems, social media, the Web and walk-ins is rising, with 67% of all help desk operations experiencing increases in 2010. That’s roughly the same percentage who reported an increase in 2009.

In recent years, many organizations have moved to centralize their help desk operations and establish a single point of contact for workers, said Roy Atkinson, an analyst at HDI, whose members represent a help desk community of about 50,000 people.

Those centralization efforts have improved incident data collection, which helps to explain the spike in reports. Moreover, creating a single point of contact, and offering multiple ways for people to reach the help desk, encourages users to seek assistance, Atkinson said.

While centralization and better record-keeping may explain much of the increase in reported calls, it doesn’t completely explain it. Atkinson said another part of the explanation could be the fact that IT complexity is actually increasing, especially as users seek to connect multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets and laptops to corporate networks. Read More…….

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Coming February 22nd

The service pack is said to be a hefty 1.2GB download will feature all prior updates and fixes and Microsoft stated the update will improve networking, security and mobility.   Read More….

« Previous Page