Transcript

Michael: Hello and welcome to Computerworld Live for the week of November 2, 2006. I'm Computerworld journalist, Michael Crawford ... And I'm Rodney Gedda.

Michael: And this week we look at an audit report of three Australian government agencies, a wrap up of all the big Kelkoo and browser news to happen over the last two weeks, flaws appear in Microsoft's newly released browser Internet Explorer 7, just two weeks ago. French equipment manufacturer Schneider Electric has announced plans to acquire American Power Conversion and of course we cross to our tech report from North America. But first, the Australian National Audit Office has found issues with digital and physical storage of records within the Attorney General's Department, the Australian Electoral Commission and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The report boldly states none of the agencies audited had given appropriate consideration to the risks associated with improperly kept records. The national archives of Australia has been charged with defining the minimum record keeping requirements these agencies should comply with for legal and business requirements to develop further guidance for agencies as a reference and coordinate and publish legislation, policies, standards and advice on agency record-keeping responsibilities. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has agreed with the finding. The Attorney General's Department recommended that the national archives adopt an approach that meets the practical record-keeping needs of agencies as opposed to issuing high level statements, if their advice is to be of any value.

Danish security consultancy firm Secunia, have located yet another security flaw in Internet Explorer 7. Thomas Christensen, Secunia's chief technology officer, said that the vulnerability would allow a user to visit a website specifically crafted by an attacker to then open a trusted site such as a bank that has a pop-up window. The attacker could then put new content into the pop-up and it could enable the attacker to ask the user for financial information or passwords according to Christensen. Secunia rated the problem as moderately critical but Christensen said the company was not aware of sites trying to exploit the flaw. French electrical equipment manufacturer Schneider Electric S.A plans to acquire American Power Conversion Corp in a US 6.1 billion $ deal to create a worldwide developer of critical power products. Both companies say they expect strong continued growth in the market for power supply products as more critical applications require continuous power and as the data centre market grows. Schneider expects that critical power products will drive its business going forward. Both companies say they expect strong continued growth in the market for power supply products as more critical applications require continuous power and as the data centre market grows. Schneider estimates that 40% of the market for UPS products came from data centres and 20% from enterprise networking throughout 2005. Schneider is best known for making a variety of electrical products such as power monitoring units and equipment enclosures, circuit breakers, transformers and surge protectors, as well as automation software and RFID products.

And now on to a wrap up of all the Telco HSDPA and browser news with Rodney Gedda. Rodney?

Rodney: Yes, Mike, it's been interesting times over the past couple of weeks. We've seen the high profile launch of Telstra's next G network, which is HSDPA technology, standing for High Speed Download Packet Access. Now this next iteration of 3G technology will allow fast downloads to handsets and Telstra has certainly stormed onto the market with HSDPA, but it certainly wasn't alone. We also saw mobile carrier Vodafone join the HSDPA foray. Now, that means that customers using HSDPA handsets or in the case of Vodafone, they've also released PC cards to go into Notebooks, for business mobile users. 1.8MB per second can be expected, but in reality it's typically between 600KB and 1.4MB with upload speeds peaking at about 384KB per second. Now, the interesting thing about Vodafone's network is that it actually offers [inaudible] high speeds at the same prices that it has its original 3D data rates, so starting at about $30 a month, you can get 100MB of data, and all the way up to $100 a month for 1GB. Now, the only surprise was Optus. Optus is trialling HSDPA at the moment in western Sydney and Canberra but even though it has a network sharing agreement with Vodafone, it hasn't released anything to market and it doesn't look like it will probably until at least the New Year. So it will be interesting to see how the HSDPA space goes into the next year. Also we have [inaudible] in that space, which is based on a different type of technology 802.16 and they'll be fighting it out pretty much up until the advent of 4G, which will be a few years from now, over who's going to dominate the mobile broadband space but it's certainly interesting to watch.

Michael: Certainly, certainly and in the browser space, we had the release of Firefox 2 last week as well, which has made a lot of impact on corporate environments as well. What news do you have for us there, Rod?

Rodney: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that, Michael. The corporate space certainly is not, you know, immune to Firefox but it's one of those things where they have this impression that they're locked into Internet Explorer for a lot of their web applications, so in many cases they're hesitant, they're unsure to use Firefox, which is a shame because the beauty of Firefox is that, for one, it's open source and runs on all the major desktop operating systems and it adheres to open standards, so you know if your web applications are standards compliant, if they're run well or display well in Firefox, but I think one of the major problems is the perception of support, so IT managers aren't confident rolling out Firefox where, they've got, you know, a large fleet of desktops and it might not be supported by operating system and application update software. Also [inaudible] in terms of if they've coded all their applications or bought offshore applications that are compatible with Internet Explorer, they feel as though there'd be too much disruption to the business if they deployed Firefox and things weren't working as they should, but having said that IT managers shouldn't fear Firefox. It's definitely a good idea to at least do a pilot of it and see how it goes, see how it plays with your web applications and with regard to security, it does have some nice security features like, say, anti-phishing protection and things like that but when we're talking about browsers, they're trying to be inherently secure anyway, so I don't think security's a compelling reason to, you know, jump on the Firefox bandwagon. Michael: So ease of use would be winning overtime in the [inaudible] again?

Rodney: Yeah, ease of use, that's another, I guess, one of the things that made Firefox get such, you know, high penetration in the consumer space was that it's just, say, on Windows or [inaudible] 10, it's just a few clicks away and you're up and running and you've got usability features like [inaudible], so you could have 10 tabs open, and still have the same window interface so you didn't clutter your desktop and yeah, just generally, it's easy to use, it's easy to you know, download and install so there aren't any problems in that regard.

Michael: Cool. Rodney, thanks a lot for your time.

Rodney: Thanks, Michael.

Michael: And now on to our tech report from North America.

: Advanced Micro Devices has asked a US court to compel Intel to disclose documents relating to its activities outside the US as part of an ongoing anti-trust law suit. AMD wants Intel to produce documents that AMD says will show evidence of coercion and other misconduct directed at Micro [inaudible] customers outside the US. The company suffered a setback in its case on September 26 when judge Joseph Farnan ruled that the US district court for the district of Delaware did not have jurisdiction over claims arising from sales to customers outside the US of Micro Processors [inaudible] AMD plant in Germany. However, AMD says Intel is using that ruling to justify withholding documents relating to sales to US customers of chips made at the German plant and of chips made in the US, sold to customers elsewhere. AMD says the September 26 ruling should only apply to damages [inaudible] Intel and not to the scope of the discovery process. Indian outsourcer, Tada Consultancy Services has acquired a 75% stake in management controls, Swiss banking software services provider TKS Technosoft for 100.5 million Swiss francs or 80.5 million US dollars. The majority stake in TKS Technosoft will help TCS expand its portfolio products to the banking and financial services market, besides giving TCS a direct presence in key European markets, like Switzerland and France. TCS of Mumbai has a long relationship with TKS Technosoft, which has included the delivery of services from India to customers in the Swiss company. The company may also, down the line, move a part of TKS Technosoft product development to India. As part of the transaction, TCS has acquired TKS Technosoft's Alpha, a product [inaudible] banking segment, and e-portfolio, its product for the wealth management market. TCS plans to integrate these products with its own products for the banking and financial services industries. In a bid to go beyond its roots as a search engine, Google has acquired Jobspot, a developer of Wiki technology for collaborative websites. Earlier this month, Google announced it would offer online word processing and spreadsheet applications to its millions of web searchers. The company also has a blogging service, but hasn't yet introduced its tool for web-based collaboration. Now Google has filled that gap by acquiring Jobspot. According to a Tuesday post on Jobspot's blog by its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Joe Kraus. He did not disclose the terms of the deal and Google did not answer requests for comment. Intel expects sales for TCS based on its community TC platform to rise rapidly in India, using 100,000 units within the next six months, while the company looks at extending the programme to other countries in South Asia. Since the platform was launched in March, around 15,000 community TCs have been sold [inaudible] partners, which include PC maker HCL Infosystems and others. Jordy Bose, director of Intel's emerging markets platform group, said that number is going to rise quickly, hitting the 100,000 unit mark in six months or so. Much of this demand will come from government spending on a programme intended to raise internet access in rural areas.

Michael: And that's about it for this week. Thanks for joining us.