Archive for November, 2007
Postini today announced new content policy management capabilities to its Email Security service, including protection for social security and credit card numbers. At no additional cost, Postini customers now gain greater flexibility and control to manage their communications compliance and security policies.
“Companies of all sizes are seeking to reduce email security and compliance risk” said Scott Petry, founder of Postini and director of product management at Google, “They are seeking to encrypt email communications automatically based on message content, prevent sensitive content from leaving the company via email and have visibility into policy violations. Postini’s innovation in content analysis and disposition simplifies the process of managing communications compliance policies for our customers. We are continuing to deliver on the promise of SaaS (software as a service) as the most cost and time effective way for large and small enterprises to manage their communications.”
Advanced Content Policy Management
With the new release announced today, Postini customers gain access to three significant advancements:
- Lexical data analysis for credit card and social security numbers in email including attachments with automatic policy enforcement dispositions options such as encrypt or block.
- Administrators can create advanced policy rules based on text patterns using regular expression syntax and apply a variety of dispositions including blocking, sending a carbon copy to supervisors, or quarantine.
- With content-based message analysis and reporting, Postini administrators gain intelligence and insight into content entering and leaving the organization. Postini customers can address policy violations with granular, easy to implement policies and address their company specific or regulatory requirements.
Postini’s content policy management framework is available as a part of the Postini standalone service and also as part of Google Apps™ Premier Edition. Content policy management is expected to be extended in the future to additional communication protocols, including Instant Messaging and HTTP.
In addition, Postini also announced significant new functionality for Email Security and Message Archiving services.
Zero hour Detection Capabilities
New early detection capabilities allow suspicious content to be automatically quarantined and re-inspected with updated virus signatures, providing an added security layer of advanced virus protection. New anti-spam capabilities have also been added to detect and block newer, more sophisticated bot-net based attacks immediately. The new advancements to the Postini architecture enable rapid updates to the Postini spam and virus filters for quicker defense against the newest threats.
Advanced Message Archive Management Tools
With new granular Message archive retention and purge controls email administrators gain more flexibility and control to manage mailbox storage management, discovery, and compliance efforts. A new self-serve option for message archive extractions enables Postini administrators to avoid costly data extraction expenses.
Taken together, these improvements enable Postini customers to have more control and flexibility over policy enforcement, email security defenses, and message archiving management. The new content policy management and email security updates are available to Postini customers at no extra charge. The Postini message archiving enhancements are available for Postini archiving customers.
November 13th, 2007
GoDaddy.com is working with Google as the pilot partner for a new effort to seamlessly integrate Google Webmaster Tools into customers’ Web hosting accounts.
With Google Webmaster Tools, Go Daddy users are now able to see how Google views their site, diagnose problems and share information with Google in order to improve their site’s visibility in search results. This service, combined with Go Daddy’s Sitemap Editor, provides a free and easy way for Web site owners to manage and improve traffic to their site.
“When Google approached us about incorporating their product into our hosting accounts, it was an easy decision,†said GoDaddy.com CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. “Our customers are always looking for simple ways to make their sites easier to find and attract new visitors. Thanks to these easy-to-use tools, customers can quickly tap this valuable Webmaster resource without having to be technical wizards.”
Go Daddy hosting customers are now able to easily add and verify their Web sites for use with Google Webmaster Tools. Once set up, Go Daddy will automatically submit sitemaps to Google on behalf of its customers. Sitemaps inform Google about new Web pages or updates to a customer’s site and help to increase their coverage of Web pages in Google’s index.
“Go Daddy is a leading innovator in the Web hosting space and, through our partnership, we hope to educate more Webmasters on how to effectively make their site more search engine-friendly,” said Bill Brougher, Google Group Product Manager. “Google Webmaster Tools was designed as a useful resource for site owners to get up-to-date information on how their site is performing. This partnership ultimately helps Google to improve the Web by increasing the comprehensiveness and freshness of the content people seek.”
November 13th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced the availability of Yahoo! oneSearch beta for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Beginning today, consumers in Latin America are able to access the industry’s leading mobile search experience with localized content presented in Spanish and Portuguese. This announcement continues Yahoo!’s momentum by further increasing the global reach of oneSearch and reinforcing the company’s strong leadership in the mobile industry, and comes on the heels of a partnership with Telefonica announced in October (see announcement titled “Telefonica and Yahoo! Partner to Bring Global Mobile Services to More Than 100 Million Consumers.”)
Yahoo! oneSearch is an innovative search service explicitly designed to serve the needs of mobile users by delivering results directly in the first screen and thereby removing the need for consumers to navigate through a sea of links to PC Web sites to find the information they want. OneSearch improves consumers’ search experience on mobile devices by integrating content from a variety of sources across the open Web, providing consumers with access to localized news, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr photos, Yahoo! Answers, Web images, as well as Web and Mobile Web sites.
“Yahoo! oneSearch has changed mobile search by fundamentally improving the way consumers access and use the Internet on their mobile phones,” said Bruce Stewart, vice president and general manager, Connected Life Americas, Yahoo!. “By extending the premier mobile search service tailored to the unique needs of the Latin American consumer, we’re providing compelling mobile experiences to millions of people and driving further usage of mobile Internet services in the region.”
To access Yahoo! oneSearch, Latin American consumers should open their Web browser on their mobile phones and visit m.yahoo.com. At the Yahoo mobile homepage, simply enter a query into the oneSearch box, and the most relevant results and instant answers will be presented in an easy to read format designed for the mobile phone. For example, if a consumer wants to track the stock price and latest news for a certain company, just type the company name or ticker symbol into the search box. The oneSearch results list the company’s Web site and stock quote, followed by recent news articles and Web and Mobile Web results. To dig more deeply into the results, a consumer simply needs to click on any item or category. For instance, by clicking on the ticker symbol in the oneSearch results, the user will be presented with in-depth financial information and company statistics as well as a stock chart showing recent performance.
Yahoo! is an established, early and aggressive leader that is helping to drive the growth of mobile advertising. With the launch of oneSearch in Latin America, Yahoo! is providing marketers and mobile operators with new opportunities to connect people to content and create new revenue streams through mobile advertising.
November 13th, 2007
Google today announced the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million to developers who build mobile applications for Androidâ„¢, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. The Challenge is designed to support the developer community and spark innovation on the Android platform by awarding cash prizes ranging from $25,000 to $275,000 to developers whose applications are picked by a panel of judges.
“We’ve built some interesting applications for Android but the best applications are not here yet and that’s because they’re going to be written by developers,” said Sergey Brin, Co-founder and President, Technology, Google. “We’d like to reward these developers and recognize them as much as possible.”
“We believe that the Android platform offers developers a unique opportunity to create truly innovative mobile software,” said Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms. “We’re challenging developers to stretch their imaginations and skills to leverage the full capabilities of this new platform and to create something amazing.”
Android was announced on November 5 by the Open Handset Allianceâ„¢, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile industry leaders committed to fostering innovation on mobile phones and offering a better consumer experience. The Alliance will provide developers with a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively. Today, the Alliance released an early look at the Android software developer kit (SDK) that includes the documentation, sample projects, development tools, emulator, and libraries that developers will need to build an Android application. Today’s Android SDK announcement can be found on the Alliance blog: http://android-developers.blogspot.com.
The $10 million total in the Android Developer Challenge will be distributed equally between the Android Developer Challenge I and II. Submissions for Challenge I will be accepted from January 2 through March 3, 2008, and the 50 most promising entries will be recognized by end of March with each receiving $25,000 awards to fund further development. These 50 entries will then be eligible for even greater recognition by applying by May 1, 2008 for ten awards worth $275,000 each and another ten worth $100,000 each. Recognition for the top apps among those entries will be announced by end of May 2008. Challenge II will launch after the first handsets built on the platform become available in the second half of 2008.
A panel of technology and mobile experts selected from the Open Handset Alliance member organizations and the industry in general will judge all qualifying entries. Awards will be given to the developers whose applications leverage all that the Android platform has to offer in order to provide consumers with the most compelling experiences. Developers retain all intellectual property and other rights to their applications. Interested developers should:
1. Download the SDK at http://code.google.com/android/download.html
2. Build a great app.
3. Submit an application between January 2 and March 3, 2008.
Additional information about the Android Developer Challenge can be found at http://code.google.com/android/adc.html
November 12th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced that it will be the first in the industry to launch an open source program aimed at advancing the research and development of systems software for distributed computing. Yahoo!’s program is intended to leverage its leadership in Hadoop, an open source distributed computing sub-project of the Apache Software Foundation, to enable researchers to modify and evaluate the systems software running on a 4,000 processor supercomputer provided by Yahoo!. Unlike other companies and traditional supercomputing centers, which focus on providing users with computers for running applications and for coursework, Yahoo!’s program focuses on pushing the boundaries of large-scale systems software research.
Currently, academic researchers lack the hardware and software infrastructure to support Internet-scale systems software research. To date, Yahoo! has been the primary contributor to Hadoop, an open source distributed file system and parallel execution environment that enables its users to process massive amounts of data. Hadoop has been adopted by many groups and is the software of choice for supporting university coursework in Internet-scale computing. Researchers have been eager to collaborate with Yahoo! and tap the company’s technical leadership in Hadoop-related systems software research and development.
As a key part of the program, Yahoo! intends to make Hadoop available in a supercomputing-class data center to the academic community for systems software research. Called the M45, Yahoo!’s supercomputing cluster, named after one of the best known open star clusters, has approximately 4,000 processors, three terabytes of memory, 1.5 petabytes of disks, and a peak performance of more than 27 trillion calculations per second (27 teraflops), placing it among the top 50 fastest supercomputers in the world.
M45 is expected to run the latest version of Hadoop and other state-of-the-art, Yahoo!-supported, open-source distributed computing software such as the Pig parallel programming language developed by Yahoo! Research, the central advanced research organization of Yahoo! Inc.
Carnegie Mellon University will be the first institution to take advantage of Yahoo!’s M45. Leading systems software researchers Garth Gibson and Greg Ganger, both professors at Carnegie Mellon, will instrument the system and evaluate its performance. Simultaneously, Carnegie Mellon computer science professors Jamie Callan and Christos Faloutsos, academic leaders in text and web mining, will solve challenging information retrieval and large-scale graph problems on the cluster. Carnegie Mellon faculty members Alexei Efros, Noah Smith, and Stephan Vogel will also use the cluster to tackle large-scale computer graphics, natural language processing, and machine translation problems, respectively. In the future, Yahoo! plans to make M45 available to researchers from other universities for open, collaborative research.
“Hadoop has become an important computing environment for data-intensive applications and Yahoo! is playing a leading role in its development. We are excited about collaborating with Yahoo! on systems software research, helping to advance the state-of-the-art, and creating new research possibilities in this critical area,” said Randall E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. “We look forward to working with Yahoo! and jointly contributing back to the open source community.”
“Yahoo! is dedicated to working with leading universities to solve some of the most critical computing challenges facing our industry,” said Ron Brachman, vice president and head of Yahoo! academic relations. “Launching this program and M45 is a significant milestone in creating a global, collaborative research community working to advance the new sciences of the Internet. This milestone is a key element of Yahoo!’s growing Academic Relations effort.”
November 12th, 2007
Yahoo! today announced that the New York Daily News, the fifth largest newspaper in the United States, has become the largest newspaper to join the Newspaper Consortium.
The Daily News will gain access to Yahoo!’s cutting-edge Web technologies for targeting display advertising, distributing content and connecting employers with job candidates on Yahoo! HotJobs. Additionally, the Daily News will be able to offer its advertisers extended reach and frequency benefits on the Yahoo! network.
“The Daily News is excited to be the latest and largest newspaper to join the Newspaper Consortium. Our partnership with Yahoo! will allow us to provide additional opportunities to our advertisers, to job seekers and to all of our users,” said Marc Kramer, CEO of the Daily News. “We are by far the biggest-selling newspaper in New York, thanks to a great product and a very strong and loyal readership. Being part of the Newspaper Consortium’s continued success story will give NYDailyNews.com a superior online presence and deliver innovative technologies to our advertisers and our audience.”
Yahoo!’s partnership with the Newspaper Consortium was launched just over a year ago and has since tripled in size to now include 21 newspaper companies, representing close to 400 daily newspapers.
“We’re very pleased to welcome the Daily News as a valuable addition to the Newspaper Consortium,” said Lem Lloyd, Yahoo! vice president of the Newspaper Consortium. “By adding the most widely circulated newspaper in New York to our extensive list of newspaper partners, we are expanding our reach and relevance in the nation’s largest metropolitan market. Yahoo! is proud to be the online partner of choice, exemplifying what it takes to offer world-class online advertising solutions.”
Core to the partnership is the ability for the Daily News to expand the distribution of its local help wanted print ads to a national audience. The Daily News will be able to leverage Yahoo! HotJobs’ leading search and job posting technology, as well as sell a suite of online media recruitment products. To date, Yahoo! HotJobs has launched 160 newspaper co-branded job sites that serve 377 newspapers, including major market dailies in Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston and San Francisco.
November 12th, 2007
An emerging segment of highly engaged, tech-savvy, and vocal voters is poised to impact the outcome of the 2008 national elections, according to new research from Yahoo!, HCD Research, and Hall and Partners. The study, entitled “The Rise of Citizen 2.0: Radically Rethinking Democracy in the Digital Age,” examines the changing role of the Internet in shaping political activity and discourse. “Citizen 2.0″ represents a slight majority (51 percent) of Americans, who crave information about politics to a greater extent than traditional voters, and are much more likely to use technology to share their political views and opinions. According to the study, presidential candidates should be tapping into the $5.4 billion political advertising market to reach these voters online.
“More candidates are using the Internet to reach voters, but overall, politicians are spending a tiny portion of their budgets online, just as most corporations were doing several years ago,” said Richard Kosinski, vice president of political advertising for Yahoo!. “We don’t think the 2008 election will turn on which candidate has the best blog or wiki. But we are saying that many campaigns are missing the important opportunity to tap into the great enthusiasm that Citizen 2.0 brings to the political process - and it’s easier than ever to do given the innovations in technology, the rise of social media, and the advancements in online advertising.”
Yahoo! will share the findings of this new research study at its first ever political summit in Washington, D.C., before an audience of political influencers including campaign managers, strategists, and academics. The summit will focus in part on key online advertising trends and best practices being leveraged by the candidates today. As the influence of Citizen 2.0 grows, researchers predict that political professionals will shift attention and advertising budget to the online channel.
“More and more political candidates are discovering that the power of the Internet boosts their campaigns’ momentum by connecting them with engaged, committed voters,” said Carol Darr, an expert on new media and politics and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s School of Kennedy Government. “Today’s tech-savvy candidates are expanding their use of the Internet to include strategic online advertising that connects with supporters who are likely to spread the candidates’ messages via online word of mouth, using email, instant messaging, and social media.”
One of the highlights of today’s summit will be a discussion between special guest speakers Karl Rove, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Max Cleland, former U.S. Senator from Georgia. Touching on themes from the Citizen 2.0 research, Rove and Cleland will discuss and debate how the Internet has fundamentally changed voter behavior, impacting campaigning, news consumption habits, issues amplification, and voter engagement.
Citizen 2.0 - Implications for 2008 Campaigns
In identifying behaviors and characteristics of Citizen 2.0, the new research highlights the unique opportunity for candidates to help feed these voters’ insatiable appetite for political information from a variety of sources. Citizen 2.0 likes connecting, sharing opinions, and discussing political views, and is more likely to volunteer time and contribute money to a candidate. Researchers also found that these voters rely on the Internet as their most trusted, and frequently used resource for gathering information, and communicating about politics:
– 87 percent use news Web sites to gather information and learn about politics
– 82 percent use search engines
– 56 percent use candidate Web sites
– 51 percent use blogs and politically-based Web sites
– 40 percent use online political groups
In a recent example of Citizen 2.0 in action, Mitt Romney supporters created and posted online a total of 129 commercials, as part of a special campaign promotion inviting the public to use photos, videos and audio clips to create a video ad. The commercials were viewed nearly 100,000 times.
Yahoo! has been heavily involved in politics in recent months including working with presidential candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama to develop strategic online advertising programs. In addition, Yahoo! has revamped and expanded its elections Web site (http://elections.yahoo.com), and hosted an online MashUp debate in September with the Huffington Post and Slate Magazine.
November 9th, 2007
A broad alliance of leading technology and wireless companies today joined forces to announce the development of Android, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Google Inc., T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others have collaborated on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.
This alliance shares a common goal of fostering innovation on mobile devices and giving consumers a far better user experience than much of what is available on today’s mobile platforms. By providing developers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, Android will accelerate the pace at which new and compelling mobile services are made available to consumers.
With nearly 3 billion users worldwide, the mobile phone has become the most personal and ubiquitous communications device. However, the lack of a collaborative effort has made it a challenge for developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers to respond as quickly as possible to the ever-changing needs of savvy mobile consumers. Through Android, developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers will be better positioned to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. The end result will be an unprecedented mobile platform that will enable wireless operators and manufacturers to give their customers better, more personal and more flexible mobile experiences.
Thirty-four companies have formed the Open Handset Alliance, which aims to develop technologies that will significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services. The Android platform is the first step in this direction — a fully integrated mobile “software stack” that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. Consumers should expect the first phones based on Android to be available in the second half of 2008.
The Android platform will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.
Android holds the promise of unprecedented benefits for consumers, developers and manufacturers of mobile services and devices. Handset manufacturers and wireless operators will be free to customize Android in order to bring to market innovative new products faster and at a much lower cost. Developers will have complete access to handset capabilities and tools that will enable them to build more compelling and user-friendly services, bringing the Internet developer model to the mobile space. And consumers worldwide will have access to less expensive mobile devices that feature more compelling services, rich Internet applications and easier-to-use interfaces — ultimately creating a superior mobile experience.
Open Software, Open Device, Open Ecosystem
“This partnership will help unleash the potential of mobile technology for billions of users around the world. A fresh approach to fostering innovation in the mobile industry will help shape a new computing environment that will change the way people access and share information in the future,” said Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. “Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’ that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different phone models.”
“As a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance, T-Mobile is committed to innovation and fostering an open platform for wireless services to meet the rapidly evolving and emerging needs of wireless customers,” said René Obermann, Chief Executive Officer, Deutsche Telekom, parent company of T-Mobile. “Google has been an established partner for T-Mobile’s groundbreaking approach to bring the mobile open Internet to the mass market. We see the Android platform as an exciting opportunity to launch robust wireless Internet and Web 2.0 services for T-Mobile customers in the US and Europe in 2008.”
“HTC’s trademark on the mobile industry has been its ability to drive cutting-edge innovation into a wide variety of mobile devices to create the perfect match for individuals,” said Peter Chou, Chief Executive Officer, HTC Corp. “Our participation in the Open Handset Alliance and integration of the Android platform in the second half of 2008 enables us to expand our device portfolio into a new category of connected mobile phones that will change the complexion of the mobile industry and re-create user expectations of the mobile phone experience.”
“The convergence of the wireless and Internet industries is creating new partnerships, evolving business models and driving innovation,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer of Qualcomm. “We are extremely pleased to be participating in the Open Handset Alliance, whose mission is to help build the leading open-source application platform for 3G networks. The proliferation of open-standards-based handsets will provide an exciting new opportunity to create compelling services and devices. As a result, we are committing research and development resources to enable the Android platform and to create the best always-connected consumer experience on our chipsets.”
“Motorola has long been an advocate of open software for mobile platforms. Today, we’re excited to continue this support by joining Google and others in the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance and Android platform. Motorola plans to leverage the Android platform to enable seamless, connected services and rich consumer experiences in future Motorola products,” said Ed Zander, Chairman and CEO of Motorola, Inc.
For more information about the Open Handset Alliance, visit the website at www.openhandsetalliance.com.
November 6th, 2007
Next Posts
Previous Posts
