computerwoche.de

Archiv

Facebook to get more social, McAfee crashes PCs

23.04.2010
The travel industry wasn't the only one affected by the volcano that erupted in Iceland. Mobile-phone vendors and suppliers adjusted shipping methods to get handsets from Asia to Europe. Some McAfee corporate clients most likely cursed the company after a security update crashed the computers of hundreds of thousands of users. If you're a financial and technology wonk, then read on for highlights on this week's earnings reports from major IT vendors. Facebook's efforts to make the Web more social may result in some lost user privacy. But perhaps the site should bolster its security first. A hacker claims to have the log-in information to more than 1 million accounts, a security research company said.

1. : A buggy antivirus update from security vendor McAfee caused corporate customers' Windows XP machines to endlessly crash and reboot. Hundreds of thousands of machines were affected, including those used by chip maker Intel, a U.K. IT outsourcing company, and local government and police forces in some U.S. states. McAfee on Thursday attributed the snafu to the update misidentifying a Windows file as a virus.

2. : Facebook used its developer conference to announce application development platform changes that either make the Web more social or decrease user privacy, depending on your perspective. Facebook and other Web sites will integrate user information and use this data to offer a more personalized Web experience. A person visiting a Facebook partner site would see content based on the preferences previously stated on Facebook. The social-networking site is also releasing iFrame plug-ins that will allow Web developers to place Facebook functions, such as the "Like" button, on their sites, allowing Facebook and its partners to know the type of content a user prefers. Analysts said Facebook could pull off this endeavor, but questioned if the measure would turn off some users over privacy concerns.

3. : In addition to airlines, the ash cloud caused by an Icelandic volcano also affected the IT industry. Some cell phone manufacturers, which ship their products from Asia by plane, developed innovative routing methods after the ash cloud shut down European air space for several days. A Swedish phone retailer had the phones flown to countries with open airports and then used trucks to complete the shipment. A European mobile-phone service provider said the air cargo conundrum hindered the availability of two already popular handsets, while a Taiwanese phone maker said the volcano's overall impact depends on when planes can resume flying in Europe.

4. : This week brought a plethora of quarterly earnings reports from several IT and telecommunications companies. Apple produced impressive numbers, boosting quarterly profit by 90 percent and increasing iPhone sales by 131 percent compared to last year's second quarter. Microsoft announced third-quarter revenue that increased by 6 percent from the same period last year, while IBM's 16 percent rise in its first-quarter revenue bodes well for the overall IT industry. Verizon Communications, eBay and AT&T, among other businesses, also issued earnings information.

5. : The prospect of running Flash applications on Apple's iPhone or iPad officially died this week when Adobe Systems, Flash's developer, said it is ceasing work on a tool that would bring the popular multimedia software to the devices. The companies have clashed over Flash for a while, but the situation intensified recently. Apple banned developers from using cross-platform compilers, tools that could be used to port the software for Apple's mobile devices. In a blog post, an Adobe employee responded to Apple's new developer terms with some choice words. Does the iTunes Store sell dirges?