Interesting move in New Zealand as they enact a ban on software patents
“The patents system doesn’t work for software because it is almost impossible for genuine technology companies to create new software without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents that exist, often for very obvious work”
Fitness industry consultant Jay Blahnik, who played a key role in the development of Nike’s FuelBand, has taken a job at Apple
Writes John Paczkowski at All Things Digital.
In the context of my belief that any supposed iWatch from Apple will be as much a Watch as the iPhone is a Phone this makes a whole lot of sense.
I can’t help wonder, as has been speculated all year, if the iWatch is to debut this year why Blahnik is only being hired now. Unless of course, 2014 or even later is a more likely ship date for said revolutionary device.
Given Apple’s noted long cycle development times, I wouldn’t rule it out. It’s either that or they aren’t satisfied with the current state of the product and he’s the Red Team.
Update: With the announcement of the M7 Motion Co-processor in the iPhone 5s and what that enables, this hire seems all the more interesting today.
What does it say about News Limited’s Business Spectator when they pigeon hole Trusteer as an "anti-virus" company? Some simple journalism, including other sources for the news about IBM’s purchase of the security company would have told them that such a description was beyond reductive. But it’s the challenge anyone in the security industry has to face when translating what we do in a way that most people understand.
The most interesting part about the purchase, the recent purchase of Sourcefire by Cisco and Intel’s purchase of McAfee a couple of years back, is that security might finally be seen as a core business offering, at least at the enterprise level.
In June Cisco CEO John Chambers said,
we are not our customer’s primary security vendor and that’s got to change.
Certainly IBM VP Marc van Zadelhoff has the same view;
all our products will work together and share data…IBM is leaps and bounds ahead in covering the most domains and doing the integration that is necessary. Five years from now [the market is] not going to be so fragmented.
What this reduction in fragmentation means for those security operations that traditionally added value to core services offered by organisations like Intel, Cisco and IBM will be interesting to behold. Should we expect further consolidation in the coming years as customers expect the services they purchase to be secure out of the box, leaving less room for over the top players? I can’t see it any other way.
For smaller, more nimble and innovative providers, as well as being able to attract attention just as Trusteer and Sourcefire have done, they may also have the ability to continue to build on top of the core security offerings and stay independent. For those who don’t fit that bill, it must be certain we will see a contracting in the market.
By using words like ‘confidential information’ and ‘stored in your keychain’, OSX describes the state of your saved password’s current security. It’s the very security Chrome is about to bypass, by displaying your passwords, in plain-text, outside your keychain, without requiring a password.
I don’t personally allow Browsers of any ilk to keep my passwords, but as Elliot Kember writes, most users just click “OK” or “Allow” in order to proceed.
There’s a fine line between convenience and security, it’s quite likely that those who are most need of one, end up tending to the other.
…Google couldn’t easily implement its more creative ideas—stuff like getting an instant signal when you walk in a restaurant that starts a stream menus and reviews—because of unaccommodating hardware from different manufacturers. “To do those things you have to innovate in the hardware,”
Not that Apple need the validation of their own strategy, but they would probably be going around high fiving all day having read comments from Lior Ron, once a product head at Google Local and now a Motorola corporate VP of product management, describing one of the strategies behind the Moto X phone.
Making Hay 