A US software industry report chides Brazil, China and India for policies it says threatens the future of cloud computing.

Washington - A US software industry report on Wednesday chided Brazil, China and India for policies it said threatened the future of cloud computing, but also took aim at developed countries such as Germany that did well on its inaugural scorecard.

The Business Software Alliance, which represents US industry heavyweights such as Microsoft, said Brazil finished last in its survey of 24 countries, earning only 35.1 points out a possible 100 because of its policies in areas such free trade, security, data privacy and cybercrime.

India, which has the world's second-largest software industry after the United States, and China, whose information and communications technology sector is expected to nearly double to $389 billion by 2015, also were in the bottom six, with scores of 50.0 and 47.5, respectively.

Cloud computing refers to providing software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from remote data centres over the Web. Demand for cloud-based software is rising rapidly because the approach allows companies to start using new programs faster and at lower cost than traditional products that are installed at a customer's own data centre.

A major purpose of the report is to rally the international “technology community around the need for greater harmonisation of laws so a truly global cloud can come about,” said Robert Holleyman, president of the US software group.

Without greater coordination of government policies, “the cloud could be chopped into little pieces,” reducing the efficiency that comes from being able to move data and software services freely across borders, Holleyman said.

The 24 countries included in the survey represent 80 percent of the global information and communications technology industry. They were scored in seven areas, which also included intellectual property protection, infrastructure and support for industry-led standards to promote smooth data flows.

Japan was ranked highest with 83.3 points. It was followed closely by other developed countries including Australia, Germany, the United States, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and South Korea, which all scored in the high 70s.

While the report showed a “sharp divide between advanced economies and the developing world, even some of the high-ranking countries are walling themselves in with conflicting laws and regulations,” Holleyman said.

European Union countries scored well, but “what's happening now in the EU is lawmakers and regulators are effectively putting their thumbs on the scale in ways that will make it difficult for non-European firms to compete,” he said.

“There are concerns that Germany, for example, wants to put a wall around the country to limit the provision of cloud services to companies that are located in Germany.”

Strong laws to protect privacy are important to give users confidence “that private information stored in the cloud, wherever in the world, will not be used or disclosed by the cloud provider in unexpected ways, the report said.

Tough security measures are also needed, but some countries such as China that have implemented Internet filtering or censorship regimes could thwart develop of cloud computing and the digital economy, the report said.

Brazil scored just 1.6 out of a possible 10 on policies to combat cybercrime, which is expected to become an increasing challenge as more and more information is aggregated in large data centres, making them tempting targets.

Japan and France earn perfect marks in that section, while South Africa came close with a 9.8.

Even though Brazil finished dead last in the report, Holleyman said he was more optimistic about the potential to persuade Latin America's second largest economy to make reforms than he was for China.

“There is probably more opportunity to make progress in Brazil by pointing out what we see as the gaps that exist currently and why Brazil's economy will slow down as result of these policies,” Holleyman said.

“I think it's going to be a bigger challenge in some other markets, particularly China,” he said.

China “not only has the 'great firewall,' that does not allow the transmission between people in China and the rest of the world. But it also has a policy to require non-Chinese cloud firms to enter into joint ventures with Chinese firms” on unfavourable terms for outsiders, he said.

India also appears to recognise it is in its interest to promote global cloud computing, Holleyman said. - Reuters

The full report can been on the Business Software Alliance's website, at www.bsa.org/cloudscorecard

The free Pingit app is the latest hi-tech challenger to the cheque.

London - Transferring money could soon be as easy as sending a text, thanks to a smartphone app released on Thursday.

It allows people to send up to £300 (about R3 600) by entering the recipient’s mobile phone number, removing the need to know sort codes and account numbers.

The free Pingit app is the latest hi-tech challenger to the cheque. It transfers money instantly, allowing the recipient to withdraw it from a cash machine straight away.

The system has been developed by Barclays, but will be available to customers of other banks and building societies from next month.

At first it will only allow individuals to transfer cash to each other, but there are plans to open it up for use with businesses and charities. In order to send money, customers must have a smartphone such as an iPhone or BlackBerry and download the Pingit app. They must also enter their account details and set up a five-digit PIN. Those receiving a Pingit transfer do not need a smartphone themselves, but must be registered for the service.

Barclays said the technology had “huge potential”, with 50 percent of the population expected to have a smartphone by the end of the year.

The bank’s head of current accounts, Dan Wass, said the app was “the first service of this type to be launched across Europe”. He added: “It is like having a bank in your pocket all the time. It allows you to send payments to anyone in the UK, simply by knowing their mobile number ... [it] makes sending and receiving money as easy, quick and convenient as sending a text. Payments such as sending money to children, for a birthday or spending money, or even to a window cleaner, can be made in seconds.”

At first, only over-18s will be able to use Pingit, but the age limit is likely to be lowered in the coming months.

Barclays stressed that the system is secure, and said that if a customer’s mobile phone is stolen, thieves would not be able to send money without the five-digit PIN. Users will also be able to disable the app if their phone is lost or stolen. - Daily Mail

Bloggers have published findings that some of the most popular software applications in Apple's App Store have been able to lift private address book data without user consent.

San Francisco - Under pressure from US legislators, Apple moved on Wednesday to quell a swelling privacy controversy by saying that it will begin to require iPhone and iPad apps to seek “explicit approval” in separate user prompts before accessing users' address book data.

Apple's move came shortly after two members of the US House Energy and Commerce committee requested the company to provide more information about its privacy policies. Bloggers, in recent days, have published findings that some of the most popular software applications in Apple's App Store have been able to lift private address book data without user consent.

“Apps that collect or transmit a user's contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” an Apple spokesman told Reuters. “We're working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”

In a letter addressed to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Representatives Henry Waxman of California and GK Butterfield of North Carolina, both Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, asked Apple earlier on Wednesday to clarify its developer guidelines and the measures taken by the company to screen apps sold on its App Store.

The letter came after Path, a San Francisco startup that makes a Facebook-like social networking app, attracted widespread criticism last week after a Singaporean developer discovered that Path's iPhone app had been quietly uploading his contacts' names and phone numbers onto Path's servers.

In the following days, other technology bloggers discovered that iPhone apps like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Foodspotting similarly uploaded user data - without permission, in some cases.

The Path incident “raises questions about whether Apple's iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts,” the letter said.

The legislators' request for information cast the spotlight squarely onto Apple for the first time since an independent blogger, Dustin Curtis, wrote in a widely distributed post last week that “there's a quiet understanding among many iOS app developers that it is acceptable to send a user's entire address book, without their permission to remote servers and then store it for future reference.”

Curtis blamed Apple, writing that he could not “think of a rational reason for why Apple has not placed any protections on Address Book in iOS.”

In their letter to Apple, Waxman and Butterfield, referenced Curtis' blog post, adding: “There could be some truth to these claims.” The legislators had asked Apple to submit its response by Feb. 29. - Reutes

The new app allows players to compete with their Facebook friends for high scores, send gifts to friends and achieve more precise and powerful targeting.

Angry Birds, the most-downloaded mobile app of 2011, was catapulted to the world of Facebook on Tuesday in a bid by its Finnish maker Rovio to get one billion people playing the addictive game.

Fans were able to test the new Angry Birds Facebook app online on Tuesday morning ahead of its official global launch in Jakarta, the world's most Facebook-connected city.

“With the great success of the Angry Birds game on smartphone platforms, Rovio intends to reach more fans and be on every screen and every platform,” Rovio Asia senior vice president Henri Holm said in a statement.

“Therefore, the company developed Angry Birds on Facebook to reach more than 800 million Facebook users worldwide.”

In the game, players fling colourful and grumpy wingless birds from a slingshot into smarmy egg-stealing pigs.

It has been downloaded more than 700 million times since it launched in 2009 and the birds have become a global phenomenon, featuring on a huge array of merchandise and in popular culture.

The number of players is likely to soar beyond one billion as Rovio offers a new version of the game with more levels and interactive features to around 845 million Facebook users.

The new app allows players to compete with their Facebook friends for high scores, send gifts to friends and achieve more precise and powerful targeting by purchasing new “power-ups”.

Rovio does not disclose how many Angry Birds apps have been downloaded in Indonesia. But the country's love for the game is obvious in the ubiquitous paraphernalia in malls, from Angry Birds mobile phone covers to baby jumpsuits.

More than 17 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people are on Facebook, and Jakarta alone has over 17 million Facebook accounts, according to Holm.

“That is more than four times the accounts in New York and almost twice the amount of the second city on the list,” the Rovio official told AFP.

Second to Jakarta is Istanbul with 9.6 million Facebook accounts, and third is Mexico City with 9.3 million, according to social networking trackers Socialbakers.com.

Indonesia as a whole has 43.1 million Facebook accounts, making it Facebook's third-biggest user base after the United States with 155.7 million and India, which just surpasses Indonesia with 43.5 million users.

Rovio was a little-known company before its Angry Birds took flight.

It had previously launched 50 games with successes including mobile versions of Burnout and Need For Speed. - AFP

Hewlett-Packard will make its webOS mobile operating system available to the open source community by September.

San Francisco - Hewlett-Packard said on Wednesday it will make its webOS mobile operating system available to the open source community by September.

HP announced in December that it was planning to make webOS open source, meaning that developers anywhere can tinker with it as they wish and it will be available for anyone to use free of charge.

The Palo Alto, California-based HP acquired the webOS software as part of its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm in 2010 but later abandoned plans to make smartphones and tablet computers using the platform.

“By contributing webOS to the open source community, HP unleashes the creativity of hardware and software developers to build a new generation of applications and devices,” HP said in a statement.

The computer maker said it would make the webOS source code available under an open source license “in its entirety by September.”

“This is a decisive step toward meeting our goal of accelerating the platform's development and ensuring that its benefits will be delivered to the entire ecosystem of Web applications,” said Bill Veghte, HP executive vice president and chief strategy officer.

HP also said it is releasing version 2.0 of webOS developer tool Enyo, which allows developers to write a single application that works across mobile devices and desktop Web browsers.

Citing disappointing sales, HP announced on August 18 it was discontinuing the TouchPad, a tablet computer powered by webOS, just seven weeks after it hit the market.

Google's open source Android mobile software is widely used by handset makers but it has been pounded with patent lawsuits from rivals Apple and Microsoft. - Sapa-AFP

The new CEO of Research In Motion says it can claw its way back to the top with new software, but analysts are deeply doubtful.

New York - In the trend-setting North American market, BlackBerry phones have gone from must-have messaging toys to outdated clunkers -all in the space of a few years. The new CEO of Research In Motion, the company behind the phones, says it can claw its way back to the top with new software, but analysts are deeply doubtful.

The two co-CEOs of the Canadian company resigned on Sunday. The new CEO is Thorsten Heins, who was the company's chief operating officer.

Even though the company is in deep trouble and has seen its stock price fall 89 percent from the all-time high it hit in 2008, Heins said on Monday that his appointment means “no seismic change” for the company. He's confident in the course laid out by his predecessors, which hinges on the software revamp.

The new software is called BlackBerry 10, and it's due in new smartphones late this year. For BlackBerry fans, it should be a welcome upgrade. It's based on QNX, an industrial-grade operating system that runs devices that need to be very reliable, like core Internet routers and anesthesia monitoring devices.

That means it's a stable platform that can give BlackBerrys a new look and new capabilities. BlackBerry 10 will have a completely new user interface, built from the ground up for touchscreen input and “very fluid,” Heins said in an interview.

But it amounts to BlackBerry tossing out its own quirky, outdated software, first introduced in 1999, and adopting a slick, touch-oriented operating system, much like Android, Google's popular smartphone software, and the software on the iPhone.

Heins said BlackBerry 10 is “extremely competitive” and insisted that RIM is “not in a catch-up race” with the makers other mobile operating systems. He emphasizes that BlackBerry 10 will offer “multitasking,” or the ability to run several applications at the same time. This is something Google Inc.'s Android software and the iPhone operating system offer in a limited fashion.

Phone software developers generally stay away from full multitasking because it can shorten battery life considerably. Improved multitasking was one of the hallmarks of Palm Inc.'s webOS when it launched in 2009, but that didn't save it from obscurity.

One thing that could entice buyers: the new software will expand the choice of applications greatly, by running ones written for Android. There are hundreds of thousands of such apps, but it's unclear how many of them will run on BlackBerry 10 without modification.

The PlayBook, RIM's tablet computer, already runs an early version of BlackBerry 10. RIM had huge hopes for the device when it put it on sale in April, but quickly had to slash the price. In December, the tablets that originally cost $500 were selling for $200, below the cost of making them. RIM wrote off $485 million worth of inventory.

The PlayBook also illustrates the big challenge RIM is facing switching operating systems. It launched without an email program, apparently because it's very difficult to get QNX to work with the RIM servers that shunt emails around.

Application developers will also have to relearn their tools to write programs for BlackBerry 10, which could prove a big hurdle.

“The platform risks suffering from the same chicken and egg problem as many others- users won't buy a device without any apps, and developers won't develop for a platform without any users,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst with Ovum.

But the main problem analysts see with BlackBerry 10 is that the phones are set to come out so late. They were originally slated for early this year, but pushed to late this year. The company said that was because the right chips weren't available. When they come out, it will be more than five years since Apple released the first iPhone and set a new standard for phone software.

And even if BlackBerry 10 makes the phones more competitive, that doesn't mean it can reverse RIM's fortunes. Analyst Tavis McCourt noted that the history of phone makers who fall on hard times and try to turn things around is not encouraging.

“In fact, it is hard to think of a single successful case in the smartphone era,” he wrote. - Sapa-AP

Associated Press writer Robert Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

Apple has revealed a new platform called iBooks Author that will make it simple for academics, authors, publishers and teachers to create interactive textbooks.

New York - Channelling the grand ambition, the razzmatazz and the hyperbole typical of the late Steve Jobs, Apple promised to revolutionise classroom learning with a new interactive textbook for its iPad tablet computer.

The company's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, fronted the first major product launch from the company since Mr Jobs, its founder, died in October.

Mr Schiller revealed a new platform called iBooks Author that will make it simple for academics, authors, publishers and teachers to create interactive textbooks. And he said Apple was updating its book-reading software, iBooks, to make it easier for people to add notes to textbooks and to take tests on the material.

“There is no reason that kids today should use the same tools they did in 1950,” Mr Schiller said. “The [physical] textbook is not always the ideal learning tool. It's a bit cumbersome.” Mr Schiller declared that the company would be a major force for change: “In general, education is in the dark ages.”

Apple is not alone in having alighted on the education market as ripe for disruption. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation hired Joel Klein, the former head of the New York schools system, last year to examine new business opportunities.

Apple devices are already widely used in schools and colleges. Education institutions use 1.5 million iPads, it claimed , and as that number increases, so too might the switchover from physical textbooks to electronic books. Last year, digital accounted for three percent of textbook sales, but that number is forecast to double in 2012.

Major education publishers such as London-listed Pearson and McGraw-Hill face potential disruption to their business because of the digital switchover, but both decided to embrace Apple's new iBooks 2 platform. Their textbooks will be available digitally immediately in the US, priced $14.99 (about R120), well below the cost of physical books.

Pearson's Financial Times division has had a tense relationship with Apple over sharing of user data from downloads, which prompted the FT to launch its own web-based service outside Apple's digital store. But Pearson's other divisions, including Penguin and education, have maintained links with the company. - The Independent

It’s not too late to resuscitate those good intentions and, thanks to some clever tech, turn them into action. By Alan Cooper.

It’s not too late to resuscitate those good intentions and, thanks to some clever tech, turn them into action

Cut the clutter

There are few things more dispiriting than a mountain of paperwork that needs sorting and filing. Ensure yours doesn’t swell any further this year by requesting that your bills and statements be sent in electronic form. More and more companies and organisations offer this option. Granted, its probably to save money rather than the environment, but why not turn their greed to your advantage?

Resist at all costs the temptation to print documents. This would simply put you back where you were – worse off in fact because you’d be paying for the paper and ink rather than the senders. This can be a bit of an adjustment for those of us schooled in the importance of keeping paper records.

Capture other important documents like passports, air tickets and receipts using a scanner or cellphone camera and they’ll be available long after the originals are lost or faded.

Then make sure you organise this information, either in virtual files on your computer or, even better, in a cloud-based programme like Evernote. This way if anything happens to your PC, your documents will survive.

Get organised

Evernote is a lot more than an archiving tool. It’s also a superb programme for organising your thoughts and recording them, without the added pressure of sharing them with the world on social networks, although it gives you the option to do so.

A “note” can take many forms – a piece of formatted text, a webpage, a photograph, a voice clip, or even a handwritten “ink” note. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported. Evernote’s available for all major operating systems, smartphones and tablets. There’s a premium, paid version for power users, but the free version is more than adequate for most needs.

Diarise it

Older readers will remember, or indeed still practise, that early January ritual of sitting down and transcribing the previous year’s annual diary entries into the new book. For most of us this is a tiresome, and today, totally unnecessary, chore.

All computers, smartphones and tablets come with electronic calendars. Most let you link to an online calendar, like those offered by Google’s Gmail and Facebook, and synchronise this information on all your devices, so it isn’t lost if one crashes or goes missing.

Backup

On the subject of gadgets imploding or going walkabout, new year is the perfect excuse to stop talking about and start backing up your data. Portable hard drives are relatively inexpensive and backup software on all recent computer operating systems means this is far less of a schlep than it used to be.

The problem with a local backup set-up like this is that if your computer is stolen or destroyed by say a fire, chances are your backup hard drive will have shared the same fate. This is why you’d be mad not to use a cloud storage solution like Sugarsync, Dropbox or Carbonite.

Most offer free, or inexpensive, basic versions and operate in the background backing up your precious data to the cloud.

An added bonus is that you can access this information from a range of devices, including most smartphones. I discovered just how useful this can be when I popped into a bank recently to close an unused credit card account. After queueing I was asked for details I didn’t have.

In the past I’d have had to abort the exercise. Instead, out came my cellphone and within seconds I was using Sugarsync to browse the online backup of my home PC’s My Document folder and opening the required document.

* For more information and links to all the applications and services mentioned in this column, visit geekbeard.posterous.com. Got any questions? Tweet me @alanqcooper and I’ll be happy to answer them. - Sunday Tribune

Social media giant Facebook has released dozens of new applications to let users catalogue every aspect of their lives.

San Francisco - Social media giant Facebook released dozens of new applications Wednesday to let users catalogue every aspect of their lives, from movies to books to food to fashion, and share them with friends.

“Whatever you love, whatever story it is you want to tell, you can add that to your timeline,” said Carl Sjogreen, director of platform products for Facebook.

The initial batch of some 60 “apps” included contributions from companies such as Foodspotting, Rotten Tomatoes, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and e-reader Kobo.

The handful of companies present at the rollout event in San Francisco pitched their apps as a way to allow users to more fully integrate their social experiences outside of Facebook into their social networking profile.

Someone reading an e-book from Kobo, for example, could highlight passages they want to share with Facebook friends. The app also will automatically track which books they have finished or started reading and connect them with other Facebook users reading the same books.

Richard Penner of Kobo said the company views books as a social experience and believes that is what its customers want too. “We believe users want to engage with each other,” he said.

It was a theme echoed by almost all developers who gathered in a chic, softly lit downtown lounge to show off their apps: it's no longer enough to simply allow users to “like” a book or a pair of jeans; an entire social experience should be created around everyday habits.

With the app from Foodspotting, food connoisseurs can easily share their love of a particularly delicious cheeseburger or just let friends know they tried an avocado roll at a new sushi place everyone is talking about.

“It gives extra context to friends,” said Foodspotting spokeswoman Fiona Tang.

Developers were quick to emphasize user control over which actions appear on Facebook - an issue that has prompted concern among some privacy rights advocates since the apps were first announced last year.

Users initially must give each individual app permission to track their cheeseburger and romance novel habits. After that, their actions are automatically - or “frictionlessly,” as Facebook likes to say - fed back to Facebook.

In some cases, the actions by users also appear on outside websites to show friends which movies they watched or which articles they read on a site.

Bryan Estrada of Rotten Tomatoes said users receive reminders when they perform actions - like rating a movie - that are recorded onto their Facebook tickers for the world to see.

Users can then choose to delete the action from Facebook if, for example, they would rather not share their love of Twilight vampire movies.

The app provides “another level of engagement” for Rotten Tomatoes users, Estrada said. “It's pretty exciting.”

Ben Silbermann, chief executive officer and co-founder of Pinterest, a site that allows users to create organised collections of virtually any information, said users can easily keep their collections of Star Wars memorabilia private if they want.

His wife used the site to plan their wedding, he said, and “might not have wanted everyone to see the bridesmaid dresses.”

Over time, the apps will track almost any aspect of life users prefer - from cappuccinos to world travels - and catalogue them into the Facebook “Timeline,” a new feature that essentially turns a personal profile into a virtual scrapbook.

With Timeline, Facebook users can easily scroll through years of events to see where a friend spent spring break in 2005, for example, or if they ever uploaded photos from a study-abroad semester in Paris.

Sjogreen of Facebook said that in addition to the roughly 60 apps released Wednesday evening, the company plans to approve more apps from developers that want to integrate with the social media giant.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Sjogreen said. - AFP

If a bulging waistline isn't enough of a motivator to go to the gym, a new iPhone app adds a financial incentive to provide that extra nudge.

San Francisco - If a bulging waistline isn't enough of a motivator to go to the gym, a new iPhone app adds a financial incentive to provide that extra nudge.

The app called GymPact charges users a fee for every gym commitment they skip. The fee can range from $5 to $50 (about R40 to R400).

“We decided to motivate people by having money on the line, rather than giving them money, which is a very radical departure from other motivational apps and programs,” explained Yifan Zhang, GymPact's co-founder and CEO.

After providing a credit card, GymPact's users make a commitment for the number of times each week they will go to the gym, along with the financial penalty they will incur if they don't.

At the end of the week, the company charges users who did not meet their goals. The money collected is distributed to users who kept their commitments. People who committed to more days get a bigger portion of the pooled money.

“We really think of what you have on the line as the number of days you're committing. That's really the focus of the program - how many days can we get you to go to the gym every week,” Zhang said.

The company is paying out anywhere between 50 cents $1 for each workout and keeps about 30 percent of each payout.

Last week, each workout was worth 73 cents.

To validate the time spent at the gym, users must check-in at a venue for 30 minutes for the workout to count.

Zhang developed the app from research into behavioral economics while at Harvard University, where she was investigating the relationship between financial incentives and motivation.

“One of the key concepts is loss aversion. Say you take the same amount of money and you offer it as a reward, or use it as a penalty. People are much more motivated by a loss than by gain,” she explained, adding that users make it to the gym 90 percent of the time.

Future plans for the app include integration with run tracking apps and the ability to pool and divide money among groups of closer connections.

“It adds the social component of motivation, which in conjunction with cash incentives is just so motivating,” said Zhang.

The recently released app still has some bugs that the company is working on. Some users have complained about problems with detecting gym location, and user interface issues.

Similar apps include Nexercise and Earndit, which provide prizes and other rewards for exercising.

GymPact is available internationally. - Reuters