Staff Writer - itbusinessdirect

Politics curtailing Silicon Valley’s fast-growing financial ties with Russia’s tech sector: Entrepreneurs, investors say

April 14, 2014 Staff Writer

SAN MATEO, Calif. (AP) – Entrepreneurs and investors say Silicon Valley’s fast-growing financial ties with Russia’s tech sector are being slowed down by current political tensions between the White House and the Kremlin. “It’s safe to say a lot of investors here are taking a step back to see how the situation will unfold,” said Alexandra Johnson, who manages a $100 million venture fund called DFJ VTP Aurora, a Menlo Park, Calif., branch of Russian bank VTB. For decades, Russia’s sophisticated scientists and engineers remained at arm’s length from Silicon…

Heartbleed bug hit list, Why you need to change your password now

April 10, 2014 Staff Writer

An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug is already being called one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever seen. The bug has affected many popular websites and services — ones you might use every day, like Gmail and Facebook — and could have quietly exposed your sensitive account information (such as passwords and credit card numbers) over the past two years. But it hasn’t always been clear which sites have been affected. Mashable reached out to various companies included on a long list of websites that could…

WSJ: Brace for increased domain registration fees should the UN oversight ICANN

April 3, 2014 Staff Writer

The Wall Street Journal just published a story by Karl Borden who is a professor of financial economics at the University of Nebraska who warns that if the US gives up its oversight control over ICANN and the United Nations winds up in that roll, expect that fees are going to be imposed on every domain registration to support not only ICANN but UN activities. The world may see history repeat itself with the Internet, and the unintended consequences are likely to be profound. The United Nations has long craved…

Critical ‘homework’ before the U.S. relinquishes stewardship of ICANN

March 31, 2014 Staff Writer

The Department of Commerce announced on March 14 that it will give up its last bit of control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 2015. As is often the case with government decisions announced late on a Friday, this decision is controversial. The U.S. has exercised light oversight of ICANN since it established the organization and emphasized the need for a free and open Internet. Other nations do not share America’s perspective and have sought repeatedly to work through U.N. organizations such as the International…

Microsoft Office for iPad, How it all started

March 28, 2014 Staff Writer

Han-Yi Shaw didn’t like what he saw, and he told Microsoft so. The software giant, by Shaw’s reckoning, didn’t really understand Apple’s platform or how to develop Office for it. Shaw told Microsoft exactly what he thought — and the company responded by agreeing to all of his changes, then hiring him. That was more than a decade ago. Today, Shaw heads up Microsoft’s Office Design Studio and is the architect of one of the tech giant’s most important innovations in years: Office for iPad. The product is available now…

US Commitee Chairs pledge to conduct aggressive oversight on NTIA announcement on future of the internet; Schedules hearing for first week of April

March 27, 2014 Staff Writer

Committee Will Hold Hearing the First Week of April as Administration Examines Whether Department of Commerce Can Turn DNS Functions Over to Internet Stakeholders. WASHINGTON, DC – House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) today pledged to conduct aggressive oversight following the recent announcement by the Obama administration on the future of Internet governance. The administration is looking to engage the multi-stakeholder Internet community to investigate future models for administration of the Domain Name System (DNS). The Department of…

Edward Snowden: The Biggest Revelations Are Yet to Come

March 21, 2014June 20, 2014 Staff Writer

VANCOUVER, Canada — Edward Snowden on Tuesday said the biggest revelations have yet to come out of the estimated 1.7 million documents he acquired from the National Security Agency. In a surprise appearance via satellite robot at the 2014 TED conference in Vancouver, Snowden said there is still a lot of reporting to be done, including diving deeper into the accusation that the NSA tricks companies into building backdoors into their systems that make data vulnerable to hackers across the world. “Is it really terrorism that we’re stopping? I say…

Microsoft May Introduce Office for Apple’s iPad Next Week

March 18, 2014 Staff Writer

Newly appointed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is said to be announcing a version of the company’s popular Office productivity suite, including Word, Excel and Powerpoint for Apple’s iPad tablet devices at an event next week Microsoft may finally introduce a version of its Office software suite for Apple’s iPad devices at an event next Thursday, according to multiple reports. Sources close to Reuters, ZDNet and The Verge have said Microsoft’s about to introduce a suite of Microsoft Office applications designed for the Apple tablet. The suite is expected to include…

Aereo’s CEO Chet Kanojia has the TV Industry Scared To Death

March 13, 2014June 20, 2014 Staff Writer

CBS Threatens To Cut Off Broadcast Signal If Aereo Wins Aereo, a company that lets you stream live network TV (NBC, ABC, Fox, PBS, etc.) to your computer, smartphone or tablet, is gearing up for a big Supreme Court battle this spring with those networks that could dismantle the startup. The networks claim Aereo violates copyright by allowing customers to record TV shows in a virtual DVR that lets you stream shows later to your device. Aereo charges $8 per month to use the service and it’s available in a handful…