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Submission + - White House Names Google's Megan Smith As CTO (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The White House has named long-time Google executive Megan Smith as the government's new CTO, in charge of improving technology and the use of data across agencies. Smith most recently served as vice president at Google's tech lab, Google[x]. She previously served as CEO of PlanetOut, helped design early smartphone technologies at General Magic and worked on multimedia products at Apple Japan in Tokyo. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and just might be, as noted in a previous Slashdot post, the first US CTO worthy of the title. Also on Thursday, the White House named Alexander Macgillivray, a former general counsel and head of public policy at Twitter, as deputy U.S. CTO.

Submission + - The Forensic Tool That Grabs Nude Selfies From iCloud Accounts (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: There's a seedy trade in compromising photos stored in Apple iCloud accounts, and it is in part aided by a software program that cleanly collects the data. The software tool they're using is Moscow-based Elcomsoft's Phone Password Breaker (EPPB), one of many forensic tools the company develops for law enforcement and other clients. Elcomsoft CEO Vladimir Katalov said via email on Wednesday that there are legitimate uses for his company's software and that it doesn't exploit flaws in Apple services, but at the same time, Elcomsoft doesn’t restrict who it sells EPPB to and over time the software has been sold and then leaked to underground websites, like Anon-IB where some of the nude celebrity photos are believed to have first been circulated.

Submission + - China Gives Microsoft 20 Days To Answer Questions In Anti-Monopoly Probe (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Microsoft has been given 20 days to answer questions from China's anti-monopoly watchdog about "compatibility problems" with Windows and Office. The questions arise from complaints that Microsoft has "not been fully open", which may be related to the company's attempts to cripple users of the widespread pirated versions of Microsoft software in China.

Submission + - Appeals Court Clears Yelp Of Extortion Claims (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: A U.S. appeals court cleared Yelp of charges of extortion related to its interaction with several small businesses who claim Yelp demanded that they pay for advertising or face negative reviews. While Yelp says it never altered a business rating for money, the court's finding was instead based on a strict reading of the U.S. extortion law, classifying Yelp's behavior as, at most, "hard bargaining."

Submission + - Oregon Suing Oracle Over Obamacare Site, But Still Needs Oracle's Help (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Oracle and the state of Oregon are in the midst of a particularly nasty set of lawsuits over the botched rollout of Oregon's health care exchange site, with Oregon claiming that Oracle promised an "out-of-the-box solution" and Oracle saying that Oregon foolishly attempted to act as its own systems integrator. But one aspect of the dispute helps illustrate an unpleasant reality of these kinds of disputes: even as Oregon tries to extract damages from Oracle, it still needs Oracle's help to salvage the site.

Submission + - Post-Microsoft Nokia Offering Mapping Services To Samsung (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: With Nokia's Windows Phone handset line sold off to Microsoft, one of the company's remaining businesses is its Here digital mapping service. No longer feeling loyalty to Microsoft or its OS, Nokia has inked a deal with Samsung to supply Here services to both Tizen and Android devices, including the upcoming Samsung smartwatch.

Submission + - Facebook Testing Mobile Searches For Old Posts (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: A major critique of newsfeed cascade apps like Facebook and Twitter is that they exist in an eternal present: sure, you may see that your friend Rob is planning on kayaking this weekend, but three hours later when a mutual friend asks you about it in real life, will you remember where he's going and when he's leaving? Facebook is trying to solve this problem, testing out a feature that will let you search for content from older posts from your phone.

Submission + - Netflix Open-Sources Security Tools It Built In-House (itworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix is a fat, tempting target for malicious hackers, and as a result they've developed a suite of tools that automatically monitor chatter on non-password-protected Interet sites and send summaries to Netflix's in-house security team. Now Netflix is open-sourcing these tools so other companies can use them.

Submission + - Silicon Valley Underpays (Non-Tech) Minority Workers (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Tech companies are often faulted for not hiring more minority employees, but in fact they often do — in non tech jobs, such as janitorial and security services. However, a new report indicates that many tech companies pay these workers below the prevailing wages, largely because they hire them through third-party staffing agencies.

Submission + - Microsoft Subsidizing PCs Set To Use Bing By Default (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: If this were 1999, anti-trust authorities would be furious: Microsoft is letting OEMs sell Windows PCs without paying royalties for the OS as long as everything is set by default to use Bing as the main search engine. But this is 2014, and Microsoft's stranglehold on the computer industry is nowhere near as tight as it once was, and it's mostly an attempt to fend off Chrome machines at the low end.

Submission + - This is Tim: How Tim Cook is Becoming the Un-Jobs (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Back in June, the New York Times ran an article (which was picked up by Slashdot) about how Tim Cook is putting his own stamp on Apple. That article, though, focused mainly on personality and style, and ITworld's Andy Patrizio has followed up with a collection of some of the technical, business, and product decisions Cook has made — from embracing the enterprise to dumping Objective C — that let us know we're firmly in the Tim Cook Era.

Submission + - FCC Allowed To Question AT&T, Verizon On Business Broadband Pricing (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has given the FCC permission to collect new data in the long-running dispute over special access pricing. AT&T and Verizon Communications control an estimated 80 percent of the special access market, and competitors have complained for years that the two dominant telecom carriers are charging excessive prices for special access services. The FCC circulated a proposed order on special access in mid-2012, but late that year, also asked for comments on the special access market. Those comments aren't due until late this year.

Submission + - Simple.TV Lets You Share DVR'd Content With Friends: When's The Crackdown? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Simple.TV is a DVR for over-the-air television programs with a lot of nifty functionality, and it just gained a new one: the ability to share recorded content with friends over the Internet. The question is, how long will media companies tolerate the ability to stream media to other people, even media that arrived for free over the publicly owned airwaves?

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