Webroot Is Latest to Join Mobile Security Fray, Launching Android Product

With Android security threats in the headlines, the need for software to protect against mobile malware has clearly moved from theoretical to tangible.

The result is a push from both start-ups and traditional security firms, with Webroot becoming the latest software maker to offer a mobile-specific product.
On Monday, the company launched Webroot Mobile Security for Android–a program that comes in a basic free version as well as a more advanced paid edition that sells for $14.95 per year. Webroot says that, for now, Best Buy will be its exclusive outlet for the paid version.
As with other smartphone security software, the new Webroot product focuses not just on protecting against viruses but also managing the threats posed by the fact that smartphones are basically easily lost honeypots filled with tons of personal information.
“We believe in protecting you as an individual, not just the device you use to connect to the Internet,” Webroot vice president Quinn Curtis said in a statement. “With smartphones and tablets, we carry around vast amounts of personal data including our contacts, emails, passwords, and even financial information. This data is targeted by cybercriminals through malware, online scams, and device theft, and the market success of the Android mobile operating system provides the scale they need to make those attacks profitable.”
Webroot joins McAfee and AVG as well as Lookout Mobile Security, a well-funded start-up that focuses on smartphone security software.

Hackers turn attention to social media and mobiles

The biggest threats to people’s online activities come from sub-standard security on mobile web browsers, threats to social media sites, and highly-targeted attacks against corporations and organisations.
That’s the conclusion of the latest internet security threat report, published by online security software specialist Symantec.
And hackers will capitalise increasingly on trust they have from their colleagues to launch online attacks, its report says.
This is how the biggest attack of 2010, known as Stuxnet, was transmitted. It targeted industrial control systems, and at the time was said to be the most sophisticated malware ever discovered. It proved, cyber defence experts say, that  malware can be used to disrupt vital infrastructure, such as electrical power supply grids, water pipelines and financial trading systems.
But, says Symantec engineer Sian John: “The important thing to note from 2010 is that targeted attacks were not confined to large multinational companies and government agencies, but included a surprising number of smaller organisations.”
As smaller companies in particular try to reduce the number of helpdesk calls they make, users are being increasingly allowed to install software on their PCs. But, says John, targeted attacks show the need for technologies to enable organisations to manage and control this centrally.
And as people turn increasingly to social media for both professional and personal purposes, says John, businesses need to have clear controls in place over its use.
The growth in the use of shortened URLs also enabled many attackers to disguise the true nature of the material they contain, John added.
“These attacks exploit the implied trust around social media,” he said, “with shortened URLs accounting for 65 per cent of malicious links in news feeds in 2010.”
The availability of so-called attack toolkits, which are sold on the black market and can be used to launch attacks on computer networks, is also cited by Symantec as a major foreseeable threat.

SugarCRM in Jobsian Flash rewrite

SugarCRM is going mobile in a big way. The company has purchased iEnterprises's iExtensions CRM – a tool that provides access to Lotus Notes contacts on smartphones and tablets – and it has announced new versions of its own software for Android, BlackBerry, and iPad.
Financial terms of the iExtensions deal were not revealed, but SugarCRM's Larry Augustine told The Reg that the acquisition helps SugarCRM expand in a "specific functional" area. Sugar is also getting iEnterprsies CEO John Carini, who will take over as vice president of collaboration products.

Other products also provide offline sync between SugarCRM and mobile, such as the open-source RhoLogic Mobile. But iExtensions is built for Notes and Domino.

With the latest mobile versions of its own software – introduced on Tuesday at SugarCon in San Francisco – SugarCRM has rewritten the SugarCRM 6 reporting and charting engine in HTML5, abandoning Adobe Flash. The company says that this provides a better level of interaction and that the charts are more eye-catching than they were with Flash. But, yes, Apple provided the motivation. "If Flash and run on the iPhone or the iPad, we probably wouldn't have come to this," Augustin told us, referring to the Jobsian edict that Flash is forbidden on Apple phones and tablets.
A year ago, SugarCRM wrote its iPhone and iPad edition with Appcelerator's Titanium platform, and just as the product was delivered, Apple's chief executive made it known code translators like Titanium were not welcome on the iPhone or iPad. SugarCRM chief technology officer and co-founder Clint Oram told us at the time he wasn't terribly thrilled by the turn in events. He wasn't alone. But several months later, Titanium was cleared for use.
Nonetheless, SugarCRM is glad to be on the iPad. Augustin is dismissive of recent statements from Dell and Hewlett-Packard that - rather predictably - argued that the iPad isn't for serious business users. According to Augustin, the iPad 2 is going to be a huge business tool for what he calls mobile business professionals, because the form factor makes the screen readable. He cites recent experience, moving among the IBM faithful during January's annual Lotusphere.
"We were at IBM's Losusphere in January - 8,000 people," Augustin said. "I was amazed at the number of iPads. This was LotusSphere, an older, more enterprise-focused event. This was in Orlando, not Silicon Valley, and we are not talking about social media start up kids. iPads were everywhere."
The iPad is still leading the market while the hardware underpinning Android has not yet fully baked. As for webOS, which runs HP's forthcoming PlayBook, SugarCRM is not yet offering support. "Android devices are very interesting," he said. "When the hardware has caught up to the iPad 2's hardware, it will give Apple a run for its money."
SugarCRM has also announced that its business apps have become more rounded through integration with a number of online tools.
SugarCRM 6 is integrated web meeting tools Cisco WebEx and Citrix Online while SugarCRM users can upload, manage ,and share Google Docs inside the suite. Sugar for IBM LotusLive, the hosted multi-tenant version of IBM's Domino, is also available. Sugar for LotusLive lets you upload, share, and collaborate on documents held on a multi-tenant version of Domino Server hosted by IBM. ®

Sencha Expands Rapidly as Demand for HTML5 Web Apps Fuels Growth

We're seeing an incredibly positive response from developers who are inspired by the potential that HTML5 offers on advanced platforms such as Android, iPad, and the RIM Playbook.

Redwood City, CA (Vocus/PRWEB) April 05, 2011

Sencha, the leading provider of HTML5 frameworks and tools for desktop and mobile application developers, is experiencing rapid growth, fueled by record sales and downloads of its advanced tools for developing rich web applications. With more than a million downloads during the last year, Sencha tools and SDKs allow developers to showcase the rich experiences delivered by modern Web apps on both desktop and mobile devices.
Enterprises and development firms are increasingly choosing Sencha tools and SDKs because of their ability to deliver faster development times and better user experiences. As a result, the Sencha developer community has more than doubled over the last year and now numbers over 220,000 registered members. The recent launch of SenchaDevs, a directory of application development firms experienced with Sencha technologies, attracted over 350 partner signups in its first few weeks. Sencha’s tools are even spawning companies dedicated to creating web apps with its tools.
Sencha is hiring aggressively, with a focus on software engineers to develop its mobile Web product line. The company recently tripled its office space, moving from downtown Palo Alto to ten thousand square feet of space in the Pacific Shores Center in Redwood City. “We quickly outgrew the Palo Alto offices, and our new location gives us the runway we need for our continued rapid growth,” said Abraham Elias, CEO of Sencha.
Web apps are game-changers for application development and deployment
Demand for Sencha open-source Web application frameworks and tools is being driven by two key trends in both business and consumer markets. Publishers, retailers and developers of consumer-facing apps are gravitating toward mobile Web technologies as a flexible solution for reaching mobile users on smartphones and tablets. This transition has been accelerated by the emergence of advanced mobile browsers that embed the latest HTML5 technologies. In addition, many enterprises have begun to migrate their core enterprise applications from first-generation Web architectures to modern, single-page Web applications powered by the latest AJAX technologies.
“We’re seeing an incredibly positive response from developers who are inspired by the potential that HTML5 offers on advanced platforms such as Android, iPad, and the RIM Playbook. This generation of tablets demands touch- and gesture-driven interfaces and this is spurring a wave of new application development,” said Michael Mullany, Sencha’s VP of marketing and products. “2011 is shaping up to be the Year of HTML5, and Sencha offers the broadest array of tools for developing applications that leverage these technologies.”
Sencha tools see broad adoption across all market sectors
In the last 12 months, Sencha has added over 5,000 paying customers across all markets — from in-house enterprise developers, to Web development shops, to major OEM partners. Sencha technology powers the user interfaces of some of the world’s most important Web properties, providing rich, responsive application experiences for users, whatever their browser or platform.
“Sencha Touch enables us to build mobile Web apps that perform and look like native apps, and it allows us to speed up development time and support multiple platforms,” said Joseph Schmitt, Web developer at Vimeo. “By choosing Sencha Touch, we only had to build one version of our Vimeo Festival app for iPhone and Android, which gave us a huge head-start on our development. We were able to add more features and still make our very tight deadline. We got to focus on building a great mobile app that provided a more interactive experience and became an essential tool for attendees by allowing them to ‘check-in’ to the video wall, view and ‘like’ videos, and create personalized schedules.”
“We’ve been using Ext JS for our entire client-side framework since 2007, and it gives us exactly what we need to deliver a gorgeous user interface and a great user experience,” said Glen Lipka, senior director of user experience at Marketo. “By using Ext JS, we speed up our development time and enhance our designs for modals, trees, drop-down boxes, and components. Plus, we get the benefits of cross-platform support, which greatly reduces our testing burden. Ext JS frees us to focus on building differentiated features for our customers. We’re looking forward to Ext JS 4 and continuing to push the envelope with support for new browser capabilities and interactivity.”
“Ext GWT reduces the complexity of building high-performance applications by providing support for the latest Web standards and cross browser compatibility,” said Alessandro Giannone, director and co-founder of SambaStream. “With Ext GWT, we were able to quickly produce highly optimized JavaScript code with all the advantages of using an enterprise-scale language like Java. We made extensive use of the Ext GWT library – our ListView is a real work of art, and the performance is superb. Ext GWT helped us to save months of development effort, and we’ve invested that time in building a world-class product with an innovative user experience.”
About Sencha Inc.
Sencha equips developers with frameworks, tools and services to help them build highly functional and engaging Web application experiences using HTML5 and JavaScript. The company’s flagship product, Sencha Ext JS, is a cross-browser JavaScript framework for building rich internet applications. It includes high-performance, customizable UI building blocks, a well-architected, extensible component model, and an intuitive, easy-to-use API. More than one million developers worldwide—representing more than 150,000 companies—use the Sencha family of open-source software to build amazing application experiences. Visit Sencha on the Web at http://www.sencha.com, read the Sencha blog, and follow us on @senchainc.

Windows 8 leaks show Microsoft Mobile and Office influences

Microsoft’s strategy of unifying its various products looks set to continue with Windows 8: new images of the operating system’s welcome screen, for instance, draw on the Windows Phone 7 lock screen, while new navigation techniques used in Office 2010 look set to be extended to Windows Explorer for file management.

Respected bloggers and writers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have begun a series of blog posts exposing initial thoughts in the first build of Windows 8 that Microsoft is releasing to developers.

The ribbon was introduced in Microsoft’s latest version of Office to replace large numbers of menus. It gives instant access to common features. Extending it to new versions of Windows itself would, for instance, allow quick synchronisation of files between machines and the cloud, as noted by other bloggers.

Further uses of cloud technology have been noted, with the inclusion of the Windows Live ID elsewhere in the new operating system, as well as the prospect of the Xbox’s motion-based Kinect sensor being integrated into PCs.

Microsoft is also known to be working on app store for Windows 8 and a back-up tool, similar to the Time Capsule that Apple offers. The “tiles” that it uses for Windows Phone 7 are also expected to appear across different devices using new versions of Windows, including tablet PCs. Also included will be a new PDF Reader and an “immersive” mode designed for tablets.

A public beta of Windows 8 is expected by the end of the year; the current leaks show the software at a very early stage of development.

SmartBear Expands Cloud and Mobile Offering with AlertSite Acquisition

SmartBear Software on Monday announced the acquisition of AlertSite Inc., a global provider of web and mobile performance management solutions. This acquisition comes on the heels of a high growth year for SmartBear with 50 percent sales growth, strong profitability, and a user community that has surpassed 100,000 users.
SmartBear delivers quality and performance tools throughout the quality lifecycle, anywhere – on the desktop, mobile and the cloud. The addition of AlertSite significantly expands SmartBear’s cloud computing and mobile offering and will allow customers to drive quality from development and testing of websites and applications, to assuring their continued performance after they are deployed.
Joe Krivickas, CEO of SmartBear Software said, “AlertSite’s cloud-based solutions for web and mobile performance monitoring are a great addition to our existing development and testing tools. We are realizing our vision to unite operational performance with quality assurance and development, ensuring quality across the entire lifecycle of an application or website. We are excited to welcome all AlertSite customers and employees to the SmartBear family and truly enable quality anywhere – on the desktop, mobile and the cloud.”

AlertSite
AlertSite is a global leader in Web and mobile performance management solutions that continuously improve the Web user experience. The Company’s flagship product, DéjàClick, is the only Web performance monitor that measures a user’s end-to-end website and mobile experience – enabling companies to speed up and optimize Web and mobile solutions. Over 2,300 small to enterprise-level companies rely on AlertSite’s comprehensive suite of services to increase website and mobile ROI.

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

About SmartBear Software
SmartBear Software provides enterprise-class yet affordable tools that deliver quality and performance throughout the entire software quality lifecycle – enabling code quality; QA efficiency; and application performance anywhere – on the desktop, mobile and in the cloud. Our collaboration, code quality, test automation, performance monitoring and ALM tools help more than 100,000 professionals to build and run some of the best software applications and websites in the world. Our users can be found around the world, in small businesses, Fortune 100 companies, and government agencies. For more information about SmartBear Software, our award-winning tools, or to join our active user community, visit

Nokia in university training deal

Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia is committed to building a local developer and mobile ecosystem in Thailand with the launch of an initial programme with three universities.
This is the phone-maker's latest move towards building up a local mobile ecosystem, following a collaborative deal with mobile operators in Thailand that uses operator billing to help local software developers to easily monetize their applications.
Nokia's head of developer relations for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Gary Chan said the multinational company was committed to building and supporting a mobile ecosystem in Thailand under its latest worldwide strategy.
Nokia's principal smart-phone strategy is a move to use the Windows Phone platform, and it plans to begin shipping these devices in volume early next year. The framework for developers will therefore be the Windows Phone ecosystem, with tools provided by both Microsoft and Nokia.
"Nokia is joining in the development of the Windows Phone ecosystem. We will contribute the Ovi Map and our strong relationship with operators around the world. We also expect to be involved in hardware design and development.
"We hope that this collaboration will create a third mobile ecosystem to compete against the Apple and Android ecosystems, and importantly to give consumers and operators wider choices," Chan said.
The Windows Phone ecosystem will eventually replace the Symbian open-source platform in Nokia smart phones, although Nokia is committed to supporting Symbian until 2014. In this time, Nokia is expected to give the Symbian platform improved browsing technology and a new user interface.
"Symbian will continue to be relevant at least until 2013," Chan said. "We are committed to getting 75 million Symbian smart phones that are touch-enabled on to the market. We are also committed to ship 150 million more Symbian devices. This offers huge opportunities for very quick application development with [cross-platform application framework] Qt."
Chan said Nokia planned to make sure that at least one MeeGo device reached the market. MeeGo is an open-source environment that is also used in embedded systems, tablet form factors, and auto instrument systems.
"We are continuing to explore bringing Qt into other price points and other devices. We will continue to invest in the Qt ecosystem," Chan said.
He said Nokia was now focusing on "the next billion people" who currently do not have mobile phones. There are around 3.7 billion mobile phones in the market, of which about 1.5 billion are unable to access the Web. There are also about 3.2 billion people around the world who do not own mobile phones, he said. Nokia's mission is to enable the next billion people to own mobile phones and to access and experience the Internet via a mobile device.
The solutions are Nokia's S40 Java platform, which the company is continuing to research and develop in order to improve it in areas such as touch and type, and the new Ovi browser that allows users to surf the Web very efficiently in countries where there is no 3G network.
Chan said the Ovi Store was very successful in Thailand because of demand for localised content and integration with local operators, including AIS, DTAC and True.
"Operator-billing integration provides 60 per cent of gross revenue from sales of applications to the developer after local tax sales. We have found that this model helps developers to make a lot of money. We launched this model in Thailand in October last year," he said.
Nokia's latest move is to team up with three universities - Assumption University, Chiang Mai University and Chulalongkorn University - to support the Thai mobile ecosystem. The collaborative arrangement will use a Nokia programme called "Tap That App". It is claimed to be the first 360-degree project in the mobile industry that enhances the competitiveness of Thai application developers.
Chan said the collaboration opened opportunities for university students to create their own application ideas and turn them into real mobile apps for consumers to download from Ovi Store.
In conjunction with the three universities, Nokia will set up "Mobile Inno Sphere Centres" at each university to serve as excellence platforms from which students can participate in the development of innovative mobile applications and services and gain real-life industry experience.
The centres will allow students to learn and discover what mobile innovation can do to improve and change lifestyles. Students and academics at the three universities will be trained in developing innovative applications by Nokia trainers, using Web and application-development frameworks such as Qt, Java and Windows Phone. After the training, students will be encouraged to submit their ideas, and the most innovative will be chosen for development, to be made available for public download from the Ovi Store.
The programme will also provide opportunities for profiles of local developers to appear in global markets through Ovi Store. Eventually, the programme is expected to create a new and competitive generation of young Thai developers who will raise the competency of the Thai application industry.
"Through our partnerships with local developers, publishers, mobile operators and academic institutions, we will contribute to the creation of an ecosystem that drives innovation, provides useful and delightful user experiences for consumers and opens greater commercial opportunities for the Thai mobile ecosystem," Chan said.
The Tap That App programme will run until December this year in Thailand. The same programme has also been implemented in other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.