Archive for June, 2010

Contractor service software reduces costs and boosts efficiencies for hvac/plumbing companies

June 30th, 2010

AZ went looking for a mobile technology that would streamline business operations between the office and the field. It tested a handful of excellent products, but even the best of the demos lacked the truly comprehensive, high-tech management approach sought by them.

Rite-Way decided that, since the marketplace didn’t yet offer such a detailed, easy-to-use product, it would leverage its experience and create a company dedicated to the development of such technology.

Today, partnering with cutting edge developers and industry professionals, that breakthrough innovation is the MO.S.T. – Contractor program, which provides a variety of innovative tools that are now reshaping the way service contractors deliver products and services.

“We’re thrilled to make the official announcement about MO.S.T.,” says Wayne Lipkus, president of Mobile Software Technology, LLC. “The HVAC/Plumbing and related service industries can be extremely demanding, yet we have developed a solution that addresses these challenges.”

While contractor and mobile software programs are not new, MO.S.T. stands out from the rest because it does not dictate to the owner what he needs but instead listens to what the owner needs and offers him the tools to make it happen.

Through its “open architecture” mentality, MO.S.T. strives to incorporate the knowledge of the users to make a better program for all.

The software optimizes scheduling, contains features to assist in increasing sales opportunities and reduces data entry errors by using standardized notes, lookups and an integrated spell check, to name a few features. With such an effective and professional approach, service contractors can distinguish themselves from the competition and easily attract and build more business.

Designed to work with any laptop or tablet PC, MO.S.T. includes dashboards, reports and pivot tables that support a wide range of tools for monitoring and managing key performance indicators.

“MO.S.T. helps its users take good care of customers by creating a service experience that is second-to-none,” Lipkus says. Is the program for you? According to Lipkus, “the program is for companies that are forward thinking, progressive and that want to embrace technology.

We feel it is not a question of if we are the best software out there but if we are the best for what you want to do with your company. Is your business worth 60 minutes of your time to find that out? I like to think so.”

Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/most—contractor-service-software-reduces-costs-and-boosts-efficiencies-for-hvacplumbing-companies-97472734.html

Mcafee introduces mcafee saas web protection

June 30th, 2010

Has announced the worldwide availability of McAfee SaaS Web Protection. The new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Web security solution combines the robust enterprise-grade reporting capabilities and features from McAfee solutions with the massively scalable, multi-tenant platform architecture that powered the MX Logic solution. The new cloud-based service protects enterprises from malware and other Web-borne threats without any on-premise requirements.

McAfee said its SaaS Web Protection provides the industry’s highest Web protection rates by leveraging the McAfee Global Threat Intelligence network. This network uses millions of threat sensors and more than 350 full-time security experts around the globe to provide customers with real-time, and even predictive, threat correlation and protection from malware, spam, Trojans and other Internet-borne threats.

Today’s Web environment provides a vastly improved user experience and access to information due to the rapid adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. However, as in other technological innovations before it, Web 2.0 technologies have also led to new vulnerabilities and new techniques for compromising corporate networks and data. Unfortunately, most organizations are not adequately protected and they are spending large sums of money recovering from attacks. Industry-leading protection is mandatory for companies to continue to safely take advantage of Web 2.0 solutions.

“Web filtering solutions have evolved from Web site monitoring to serious malware defense,” said Marc Olesen, SVP and General Manager, Content and Cloud Security for McAfee. “McAfee SaaS Web Protection incorporates all of the knowledge and experience we’ve gathered through the years, as well as the unique expertise and technologies gained from our recent acquisitions.

Combine that with our McAfee Global Threat Intelligence capabilities in the cloud, and we think users will be hard-pressed to find a better, more effective or reliable solution than McAfee SaaS Web Protection.”

In addition to the superior protection, McAfee SaaS Web Protection helps reduce upfront costs, as well as lowers ongoing maintenance and management costs.

Furthermore, organizations with numerous locations or limited IT resources can quickly deploy the solution by simply redirecting Web traffic to a McAfee data center and allowing McAfee SaaS Web Protection to manage protection from start to finish. With no applications or hardware to install or deploy, the service provides organizations with immediate and reliable network protection.

The McAfee SaaS Web Protection solution now provides:

- More Comprehensive Reporting: Enterprises need scalable, comprehensive reporting to understand their Web traffic and the threats this traffic presents. McAfee SaaS Web Protection gives organizations the tools they need to understand today’s Web traffic. IT staff can easily identify trends, investigate potential problems and analyze security threats.

- Simplified Policy Enforcement and Controls: The new service provides automatic enforcement of acceptable usage policy, reduces corporate liability and improves employee productivity. Additionally, organizational policies enable granular controls for Web security and usage.

- Early Protection: Threats are blocked in the cloud before they reach the customer network. Relying on extensive knowledge of Internet entities and the constantly changing global threat landscape, the McAfee TrustedSource technology enhances Web filtering by identifying potentially malicious behavior and enabling organizations to dynamically block these threats in real-time.

- Rapid Deployment and Unlimited Scalability: Built atop what McAfee believes to be the world’s most massively scalable, multi-tenant platforms, the McAfee SaaS Web Protection solution can be rapidly deployed anywhere around the world, and for an unlimited amount of users without any performance degradation. McAfee maintains an extensive network of world-class data centers to ensure maximum speed and redundancy.

- Remote Protection: McAfee SaaS Web Protection also provides the same level of Web security for remote offices and mobile users. This enables corporate security policies to be centrally managed and enforced for all users, even when they are not behind the corporate firewall.

McAfee SaaS Web Protection complements an already powerful portfolio of Web security solutions offered by McAfee; including McAfee Web Gateway for on premise protection at the gateway via appliance or virtual machine form factors. All McAfee Web security solutions leverage McAfee global threat intelligence for best in class Web security for organizations of any size.

Source:http://www.itnewsonline.com/news/McAfee-Introduces-McAfee-SaaS-Web-Protection/19605/4/3

Sony offers global free software update to fix possible overheating of VAIO laptop

June 30th, 2010

Wednesday that it has started providing free software updates to more than half a million users worldwide to fix a glitch that could cause overheating in its popular VAIO laptops.

So far, no injuries have been reported, but the Tokyo-based electronics company said it has received a total of 39 problem reports, including 26 in the U.S., with users complaining about the heat and distortion of the shape of their computers, the company said.

None of the problems were reported in Japan, Sony said.

The problem could affect a total of 535,000 VAIO laptops worldwide, mainly U.S. users but also others in Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia.

The overheating could occur when a user plugs in an adapter to charge when a battery in the laptop is nearly used up, Sony said.

Sony is offering users a software application download designed to fix the flaw, and has notified registered users by e-mail of the service.

Sony in 2006 had a massive global recall over quality problems in its batteries for laptops.

After incurring annual losses for two straight years, Sony expects to return to the black in the current financial year to March 2011, forecasting a net profit of 50 billion yen on revenue of 7.6 trillion yen.

Source:http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D9GLKLI01

HTC evo 4g gets updated with new software version

June 30th, 2010

It seems like this is the season of updating phones with new versions and latest softwares. The latest to enter the gang is HTC EVO 4G from Sprint. According to the company’s Community Forums, the phone gets an over-the-air update with the new software version 1.47.651.1.

With this amendment, the phone is claimed to deliver a better performance in terms of communication and features. With the OTA update users can access services as per their requirements.

They can now experience an improved Wi-Fi support as well. Improvements are revealed in the Exchange Active Sync which includes fixing issues like new account setup, PIN policy usage and Exchange Calendar 2010 Sync.

Battery performance of the phone is said to be enhanced with the Facebook sync issue now taken care of. For those not updated on the Evo 4G front, the phone boasts of 4.3” capacitive touchscreen and dual front-back facing cameras. This Android-based phone supports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

Mobile enthusiasts will either receive a notice of the availability of update or they can check for the updated version by visiting Settings followed by System updates and than HTC software update on their device.

Source:http://www.mobiletor.com/2010/06/30/htc-evo-4g-gets-updated-with-new-software-version/

Yahoo enhances open source software Hadoop, adds Security, Oozie

June 30th, 2010

Yahoo has enhanced open source software Hadoop, with Security and Oozie, which the company claims will allow enterprises to get value from their data and better manage their businesses.

Hadoop with Security enables authentication through integrating Hadoop with Kerberos, a open source authentication standard that enables secure collaboration and sharing of authenticated data.

While, Oozie, a workflow engine for Hadoop is an open-source workflow management and coordination engine to manage jobs running on Hadoop, including Distributed File System, Pig and MapReduce.

Melanie Posey, research director at IDC Research, said: “Businesses across all sectors are looking for ways to leverage the vast quantities of data they are accumulating, and Apache Hadoop is an efficient solution for processing data at scale. Hadoop has matured and is now becoming an enterprise-ready cloud computing technology with the addition of Kerberos authentication.

“Now organisations of various sizes can leverage Yahoo!’s Hadoop investment and deployments to run it on their own systems and build out their own Hadoop deployments without starting from scratch on internal science experiments.”

Further, the Oozie is designed to run complex work processes and ETL. It has been tested and deployed across Yahoo. Yahoo is also collaborating with scientific community for system research on large-scale data clouds.

Source:http://www.cbronline.com/news/yahoo-enhances-open-source-software-hadoop-adds-security-oozie_300610

Software gives Spanx tighter control over sourcing

June 30th, 2010

Shapewear brand Spanx has begun implementation of PLM and global sourcing software to increase speed to market and improve organisation across its product line.

The e-PLM and e-SPS software from NGC (New Generation Computing) will also help collaboration and communication between designers, factories and employees.

Spanx, which was launched ten years ago and now offers hundreds of shaping, contouring undergarment designs for women and men, previously managed its product design and factory collaboration with manual processes.

“We ran the business on spreadsheets, as is typical with young companies,” says Robert Hunnicutt, technology project manager.

“But with our rapid growth, it became harder to manage information and the flow of data. Our product line was growing tremendously, we added more staff, and the number of factories tripled within 12 months. We couldn’t keep running our business on spreadsheets.”

He adds: “We needed a system to help speed up development, from concept to production.”

The new software is helping Spanx streamline its product development by organising product sketches, specifications and all digital assets much more efficiently.

The company has also speeded up the design process by streamlining the flow of information and becoming more structured.

Designers are also “using their time more efficiently, which has allowed us to have more products available and add more flexibility into our design schedules,” Hunnicutt explains.

The company is also benefiting from enhanced communication and collaboration with factories and faster speed to market as a result of the improvements in design processes and production.

Source:http://www.just-style.com/news/software-gives-spanx-tighter-control-over-sourcing_id108145.aspx

Carnegie mellon software engineering institute receives contract extension from u.s. government

June 30th, 2010

Carnegie Mellon University has received a five-year contract extension, with a face value of $584 million, from the U.S. government through June 2015.

The SEI’s contract ensures that the Institute will continue to pursue its mission of advancing the practice of software engineering and improving the quality of systems that depend on software. Previous contract renewals were in 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005. The 2005 agreement contained an option to extend the contract for five additional years starting in 2010.

Beginning in the summer of 2009, the U.S. government conducted an extensive review of the SEI, culminating in the recommendation by government reviewers to exercise the option to renew the SEI contract.

The Department of Defense (DoD) sponsoring agreement for the SEI states that “the mission of the SEI is to provide technical leadership and innovation through research and development to advance the practice of software engineering and technology in support of DoD needs.”

“We are pleased to have the opportunity to continue to carry out the SEI’s mission,” said Paul Nielsen, SEI director and CEO. “Our purpose is to advance the state of the art in software engineering and transition these advancements to the community so that organizations may develop and acquire software that is more reliable, more secure, and more dependable.”

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the SEI was established in 1984 at Carnegie Mellon University as a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). Through its sponsor, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, the SEI carries out its mission by focusing on software engineering management and technical practices.

Throughout its history, the SEI has defined specific initiatives that address pervasive and significant problems that impede the ability of organizations to acquire, build, and evolve software-intensive systems predictably on time, within expected cost, and with expected functionality.

Source:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carnegie-mellon-software-engineering-institute-receives-contract-extension-from-us-government-97471019.html

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