Mark Papermaster has been head of Apple’s iPhone and iPod hardware engineering department since 2009 when he joined the company from IBM.

His departure is widely believed to be linked to the problems with the antenna on the iPhone 4.

Apple would not comment on the reasons for his departure or whether he resigned or was fired.

Soon after the iPhone 4 was released in late June many owners began reporting that it dropped calls. Evidence emerged that signal strength faded when the phone was held in a particular way.

The problem was traced to the iPhone’s use of its metal casing to house its antennas. Bridging the short gap between two antennas on the lower left-hand side of the case caused signal strength to leak away.

An investigation by the influential Consumer Reports organisation confirmed the problem and led to it declaring that it could not recommend the product.

Initially, Apple downplayed the problems but the continuing furore led it to offer free cases to all iPhone 4 owners as these stop the gap being bridged. Mr Papermaster was not present at the press conference where the offer to iPhone 4 owners was unveiled.

An Apple spokesman said Mr Papermaster’s responsibilities would be assumed by Bob Mansfield who currently oversees engineering efforts for the company’s Macintosh products.

He also has a role in guiding development of some of the components for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Mr Papermaster worked at IBM for 25 years before joining Apple. Although hired in 2008 he did not start work at Apple until mid 2009 because IBM filed a lawsuit saying his taking up the post breached terms of his contract.

By BBC News, August 9 2010.

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The move comes six months after the European Court of Justice confirmed Google had not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trademarks.

Prior to that, brand owners and trademark holders could file complaints to prevent third-party ads being returned alongside a search for a trademark name.

The new online advertising policy will be active from 14 September and will cover Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe. The policy has been standard in the US and Canada since 1984.

Google also announced today a specific policy for Ireland, the UK and Canada whereby advertisers can use third party trademarks in their ad text even if they don’t own that trademark or have specific approval from the trademark owner to use it.

Trademark owners who still feel that third-party ads will confuse users as to the origin of the goods and services will be entitled to continue to file complaints with Google.

“We made this ad text change in the US last year and believe it has helped both our users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear,” said Peter Fitzgerald, industry director for Google in the UK.

“We believe the user experience is improved if, for example, they conduct a search for a particular brand of tv and see ads which give them more detail about where they can buy that particular brand of television, where they might be able to fix it, buy component parts or read reviews,” Fitzgerald said.

The 12-year-old internet giant believes that as a result of the changes, users will benefit from seeing more relevant ads via their searches.

The changes will primarily affect Google’s Adwords service, which works on a pay-per-click basis and accounts for 95pc of Google’s revenues.

By John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, Wed. August 4 2010

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The bug allowed attackers to craft booby-trapped shortcuts that allow them to take over a target computer.

Many users set up shortcuts to get to programs and places in Windows that they use regularly.

Microsoft said it released the patch because it had seen an increase in the number of attacks on the vulnerability.

The fix will be sent out to those that automatically update their machines. It will also be available via the Windows Update site.

The flaw was found in mid-July and allows malicious hackers to embed commands in shortcuts that are executed when that quick link is used or viewed. Every version of Windows is vulnerable to the flaw.

The first exploits of the flaw were seeded via infected USB drives and network connections. While exploitation of the flaw was limited initially, the tempo of attacks via the bug has escalated since it was discovered and publicised.

Early attacks using the bug were aimed at the software control systems for critical infrastructure such as power stations.

Microsoft signalled the severity of the problem by releasing an update outside its usual patch cycle. Security fixes are usually issued on the second Tuesday of every month.

Christopher Budd, senior security response manager at Microsoft, wrote on the company’s security blog: “We’re able to confirm that, in the past few days, we’ve seen an increase in attempts to exploit the vulnerability”.

By BBC News

The IDA Ireland supported move will bring ServiceSource’s total headcount in Ireland to 380 people.

ServiceSource is the leading provider of a complete suite of cloud computing-enabled solutions proven to increase service revenue performance for global technology, healthcare and life sciences clients.

ServiceSource has six global service centres that serve technology and healthcare IT customers in over 100 countries and 30+ languages. Clients include Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, AT&T and GE Healthcare.

ServiceSource established its EMEA Headquarters in Dublin in 2005, with an initial plan to recruit 110 people, however today’s announcement will see the company employ over 380 people at the operation in South Dublin, which provides client support, HR, training, IT and operations functions to ServiceSource’s EMEA clients.

“Since establishing its Irish operation in 2005, ServiceSource has continued to grow and expand,” Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keefe said.

“Firms such as ServiceSource are at the forefront of innovation, creating new jobs and services in technologies that make a difference to clients’ bottom line in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

“The new jobs endorse the Government’s focus on innovation and the knowledge economy because our policies are helping to deliver the calibre of graduate major players such as ServiceSource seek to drive their business models”, O’Keeffe added.

ServiceSource partners with technology, healthcare, and life sciences companies to maximize maintenance, support, and subscription revenue while optimising customer loyalty. It increases contract renewal rates for clients on average by 10—25 percentage points – and in some cases by up to 40 points.

These results are achieved via a purpose-built service revenue solution, including a suite of cloud applications and managed services built on a proprietary technology platform, which combines the industry’s most robust data management engine and a unique service revenue master, leveraging our deep knowledgebase of benchmarks and best practices.

Crosbie Burns, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of ServiceSource EMEA said: “ServiceSource Dublin has been operating very successfully since established in 2005. We have a fantastic team here in Dublin and we are delighted to be expanding our workforce here to continue to support our EMEA customers.”

“This is terrific news for ServiceSource,” IDA Ireland’s CEO Barry O’Leary said.

“ServiceSource is a significant multinational company and this development is reinforcement of Ireland’s ability to provide a nurturing environment where leading corporations can continue to expand”

By John Kennedy

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Brendan Conway started iTraffic in 2007 after 30 years in the motor trade and having set up another business, RM Distribution, which imported and installed in-car entertainment and security devices.

“In selling sat navs and other devices I realised there was no dynamic traffic information in Ireland, so I put the partnerships in place to allow iTraffic to collect, detect and publish real-time traffic information,” he said.

“A lot of new technologies were needed and I have made an overall investment of €1 million myself to get the company going.”

Compatible with 1 million smartphones

Twaffic Navigator can be used on 99pc of smartphones (1 million) in Ireland. It receives traffic flow updates every five minutes and provides advanced warnings of potential bottlenecks such as accidents, road-works or even road closures throughout the journey.

It is Ireland’s first smart-phone enabled navigation device to include real-time traffic information that allows users to check journey times before setting off – the ‘know before you go’ feature – and provides the fastest route to destination every time, re-routing around traffic incidents.

Pedestrians as well as vehicle drivers can use the new app, which also has a ‘Near Me’ facility to allow you to find the nearest restaurant, golf course, public park etc.

The ‘share your location’ feature, for those who use Facebook and Twitter, provides location-based tweets and alerts with a precision map to display to your friends and colleagues.

By

The main difference between iPad apps and iPhone apps is in the screen real estate. The iPad screen – at 9.7-inches – is much bigger than the smartphone display, about the same size as a netbook. However, netbooks do not provide the same intimacy.

This is where Apple technology really excels. You pass right through the technology and feel as though you are in the web, in the game or whatever particular application you’re using.

These apps range from free to quite pricey and you’ll find yourself changing your behaviour, reading more than you used to and learning more than you used to also.

National Geographic World Atlas HD – €1.59
As a child, one of the first books I remember poring over was the world atlas. As I traced country boundaries with my fingers I could sense the enormity of Russia’s vast open spaces and the imagine Ferdinand Magellan and his crew approaching Tierra del Fuego for the first time.

Glossy magazines, websites or computer programmes have not brought me back to this place, but the National Geographic World
Atlas app has. Navigating the globe by finger and zooming in on areas that take your fancy, discovering facts about the world’s nations
and checking out the satellite view is fun and informative. The rich colours and detail echo the traditional atlas.

This is one of the apps that renders the iPad a real, albeit expensive, educational tool.

AccuWeather – Free
One of the clever things about the iPad is that by its very nature it frames everything it does. As long as you have a stand you can enjoy it as a digital photo frame, a movie/music player or, in this case, a weather channel. If you’re so inclined you can see weather maps, video reports, and even migraine risks or grass-growing conditions.

iDisk – Free
One of the chief complaints about the iPad is that it cannot be used as an external hard drive like a laptop or netbook. There are, however, ways around this with many apps, including Apple’s iDisk. If you are an Apple MobileMe member you will be aware of the
20GB of online or cloud storage for an annual fee. iDisk manages access to this and solves the iPad storage dilemma for the most part, holding music, movies, documents, pictures and email.

Financial Times iPad Edition – Free
As with many other global publications, the Financial Times has gone the route of creating its own iPad app. The light salmon colour and column layout of the paper version is reproduced well but the addition of FT video and the ability to access your FT portfolio rounds this app out.

Highlights include links from companies mentioned in articles to a financial profile and interactive stocks chart.

There is free access until 31 August, after which you will have to register online.

Pages – €7.99
Apple’s own Pages – adapted from the Mac version – is a powerful word processing application. Create documents and export in Word, Pages or PDF format and email to your colleagues. Pictures and video can be added and charts can be created.

Marie Boran

Ron Bowles used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user’s privacy settings.

The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID.

Mr Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook said it was already public information.

The file has spread rapidly across the net.

On the Pirate Bay, the world’s biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by more than 1,000 users.

One user, going by the name of lusifer69, described the list as “awesome and a little terrifying”.

In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said that the information in the list was already freely available online.

“People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,” the statement read.

“In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.

“No private data is available or has been compromised,” the statement added.

‘Privacy confusion’

But Simon Davies from the watchdog Privacy International told BBC News that Facebook had been given ample warning that something like this would happen.

“Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,” he said

“It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn’t have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there’s an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence, he added.

Mr Davies said that the trawl of data fed into “the confusion of the privacy settings”.

“People did not understand the privacy settings and this is the result,” he said.

Facebook hit its 500m user in mid June 2010 Earlier this year there was a storm of protest from users of the site over the complexity of Facebook’s privacy settings. As a result, the site rolled out simplified privacy controls.

Facebook has a default setting for privacy that makes some user information publicly available. People have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the defaults.

“It is similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook,” said a spokesman for the firm.

“If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.”

But Mr Davies disagreed, saying the default settings should be changed.

“This highlights the argument for a higher level of privacy and proves the case for default nondisclosure,” he said.

“There are going to be a lot of angry and concerned people right now who will be wondering who has their data and what they should do.”

However, Mr Davies pointed out that this was something of an “ethical attack” and that more personal information, such as email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses had not been included in the trawl.

BBC Online readers have been sending us their thoughts on this story. Here is a selection of their comments.

I’ve reconnected with dozens of old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years, because it is possible to search for them on Facebook. There’s not much point in signing up for it if you’re just going to hide behind a wall of anonymity.

Cliff Smith, Exeter, UK

I don’t see that Facebook has done anything wrong. They make it abundantly clear that you, the subscriber, are responsible for managing your privacy settings. If you don’t know how to cook, you stay out of the kitchen. In other words, if you don’t understand how to manage your privacy settings, don’t sign up to Facebook.

Steve, Riverside, California, USA

I made a deliberate decision not to use Facebook because I don’t trust it. It is obviously a frequently-attacked site, and I don’t trust the company to resist the temptation to harvest the data they host.

Jane C, UK

What happened is that someone wasted hours compiling already available material and then posted it on the ‘scary’ Pirate Bay website, as if they were disclosing secrets of national security. It’s no more alarming than finding the yellow pages in a brothel. If you want to meet friends and share information with the world then stop whining when the person looking over your shoulder can see it all too.

Mark Ford, East Grinstead, UK

I use Facebook to connect with family friends and co-workers. But I am not searchable, I do not share with ‘friends of friends’ and have not installed any of those silly side apps that share your info. Facebook is still too complicated for the average user.

Shannon, Winchester, California, USA

Large scale data mining exercises like this one are actually pretty common and easy to do. If you don’t want people looking at your information, either don’t make it publicly available or don’t post it in the first place.

Ben, Manchester, UK

By Daniel Emery,Technology reporter, BBC News

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IN THE six months since it was first announced, the Apple iPad has certainly made an impact. Described as a “magical and revolutionary device” by chief executive Steve Jobs, the iPad has sold more than three million units since its April 3rd launch in the US, and its May 28th debut in Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland.

Irish Apple fans have had to wait a bit longer but from today the device goes on sale in nine more countries, including Ireland.

Essentially a large iPhone, the iPad runs on the same operating system as its phone counterpart. The device is aimed at people who want to watch media clips, view photographs, send some email and maybe browse the web without having to peer at a small phone screen or be saddled with a laptop.

Like most Apple products, a lot of thought has gone into the design. The iPad is slim at only 13.4mm thick, and looks remarkably similar to Apple’s much-praised phone.

The 9.7 inch high resolution screen is incredibly detailed and has been designed with movies and other media content in mind. It’s bright, and is supposed to be fingerprint resistant, although anyone who has used an iPad for any length of time will probably question its ability to resist smudges.

The screen, combined with the iBooks application, also makes it a pretty impressive e-reader. Text is crisp and clear, and the iBooks application makes it easy to read, giving the option of customising typefaces and font size.

However, it’s a little on the heavy side to hold one-handed, as many people do with regular books or e-readers, for any length of time without your wrist taking the brunt of it. While 0.68kg may not seem very heavy when you’re reading the specs, it will when you’re making your way through the latest best-seller.

On the inside, the iPad has a 1GHz chip to move things along. It’s speedy enough at loading applications and switching between media files. The amount of files you can squeeze in will depend on the capacity you opt for: 16GB, 32GB or 64GB, according to your budget. On the face of it, the price difference for such products seems a little steep – €100 for an additional 16GB and 32GB of memory respectively when you upgrade to the 32GB and 64GB versions. The extra cost of getting 3G is also steep – an extra €100 to have the connectivity built in, and that’s before you start paying for your data plan.

Weighing it up against the cost of a wireless mobile modem, and the price for convenience is clear.

The cost of such products is always an issue, particularly when comparing them to overseas costs. The 16GB Wifi only version of the iPad costs €499 here, compared with $499 (€390) in the US and £429 (€509) in the UK. The top of the range 64GB version with Wifi and 3G connectivity will set you back €799 in Irish stores and £699 in the UK (€829). The same device costs $829 in the US, the equivalent of €647 at today’s exchange rates.

The range of functions on the iPad is what has grabbed people’s attention. Aside from movies, web browsing and e-mail, it will also function as an iPod, albeit a large one. It comes with built-in speakers and a headphone socket, and though it will never replace your iPod or iPhone when it comes to portable music, it’s handy for listening to podcasts while browsing the web or watching films in public places – on a long plane journey, for example.

This is where the iPad’s far superior battery really shines. You would be hard pressed to get 10 hours out of a laptop, but the iPad’s claimed battery life appears to be living up to its promises.

However, there are some other things to note about the iPad. It does not have a USB port or the ability to connect external storage cards, such as the one inside a digital camera, without the purchase of additional kit. Most of the time you won’t transfer files without your Mac or PC, unless you’re downloading them from an online source. The lack of such functions has been criticised, but it doesn’t seem to phase Apple’s loyal following, who have already crumbled and bought the device despite its perceived shortcomings.

All the software for the iPad comes from Apple’s App Store. Because it uses the same operating system as the iPhone, it will run applications designed for the phone too. However, to take full advantage of the screen, users will have to shell out for apps designed with the iPad in mind.

The new device has created a new market for app developers, who suddenly have a lot more screen space to fill. This is a great opportunity for most, with everything from reader applications and games to productivity software benefitting from the larger screen real estate.

The apps can be, in some instances, more expensive to buy than their iPhone counterparts. However, there are still some that remain free or close enough in price to their iPhone counterparts. And if you’ve already bought the iPhone version and are quite happy with it, you could always just redownload it to the iPad through the App Store for free.

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Now that we know the iPad is coming to Ireland this Friday, 23 July, we’ll need to start thinking about how we’re going to accessorise it and you can’t get more quirky than the Cradle lap desk.

Made from plyboo (that’s bamboo-effect plywood), the Cradle lap desk has a circular centre made of matte soft-touch where you dock your iPad for swivelling and turning about while placing the desk in a comfy manner on your lap or in front of you.

If you’ve already played with an iPad you’ll know that it won’t just rest on your lap – it requires holding and re-positioning and can be a slippery gadget.

This funky design from www.quirky.com will look good in the modern home or office and importantly has a foam cushion on the underside so it’s comfortable, too.

Quirky.com is a design collective where ideas can be submitted by the general public for US$99. If the idea is useful/unique enough, it is passed through resident designers and the Quirky community gets a say on the look, logo, etc.

Depending on the unit price, Quirky needs pre-sale commitment from a certain number of people and when this number is reached it goes on sale.

By Marie Boran, Silicon Republic, Tuesday July 20 2010

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Computer giant HP which has just acquired smartphone maker Palm has completed a trademark application for ‘PalmPad’ signalling its intention to go head to head with Apple’s iPad.

HP, which earlier this month confirmed it completed the US$1.2bn acquisition of Palm, has made no secret of thefact that it plans to feature Palm’s webOS in a new line of tablet PCs, netbooks and smartphones.

The filing with the USPTO was made by Hewlett-Packard Development Company based out of Houston, Texas.

Prior to buying Palm, HP has been mysteriously quiet about plans to make a Windows 7 based tablet computer – dubbed the Slate – and has jettisoned plans to make Android-based tablet devices.

Upon completion of the Palm purchase, Todd Bradley, executive vice-president of HP’s Personal Systems Group, explained the that acquisition will give HP access to Palm’s webOS platform and, in particular, a “rich portfolio of intellectual property” from the smartphone maker.

Former Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein made it clear the webOS platform will feature in future slate PCs and netbooks.

“With webOS, HP will deliver its customers a unique and compelling experience across smartphones and other mobility products.

“This allows us the opportunity to fully engage in growing our smartphone family offering and the footprint of webOS.”

Rubenstein will lead the Palm global business unit within HP and will report to Bradley.

By John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, Tuesday July 20 2010

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