Yearly Archives: 2010

Ubuntu recently announced that the next release of Linux based Ubuntu 11.04, would use Unity instead of GNOME as its default desktop interface.

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder said, “Lots of people are already committed to Unity, the community, desktop users, developers, and platform and hardware vendors.” In particular, he noted, “Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) favor Unity. They’re happy to ship it. Dell, Lenovo and Acer are reported by ITworld support the move.

Ubuntu will aso be switching Ubuntu’s base graphics system from the X Window System to Wayland.

Ubuntu’s Unity interface: What to expect at: http://www.itworld.com/open-source/128540/ubuntus-unity-interface-what-expect

Google has developed a new algorithm that will not reward businesses with bad customer service, according to an article , “Being bad to your customers is bad for business”, on a Google blog.

This was after a recent article by the New York Times “By treating your customers badly, one merchant told the paper, you can generate complaints and negative reviews that translate to more links to your site; which, in turn, make it more prominent in search engines. ”

“In the last few days we (Google) developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.”

Full article: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html

Google has released Earth 6, The upgrade adds integrated Street Views into Google Earth and over 50 species of trees have been added.

“In Google Earth 6, we’re taking realism in the virtual globe to the next level with two new features: a truly integrated Street View experience and 3D trees. We’ve also made it even easier to browse historical imagery. Over the next several days, we’ll be digging deeper into these great new features, but here’s an overview to whet your appetite.”

More: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing-google-earth-6the-next.html

Attachmate Corporation today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire, upon closing, Novell, Inc. for a purchase price of $6.10 per common share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $2.2 billion. Novell, a leader in intelligent workload management, helps organizations securely deliver and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments through solutions for identity and security, systems management, collaboration and Linux based operating platforms.

Attachmate Corporation is owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. As part of the transaction, Elliott Management Corporation, one of Novell’s largest shareholders, will become an equity shareholder in Attachmate Corporation. Upon close, Attachmate Corporation will manage a brand portfolio consisting of Attachmate(R), NetIQ(R), Novell(R) and SUSE(R).

“This acquisition will add significant assets to our current portfolio holdings and the Novell and SUSE brands will allow us to deliver even more value to customers,” said Jeff Hawn, chairman and CEO of Attachmate Corporation. “We have great respect for Novell’s business, its employees and its commitment to customers. Moreover, we look forward to maintaining and further strengthening Novell and SUSE solutions to meet market demands.”

“We believe the transaction with Attachmate Corporation will deliver important benefits to Novell’s customers, partners and employees by providing opportunities for building on Novell’s history of innovation and market leadership,” said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. “Novell, SUSE, Attachmate and NetIQ have complementary product portfolios and many shared customers. We are pleased that Attachmate has committed to building on the strengths of the Novell and SUSE brands to address customer needs.”

“We are pleased to be supporting this important business combination,” commented David Golob, partner at Francisco Partners. “The broad portfolio of products and technologies gives Attachmate Corporation the ability to deliver comprehensive solutions ranging from information security to cloud computing for the benefit of leading enterprises globally.”

“From our perspective, we believe there is great opportunity to build upon Novell’s established record of innovation and impressive technology,” commented Prescott Ashe, managing director, Golden Gate Capital. “This is consistent with our charter to partner with world-class management teams to make equity investments where there are demonstrable opportunities to significantly enhance company value.”

“Elliott is pleased to have been a major catalyst in this transaction, enabling Novell’s shareholders to realize substantial shareholder value,” said Jesse A. Cohn, portfolio manager at Elliott Management. “Novell has a robust product set that we believe will create a significant value opportunity as part of the Attachmate Corporation portfolio of products.”

The transaction is currently expected to close in the first quarter of 2011 and is subject to customary closing conditions including antitrust clearance, Novell stockholder approval and certain other regulatory approvals and closing conditions. The transaction is also conditioned upon the concurrent closing of Novell’s planned sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC.

Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets are acting as financial advisors and Jones Day is acting as legal advisor to Attachmate Corporation. Financing is being provided by Credit Suisse, RBC Capital Markets, Goldman Sachs and Citadel Securities. J.P. Morgan is serving as financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is acting as legal counsel to Novell. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP advised Elliott Management on the transaction.

About Attachmate Corporation Attachmate Corporation, owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo, enables IT organizations to extend mission critical services and assures they are managed, secure and compliant. Principal holdings include Attachmate (www.attachmate.com) and NetIQ (www.netiq.com).

About Novell Novell, Inc., a leader in Intelligent Workload Management, helps organizations securely deliver and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments. Novell helps customers reduce the cost, complexity, and risk associated with their IT systems through our solutions for identity and security, systems management, collaboration and Linux based operating platforms. With its infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com

Evernote now has over 5 million users according to the companies blog. The cloud memory service service is gaining tens of thousands of new users per day.

Evernote report: twenty two thousand one hundred and thirty new people joined Evernote yesterday.

Highest daily revenue from Evernote Premium subscriptions
Most single-day Windows users ever (thanks to our recent Evernote 4.0 for Windows update)
Most single-day Android users ever (thanks to the awesome, new Evernote 2.0 for Android)
Most single-day BlackBerry users ever (ditto)”

There are Mac and iPhone / iPad updates coming soon.

http://blog.evernote.com/2010/11/10/5-million-evernote-users/

Janco Associates has just published a list of domains that are spamming businesses in the United States. The CEO of Janco, Mr. Victor Janulaitis said, “We have decided to publicly publish a list of frequently spamming domains hoping that this will put pressure on those domains that are listed.” Janulaitis added, “We hope that more businesses and individuals will begin to add domain filters and bounce messages back to those site.”

Janco has found that there are a significant number of sites that do not attempt to follow the CANSPAM requirements. In particular are site in the .ru (Russian) domain. If businesses and individuals who control spam filters begin to add these domains to their filters then it will become more difficult for spammers to distribute their emails. When this begins to impact valid users in those domains then more pressure will be placed on the ISPs who host them.

Janco will dedicate specific pages on its web site to publish not only spammer domains but key words that can be added to filters. Where possible Janco will use wild card characters so that entire ranges of domains and banned words can be used in the process to minimize the amount of spam that users receive. The list are contained in a format that is easily copied with cut and paste directly from Janco’s web pages.

Janulaitis said, “The two primary pages that can be used for as a basis for the cut and paste are http://www.e-janco.com/Banned_email_domains.html and http://www.e-janco.com/Banned_email_text.html.” These pages are available immediately and have directly inks to over a dozen social networking sites.

Janco is a Mountain States based consulting firm that publishes the IT Salary Survey, Browser Market Data, and the IT Infrastructure HandiGuide® series of books used by IT, finance, human resources and other professionals as the source of information on topics from policies and procedures, to job descriptions.

Google has announced a page preview feature, called “Instant Previews,” so you see what’s on a page that’s listed in Google’s search results without having to leave Google.

Instant Previews provides a graphic overview of a search result and highlights the most relevant sections, making finding the right page as quick and easy as flipping through a magazine. To use it, click once on the magnifying glass next to the title of any search result and a visual overview of the page will appear on the right. From there, hover your cursor over any other result to see a preview. For those of you who’ve recently stopped using your mouse to search, now you can navigate to a result, hit the right arrow key to see the preview, and hit the down arrow key to keep browsing.