Western Digital launches WD TV Live

Western Digital announced Tuesday the launch of its new WD TV Live HD Media Player. Available now for $149.99, the WD TV Live hopes to transform your television into a home media hub. The WD TV Live is an upgrade over the previous WD TV model, now adding Ethernet connectivity and digital theater sound to its extensive features.

The concept remains the same: you plug the WD TV into a television set and any external hard drive. Western Digital says it designs products with users in mind and has paid particular attention to how user friendly the UI is. The WD TV is designed to take your media files from your external hard drive and play them on your TV. The device supports many different types of audio and video files, such as H.264, MKV, VIDEO_TS folders, and FLAC audio, and can play back HD video in full 1080p resolution. While providing high definition capabilities, it's designed to be easily navigable for the average user. First, it adds Digital Theater Sound (DTS) support (it previously supported Dolby Digital) for surround sound capabilities. Since the introduction of the original WD TV, the Western Digital team has sought consumer input, said Seema Lindskog, a director of marketing for WD. In addition to offering an improved UI with a movie preview screen feature, the WD TV Live has two major advantages over its predecessor.

With the addition of an Ethernet port, the WD TV Live can access popular Web services such as YouTube, Pandora, and Flickr with the click of a button. While some people may see this an oversight, Western Digital seems to be targeting this product for users with large media libraries who would quickly fill up a built-in hard drive. It can also stream content from an external hard drive, a Mac, or a Windows PC. The Ethernet capabilities of the WD TV Live make it easy to centralize your media, though the WD TV Live itself does not have any storage capacity. Also, not including storage in the unit allows the company to keep the price down.

Benioff plays nice to Oracle at OpenWorld

Attendees packed into a presentation by Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff at Oracle's OpenWorld conference Tuesday, but those hoping the executive would deliver some of his trademark trash talk toward Oracle left the room disappointed. But Benioff made no response to Ellison's jibes on Tuesday, instead referring to the companies' "fantastic relationship" and thanking Oracle for being "magnanimous" enough to let Salesforce.com appear at OpenWorld. Some sort of throwdown seemed possible, even likely, given that during a shareholder meeting last week, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison mocked Salesforce.com's offering as a "little itty-bitty application" that is dependent on Oracle's own technology. Salesforce.com is a sponsor of the show.

Since then, the two executives have repeatedly slammed each other's business model, with Benioff declaring on-premise software a dying model and Ellison famously mocking cloud computing on a number of occasions, even as his own company tests those waters. Ellison was an early investor in Salesforce.com, but left the vendor's board after he and Benioff had a falling out. Their history caused surprise and curiosity among some observers, who questioned why Oracle would allow such a direct rival to tout its products at OpenWorld. And during the shareholder meeting, Ellison said he could provide a long list of customers who once used Salesforce.com but "chucked it out" in favor of Oracle's own on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) software. Indeed, beyond slamming Salesforce.com's technological achievements, Ellison has made it a point during recent earnings conference calls to cite deals it won against the on-demand vendor.

But in the end, Benioff seemed more intent Tuesday on building bridges than burning them. The two companies announced a partnership on Monday for selling Salesforce.com CRM and related services to small and medium-sized businesses. At one point, he was joined onstage by Dell CEO Michael Dell. Salesforce.com and Dell already had close ties, having used each other's products for some time. Dell said its experience running Salesforce.com will give it an edge when working with new customers.

Former DHS cybersecurity chief points finger at Congress

Part of the blame for continued cybersecurity problems in the U.S. government and beyond lies with Congress and its "scattershot" approach to dealing with the issue, a former assistant secretary for cybersecurity at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. Some committees are pushing for more cybersecurity responsibility outside of DHS, while other committees are resisting changes, he said during a press briefing. Congress has often provided aggressive oversight of cybersecurity efforts at DHS and elsewhere, but there are continued turf battles between various congressional committees, and lawmakers introduce multiple pieces of legislation that sometimes conflict with each other, said Gregory Garcia, who served as assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications at DHS from late 2006 to late 2008. Garcia mentioned eight congressional committees that have responsibility for a portion of cybersecurity policy, and he called on congressional leadership to coordinate cybersecurity efforts. Congressional leaders "need to bring their committees together, sit them around the table ... and make sure everybody understands what is their jurisdiction, what's their responsibility, and what are the policy gaps," Garcia said. "Have a coordinated, leadership-driven process, rather than letting all these committees go off freelancing with their next great idea." If one committee is pressing for the U.S. Department of Justice to have more authority and a second is pressing for DHS to have more authority, "we're not making progress, we're going off scattershot," Garcia added.

There were also significant management problems at DHS, partly because the agency is only six years old, Garcia said, but a large problem was that agency leaders were sensitive about criticism from Congress, and wouldn't let lower level staffers make the decisions they had expertise to make. "Decisions were made at the political level, not at the civil servant level," he said. Garcia's time at DHS was marked by hypercriticism from a Democrat-controlled Congress of the agency, with its leadership appointed by former Republican President George Bush, he said. Some of the congressional criticism of DHS seemed "cynical," added Garcia, now president of Garcia Strategies, a consulting group. The House committee has hosted several hearings focused on cybersecurity in recent years. Representatives of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee didn't immediately respond to a request for a reaction to Garcia's comments.

Garcia's criticism of the cybersecurity policy process came two days after the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report saying that federal IT systems remain vulnerable to a variety of cyberattacks. Agencies did not consistently authenticate users to prevent unauthorized access to systems; did not encrypt sensitive data; and did not log and monitor security-relevant events, the GAO said. Security audits have "identified significant weaknesses in the security controls on federal information systems, resulting in pervasive vulnerabilities," the GAO report said. "GAO has identified weaknesses in all major categories of information security controls at federal agencies." During 2008, audits found weaknesses at information security controls at 23 of 24 major U.S. agencies, the GAO said. Agencies have failed to fully implement information security programs, the report said. Many large companies should have enough incentives to protect their data, Kessler said. "I'm not sure regulations or fine are necessarily going to compel boards of directors or senior IT executives," he said. "They can lose everything with one vulnerability." However, Congress may be able to create some incentives for medium-sized businesses that don't have the resources to properly address cybersecurity, Kessler added. Asked what Congress can do to help private companies better protect themselves, Garcia and Alan Kessler, president of intrusion protection vendor TippingPoint, questioned whether new regulations would be productive.

Garcia also questioned whether new regulations would be effective, but he warned that they may be coming. Some U.S. industries still don't take cybersecurity seriously enough, he said. "There may be a time when the Congress gets fed up ... and will declare market failure and regulate," he said.

NASA offers $400,000 prize for super space glove

If you can build a high-tech glove that can move easily and operate effectively in the vacuum of space, NASA may have $400,000 for your effort. NetworkWorld Extra: 12 mad science projects that could shake the world NASA said the competition will test gloves from at least two contestants that will measure the gloves' dexterity and strength during operation in a glove box that simulates the vacuum of space. That's the amount of money up for grabs in the 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge set for Nov. 19 at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla.

According to the competition Web site, the challenge will be conducted by Volanz Aerospace in a format that brings all competitors to a single location for a "head to head" competition to determine the winning Team(s). Each team will be required pass a series of minimum performance requirements having to do with the glove's interface with the interface to the test box, flexibility, dexterity and pressurization. The team(s) that earns the highest score will be the winner. Other requirements include: the weight of the outer or thermal micrometeoroid garment (TMG) layer of the glove must not exceed 200 grams; and the TMG must be able to withstand a temperature range from -120 degrees Celsius (-185 F) to +113 degrees Celsius (235 F). Performance tests include range-of-motion and the ability of the operator to push and pull items as well as manipulate them. From the Web site: For this test, conducted in the glove box, the Competitor will insert the full Glove, consisting of the TMG layer, outer glove unpressurized layer, and the unpowered, bladder and bladder-restraint portion of the Glove into the Glove Box. The glove challenge is but one of NASA's Centennial Challenges that offers top dollar rewards for a variety of innovative technologies.

The Competitor will perform 30 minutes of hand exercises (e.g., pinching and gripping), and other manipulation dexterity tests and tasks that will be scored based on performance. For example, NASA recently awarded $1.65 million in prize money to a pair of aerospace companies that successfully simulated landing a spacecraft on the moon and lifting off again. NASA recently held and awarded a $900,000 prize in its Power Beaming and Tether Challenge to develop future solar power satellites and a futuristic project known as the Space Elevator. NASA gave a $1 million first prize to Masten Space Systems and a $500,000 second prize to Armadillo Aerospace for successfully completing the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Space elevators are in a nutshell stationary tethers rotating with the Earth, held up by a weight at its end, and serving as a track on which electric vehicles called "climbers" can travel up and down carrying about 10 tons of payload, according to The Spaceward Foundation which is working with NASA on these challenges.

Microsoft Windows chief decries standards grandstanding

Los Angeles – Microsoft will be compliant with industry standards in Internet Explorer 9 such as HTML 5, but Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live division, decried the habit of vendors getting ahead of the process. There is a little bit of a time warp going on." Sinofsky was making reference to Mozilla who is pushing heavily on HTML 5 in development of its Firefox browser. Browser that launched an industry turns 15 "We are not trying to market things that are not there for developers to use yet," said Sinofsky during an interview with Network World. "Whether they are in IE or not, saying you are standards based but then saying you are the most HTML 5 compliant browser does not make sense because the standard is not [complete] yet.

The browser issue is a hot topic given that Microsoft has lost over the past year about 7% market share, according the thecounter.com, as users gave up on IE 7 to go to alternatives such as Firefox and Safari. Sinofsky characterized his stand as responsible engineering. "We understand people's desire for interoperability so HTML 5 is a thing that people talk about a lot but it is not even at the standard recommendation phase yet." Microsoft supports some aspects of the standard that are complete now such as storage and cross-site navigation. Microsoft is hoping IE 8 can attack that trend and have IE 9 squash it. Microsoft, however, is working toward full support on the HTML 5 specification, which was one of three advancements Sinofsky highlighted when he talked about IE 9 during his Wednesday keynote address. But he would not provide any delivery dates for the software.

The other two were improvements on the Acid 3 test of standards compatibility, where Microsoft now scores 32 out of 100 with its latest prototype browser, and GPU-based rendering, which takes advantage of hardware for tasks such as animation or rendering type. "These three things will be in IE 9," he said. In terms of Acid 3, a test from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a browser follows certain parts of Web standards, Sinofsky admitted there is work to do and said that Microsoft is doing it. "We are behind in it and I want to make sure people understand that we get it, we are working and we are showing progress," he said. Microsoft released a set of videos it produced that highlight its standards work. Sinofsky also acknowledged that the SunSpider Java benchmark shows IE performance lacking against the competition and said that disparity would be corrected. Sinofsky said the third important area for IE 9 will be performance, especially as it relates to taking advantage of modern PC hardware.

In terms of animation in a browser, Sinofsky said it can't be done effectively without hardware. "The difference between a PC game today and a PC game from 10 years ago is that the game 10 years ago looked like an animated cartoon, it is like comparing a Pixar film to a Disney film. During his Wednesday demo, Sinofsky showed text rendering being done by a graphics chip using DirectX's Direct2D, and he showed a map animation using GPU-based rendering that improved the frame per second rate from 14 to 60. "The device [the browser] is on matters; hardware acceleration is just one example" he said. "The readability you gain by using a hardware chip rendering text is very significant." Sinofsky said corporate end-users reading lots of text each day from a browser can reduce eye strain and improve their performance just by having improved text rendering. That is all hardware; and having all that show through the browser while still working on standards is incredibly important." Follow John on Twitter.