|
|
Archive for May, 2010
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
 Chase released an iPad app May 5, becoming the first U.S. bank to get a native mobile banking application on Apple’s new tablet computer.
Currently Chase’s iPad app allows customers to access balances, pay bills, send wire transfers and know the location of the nearest ATM and branch. Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly said Chase will continue to upgrade its iPad app in the future.
“We knew customers would be interested in iPad, and we wanted to make an app available as quickly as possible,” he said in an e-mail. “So we worked quickly to get it done.”
Tags: apps, bank, ipad, Technology
Posted in Industry Stories | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
 Congratulations to Mr. Reginald H. Smith Jr. – Chief Executive Officer with Metairie Bank in Metairie, Louisiana!
He is the WINNER of a new Dell Netbook from the Percento Technologies drawing today at the Louisiana Bankers Association Annual Convention.
Thank you to everyone who joined our drawing.
Posted in Percento | No Comments »
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
 Microsoft Office has been the best selling piece of software for five years running. How does the company plan to compete when it releases Office 2010 Wednesday? Make most of it available for free.
Microsoft Office has been the best selling piece of software for five years running. How does the company plan to compete when it releases Office 2010 Wednesday? Make most of it available for free.
To counter the popularity of Google’s online Docs application, which bundles a word-processing tool, spreadsheet editing, presentation functionality and more into one free app, Microsoft is adding its own free online component: Web apps.
The Office 2010 suite, which Microsoft will release to business customers tomorrow and to consumers in early June, will include the ability to create, edit, view and share files online using the company’s SkyDrive website. In fact, you won’t even need to buy the program to use the online tools; Microsoft will make the majority of Office functionality available for free to anyone — whether they’ve bought the new suite or not.
To use the online functions, simply visit SkyDrive.com (or the Facebook-ified version at docs.com). You can also save a file from one of the Office 2010 apps directly to SkyDrive. Then visit the file from any browser, anywhere you go, and click the edit button to bring up editing options. The free versions of these apps don’t include all of the functionality you’ll find if you buy Office 2010, but most users will probably find it sufficient.
So which is easier to use, Google Docs or Office 2010? Both are relatively straightforward programs, though Office adds some neat extras, such as the ability to broadcast a PowerPoint presentation across the Internet. Office Web Apps have a few rough edges still, but once ironed out they’ll be very robust programs — especially considering the price.
There’s more to Office 2010 than just that, of course. Outlook fans will appreciate a new Social Connector feature, which brings the e-mail and calendaring program into the world of social networking. It lets you sync contact data with popular social networks, sharing status, pictures, shared documents and more.
Office 2010 Also adds a very neat “broadcast” function for PowerPoint presentations. The feature uploads your presentation to a secure website and gives you a unique URL to it; pass the URL to your friends or colleagues to create an impromptu presentation from wherever you are. It’s a very convenient way to collaborate — though to start such a presentation, you’ll need to buy Microsoft Office 2010.
There are many other smaller improvements, of course, such as Excel’s Sparklines — a new data visualization technique that adds little trend lines into individual cells — new text effects for Word, video editing functions in PowerPoint and so on.
But the biggest change users will encounter is hardly a new one at all. When Microsoft released Office 2007, the company rewrote the rules for interfacing software with “the Ribbon,” a new user interface paradigm that bubbles up contextual commands — in theory, just the ones you’ll want for whatever you’re doing.
The interface is polarizing: You either love it or can’t figure out how to use it. And that’s part of the reason MS didn’t have a gigantic hit on its hands with the last version of its productivity suite. With Office 2010, the Ribbon expands onto all of the Office apps. Learn to love it, in other words — and embrace the online future of Office.
Office 2010 sells in several versions. Office Professional, which includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010, and premium technical support is priced at $499 for the full boxed copy or $349 for the product key card.
Office Home and Business sells for $279 in a box, or $199 for a product key that lets you download and activate the app online. This version includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and Outlook 2010.
Office Home and Student is priced at $149 for the boxed version and $119 for the product key card and includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and the Office Web Apps. It is available in a Family Pack, allowing use on three PCs in one home.
Source
Posted in Industry Stories, Percento | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
 Percento Technologies is exibiting to the Louisiana Bankers Association 110th Annual Convention & Exposition, open to member and non-member bankers, associate members, exhibitors and sponsors, is being held this week, at the Hyatt Lost PinesResort & Spa just outside of Austin, Texas.
Hundreds of bank CEOs, directors, executive vice presidents and senior management decision-makers will gather for educational programs, networking events, an extensive exhibit hall and golf tournament.
Percento is giving away a Dell Netbook by drawing, to be held at 5:00 PM Thursday afternoon. Winner to be announced here on the Percento Blog.
Posted in Percento | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
 Security research firm Matousec has published details of a technique for bypassing some of the protections offered by widely used Windows security software, including programs from McAfee and Trend Micro.
However, the attack has serious limitations, including the requirement that the attacker must already have the ability to execute code on a system, Matousec acknowledged. That means the method would have to be used in combination with another attack vector, or employed by an attacker with local access to a system.
The method, called an argument-switch attack, can be used against Windows security programs that use a technique called System Service Descriptor Table (SSDT) hooking. All of the 35 applications tested by Matousec featured this technique, including products from BitDefender, F-Secure, Kaspersky, and Sophos, as well as McAfee and Trend Micro.
Source
Tags: Matousec, widespread antivirus flaw
Posted in Industry Stories, Percento | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Congratulations to Ms. June Liles - with Lincoln Harris!
She is the WINNER of a new Dell Netbook from the Percento Technologies in the 2010 Houston Building Owners and Management (Houston BOMA) Expo drawing.
Thank you to everyone who joined our drawing.
Tags: BOMA, Building owners and management, houston BOMA
Posted in Percento | No Comments »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
The Federal Communications Commission released detailed plans Thursday to ensure that it has authority to craft new rules to keep the Internet open.
Figuring out exactly what the FCC is proposing and how it will affect the industry and consumers is confusing. The procedure the FCC has chosen to shore up its authority is complicated and requires some legal gymnastics. To get the skinny on what’s being proposed check out this FAQ below:
What exactly did the FCC do on Thursday?
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski released details of a new plan to reclassify broadband services so that some common carrier rules required by telecom services would apply to broadband. The thought is that reclassifying broadband would put the FCC on firmer legal ground for establishing Net neutrality rules, which are supposed to keep the Internet open and free and protect consumers from companies trying to monkey with their Internet traffic.
The FCC is doing this because a month ago the agency’s authority was called into question when a federal court ruled against the FCC for punishing Comcast for violating its Net neutrality principles. The court basically said that the FCC did not have the authority to give Comcast a slap on the wrist for slowing down BitTorrent traffic on its network.
How is broadband currently classified?
Today, broadband is classified as what’s called a Title I Information service under the Telecommunications Act. These services are not regulated by the FCC. This means that the FCC cannot tell broadband providers that they need to share their networks with competitors or what prices to charge for their service.
By contrast, services that are classified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act are considered telephony services and those are regulated. Under this provision, companies that own their own phone networks are considered common carriers and they must share that infrastructure with competitors. The government is also able to set rates on how much they charge for the use of those facilities.
If the FCC is reclassifying broadband as a Title II service will all the rules under this classification apply to broadband?
The short answer is no. Under this plan, the FCC will reclassify broadband as a regulated service under Title II. But broadband services will be exempt from most of the old rules written for a monopolistic, 100-year-old telephone infrastructure.
The FCC has no intention of forcing facilities sharing or to control rates, FCC officials have promised. The FCC says all it is trying to do with this measure is to reassert the limited authority it thought it had before the Comcast decision. Genachowski simply wants to put the agency on firmer legal ground so that the agency can finish making its proposed Net neutrality principles official regulation. Without reclassification, the FCC argues that its new rules could be challenged in court.
Does the FCC even have the legal authority to reclassify broadband services?
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the FCC’s legal authority to reclassify communications services, according to the agency. In the Brand X case, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court affirmed the FCC’s decision at the time to classify cable broadband as an unregulated information service. The majority in this case said that FCC had the technical expertise to determine the classification.
As a result, cable modem service remained unregulated. Soon after the decision, the FCC reclassified DSL service as an information service as well to put it on the same legal ground as cable.
Assuming that the FCC does have the authority to reclassify traffic, does this mean that all Internet services will be classified as Title II?
No, the FCC has said that it will limit the new rules to broadband transmission. This means that services, such as EarthLink’s broadband service, which uses infrastructure from another provider like AT&T, will not be regulated. Other Internet services, such as Google would also not be regulated under this definition.
The FCC argues that the basis for applying the standard in this way comes from the dissenting opinion in the Brand X case led by Justice Antonin Scalia. He argued that broadband transmission service should be classified separately from Internet content services.
Does anyone disagree that the FCC has the legal authority to reclassify broadband services?
Yes, the telephone companies, namely AT&T and Verizon Communications, strongly disagree that the FCC has the authority to reclassify broadband.
“We believe this is without legal basis,” said Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs for AT&T. “Congress has never given the FCC explicit authority to regulate the Internet under Title II. Simply because it desires to do so, or is concerned because a court has questioned its authority to do so, does not by itself confer legal authority.”
AT&T suggests that if the FCC is concerned about its legal standing, it should go back to Congress and ask Congress to pass a law giving it explicit authority to deal with the issue.
“The right and proper step is to place that question before the Congress,” Cicconi said in his statement. “We feel confident that if the FCC proceeds down this path, the federal courts will ultimately reach the same conclusion.”
Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president of public affairs, also said he doesn’t believe that the FCC has the authority to make these changes.
“We believe that the chairman’s stated approach is legally unsupported,” he said in a statement. “The regulatory and judicial proceedings that will ensue can only bring confusion and delay to the important work of continuing to build the nation’s broadband future.”
There must be some companies that support the FCC’s position. Who are they?
Thirteen companies, including Google, Amazon.com, and eBay, praised the FCC’s reclassification proposal in a letter sent to Genachowski in support of his plan.
“We applaud the middle ground approach that you have proposed,” the letter said. “We share your belief that this course will create a legally sound, light-touch regulatory framework that benefits consumers, technology companies, and broadband Internet access providers.”
It sounds like there will soon be a lot of lawsuits brewing. Are broadband companies the only ones likely to sue? What other types of legal challenges could there be?
AT&T, Verizon Communications, Comcast, and all the other broadband providers are likely to challenge the reclassification rules in court. But that’s just the beginning. There is a very good chance that even groups that support the FCC’s reclassification plan could sue the agency for making too many exceptions to the rules.
For example, the advocacy group Free Press applauded the FCC’s plan for “sending a clear signal” that they are “charting a path toward sensible broadband policy framework that will protect consumers and promote universal access.”
But then the group’s President and CEO Josh Silver went on to say in the same statement that the plan did not go far enough.
What kind of effect could all this litigation have on broadband service? Could the FCC’s actions stifle investment?
Legal uncertainty is never a good thing for investors. The FCC said it is confident that none of the forbearance provisions will be overturned. In the 17 years since the FCC was granted the right to make exceptions to its rules, none of those exceptions has ever been overturned, the agency said. But critics say that courts may see things differently, and even the suggestion of ongoing litigation over this issue could cause companies and broadband investors to take a wait and see approach. And this would stifle innovation and slow down broadband deployments precisely at the time the FCC is trying to encourage more investment in broadband.
“If the FCC follows through with the chairman’s stated intent, it will have a direct impact on jobs and investment in one of the areas of the U.S. economy that many hoped could help lead the recovery,” Cicconi said in his statement.
So what’s next? How long will it take for the FCC to actually go through this process of reclassifying broadband traffic a Title II service?
First, the FCC will vote on the an item to start the process. This should take place within the next month, according to FCC officials. The “notice of inquiry” will ask the public for input on how to reclassify broadband services.
At the same time, the FCC will issue a “notice of forbearance,” which will clarify the exceptions to Title II that should be included when reclassifying broadband. It’s difficult to say how long this process will take. But it’s a good guess to say it will take several months to a year to get the proposal finished.
What does this all mean for the average consumer?
Honestly, broadband consumers are not likely to see any change in service anytime soon. Even if broadband services are reclassified, which won’t happen for at least a year, consumers aren’t likely to notice anything different. But critics say that in the long run, consumers will be affected because companies will stop investing in their infrastructure.
Supporters say just the opposite. They believe more investment will result, because Internet companies will invest in creating new services without the fear of big broadband providers trying to control their services.
Tags: broadband, fcc, plan
Posted in Industry Stories, Percento | No Comments »
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Apple announced that its bestselling iPad will be available in nine international markets starting May 28, with preordering in those countries starting May 10. In July, the iPad will expand to still more countries, including Belgium and Hong Kong. Apple had previously announced delays in its international rollout due to sales that apparently exceeded the company’s supply pipeline and internal expectations. More than 1 million iPads have been sold since the device’s April 3 release.
Apple announced on May 7 that the iPad will be available May 28 in nine international markets: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The iPad’s early sales success in the United States had exceeded Apple’s supply pipeline, forcing the delay in the international rollout to late May.
A statement on Apple’s site indicated that iPad preorders for those nine markets would begin May 10, for both the WiFi-only and 3G-enabled versions of the device. The latter began selling in the United States April 30, and retails at a roughly $130 premium over the WiFi-only version.
July will see the iPad arrive in another round of countries, including Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore. Release dates and preordering for nine other countries are apparently in the works.
Since the iPad’s April 3 release in the United States, Apple executives have repeatedly indicated that demand for the device has outstripped internal expectations. “[We] will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad,” the company said in an April statement.
Total iPad sales topped 1 million units by the end of April. In addition, Apple indicated in its May 7 statement that some 12 million apps and 1.5 million ebooks had been downloaded by iPad owners. Those numbers contributed to Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall raising his calendar year 2010 revenue estimates for Apple from $57.9 billion to $62.6 billion: “Once again, we highlight our view that Apple remains the best technology company on the planet with numerous catalysts on the horizon—e.g., international iPhone ramp, iPad ramp, emerging recurring revenue stream, etc.—and no business model issues.”
Despite delays in the international rollout, the iPad has already attracted its share of attention in other countries, with Israel temporarily banning the device due to its WiFi capability allegedly being in noncompliance with the European wireless standards.
However, Israel later reversed its decision and returned iPads confiscated by customs. “Following the completion of intensive technical scrutiny, Israel Minister of Communications Moshe Kakhlon approved the import of [the] iPad to Israel,” the Israeli Communications Ministry wrote in a statement reprinted on Reuters. “Accordingly, the import of a single device per person will be permitted commencing Sunday, April 25.”
Source
Tags: international, ipad, rollout
Posted in Industry Stories, Percento | No Comments »
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
 Congratulations to Mr. Randall W. Dobbs - Chief Executive Officer with Community National Bank in Belllaire, Texas!
He is the WINNER of a new Dell Netbook from the Percento Technologies drawing today at the Texas Bankers Association Annual Convention.
Thank you to everyone who joined our drawing.
Posted in Cool Technology | No Comments »
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Percento staff attended and exibited the Houston Building Owners and Manaement Expo this week.
The Houston BOMA Building Expo is back…and better than ever! More exhibitors attended, more products and services offered and more fun! It is the largest Expo of its kind in this industry.
Tags: BOMA, houston
Posted in Percento | No Comments »
|
|
Chase released an iPad app May 5, becoming the first U.S. bank to get a native mobile banking application on Apple’s new tablet computer.
