Money investment

An appellate court ruled that ClearOne Communications Inc.’s agreement to pay attorneys fees for its former CEO came with conditions, including that she not break the law.

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a maker of computer virtualization software, said Tuesday it has bought two smaller companies — Integrien and TriCipher.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Integrien makes performance analytics software and TriCipher’s technology helps manage online logins and user authentications.

VMware makes virtualization software that allows one computer to function as several, helping businesses cut costs by saving on energy and equipment.

Both acquisitions are expected to close in the third quarter.

An Anglican Church in Nova Scotia has announced plans for a uniquely technological ceremony — the spiritual blessing of smartphones, laptops, and other electronic communication devices.

Rev. Lisa Vaughan, rector of St. Timothy’s parish in Hatchet Lake (15 km southwest of Halifax) plans to perform the ceremony this coming Sunday. Despite the ultra-modern focus, she says, the ceremony is firmly rooted in tradition.

“I think they traditionally used to call it Plough Monday, where people used to bring their farming equipment and tools to the church to be blessed,” said Rev. Vaughan explained. “Most of us live with our cellphones and laptops and BlackBerrys and all that kind of stuff. I mean, those are just daily tools for us.”

As businesses turn to cloud computing and Web conferencing to save money, online meeting service provider Dimdim looks to capitalize on both movements with its latest product upgrade.

Dimdim 6.0, released Tuesday, updates the service’s desktop screen-sharing and video conferencing features and adds collaboration tools.

The service works by hosting Web meetings in the cloud, so using Dimdim only requires a browser — software downloads are not necessary. Users are given a permanent URL, hosted on Dimdim’s servers, that allows them to conduct or join meetings. Dimdim works with all browsers and OSes, according to the company, which is located in Lowell, Massachusetts.

“We live in the browser,” said Steve Chazin, Dimdim’s chief marketing officer. “Anything you can do in-office looking over someone’s shoulder you can do online.”

With businesses cutting travel budgets, companies are turning to online meetings, he said.

Chazin emphasized the updated desktop screen-sharing option, called MyScreen, as one of Dimdim 6′s new additions.

MyScreen now allows meeting organizers to select what portions of their desktop they share with participants. The person running the meeting moves a pop-up window around the desktop, allowing only the areas of the desktop they select to appear on the screens of other people in the meeting. The updated MyScreen function also permits the person running the meeting to share applications with other attendees.

In earlier versions of Dimdim, the video conferencing function only allowed participants to see one other person in the meeting. Dimdim 6 permits four people to be visible and adds a full-screen video conferencing feature.

Chazin also talked up Dimdim’s collaboration features, calling the service’s ability to share documents “one of its strongest features.”

Dimdim 6 gives users a secure library to store all their documents, the company said. Dimdim supports all document formats so users can upload, for example, a Microsoft Word document or PowerPoint presentation to Dimdim’s servers and then share the files with other participants.

Other new collaboration options include a polling feature and the ability to share Web content.

The polling option allows the person running the meeting to create a poll to vote on during a meeting to gage participants’ reactions to a meeting’s progress.

Meeting organizers can share URLs to YouTube videos and Picasa photo albums by pasting a link to the page in their MyScreen display. Other Web content can also be displayed by pasting the embed code.

A basic version of Dimdim is free for a conference of up to 10 people.

For larger meetings and to use the more advanced options, such as four-person video chat and application sharing, businesses need to purchase a premium version of the service. Dimdim’s paid versions, which offer more advanced features, can serve larger conferences. Dimdim Pro costs US$25 a month for a meeting of up to 50 people. Dimdim Webinar sells for $65 a month for a meeting of up to 50 people and events with 1,000 participants. Dimdim Business is $33 per user per month for unlimited meetings of up to 100 people.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

An experiment run by Duke University and a European group responsible for managing Internet resources went wrong Friday, disrupting a small percentage of Internet traffic.

The damage could have been far worse however, and the incident shows just how fragile one of the Internet’s core protocols really is, security experts say.

The problem started just before 9 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time Friday and lasted less than half an hour. It was kicked off when RIPE NCC (Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre) and Duke ran an experiment that involved the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) — used by routers to know where to send their traffic on the Internet. RIPE started announcing BGP routes that were configured a little differently from normal because they used an experimental data format. RIPE’s data was soon passed from router to router on the Internet, and within minutes it became clear that this was causing problems.

“During this announcement, some Internet service providers reported problems with their networking infrastructure,” wrote RIPE NCC’s Erik Romijn in a note posted to the NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) discussion list. “Immediately after discovering this, we stopped the announcement and started investigating the problem. Our investigation has shown that the problem was likely to have been caused by certain router types incorrectly modifying the experimental attribute and then further announcing the malformed route to their peers.”

That shouldn’t have happened on systems that were properly configured to support BGP, Romijn said, but nonetheless for a brief period Friday morning, about 1 percent of all the Internet’s traffic was affected by the snafu, as routers could not properly process the BGP routes they were being sent.

“Over 3,500 prefixes (announced blocks of IP addresses) became unstable at the exact moment this ‘experiment’ started,” wrote Earl Zmijewski, a general manager with Internet security firm Renesys. “Not surprisingly, they were located all over the world: 832 in the US, 336 in Russia, 277 in Argentina, 256 in Romania and so forth. We saw over 60 countries impacted.”

Security experts have warned for years that attackers could cause serious Internet disruptions by messing with BGP routes. Two years ago, YouTube was temporarily cut off from the Internet after a Pakistani BGP route that censored the video service was inadvertently spread worldwide.

Earlier this year, bad routes announced out of China ended up briefly disrupting some Internet traffic.

The damage from Friday’s experiment was minimal, but if someone had been able to intentionally announce bad routes, it would have been much worse, said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with security firm Trend Micro.

It’s unclear why RIPE NCC and Duke were trying out these new route formats.

One of the researchers behind the experiment, Duke assistant professor Xiaowei Yang, declined to talk in detail about the experiment, citing legal concerns. But she said that the work was for a research paper, and the BGP data that was sent was “100 percent standard compliant.”

“It is an experiment initiated by my student and I,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “It unexpectedly triggered some vendor bugs.”

RIPE NCC could not immediately be reached for comment.

Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert’s e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2010 series. Every day from mid July through August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.

When you create a contact in OS X’s Address Book, the first item entered for each entry point is considered the primary entry. For example, if you enter two e-mail addresses for a friend (one work address and one personal address), the first e-mail address you enter is considered by Address Book the primary. That’s the address that automatically appears when you’re addressing a e-mail to that same friend.

Unfortunately, there’s no built-in way in Address Book to change the primary designation for a contact. You need Set Primary Addresses an Address Book plug-in that simply adds the functionality to let you change the primary designation.

Set Primary Addresses goes in your Address Book Plug-Ins folder, which is located in your Library folder. When you want to change the primary designation, all you have to do is click on the field label; a menu will pop up, and “Make this the Primary” will be one of the selections. For example, to change the primary e-mail address, click the field label next to the address you want to designate, select “Make this the Primary Email” and you’re done. Now this e-mail will be the one that automatically fills in.

Set Primary Addresses doesn’t do much, but it provides a basic but needed function to Address Book.

Want to stay up-to-date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your inbox. You can also follow MacGems on Twitter.

Our 186-page Mac Gems Superguide is a veritable greatest hits of Mac Gems. It’s available as a PDF download, PDF on CD-ROM, or as a printed book. Learn more about the Mac Gems Superguide.

Roman Loyola is a Macworld senior editor.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Many games these days feature downloadable content. But how many of them give it away for free? Paradox Interactive is offering DLC for PC role-playing game Mount & Blade: Warband at no charge.

The new DLC is now available with Patch 1.130 to those who already own Warband. The DLC includes more than 70 Achievements, three new maps: Forest Hideout, which is tailored for conquest mode; Jamait Castle, a siege-warfare experience; and The Arena, a locale for deathmatches and other multiplayer fare. But why are they giving it away for free?

“To be quite honest, we do often charge for DLC and expansion packs, but we’re always looking into how we can provide additional value for our community,” says CEO Fredrik Wester of Paradox Interactive, the publisher for Mount & Blade, in an e-mail. “Warband has received such a great reception, and our gamers have become enormous advocates for the game, whether it’s posting about it on the [developer] TaleWorlds and Paradox forums or encouraging their friends to play it on Twitter. When we saw this specific DLC pack, we took a look at it and initially considered a low price point. But after some internal discussions, we opted to just give it away as a thank you to our fans.”

Mount & Blade, whose development was led by a husband-and-wife team, debuted in September 2008. The follow-up Warband came out in March.

Got any tips, corrections, or feedback? Contact GamePro’s news team or follow GamePro on Twitter.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

Sumo’s governing body plans to offer Apple iPads to each of  Japan’s 51 training stables after touchscreen smartphones have proved difficult to use for the oversized wrestlers. “When they try to send email on mobile phones or PCs they often end up pressing two or three keys at once,” the daily Nikkan Sports reports .

The Japan Sumo Association hopes the 9.56 inch by 7.47 inch tablet computers will improve communication between coaches, wrestlers and association officials following a series of scandals that have plagued the sport in recent months. The association intends to spend the equivalent of £23,000 on iPads, which will include officials finally replacing faxes as a means of communication.

“With faxes you can’t be sure if the message was actually received but with email we can prevent that,” the JSA told the Financial Times. “Plus, you can carry them around.”

Additionally, in Japan, Apple’s tablet device has also been hailed for its potential appeal to the elderly the Financial Times adds, due to a fifth of the population being past retirement age.

Click here for a free digital sample of Macworld’s Complete Guide to the iPad. Packed with tips and tricks, this essential guide gives you the lowdown on all the iPad’s features, plus the top 50 apps you must download.

Unlike other online speed tests, the Silver Networks Online Line Quality test checks speed AND latency- the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to travel, firewall-to check security as well as packet loss. These four components are crucial for the successful deployment of voice over IP (VoIP) services and for anyone who wants to know how fast they are surfing the web.
Guy Citrin, who lead the Silver Networks implementation of the free online service said, “This test is crucial for our mission.

Silver Networks is bandwidth agnostic- we don’t care how you’re getting your bandwidth. It doesn’t mean that we’re bandwidth atheists though! We need clients to be able to test their bandwidth to make sure that they have enough quality to deploy VoIP services. We supply a full suite of Hosted VoIP products- from voice, fax to email and hosted call centers. We want to make sure that these are deployed on the best quality lines at the lowest cost. The buzzword now is “bandwidth neutrality”- if you can get a cheaper circuit or are under contract, we are happy to provide you with the best VoIP solutions for your business needs regardless of who supplies the bandwidth. We just want the bandwidth to be good- before you go headfirst into VoIP.” The line quality test is located at www.silvernetworks.com. A traditional speed test is located there as well.

Silver Networks’ Free online Line Quality Meter is part of the Silver Networks commitment to bandwidth neutrality in providing best in class VoIP applications for business. The free test is a must for anyone considering deploying VoIP.It is accurate, useful and absolutely free.

Silver Networks provides best in class VoIP solutions including business grade VoIP, fax to email and hosted call center solutions. All of the applications are easy to install, easy to use and robust. There are no contracts, no installation fees and customers can continue to use their existing numbers.

Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2010 series. Every day from mid July through August, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a favorite free or low-cost program. Visit the Mac Gems homepage for a list of past Mac Gems.

When you create a contact in OS X’s Address Book, the first item entered for each entry point is considered the primary entry. For example, if you enter two e-mail addresses for a friend (one work address and one personal address), the first e-mail address you enter is considered by Address Book the primary. That’s the address that automatically appears when you’re addressing a e-mail to that same friend.

Unfortunately, there’s no built-in way in Address Book to change the primary designation for a contact. You need Set Primary Addresses an Address Book plug-in that simply adds the functionality to let you change the primary designation.

Set Primary Addresses goes in your Address Book Plug-Ins folder, which is located in your Library folder. When you want to change the primary designation, all you have to do is click on the field label; a menu will pop up, and “Make this the Primary” will be one of the selections. For example, to change the primary e-mail address, click the field label next to the address you want to designate, select “Make this the Primary Email” and you’re done. Now this e-mail will be the one that automatically fills in.

Set Primary Addresses doesn’t do much, but it provides a basic but needed function to Address Book.

Want to stay up-to-date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the Mac Gems newsletter for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your inbox. You can also follow MacGems on Twitter.

Our 186-page Mac Gems Superguide is a veritable greatest hits of Mac Gems. It’s available as a PDF download, PDF on CD-ROM, or as a printed book. Learn more about the Mac Gems Superguide.

Roman Loyola is a Macworld senior editor.

All contents copyright 1995-2010 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com