Margaret Walsh

Connected TVs, set-top boxes, and Blu-ray Disc players aren't new, but they continue to make new connections with Web sites and services, from YouTube and Netflix to Amazon and Internet radio sites. Some offer a lot more than others, but all are building up their portfolios of Web video and interactive services. The definition of "connected" varies widely between consumer electronics vendors.

Some of the newest entries were on display last week at the CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association) event in Atlanta. Available on networkable Bravia sets, the video service will also appear on a new networkable Sony Blu-ray Disc player, the BDP-N460, which will ship later this fall priced under $250. (Sony Bravia TVs also offer Web content such as stocks, weather, and Twitter, via their Bravia Widgets.) LG Electronics, meanwhile, announced the addition (via a firmware upgrade later this month) of the Vudu on-demand service to the Netcast Entertainment Access service on its $399 BD390 Blu-ray Disc player. Sony, which already offers movies, TV shows, and music from some two dozen partners, including Amazon movies on demand, Slacker radio, and YouTube, announced that it will add Netflix to its Bravia Internet Video lineup later this fall. The service already offers access to CinemaNow, Netflix, and YouTube content. And Samsung's networkable Blu-ray Disc players, including the BD-P1600, BD-P3600, and BD-P4600, will add YouTube access to the existing Pandora and NetFlix services.

Samsung's Internet@TV service, which already had a dozen Yahoo widgets, now offers on-screen access to Rallycast fantasy sports applications, including Facebook messaging and access to team stats. Pioneer, meanwhile, demo'd a new platform for connected electronics. The prototypes at CEDIA featured everything from video-on-demand services to backup. Code-named Project ET, it is designed to allow device designers and/or consumers to choose the content and services they want by clicking on menu buttons in the service's Web portal. Pioneer officials said the platform could exist on a set-top box of its own or on a Blu-ray Disc player or other networkable device (one demo setup featured a Blu-ray player with 1 terabyte of built-in storage. The company hopes to show a product based on the platform within the next few months.

To better safeguard the personal data of its students, the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) has adopted a specialized data-masking technique in its application development work that effectively can hide data in plain sight by mixing it up. 10 of the Worst Moments in Network Security History Data such as students' first and last names can be switched around to camouflage the real names, and sensitive information such as student identification numbers also undergoes a gentle jumbling so what appears to the eye is not the true number. Steve McCabe, associate director of information in UC Berkeley's residential and student services program, says the advantage in using the dataguise tool is it significantly reduces security risks around personal, sensitive data. "Student IDs paired with names becomes restricted data here," says McCabe, describing some of the data-privacy rules that the university must follow. It's done with a tool called datamasker from dataguise. But the challenge has been how to enforce restrictions in a software-development environment where constant work by several developers is ongoing to support UC Berkeley's home-grown Web-based applications for SQL Server, such as the housing and assignment system.

Though the actual production database has to be protected through other means, the risks associated with data exposed to developers and testers in the course of their work has been vastly reduced since UC Berkeley started using the tool about half a year ago. McCabe says the data-masking approach, in which the dataguise tool mixes up names, sensitive numbers and other data prior to developers seeing it (dataguise calls it "de-identification"), has worked out well because the data columns maintain the necessary structure but the content is effectively concealed to the naked eye. "We do a lot of application development and handling large volumes of student information, and we wanted a way to restrict that data," McCabe says. "So we randomize the IDs, and first name, last name, date of birth, and so forth." While one main copy of a production database is preserved, with the genuine student information, developers can freely work on copies that have undergone the dataguise data-masking treatment in what McCabe calls a "sanitized version" without concern of a potential data breach. "It maintains the relationship and updates with scrambled data," McCabe says. UC Berkeley, like many universities, has suffered consequential data breaches. In May of this year, UC Berkeley acknowledged a data breach in which it said hackers broke into its health-services databases, compromising health-related information on about 160,000 individuals.

Oracle is planning an aggressive fight with European regulators if its attempt to take over Sun is slapped with a statement of objections in the coming week, said people close to the company Wednesday. The European Commission declined to comment on the reports, but confirmed that if such a step was to be taken it would have to be taken soon, in order to allow enough time for procedures leading up to the Jan. 19 deadline for a ruling. "The ball game would change dramatically if the Commission issues a statement of objections," said one person familiar with Oracle's thinking who insisted on anonymity. Unsourced news reports that a statement of objections is imminent surfaced earlier Wednesday. He added: "Oracle has been holding back until now, and contrary to what the Commission says it has addressed the substance of the Commission's concerns about the deal in huge abundance." When the Commission opened an in-depth probe of the Oracle-Sun deal at the beginning of September, it said it was concerned about the deal's impact on the market for software that runs corporate databases.

Oracle is unwilling to sell off MySQL because it is "a strategic imperative of the deal," the person said. Sun owns MySQL, an open-source challenger to the big three makers of proprietary database technology: IBM, Microsoft and the market leader, Oracle. Oracle needs MySQL in order to compete with Microsoft in markets such as the one for small and medium-size corporate clients, he said. "This deal is the most transformational deal in the history of the IT industry. The frustration with European competition regulators is palpable, she said. It will enhance competition, not erode it, by creating a more viable counterweight to Microsoft," another person close to the merging companies said, also on condition that she wasn't named. The European Commission was notified of the deal at the beginning of August - a time when many Commission officials are away on holiday.

It can send a review off in the wrong direction. The chances of getting a quick thumbs-up in Brussels were not strengthened by the timing, as less-experienced officials were left to handle the notification, she said. "It's not ideal to have your deal handled by the B-team at the start. It looks like that's what has happened with Oracle/Sun," this person said. In reference to the most controversial merger ruling by the Commission in recent years, he said the transatlantic political storm that would be unleashed if the Commission blocked Oracle/Sun "would be like GE/Honeywell on steroids." General Electric's planned takeover of aeronautics firm Honeywell was cleared in the U.S., just as the Oracle/Sun deal was. If the Commission does issue formal objections to the deal it will mean war, said the person familiar with Oracle's thinking. But it was blocked in 2001 by the European Commission.

Although the political landscape has shifted dramatically with the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House, the person close to Oracle said the political fallout from a European prohibition of the Oracle/Sun deal would be even more intense. "While GE was arguing with the Commission, not one job at Honeywell was lost. During the buildup to that ruling, senior U.S. politicians including President George W. Bush intervened to try to save the deal. Sun has lost thousands and faces going out of business if this deal fails," the person said, pointing out that GE/Honeywell happened when the U.S. economy was strong, unlike now, when unemployment has reached almost 10 percent in the U.S.. "Senior politicians including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are ready to intervene on Oracle's and Sun's behalf but have been asked to hold fire for now," he said. Pelosi has close political and personal ties with Sun's hometown of San Francisco. "If the Commission issues an SO (statement of objections) in the coming week it will be gloves-off time - no more holding back," the person close to Oracle said.

With quarterly IT sales results pouring in, vendors including IBM, Google, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel appear more confident than ever that the global recession's depressing effects on the tech market are lifting. IBM, the second-biggest IT company in the world behind Hewlett-Packard, reported better-than-expected third-quarter results Thursday. Major U.S. market indexes including the tech-heavy Nasdaq dipped Friday, however, as investors absorbed mixed macroeconomic news. Though revenue dropped 7 percent from a year earlier to US$23.6 billion, it rose 1 percent sequentially from the second quarter and bested the $23.4 billion consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

The company reported its third-quarter net earnings rose to $3.2 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. IBM's diverse portfolio of services and its global footprint helped it weather the economic storm this year. More important - in terms of signs of recovery - is that Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge, in a conference call, forecast a return to revenue growth in the fourth quarter. IBM shares slipped by $5.80 to $122.18 in midday trading Friday, however, as investors questioned the extent to which foreign exchange rates factor into the revenue figures. Revenue increases are often seen as the real signal of growth for any company, since earnings can be boosted by cost cuts.

Google, also reporting results Thursday, said revenue for the quarter ending in September jumped 7 percent to $5.94 billion - the Internet ad giant's fastest sales growth rate so far this year. Google, which generates more than 90 percent of its revenue from search-related advertising, is widely seen as a barometer for Internet commerce. It said net earnings were $1.64 billion, a 27 percent jump from last year and on a per-share basis, higher than analyst expectations. "The worst of the recession is clearly behind us," proclaimed CEO Eric Schmidt in a company statement. Google shares bucked the downward market trend Friday, hitting a 52-week high for the company at $554.75 in midday trading. Analysts have for several months forecast a return to growth for the hardware sector. On the hardware components front, AMD said Thursday that revenue fell in the third quarter, but that it expects sales in the last three months of the year to rise "modestly." Revenue in the quarter dropped 21.3 percent to $1.4 billion from a year ago, but beat the $1.26 billion expected by analysts.

IDC said Wednesday that global PC shipments in the third quarter did in fact rise 2.3 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, to 78.1 million units - the first quarter this year in which PC shipments increased compared to 2008. Gartner also said this week that PC shipments rose during the quarter. Rising PC sales are boosting the fortunes of chip companies. Though Gartner's estimate of a 0.5 percent year-over-year growth was smaller than IDC's, its figure for total shipments was higher, at 80.3 million units. "These are good results especially given that PC shipments for the third quarter of 2009 are being compared to a very strong third quarter from 2008," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, in the report. Intel on Tuesday reported strong quarterly results and forecasts that beat industry expectations. Intel forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $10.1 billion "plus or minus $400 million," while analysts had been expecting $9.5 billion. "The timing of Windows 7 is favorable for the industry due to expected economic improvements and an overdue hardware replacement cycle," Gartner's Kitagawa noted.

Intel's revenue of $9.39 billion was up by $1.4 billion compared to the prior quarter, though it was lower than the $10.2 billion in the third quarter last year. Not all vendors are upbeat, however. Though Nokia now expects global, industrywide mobile-device sales to fall by only 7 percent this year - compared to its prior forecast of 10 percent - CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo injected a note of caution in an otherwise upbeat earnings week. "Let's be clear, uncertainty in end-consumer demand remains," said Kallasvuo on a conference call. Nokia on Thursday reported a third-quarter loss of €559 million (US$833 million) mainly due to charges related to its Nokia Siemens networking infrastructure business, which has been losing market share. That uncertainty spooked investors Friday, as markets tumbled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped by 67.9 points to hit 9997.35 in midafternoon trading, while the Nasdaq Composite dipped 13.08 to 2160.21. IT companies have been riding a wave of optimism recently.

Though most tech leaders were upbeat this week, news about financial and consumer companies - including disappointing earnings results from Bank of America and General Electric - spooked investors. Shares of Nasdaq computer companies are as a group up by 38.25 percent from a year ago, when the U.S. financial sector was crumbling. Whether this trend continues will depend to a large degree on quarterly results from other tech leaders such as Microsoft, BMC, Yahoo and AT&T in the next few weeks. Nasdaq telecom shares are up 32.74 percent from a year ago.