The New Nation - Internet Edition

Oracle has announced it has been positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner's "Magic Quadrant for Web Access Management, 2H07" report.(1) Gartner positions vendors in the quadrants based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute.

In the Web Access Management Magic Quadrant report, Gartner defines Web Access Management (WAM) as "access control engines that are designed to provide centralized authentication and authorization capabilities for Web-delivered applications." According to Gartner, "Larger vendors capitalizing on installed customer bases are experiencing the most growth, while smaller vendors are less able to differentiate themselves in this mature market."

Oracle Access Manager, a hot-pluggable single sign-on solution, enables organizations to provide secure access to heterogeneous applications and IT systems. Using Oracle Access Manager, individuals can log in once and gain access to a broad range of IT resources. The software can serve as a standard identity management and access control system for an enterprise's application ecosystem, allowing authorized personnel to centrally manage identity administration and access management to Oracle and non-Oracle systems. Additionally, Oracle Access Manager enables self-service and self-registration, reporting and auditing, policy management, dynamic groups and delegated administration. Oracle Access Manager is available as a stand-alone offering or as part of Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite.

"The increase in security threats and the rise in compliance requirements has made access management an essential component of an organization's overall security strategy," said Hasan Rizvi, vice president, Security and Identity Management Products, Oracle. "We believe Oracle's position in the Leaders Quadrant for Web Access Management further validates the value Oracle Access Manager delivers to organizations today while also supporting our strategy - to provide our customers with the most comprehensive, leading information protection solutions available."

Oracle's comprehensive portfolio of access management software includes Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On, Oracle Identity Federation and Oracle Web Services Manager. The software's hot-pluggable architecture enables organizations to deploy each of these offerings in heterogeneous IT environments.

Serving as the security backbone for Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Identity Management helps customers and partners decrease security threats across diverse IT environments while helping address governance, risk and compliance needs. Oracle Identity Management was the fastest growing suite of Identity Management products in 2006, based on total software revenues worldwide. Oracle Identity Management's support of industry standards such as WS*, XACML, SAML and SPML helps enable customers and partners to more easily integrate applications with the framework. The family of best-in-class software includes Oracle Identity Manager, Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Adaptive Access Manager, Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-On Suite, Oracle Identity Federation, Oracle Virtual Directory, Oracle Internet Directory, Oracle Management Pack for Identity Management and Oracle Web Services Manager; all of which can be used in its entirety or as individual components. To learn more, visit http:// www.oracle.com/identity.

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted October 29, 2007, by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner.

Inpace Celebrate its 10th anniversary on 31 Dec '07. Inpace started its journey December, 1997 to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for Computer Graphics, marketing communications services and fulfillment outsourcing.

Inpace Management Services Limited was registered on 1st August, 2004 to diversify its business and serve the customers in a more organized and professional way. Over the last 10 years Inpace has made substantial progress in achieving its primary goals.

While doing this, the company gradually expanded its business into advertising, direct sales and IT enabled services for most of the renowned multinational IT companies present in Bangladesh. At present, Inpace has got its name as a professional house of fulfillment activities for major MNCs and local companies. Customers, suppliers, vendors, sponsors, business partners and well-wishers attended to join hands to commemorate their 10th anniversary. The all-day program comprised of meet & greet with flowers, sharing old memories, photo sessions and adda over a choice of Bangladeshi traditional foods.

Thomas Claburn

A flaw in Microsoft's Windows Home Server could lead to data loss under certain circumstances, the company has confirmed.

Windows Home Server, released over the summer, aims to offer home users centralized media storage and home backup capabilities for networked PCs.

Microsoft last week updated a support document acknowledging that files edited using certain programs and then stored on Windows Home Server could become corrupted.

"Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available," the Microsoft help documentation explains.

"Until an update for Windows Home Server is available, we recommend that you do not use the programs that are listed in this article to save or to edit program-specific files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system."

The listed programs are as follows: Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007, and SyncToy 2.0 Beta.

The issue was acknowledged in October, when Microsoft warned "not to copy data files that contain alternate [NTFS] data streams to Windows Home Server shared folders."

Microsoft offers free software called Streams to determine whether NTFS files have alternate data streams associated with them.

Microsoft also says that some users have reported problems with Torrent applications, Intuit Quicken, and QuickBooks program files and that it is attempting to reproduce those issues.

Microsoft says that file corruption can occur under circumstances when a home server is under extreme loads, as might happen when copying large numbers of files, when a user is editing files already saved to a shared folder on the home server, and when a user is using one of the listed programs to edit files on a home server.

Michael Kwan

Realistically, the only thing separating the iPod touch from the Apple iPhone is the simple fact that the latter can make phone calls and the former cannot.

That little hurdle has apparently been overcome, because touchmods has come up with the VoIP application for the iPod touch and they're nice enough to provide us with a video demonstration.

In order to complete a VoIP call on the iPod touch, you'll need to gab the microphone attachment which dangles from the bottom of the portable media player.

In the video, you can see that making a call is just as easy as you'd expect it to be. This is definitely a quantum leap forward in functionality for the WiFi-equipped handheld. I'd imagine that transferring the app over to the iPhone should be a reasonably straightforward affair as well.

The team at touchmods plans on releasing the VoIP app tomorrow, so stay tuned for that announcement. We just wonder if firmware 1.1.3 will add another speedbump in their plans.

Internet

The family of a 10-year-old girl who received an MP3 video player for Christmas was shocked when they found the player was loaded with explicit songs and pornographic movie clips.

Daryl Hill's daughter was thrilled to find that Santa had left an MP3 player under the tree, until she turned it on.

"Within 10 minutes, my daughter was crying," said Hill.

There were video clips of XXX rated sex scenes.

"I wish I could take the thoughts and images out of her head," said Hill.

The Hills had bought three MP3 players for their children that came from a Wal-Mart store in Sparta, Tennessee.

It turns out one of the MP3 players had been returned to the store from a previous owner who loaded sex clips, graphic war scenes and lyrics about using drugs.

The Hills want to know why Wal-Mart would sell used merchandise as new in the first place, which is in violation of its own policies.

"If they want to be a major retailer, they need to act like it," said Hill.

The manager at the Sparta Wal-Mart declined comment on the matter.

A Wal-Mart spokesperson confirmed that stores are not supposed to return opened packages to the sales floor.

They said they are working to get to the bottom of the problem. The Hills said they have declined Wal-Mart's offer to replace the MP3 player.

They've already bought their daughter a new one and are hanging onto the controversial one until they talk to a lawyer.

There is a reason people still buy CDs more than they do digital albums. Actually there are several, but viruses that come along with music via peer-to-peer sites (P2P) and a concern over digital rights management (DRM) aren't the only culprits.

Digital music files just don't provide the same amount of content that a CD package does. That includes liner notes, extended album art and lyrics. Buy a digital album today and all you get are a list of tracks and (maybe) a thumbnail image of the album cover that you can't even read.

It's one of the reasons music fans still turn to P2P networks for their music. In addition to providing music free of charge and free of DRM, P2P sites in many cases also include digital copies of such extras typically found in the CD. According to label sources and pirate network tracking firms, fans downloading full albums from BitTorrent sites almost universally choose files that include scans of the CD booklet over those that don't.

Of course, there is little that can be done with those scans other than view them on a computer. Imagine if the music industry and the digital music services got together and offered an official way to access the same content, but make it available on portable devices as well as make it interactive.

There are two ways to accomplish this. One is working directly with a digital music service and hardware developer to ensure all this new content has an outlet. The other is to go it alone.

For the former, iTunes is the most likely candidate.

Although hardly life-threatening, iTunes is facing new competition from Amazon and a variety of social networking sites. While it has made great advancements with the iPod, iTunes' innovation has been slow. The service looks and operates much like it always has. The only new features are in video.

In 2008, look for Apple to make nice with its label partners by offering a bit more with each download, such as lyrics and more interactive album art.

iTunes is the only music service that has a built-in video download feature. The others offer only streaming video. It's also one of the few services that feature a tightly integrated device -- the iPod. Apple is in a great position to roll out new features across its online store and its devices at the same time.

Microsoft's Zune is another place to watch for this, for the same reasons. It also has the integrated service and device, as well as ownership of the technical building blocks needed (such as Windows Media Player). And since it's still lagging far behind Apple in the digital music game, Microsoft could easily tap digital extras as a battleground for new market share.

The problem is that the four major music companies rarely work together on anything. So another angle would be for each to go it alone. If digital music services can't or won't incorporate better metadata into their downloaded files, look for third-party applications to emerge that will do so after the fact.

Early examples of this are two games developed for the iPod -- "Musicka," created by the developers of the original music rhythm game "PaRappa the Rapper," and "Phase," created by "Rock Band" and original "Guitar Hero" developer Harmonix. Both are rhythm-based games that let users "play" along to the songs on their device by pressing buttons at the right time.

The point is that if these game companies can do it, there is no reason why labels can't offer (or commission) their own iPod plug-in that will import better album art, liner notes and lyrics directly from the label or artist and ported into iTunes and the iPod.