Cyber-Security Czar Defends Government Role

Howard Schmidt, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, defended a new federal program that would allow individual Internet users to authenticate their online identities during a panel discussion held on the eve of the RSA security technology conference in San Francisco. Mr. Schmidt argued that the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (or NSTIC) is meant to serve as a catalyst for the private sector to adopt however it sees fit, and will “balance privacy, anonymity and security.”

In a nutshell, NSTIC would be a way for individuals to sign onto Websites that adopt the voluntary federal program. Initially, the thinking goes, the program would be used by federal agencies to allow individuals to check things like electronic medical records held in government databases, but once proven and accepted, would be adopted by private organizations like banks and other commerce sites to ensure greater security for normal transactions. Bruce Schneier, the head of cybersecurity for British Telecom, was generally supportive of the program, but also had a word of warning for Mr. Schmidt: “I really think this is something the government can’t control, and if it starts controlling it, everyone would freak.”

Mobile World Offers Replay Of Gigahertz Wars

Remember gigahertz? That speed measure for microprocessors has been all but banished from buyers’ minds in evaluating new PCs. But gigahertz emerged as a hot topic this week in Barcelona, where the mobile device world has converged for its annual trade show.

Qualcomm, for instance, used the Mobile World Congress to describe what may be a high water mark for gigahertz ratings among chips based on the widely used designs from ARM Holdings. But power consumption of future chips–including one discussed in a sneak preview by Intel–may be at least as important in the battle to supply future smartphones and tablet PCs.

Qualcomm on Monday previewed a new version of its flagship Snapdragon product line that is expected to operate at 2.5 gigahertz, and have other features that include four processors (compared to two for TI’s new OMAP version). But neither chip is coming very soon; Qualcomm doesn’t expect samples of its new APQ8064, which it said was aimed at tablet PCs, until early 2012.

Nvidia, another ARM-based rival, has been gaining momentum lately for dual-processor chips that operate at 1 gigahertz now. But the company plans to show some working models of future versions in Barcelona.

H-P Acquires Analytics Startup in New CEO’s First Deal

Hewlett-Packard said Monday it would acquire a startup whose software helps businesses spot trends hidden in large amounts of data, moving into one of the hottest subsectors of the tech industry in the process.

The deal for Vertica Systems Inc., a closely held company in Billerica, Mass., is the first for H-P since Leo Apotheker assumed the chief executive post in November. While Apotheker is yet to reveal an overall strategy for H-P, he has said that he plans to invest more in software, which tends to have a higher profit margin than PCs and servers.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. An H-P spokeswoman declined to comment and a spokesman for Vertica didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Vertica was co-founded in 2005 by Michael Stonebraker, an industry pioneer known for work on relational databases during the 1970s at the University of California at Berkeley. Businesses use its software to gain other insight into fast-unfolding trends, such as sales slows downs or runs on a particular product. For instance, the software could sift through real-time sales data, compare them to the year earlier, and send an alert if a particular store wasn’t moving enough televisions.

Digits Live Show: Will a Cheap iPhone Be as Common as iPod?

Yukari Kane and Spencer Ante discuss whether Apple’s plan for a cheaper line of iPhones is a sign that other smartphone makers and operating systems - like Google Android - are posing a threat. Also: could the Apple iPhone become as ubiquitous as the iPod?

Google Cloud Boosting YouTube Upload Speeds

YouTube is leaning heavily on parent company Google’s huge cloud computing infrastructure of data centers and Web servers to reduce the amount of time it takes for users to see their videos published online, Digits has learned. YouTube engineers have been trying to address latency, as this problem is known, using a variety of methods, including multithreading and parallel processing technologies which improve the speeds of the computers processing uploaded videos. But rather than focusing on improving the processing speeds of individual computers, explained YouTube engineer Vijnan Shastri, the engineers decided instead to break up the videos into multiple pieces, assign processing tasks to “hundreds of thousands of machines,” and then reassemble the pieces at the end.

Google Acts Against Web Content Farms

Google is stepping up a war against what it calls low-quality websites.

The Internet giant, after facing criticism from a few tech insiders, last month acknowledged that it “can and should do better” to beat back such sites, which game Google’s algorithms to rise up in search results but offer users little value. They are often associated with what the industry calls content farms, which publish thousands of Web pages a day–sometimes by plagiarizing content from other sites–to generate Web traffic and links from other sites that raise their prominence in Web searches.

Figuring out which sites are associated with content farms can sometimes be a subjective decision, so Google is asking its users for help. The company is offering what’s known as an extension for the Google Chrome browser, whose popularity has been climbing and captured 10% of the browser market in January, according to NetApplications.

The experimental extension, which Chrome users can download, allows users to manually block sites from their web search results if they deem them to be spam or low-quality. Once blocked, the sites won’t appear during future searches.

Tech Diary: Blog To Book: Is the Formula Still Working?

Blogger starts a blog. Blogger solicits photos or texts or emails. Blogger gets a book deal. That formula has been wildly successful for the last few years, but is showing signs of market saturation.

There were roughly 100 book deals involving blogs or Internet memes last year according to Publisher’s Marketplace.

Christopher Weingarten, 31, was one of them. A year ago, he decided to start a blog about dogs, dressed as hipsters. He gets readers to submit photos and attaches a witty caption.

Over three million hits and thousands of submissions later, he just recently landed a book deal, with the book hitting bookstores in July. While the freelance music writer discloses that his book deal was not six-figures, it was “certainly more than the $3,000 advance I got for doing a book about music.”

Mobile Conference (Again) Dominated by Absent Apple

The World Mobile Conference is kicking off in Barcelona today, once again minus the participation of Apple. Mobile device market analyst Michael Gartenberg tweets on the irony that “the long shadow cast over Barcelona comes from the company not exhibiting there. That’s now become common.” (In 2010, remember, Apple has just unveiled its iPad; and the 2009 event was overshadowed by the recent success of Apple’s App Store and rumors of an upcoming third revision of the iPhone. Apple also manages to overshadow the Consumer Electronics Show every year without actually attending.)

For this year, the mind-numbing parade of product announcements has already begun, with a new (huzzah!) version of the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S smartphone and a new PlayStation phone from Sony Ericsson called Xperia

.

AT&T to Offer New Gaming Platform on Android Phones

AT&T will offer a new social gaming platform on its Android phones, as the company invests more heavily in the Google operating system in the wake of losing its exclusive hold on Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

The carrier will partner with the OpenFeint video game network, a social gaming community that allows users to play each other across different operating systems. The OpenFeint community allows users to post high scores, have multi player competition and chat while playing games. It also provides a platform for game developers to create content.

Mobile Ad Vendor Offers Tracking Opt-Out

UPDATED: A proposed settlement of a lawsuit challenging the tracking of mobile-phone users could make it easier for users to opt out of targeted ads on some mobile websites. Ringleader Digital Inc., a New York company that places ads on mobile phones, said it had agreed to settle claims that it improperly tracked phone users by placing the equivalent of “cookies” on their phones. The suit, filed in September in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claimed that Ringleader’s technology “re-spawned” the cookies when users tried to delete them.