Case study: Birmingham rolls out free public Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is becoming an increasingly popular feature on the high streets of the UK, with retailers getting a real taste for offering free wireless internet access to their customers while they sup a coffee or browse the rails.

Increasingly, the public sector is looking to the private sector for guidance on how it too can bring the same connectivity, via tablets and smartphones, to those it serves.

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Birmingham City Council is one such organisation. At the beginning of August, it announced that it planned to roll out a Wi-Fi network throughout the centre of the Midlands hub, providing access to free and speedy internet connections in its most popular public spaces.

Councillor James McKay, cabinet member for a green, safe and smart city, says the plan is a key part of making Birmingham a more attractive place for investors.

“Wi-Fi is part of a much wider agenda for connectivity across the city and the plan to position Birmingham as the place to come for innovative businesses, helping us in turn to meet our jobs challenge in the city,” he says.

The project was born out of other work by the council to boost mobile connectivity.

“We were working on the procurement of 3G and 4G connectivity for the city, and through that process the exciting proposal of the Wi-Fi network emerged, so really it came out of the broader plan for Birmingham’s digital future,” says McKay.

The council had teamed with Virgin Media Business and planned to use its small cell technology to increase mobile signals across the city.

The way small cells work is by connecting into a fibre network, then being attached to street furniture, such as lamp posts, to broaden the reach of their frequencies. They can then mesh with other installed small cells, boosting signals for any mobile networks that choose to link to them.

“This is a first with small cells in the UK,” adds McKay. “They have been used successfully in the US, so I am not concerned that the technology is an issue. Instead it is exciting for Birmingham, taking our infrastructure and marrying that with proven international technology not yet used in the UK, all to the benefit our residents.”

Birmingham City Council and Virgin Media Business will offer these small cells on a wholesale basis to mobile operators. It is hoped that the competitive pricing, and the fact the installation is already taken care of, will encourage more investment into the city, especially as networks look to launch 4G services.

Then, with the connectivity in place, a Wi-Fi network will also be available to residents, meaning one installation is offering two solutions.

While many will praise the Wi-Fi element, some will object to the public sector paying for infrastructure so that mobile operators can boost signals, arguing that those companies should take the financial hit themselves. However, McKay believes it was the right choice to invest.

Birmingham City Council is getting an income and creating a new market with Virgin Media Business to broaden the playing field

Councillor James McKay, Birmingham City Council

“You have a choice as a statutory organisation,” he says. “You can either step back entirely, let the market take over and wait on trend, or you can get involved and make the state become an effective partner.

“It is not about the taxpayer subsidising something mobile network operators should be doing. We are actually getting an income and creating a new market with Virgin Media Business to broaden the playing field.”

The choice of partner was also a surprise, as Birmingham and Virgin Media have a somewhat rocky history.

The pair were at loggerheads last year when the internet service provider (ISP), alongside rival BT, complained to the European Union about the council for its plans to build its own superfast broadband network, claiming there would be “significant overbuild” with its own network and would be a waste of public money.

Virgin Media and BT won the case, and the £150m pledged by George Osborne to go towards 22 similar projects in major UK cities was redirected to give small businesses vouchers to cut the cost of installing broadband.

McKay, who was a vocal opponent of Virgin’s interjections at the time, says the issue was separate and would never cloud the council's judgement in building Birmingham’s digital future.

“Where we had the disagreement was a specific issue around the Urban Broadband Fund,” he says. “We had our view, Virgin Media had its view, as did other operators. Now the issue has been dealt with and we have a shared view, but the relationship with Virgin Media and Virgin Media Business was always much bigger than that single issue.”

With that put behind them, work is due to begin on the roll-out in September. Areas such as Victoria Square, New Street, Moor Street, High Street, St Philip’s Cathedral and the plaza in front of the new Library of Birmingham will be the first to benefit, but how it grows is yet to be decided because of the model at play.

“Where the small cells are, the roll-out for 4G and, in turn, the Wi-Fi locations is very dependent on the MNOs [mobile network operators] taking it up,” says McKay.

“We have initially put it into high footfall areas, but again, where that model develops is dependent on MNOs' commercial considerations. We have a clear aspiration to get the Wi-Fi and 4G all across Birmingham city centre, but we depend on the operators to want that too.”

The commercial model enabling the Wi-Fi to be free and without a time limit is also yet to be defined, but this is something the council wants to leave to Virgin Media Business.

Raj Mack, head of Digital Birmingham, says: “Virgin Media Business wants to find a way to make that model commercial, but from our perspective it is about pushing forward the digital plans. It is up to Virgin how it commercialises it, but for us it is about free, open access with no time limit."

He says it is still working out some of the details – for example, how much data users will need to provide to sign up – but expects the whole city to benefit, both with Wi-Fi and mobile phone coverage.

Study Strengthens Family History As Cancer Risk Factor

Having a family history of cancer raises your own risk of the disease -- even if it's not the exact same type, according to a new study.

European researchers found that family history increases the risk of not only concordant cancer -- which is the same cancer -- but also discordant cancer, or a different kind of cancer. The findings, published in the journal Annals of Oncology, held true even after taking into account other potential risk factors, such as alcohol or tobacco use.

"Our results point to several potential cancer syndromes that appear among close relatives and that indicate the presence of genetic factors influencing multiple cancer sites," study researcher Dr. Eva Negri, who is the head of the Laboratory of Epidemiologic Methods at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Italy, said in a statement. "These findings may help researchers and clinicians to focus on the identification of additional genetic causes of selected cancers and on optimizing screening and diagnosis, particularly in people with a family history of cancer at a young age."

The study is based on data from 12,000 cancer cases that occurred between 1991 and 2009 in 13 different sites, including the kidneys, breast, ovaries, prostate, liver, colorectal, stomach, mouth and esophagus. Researchers compared these cases with 11,000 people who didn't have cancer, and specifically examined family history of cancer and lifestyle risk factors.

Researchers found associations between having a family history of cancer and having a higher risk of cancer yourself, even if the cancer is of a different type. For example, if a woman has a close relative with colorectal cancer, she has a 1.5-fold higher breast cancer risk.

And if a person has a first-degree relative with cancer of the larynx, he or she has a 3.3-fold increased risk of oral or pharyngeal cancer. If a woman had a first-degree relative with breast cancer, she has a 2.3-fold higher ovarian cancer risk.

For people with a first-degree relative with bladder cancer, their own risk of prostate cancer is 3.4-fold higher.

Researchers noted that some of this increased risk of cancer could come from shared environments, such as family smoking or drinking habits. But they also said there's evidence genetics seems to play some sort of role.

UK datacentres vulnerable to BYOD risks, shows Ponemon study

A Ponemon Institute research into the bring your own device (BYOD) trend has found that about 60% of UK businesses have no personal device policy in place and are putting critical data at risk once it leaves a company, whether through BYOD or public cloud-based file-sharing.
By ignoring simple security steps and employee BYOD education, companies are jeopardising their confidential data, exposing it to theft, corruption, hackers, malware and more, the research report has warned.

The study, 2013 Data Protection Trends Research, found that 58% of the 570 UK IT chiefs surveyed admitted to not having a BYOD policy in place to manage employee-owned mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

A wide majority (80%) of organisations have not educated employees on BYOD privacy risks, while 31% of IT teams said employee-owned devices were not allowed, illustrating that organisations are still in denial when it comes to consumer IT trends.

Another 23% have opened up the company network to make exceptions for executives, who may be handling sensitive data. This puts businesses at an increasing risk of data loss and serious compliance issues, according to the research firm.

The report, commissioned by backup provider Acronis, revealed that currently, only 21% of the respondents mandated a device password or key lock on personal devices, and only 18% performed remote device wipes when employees leave the company.

The study stated that employees commonly share corporate files through third-party cloud storage solutions such as DropBox, but as many as 69% of organisations do not have a policy in place around public cloud use and 80% have not trained their employees in the proper use of these platforms.

Experts have previously warned that BYOD and IT consumerisation are not just passing fads and that they are here to stay.

While 59% of UK organisations said they will support Apple’s Mac machines in the next year, more than half (61%) said compatibility and interoperability are still big obstacles to making Macs compliant with enterprise IT, which puts data stored and shared across the corporate network and on Apple devices at risk.
The study’s findings are in line with a previous YouGov report which revealed that many UK employers are failing to provide guidance on the usage of personal devices at work – potentially putting personal information at risk.

“Personal devices have permanently and positively changed the workplace, particularly in the way employees collaborate, work remotely and interact with company data,” said Rick Powles, managing director UK and Ireland at Acronis.

“BYOD is a huge opportunity for companies, but our research shows troubling signs of negligence in the face of these dangers. However, with policies and solutions that manage the flow of data between multiple devices and environments, companies can practice safe BYOD with confidence.”

To optimise BYOD and to avoid data loss and compliance issues, organisations should take immediate steps to ensure employees are trained in safe BYOD practices, that personal device and public cloud use are monitored and managed, and that effective data protection strategies are in place to prevent data loss, Powles advised. These are the critical steps to achieving safe BYOD.

The study was part of Ponemon Institute’s global survey of 4,374 IT practitioners which included more than 570 respondents from the UK, spanning from mid-sized to large enterprises.

It also showed that, despite many UK companies lacking in devising a BYOD strategy, the UK was ahead of the US in embracing BYOD and planning policies around employee device management. This finding echoed Citrix’s European chief’s remark that BYOD strategies are being adopted much faster in Europe than the US.

Case Study: Johnson Matthey consolidates Active Directory with Dell

Chemicals manufacturer Johnson Matthey has used tools from Dell to simplify a complex, multinational Active Directory infrastructure.
The company has evolved from autonomous business units. The organisation used to run Novell servers with Novell directory services across 120 sites, all of which were administered by separate IT teams.

As part of a re-organisation of IT – from regional organisation to a centralised structure – Johnson Matthey found it had over 30 Active Directories. Stephen Way, divisional IT director of Johnson Matthey, said: "We had a very devolved structure with every site using its own Active Directory. We recognised we needed a single directory."

There was no incentive for Johnson Matthey to simplify its Active Directory infrastructure, but Way said: "We had plans to move off Novell and we wanted to deploy SharePoint across the company."

He also wanted to prepare Johnson Matthey for using cloud service. The company was also considering cloud email. A single Active Directory was a prerequisite to these intentions.

Way looked at the native Microsoft Active Directory migration manager tool, along with identity management software, but found the tools had a heavy overhead. "We did not want to impose extra administration on the network."

Johnson Matthey selected Dell Migration Manager for Active Directory to move the regional Active Directories into a single Active Directory and used Dell's Active Role Server to support devolved administration rights.

Way explained: "We chose this solution as the benefits were threefold. It allowed us to deliver the Active Directory migration within our tight deadline without data loss and disruption to the majority of users; improve security levels and comply with industry regulations; and provide ongoing management. Because it manages some of the administration, ActiveRoles Server has also delivered significant time savings for IT staff, giving them more time to focus on value-added activities. Support calls have dropped by 98%."
The consolidation of Active Directories was relatively straightforward. He said: “We needed to set two-way traffic between host and target Active Directory forests with full rights. We asked sites to clean up their Active Directory to remove users who had left the company."

The migration team needed to visit each site to change the login domain of each PC and server, so the user would use the new Active Directory domain when they next logged in.

"The project took eight and a half months and a lot of air miles, because we had to touch every machine," Way added.

"A site would have a long list of machines on its Active Directory. Some of these machines were not being used and some needed different configurations. In a well-run site we would need to visit 15% of the machines, but in a less well-run site we would have to check 99% of the machines."
In parallel to the Active Directory project, the company upgraded its network to MPLS and deployed network acceleration appliances.

The project took eight and a half months and a lot of air miles, because we had to touch every machine
Stephen Way, divisional IT director, Johnson Matthey

He said the biggest problem was with users who noticed their domain had changed, and who would alter the settings to attempt to log into the old domain and then call the helpdesk to say they could no longer login. All the work on the servers was done in the background but each one needed rebooting to access the new Active Directory.

The team also needed to ensure that domain name services (DNS) for each site had the correct entries, he added. "Active Directory is very reliant on a clean DNS to work. We had 30 domains and around over 100 DNS servers which needed to be cleaned up."

As in any major project, preparation was key. Way said the biggest part of preparation was in winning the hearts and minds of the administrators in the other Johnson Way office, who had previously managed their own domains. "We did not impose global naming standards for user names and device naming, but the Dell tool enabled us bring in everything." Any duplications or discrepancies were cleared up, he said.

Case study: In-flight caterer modernises IT for efficiency during seasonal travel peaks

As part of a £10m IT transformation project to modernise its systems and infrastructure, UK in-flight caterer Alpha LSG selected Getronics to host its IT on a cloud platform for scalability during peak travel season.
Alpha LSG serves 16 UK airports and provides catering, in-flight retail and logistics services to more than 75 airline customers, including Thomas Cook, Monarch Airlines and Thomson (part of TUI Travel PLC).

Alpha LSG was formed in October 2012 after a joint venture between air travel service provider Dnata’s Alpha Flight Group and LSG Sky Chefs Europe.
With a combined revenue of over £300m, and with about 3,600 employees, the IT team of the newly formed company were left with a distributed IT infrastructure. But the challenges of distributive IT could be traced back to 2010 when Alpha Flight Group was acquired by Dnata.
“Since the Dnata acquisition in 2010, we have been working with distributed legacy IT systems that were constraining productivity, creating inefficiencies and additional cost, while limiting innovation and development,” says Charlie Goakes, IT director at Alpha LSG.
The IT team was keen to modernise its datacentre systems with an efficient infrastructure, and also wanted to improve desktop management and workspace efficiency, increase flexibility and build scope for future innovation and upgrades.
As a travel business, the company also needed scalable IT with the ability to handle the seasonal peaks and troughs of the travel calendar. The IT team identified a transition to a cloud-based platform as the best solution for its specific technology needs – scalability, agility and high availability at peak times.
Alpha LSG chose cloud service provider Getronics after a tendering process because of the latter’s experience in providing IT services to enterprises in the travel and transport sector. The IT team worked with Getronics to create a tailored solution for its specific IT needs.
Alpha LSG’s IT and Getronics had to migrate the IT infrastructure to the cloud in just three months, to maintain stability and minimise any negative impact on business operations. The modernisation project was completed in January, giving the IT department time to plan and train staff ahead of the peak holiday travel season.
The ambitious migration project included moving all business data, business applications and employees to a cloud service model. Hosting business applications on a cloud platform will ensure 24x7 availability, according to the IT team.
The IT modernisation project also included replacing more than 500 desktops with thin client devices and virtual desktops to enable mobile working, as well as installing a new dual-provision WAN infrastructure in each of Alpha LSG’s 27 sites to improve network traffic flow.
By implementing a cloud-based system, the airline caterer is able to manage costs by moving to an on-demand model and paying only for the infrastructure and services it needs.
The ability to scale up to tackle seasonal peaks leads to significant efficiencies as infrastructure is not lying dormant for many months of the year, the IT team said. Additionally, the cloud model helps it overcome licensing issues – enabling the business to access the most up-to-date versions of business-critical software without having to manage upgrades in-house.
In the competitive travel sector an “always-on approach” is fundamental to business success. The cloud IT model enables its employees to access company applications from anywhere and at any time, giving the business maximum flexibility, says Goakes.
Cloud also optimises business processes and improves business continuity and disaster recovery, ensuring that Alpha LSG minimises downtime to offer mission-critical services to customers 24x7.
“Through working with Getronics, we have integrated all our systems on to a single cloud platform, dramatically increasing efficiency and giving us the flexibility we need to compete in a constantly evolving and competitive marketplace,” says Goakes.
Getronics chief executive Mark Cook says: “Business agility is crucial in the travel market, with companies required to flex to meet evolving customer demands over the course of the year.”

As for the move from traditional desktop infrastructure to thin client-based technology onsite, it has helped the company save around £50,000 per annum on power costs, based on savings since implementation in January.

Today’s datacentres are not fit for the cloud, shows study

Many enterprises continue to depend significantly on antiquated datacentre infrastructures which are ill-equipped to serve user demands in the cloud and virtualisation era, a study has found.

A wide majority (91%) of IT decision-makers admitted that their current IT infrastructures still require substantial upgrades to meet the ever-changing and unique networking requirements created by virtualisation and cloud computing.

This was despite three-quarters of respondents saying they have updated their IT infrastructures in the past three years.

The study of more than 1,750 IT decision-makers, commissioned by networking service provider Brocade and carried out by research firm Vanson Bourne, also found that multiple network failures each week was common among one-third of the respondents.

As today’s organisations interact with data and applications constantly, whether through video-conferencing or accessing database applications on remote devices, the datacentre network has never been placed under greater strain, according to Brocade.

But still, 61% of IT professionals admitted that their corporate networks are not fit for the cloud era, with 41% saying that network downtime has caused their business financial hardship either directly – through lost revenue or breached SLAs – or from their customers’ lack of confidence.

“Many datacentres that exist today are based on 20-year-old technologies and they can no longer keep up with demand,” said Jason Nolet, vice-president datacentre switching and routing at Brocade.

“Virtualisation and cloud models require greater datacentre network agility and performance, as well as reduced operational cost and complexity.

“The findings clearly show that despite apparent investment in the past few years, most organisations are still ill-equipped for current business demands,” he added.

Datacentre hardware must be refreshed often to ensure that server utilisation is optimised and that workloads do not fail, experts have said.

Consulting engineer and datacentre energy expert Ian Bitterlin had previously argued that while web giants such as Facebook refresh server hardware every nine months, UK enterprises refresh theirs about every five years and the public sector organisations, on average, update their hardware once every eight or 10 years.

Some enterprises are beginning to deploy more scalable and resilient datacentre network infrastructures.

About 18% of IT decision-makers cited the use of fabric-based networks, while 51% said they are planning to roll out Ethernet fabrics next year to support their virtualisation strategies.

The study also revealed that some enterprises are looking at deploying software-defined networks (SDNs) by 2015 to increase productivity, deliver better access to real-time information and improve service delivery.

While SDN providers such as Brocade and Juniper Networks claim it offers benefits for the business, datacentre SDN is still in its infancy, according to experts.

A TechTarget study found that although 43% of respondents indicated that they plan to evaluate SDN technologies over the next 12 months, 78% believe SDN is not mature enough for their environments today.

Over two-thirds of respondents also expressed interest in on-demand datacentres – where physical and virtual networking elements are combined to provide the necessary capacity to deliver different applications rather than a standard capacity provided by legacy datacentre networks to deliver apps.

On-demand datacentre strategy provides a pragmatic route for the adoption of SDN, according to Brocade.

Case study: Toyota fleet management system gathers global fork-lift truck data remotely

Toyota Material Handling Europe has developed an operational fleet management system that monitors and controls fork-lift trucks globally. The system, which the company uses at its manufacturing plants in Sweden, France and Italy, and offers as service to its customers, is built using Microsoft technology.

It won two awards in the Computer Weekly European User Awards for Enterprise Software – one as the best private sector entry, the other for best of show.

CIO Håkan Borglund (pictured) describes the Toyota I_Site service as “a fleet management system, which is very interesting especially if you have a big fleet of fork-lift trucks”.

He says its business intelligence functionality is built into the application, into the business logic: “You can have triggers for various things. For example, if a truck touches something and that suggests goods are damaged, you can see details about the event: when it happened, who was driving. It can indicate what training is needed for the driver. It is really alive. It is not something you download once a month.”

At the heart of the system is a black box on a fork-lift truck. Toyota I_Site collects data from the fork-lift truck, transmits the data to a central database using wireless technology and the regular mobile networks, without the need to install software or hardware. The data can then be analysed over a web interface.

“Originally, we wanted to predict when service was needed for the trucks – that then enabled other functions, such as safety,” says Borglund. “It is a global system, and can be deployed anywhere using a mobile network, including in our own factories.”

Toyota Material Handling Europe's fleet management system is designed to address the problems material handling companies experience in optimising their truck fleets, improving the logistics process and reducing overall energy consumption.

The division makes Toyota fork-lift trucks and BT warehouse equipment – industrial equipment for material handling. Toyota acquired BT in 2000. As well as the three European factories, it has sales and marketing companies in 30 countries.

Borglund, who is based in Sweden, runs an IT department of 200, consisting of two teams – information systems and IT infrastructure.

The information systems team has a business relationship management structure, with a business systems manager for each process. “We have close co-operation with the business,” says Borglund. “I am glad that we have that. It works well as a set-up.”

The I_Site system, built on Microsoft’s .Net framework, is now in its third version. Borglund confirms it is being used in the company’s own factories and that there are some 10,000 black boxes beaming back data from fork-lift trucks worldwide.

"We have a fair mix of standard and custom-built systems," he says. "M3 is our ERP [enterprise resource planning], which is standard. But we are not afraid to build things ourselves.”

Borglund, who came to Toyota from the airline industry, says the KPI-driven service culture of that industry has informed his work at the Japan-based automotive company, which is well known for its culture of continuous improvement – the "Toyota Way".

Alert! Study finds Internet users heed browser warnings

Security warnings displayed by Web browsers are far more effective at deterring risky Internet behavior than was previously believed, according to a new study.

The study looked at how users reacted to warnings displayed by Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome browsers, which warn of phishing attempts, malware attacks and invalid SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates.

It was widely thought that most users ignored the warnings, based on several studies released between 2002 and 2009. However, in the past four years, browser warnings have been redesigned, but the effect of the new designs on users had not been studied.

For example, toolbars that warned of possible phishing attacks have been replaced with full-page warnings that may have influenced people's behavior, the researchers who conducted the study wrote.

More than 25 million warning impressions displayed by Chrome and Firefox in May and June were analyzed. The data was collected from telemetry programs used by Mozilla and Google, which collect what the researchers term 'pseudonymous' data from the browsers of consenting users.

In the case of both browsers, less than 25 percent of users opted to bypass malware and phishing warnings, and only a third of users cruised through the SSL warnings displayed by Firefox.

"This demonstrates that security warnings can be effective in practice; security experts and system architects should not dismiss the goal of communicating security information to end users," according to the paper, which was submitted to the Usenix Annual Technical Conference 2013 in San Jose, California, late last month.

The analysis uncovered other interesting details. It appears that more technical users bypassed security warnings more often. The researchers considered technical users as those who used Linux and pre-release browsers.

"Technically advanced users might feel more confident in the security of their computers, be more curious about blocked websites or feel patronized by warnings," the paper said.

Despite the positive influence of the warnings, the researchers found users clicked through more than 70 percent of Google's SSL warnings. By contrast, Firefox users clicked through them just 33 percent of the time.

There are a few thoughts why Chrome's SSL click-through rate is higher. Users can bypass Chrome's warning with a single click, whereas Firefox requires three clicks. Firefox displays a more stern warning, showing an image of a policeman and using the word "untrusted" to describe the site.

There may also be other mitigating factors, the researchers said. Nevertheless, Chrome's high SSL click-through rate "is undesirable," they wrote. "Our positive findings for the other warnings demonstrate that this warning has the potential for improvement."

The study was written by Devdatta Akhawe of the University of California, Berkeley, and Adrienne Porter Felt, a research scientist at Google.

Paying bug bounties is a better investment than hiring a security team, study claims

Paying rewards to independent security researchers for finding software problems is a vastly better investment than hiring employees to do the same work, according to researchers from the University of California Berkeley.

Their study looked at vulnerability reward programs (VRPs) run by Google and Mozilla for the Chrome and Firefox web browsers.

Over the last three years, Google has paid $580,000 in rewards, and Mozilla has paid $570,000. In the course of those programs, hundreds of vulnerabilities have been fixed in the widely used products.

The programs are very cost effective. Since a North American developer’s salary will cost a company about $100,000 with a 50 percent overhead, “we see that the cost of either of these VRPs is comparable to the cost of just one member of the browser security team,” the researchers wrote.

Additionally, more eyes on the code meant the VRPs uncovered many more software flaws than just one hired developer could find.

The study provides a sound foundation for reward programs, which are not embraced by all vendors. Adobe Systems and Oracle do not pay for vulnerability information.

Microsoft has traditionally not paid bounties, but did implement a one-off program last month. Through July 26, Microsoft will pay up to $11,000 for bugs in its Internet Explorer 11 browser.

Bug bounties have other advantages, such as by reducing the number of vulnerabilities that are sold to malicious actors who would use the information for criminal activity. The programs also make it harder for hackers to find vulnerabilities, the researchers wrote.

But a key difference between Google’s and Mozilla’s programs may affect their effectiveness.

Mozilla pays a flat $3,000 reward for a vulnerability. Google pays on a sliding scale, which ranges from $500 to $10,000. Google judges vulnerabilities and exploits on factors such as difficulty and impact.

Google’s average payout is just $1,000, but the chance of obtaining a much higher reward appears to provide an incentive for more people to participate in its program, the researchers wrote.

Google’s program, while costing about the same as Mozilla’s, “has identified more than three times as many bugs, is more popular and shows similar participation from repeat and first-time participants.”

“This makes sense with an understanding of incentives in lotteries: the larger the potential prize amount, the more willing participants are to accept a lower expected return, which, for VRPs, means the program can expect more participants,” according to the paper.

Also, browser penetration contests such as “Pwnium” run by Google with rewards up to $150,000 sparks more interest among researchers.

“We believe this sort of ‘gamification’ leads to a higher profile for the Chrome VRP, which may help encourage participation, particularly from researchers interested in wider recognition,” the paper said.

“Accordingly, we recommend Mozilla change their reward structure to a tiered system like that of Chrome,” it said.

Study: British TV Dramas Gaining Traction Among Chinese Elite

China’s fiercely competitive streaming video sector has seen audience growth for an emerging content category that is attracting its most sophisticated local viewers: British TV dramas.

A new study from Beijing-based entertainment research firm Entgroup has revealed that China’s urban wealthy and well-educated are increasingly buzzing about Britain's lushly produced TV fare, including shows like Downton Abbey and Sherlock.

Comparing rates of discussion on Chinese social media sites, Entgroup found that British dramas now account for 9 percent of all mentions of foreign television programming, whereas just a few years ago such shows were essentially unknown in the country. Korean TV, by comparison, commands 28 percent of all social media discussion of international TV.

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But when Entgroup examined social media sites that draw an exclusive white collar and college educated userbase, discussion of British shows hit 13 percent, and Korean drama fell to just one percent.

The trend mirrors what Chinese television critics have taken to calling the “disdain chain,” in which British TV fans look down on fans of U.S. shows, American TV aficionados snub Korean soap fans, who themselves turn their noses up on people who simply like local Chinese TV.

“Though British drama viewers are a minority, they are high-end and very loyal,” said Jean Shao, spokeswoman of leading streaming video site Youku Tudou, told the Wall Street Journal. ”This is what the advertisers fancy.”

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Chinese video sites are tailoring their offerings to meet the demands of this rarified slice of the viewership -- and the luxury advertisers they attract. Sohu.com Inc. launched the first dedicated British drama channel in China last year, the Journal noted in its report. And Youku Tudou debuted a British TV feed in April, followed by Tencent Holdings in June.

The U.K.’s premiere TV producers, such as BBC Worldwide and Fremantle Media, are finding their content much in-demand, as China video sites vye for exclusive rights. According to the Journal, Tencent has the exclusive rights to 13 British shows with a total of 500 episodes, while Youku Tudou Inc is licensed to stream 32 shows, with 200 episodes.

“The storylines in British dramas are more complete and British actors are A-listers in terms of acting skill,” said Zhu Xiangyang, chief content officer of Youku Tudou. “The high quality of British dramas is what demanding audiences look for.”

Caroline Torrance, director, scripted at BBC Worldwide said: “Our drama has always done very well in China and continues to do so. Viewers seem to really gravitate towards the rich story-telling and high production values of our series. Sherlock has been a hit there as it has worldwide, and Mad Dogs and Parade’s End are other dramas that have sold there recently."

Added Torrance: "With high-end titles, such as Top of the Lake, Orphan Black and A Young Doctor’s Notebook coming through our slate, I would expect we will continue to see success with our programs in this market."

Study: Management blocking IT projects due to rampant "fear"

There are lots of things in this world to be afraid of. Spiders. Terrorists. Clowns.

 

Now it seems you can add IT projects to that list. Online storage provider Mozy recently released results from a study which note that 55 percent of IT managers complain that the companies they work for "perceive the adoption of technology as a risk" and that 57 percent of company executives are "fearful of new technology implementations."

 

37 percent of respondents to the survey said that IT projects had been axed or blocked due to this fear.

 

Fear? Fear of what, exactly?

Mozy

Fear in the workplace is a topic that is far more complex than a simple phobia involving snakes or walking under ladders. At the office, workers have a veritable minefield to navigate. According to the study, they worry over just about everything: accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient (25 percent), being on the mark during presentations (15 percent), and even clicking on an "inappropriate link" during Internet searches on the job (21 percent).

 

Some workers really end up in the weeds. 13 percent worry about accidentally setting off the alarm in the office, 8 percent are afraid of the coffee machine, and another 8 percent believe that the office photocopier is "plotting against them."

 

That's a lot to be afraid of, but it doesn't really touch on the biggest fear of all: Getting fired.

 

The fear of losing your job is not an irrational one in today's market — although 23 percent of workers say they are "always" thinking that they are about to get fired — considering how stillborn the national economic recovery has been, particularly in the arena of employment.

 

For IT workers, that fear expresses itself in a different, more subtle way. IT projects are undertaken based on the promise that they will make a company more competitive, more productive, or more profitable, but as many IT managers know, calculating a legitimate ROI can be elusive. Business managers, in turn afraid of losing their own jobs should a project they approved ultimately fail, keep their cards close to the vest. Unless a project can be proven to be absolutely vital to the ongoing existence of the company, management is likely to simply say no.

 

Of course, those fears also have a flipside. If a tech project fails it could bring the company down… but if it succeeds, it could isntead make the manager that approved it irrelevant and cost him his job in a different way. It isn't hard to see how, for many, approving a tech project really is a no-win situation.

Mozy

Coping With Fear

 

IT managers are slowly learning how to overcome these fears and push their projects through, and Mozy Senior Director Gytis Barzdukas has identified a number of ways that IT managers can help this process. To wit:

For starters, consider the buzzwords you use. Certain terms and phrases go in and out of fashion, often with alarming speed. Today's best buzzwords: Cloud, collaboration, on demand, and virtualization. Bad buzzwords: Gamification and …as a service. (The fact that "cloud," "on demand," and "as a service" mean functionally the same thing should not be lost on the reader.) While both terms are positive, "cloud" is currently a far better choice than "on demand."Drive from the bottom up: Get employees to suggest technologies that the companies need and encourage their adoption, then build proposals around them.Start small: Pilot programs keep risks — and the level of fear — to a minimum.It's all about the money: Any tangible financial benefits should be placed front and center in any project proposal.

Highlights from the study can be found at the above link. The full report, Mozy says, will be released in the next few days.

 

 

German Box Office in 2012: Strong Growth Across Nearly All Demographics (Study)

"Skyfall" was the number one film in Germany in 2012.

COLOGNE, Germany – Last year's record-breaking box office performance in Germany was even better than previously thought. A detailed analysis of 2012 released Tuesday by the German Federal Film Board showed growth across all but the youngest demographic (10-to-19), with graying audiences increasing dramatically.

Individuals ages 50-to-59 in Germany went to the movies 29 percent more often last year, while the 60-plus demo showed an 18 percent uptick. The total number of individual cinema-goers in Germany increased by 800,000 to just under 30 million, and the frequency of visits per person increased from 4.3 films per year to 4.4.

STORY: German Box Office Strong in First Quarter Thanks to 'Django Unchained', Local Comedies

The only negative was in the youngest demographic, 10-to-19, where movie-going decreased by 15 percent in 2012.

This is consistent with a long-term trend in Germany, which has seen a graying of the local cinema audience. The average age of a German moviegoer last year was 36.5, up from 34.5 in 2012, and over the past six years the strongest-growing demos have been movie fans 50 years or older (up 50 percent) and 60-plus (up 64 percent).

Twitter: @sajilpl

How to Use an Ultrabook to Cut Study Time in Half

Being a student can be a blast – as long as you’re not spending all four years with your head buried in books.  You might be surprised how much time you waste by not taking advantage of readily available technology.  There are plenty of simple and inexpensive ways that can you can save time, improve your work, and maybe even boost your GPA.  Here are some ways an Intel inspired Ultrabook™ can help you get the most out of your classes and your college experience.

 

Use note-taking software.  There are a lot of popular note-taking applications, including Google Notes, Evernote, OneNote, and Uber Note.  These are amazing tools for keeping yourself organized, improving your note-taking capabilities, and staying on schedule.

 

Record lectures.  There are dozens of free programs to record and save audio files, and every Ultrabook is equipped with a built-in microphone.  If you want to boost the quality of your recordings, you can get a pretty decent USB microphone for as little as $40.

 

Use voice recognition technology.  A program like Dragon’s NaturallySpeaking can take what’s being heard in the classroom or the study room and automatically transcribe it into text for you.  

 

Use the cloud to collaborate.  Google Docs, Google Drive, and other cloud programs are great tools for sharing class resources and collaborating with peers.

 

Learn the shortcuts.  Windows 8 is designed to be an intuitive, time saving portal to all of your important programs and files.  You can make your life a lot easier by learning some of the simple, built-in Windows 8 shortcuts.

 

Work on the go.  With a portable device like an Ultrabook, you can make the most out of every minute you have in between classes, during your commute, or over lunch.  A convertible like the Yoga IdeaPad 13 is great for close quarters in tablet mode, and can be flipped to full keyboard mode when you need to get more involved.

 

When it comes to getting the most out of college, everybody will tell you to enjoy the social experience without neglecting your studies.  While that’s easier said than done, hopefully these suggestions will tip the party-study balance in your favor.

 

 

TV Pilot Production Increases as California Loses Market Share: Study

More TV pilots than ever are being made, while production continues to spread to more places,  according to an annual survey by Film L.A.

There were 186 pilots shot for broadcast and cable TV during the 2012-13 development cycle (January-April) -- the most ever.

PHOTOS: The Faces of Pilot Season 2013

Of those, 96 were shot in L.A., the second-largest tally in history. From Jan. 1-June 10, permitted production days for pilots were up almost 40 percent compared to last year.

The bad news, however, is that L.A.’s share of the market fell to 52 percent, the second-lowest on record, down from 82 percent in 2006-07.

“The scary thing for the Los Angeles region,” says Paul Audley, president of Film L.A., ”is we continue to lose ground in our share of work to other states and countries.”

Drama pilots in particular went elsewhere. L.A. had 83 percent of comedy pilots (down from 91 percent last year) but only 22 percent of drama pilots (down from 28 percent last year and 63 percent in 2006-07).

“Comedy has traditionally stuck around Los Angeles,” says Audley, “because the turnaround time on writing for comedy is so short. They are writing up to the time of filming frequently, while dramas have a greater lead time. Comedies are also less expensive to shoot, so the incentives don’t have as much impact.”

The average cost for a half-hour comedy pilot is $2 million, according to the study, while a drama costs $5.5 million for an hour.

Film L.A. estimates that about $277.8 million was spent on TV pilot production in Los Angeles during the most recent development cycle, up from $262 million last year. That is about 39 percent of the total spent by all producers in all locations. In the same period last year, L.A. had about 40 percent of the spend.

“Drama producers use incentives to offset the increased cost of long-distance production,” says the study, “while affording higher-end production values. Often this means financial concerns trump creative concerns when deciding where to shoot.”

During the past three pilot seasons, drama pilots were filmed outside L.A. by a ratio of more than 2-to-1. In the 2012-13 cycle, the ratio was closer to 4-to-1.

“Dramas are highly lucrative,” adds Audley. “States are fighting to get those television dramas and keep them. We continue to lose ground substantially in that area.”

After L.A. (96 pilots) the top production locations were New York (19), Vancouver (15), Atlanta (nine) and Toronto (six), followed by Chicago and New Orleans (five each). All offer greater production incentives than California.

This marks a surge for Atlanta, which passed Toronto for the first time thanks to Georgia’s generous tax incentives, new studio facilities, efforts to train crews and the growing activity of Tyler Perry.

PHOTOS: Summer TV Preview: 51 New and Returning Series

“Atlanta sees itself as a future production center and is really working hard to entice (productions) with money and new facilities,” says Audley. “They have been successful this year.”

One consideration, says the study, is where the comedy or drama is supposed to be set. While L.A. often subs for other places, New York and Chicago mostly play themselves. New York is often used in place of Washington, D.C.

Digital distributors like Netflix and Amazon represent a small but growing part of the total. One difference is that like many cable TV networks, the emerging digital players create pilots throughout the year.

There are real consequences to these location shifts as shown by an additional study done by Film L.A., which analyzed new and continuing pickups of series on broadcast networks during primetime for 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14.

At the beginning of the 2012-13 season, there were 47 L.A.-based shows on broadcast (18 dramas, 29 comedies). There also were 24 shows shot elsewhere (23 dramas, one comedy). “Last year,” says the study, “marked the first time during Film L.A.’s ongoing study in which L.A. accounted for less than 50 percent of network screen time devoted to primetime scripted drama.”

Audley is frustrated by the California incentive plan, which serves up $100 million annually but does not come close to meeting the demand. That law, he notes, does not even include incentives for broadcast network or premium cable series – unless they are returning to the state after shooting elsewhere for at least one full season.

He says California is shortsighted and as a result is losing one of its most important industries.

“If the pilots go, that means the shows will also go elsewhere,” says Audley, “and that’s tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars being spent outside of California.”

Film L.A. is a nonprofit organization that coordinates permits for filmed entertainment shot on location in Los Angeles and L.A. County.