Software Industry Announcements and News
PayPal and China UnionPay Open the Global Marketplace to Chinese Consumers
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.18.10 under Web Development
SINGAPORE–PayPal and China UnionPay, China’s bankcard association, today announced that China UnionPay (CUP) card members will be able to use PayPal to shop online, representing a new opportunity for international retailers to sell to a large base of Chinese customers who, combined, hold 2.1 billion CUP cards.
“PayPal’s partnership with China UnionPay removes an important friction point that exists across borders, and we are thrilled to eliminate the payments barrier so merchants can welcome millions of new Chinese customers to their sites.”
“After years of being the export hub for the world, today marks the day that China is open for business as an import e-commerce market,” said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal. “PayPal’s partnership with China UnionPay removes an important friction point that exists across borders, and we are thrilled to eliminate the payments barrier so merchants can welcome millions of new Chinese customers to their sites.”
Chinese consumers have more disposable income than ever before and are starting to look for the best products the world has to offer. CUP card members will be able to use PayPal in the third quarter of 2010. This gives merchants the opportunity to spend the coming months preparing their Web stores for Chinese consumers, including adding Chinese translation and fast, cost effective shipping methods.
About China UnionPay
China UnionPay, established in 2002, is the national bankcard association in China. As the pivotal role of China’s bankcard industry, China UnionPay is responsible for operating unified inter-bank clearing and settlement system in China and developing the international acceptance network for CUP card. By collaborating with various parties, China UnionPay has greatly boosted the development of China’s bankcard industry.
To date, the total number of CUP card issued worldwide has exceeded 2.1 billion; in 2009, the number of CUP card inter-bank transactions reached 7 billion with an amount of USD 1.1 trillion; the overall merchants, POS terminals and ATMs reached 2.13 million, 2.88 million and 930 thousand respectively. China UnionPay has also established partnership with around 400 financial institutions all over the world.
As of now, CUP card international acceptance network has been extended to 90 countries and regions. Over 10 of them, including Japan, Korea, Singapore, Russia, Mongolia etc, have issued CUP card.
Relying on China, the world’s most vibrant emerging economy and the world’s largest cardholder group, China UnionPay not only provides quality, secure and efficient payment services for hundreds of millions of cardholders all over the world, but also brings brand new choices and values for partners as well as energy and opportunities for the global bankcard industry.
China UnionPay will further enhance international cooperation in the future, work hand in hand with partners to achieve mutual development and success, to build UnionPay into a major international bankcard brand with global influence, and to make greater contribution to the overall prosperity of the global bankcard industry.
About PayPal
PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 81 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later. The company’s open payment platform, PayPal X, allows developers to build innovative payment applications on multiple platforms and devices. More information about the company can be found at https://www.paypal.com.
PayPal is headquartered in San Jose, California and its international headquarters is located in Singapore.
Take part in Cold War with Us & Them
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.17.10 under Games & Entertainment
Icehole Games is happy to announce the completion of its latest game “Us & Them – Cold War”, a serious strategy game about the cold war period.
“Us And Them – Cold War” is a turn-based strategy game about cold war. Although it is a game of territorial expansion, the rivals do not attack their opponent using military force. Instead they are using an army of Spies, Assassins and Experts of various kinds (like economy, technology etc.) in order to destabilize the enemy’s countries socially, economically, politically and finally to change their governments’ ideology and attach them in their own political block.
The players will have to manage resources like money, oil and technology. They must place their units strategically on the map and create a series of spy networks waiting for the right moment to unleash a series of sabotages, assassinations, bribes, revolutions, arrests and interrogations of enemy units. Since most of the units are hidden to the enemy, the collection and interception of crucial information about the countries, the units’ attributes and their whereabouts is essential for victory.
All units, as a representation of actual persons, have their own skills and attributes that make them unique and allow the player to connect with them personally, as they develop and get better and more experienced by the time.
A series of special rules will allow you to deploy special strategies like the “Domino Effect” and the “Communist sandwich” (as described by Richard Nixon) and to take advantage of great personalities of the time like Che Guevara, John Edgar Hoover, Mao Ze Dong, the Pope, Fidel Castro and others.
Also the players will be able to benefit from advanced technologies, using gadgets right out of James Bond’s laboratories and some famous equipment of real life spies.
Finally, the game features a series of random events that in the most part are real events well known to the majority of the public.
The game will be release from Audio Visual in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania, while icehole is still looking for publishers worldwide. It is available online at www.usandthemcoldwar.com
About icehole games
Icehole Games was founded in 2000 in Athens Greece. The goal of the company is to develop unique strategy games for the PC users. The company is mainly known for its successful series of Basketball management games called “World Basketball Manager”.
Except for WBM series, the company’s portfolio includes titles like “1821 fight for freedom” and “Select Quiz”.
The Use of Video Conferencing in Education: Benefits and Issues
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.17.10 under Education
Yulia Trifonova, the representative of VideoPort, met a technical expert for the International Institute of Economics and Law to discuss the use of video conferencing in distance learning and some issues that may arise.
Lots of people nowadays live in small towns with few or no colleges. This means that if such students want quality higher education, they have to commute or even move to the cities where the best colleges are located. Those who cannot afford it or are simply reluctant to leave their home town may consider distance learning as another option they can use, as it allows them to choose from a wide variety of schools that offer the education students desire and deserve. Technological advances, particularly the introduction of video conferencing to some schools, have made it possible for students to take courses taught by the most well-known professors and lecturers. Yulia Trifonova of VideoPort reports on possible ways of using video conferencing in distance learning and on the problems related to it.
The International Institute of Economics and Law has been using VideoPort SBS Plus video conferencing software application since Oct’09. After three months of successful testing the staff of the Institute has fully appreciated all the benefits of this innovation, as well as the ease of use. Consequently, the academic course schedule for the next semester will be planned to allow for active use of video lectures.
This is how video lecturing works: a lecturer’s monitor displays students located in five different classrooms. Students see the lecturer on screens of their computers. Some inconveniences may arise as students have to follow the lecture looking at their own monitors: the lecturer cannot see their faces, which breaks visual contact with the audience. To resolve this issue, the Institute contemplates equipping classrooms with projectors that would display lecturer for all the students.
At present video lectures are delivered through symmetric video conferences only, since lecturers find it difficult to speak to an audience without visual contact. For the same reason they don’t use asymmetric video conferences that involve up to three broadcasters transmitting their video and audio to all other participants who can only see and listen to them. However, this type of group video conferencing is likely to become widely used for distance learning once teaching staff gets comfortable with it, as it allows having guest speakers from one or more of the distant sites thus offering extended learning opportunities.
In addition to video conferencing capabilities, distance learning can be enhanced with the use of collaboration tools, such as electronic whiteboard and slide show presentations. Moreover, students can ask the professor questions using not only a microphone, but also an integrated chat system.
One of the aspects of educational video conferencing yet to be explored is related to the copyright law. This law is applicable to cases when lectures are recorded by students. Since it is planned to introduce some changes into this field of legislation, it may cause unforeseen difficulties in the future.
The Institute administration is certain that videoconferencing in distance education shows potential, being beneficial for both staff and students. While distance education offers any student access to the almost unlimited number of options, videoconferencing allows dramatically improving the quality of the chosen course.
About VideoPort LLC
VideoPort is a company focused on the development and production of video conferencing software solutions and systems. The company also provides video conferencing services, such as http://www.zoomcall.com. For more information, please visit the company web-site at http://video-port.com.
ElcomSoft Breaks Wi-Fi Passwords
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.16.10 under ASP Member Companies, Security & Privacy
ElcomSoft Breaks Wi-Fi Passwords, Unlocks iPhone and iPod Backups Faster with New ATI Cards
ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. accelerates the recovery of Wi-Fi passwords and password-protected iPhone and iPod backups by using ATI video cards. The support of ATI Radeon 5000 series video accelerators allows ElcomSoft to perform password recovery up to 20 times faster compared to Intel top of the line quad-core CPUs, and up to two times faster compared to enterprise-level NVIDIA Tesla solutions.
ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. breaks yet another record by making password recovery faster and more affordable once again. The company raises the standard of high-performance, affordable password recovery by supporting the newest consumer-grade video accelerators from ATI. The support of massively parallel computing available in the newest ATI video accelerators such as ATI Radeon HD5970 allows ElcomSoft to achieve password recovery speeds exceeding those of high-end CPUs and competing NVIDIA boards, including NVIDIA Tesla systems.
Benchmarks performed by ElcomSoft demonstrate that ATI Radeon HD5970 accelerated password recovery works up to 20 times faster than Core i7-960, Intel’s current top of the line CPU unit. The password recovery speed of the new sub-thousand dollar video card from ATI exceeds the performance of enterprise-grade NVIDIA Tesla solutions priced at $10,000. When password recovery is concerned, ATI Radeon HD5970 provides twice the performance of NVIDIA Tesla for a fraction of the price.
ElcomSoft is looking forward to testing its software on the upcoming NVIDIA Tesla (S2050/S2070), which will be available in Q2/Q3’2010, as well as NVIDIA’s Next Generation CUDA architecture code named Fermi, which is claimed to surpass anything announced by NVIDIA’s leading GPU competitor (AMD).
About Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker
Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker is the first commercially available GPU-accelerated tool to unlock encrypted iPhone and iPod Touch backups. The new release makes use of the massively parallel computing available with the latest ATI and NVIDIA boards, including NVIDIA’s high end Tesla solutions. ATI-accelerated Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker grants forensic access to information stored in Apple devices by recovering password-protected backups to iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS, iPod Touch 1st through 3rd Gen up to 20 times faster than tools using top of the line Intel CPU units such as Core i7-960.
The tool recovers the original plain-text password protecting iPhone and iPod backups. Brute force and advanced dictionary attacks with a wide range of permutations are available to speed up password recovery even further. Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker does not require Apple iTunes or any third party software to be installed. More info at http://iphone.elcomsoft.com
About Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor
Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor is the first commercially available ATI-accelerated solution to allow system administrators audit wireless network security. The tool attempts to recover the original WPA/WPA2 PSK password protecting Wi-Fi communications. GPU-accelerated dictionary attacks with a wide range of permutations allow simulating full-scale attacks on wireless infrastructure. By employing massively parallel computing available in the latest ATI video cards, ElcomSoft has increased the power of the attack twentyfold compared to top of the line, quad-core Intel CPU, the Core i7-960, and doubled the recovery speed compared to significantly more expensive NVIDIA Tesla based solutions.
Supporting GPU acceleration technologies offered by both major GPU manufacturers, ATI and NVIDIA, ElcomSoft offers the fastest and most cost-efficient wireless security audit solution on the market. The support of the latest ATI hardware makes Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor the most powerful and the most cost-effective Wi-Fi password recovery solution currently available on the market. More info at http://wpa.elcomsoft.com
Pricing and Availability
Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor and Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker support Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista or Windows 7 with x32 and x64 architectures. Downloadable evaluation versions of Elcomsoft iPhone Password Breaker and Wireless Security Auditor are available at http://iphone.elcomsoft.com/ and http://wpa.elcomsoft.com/
About ElcomSoft Co.Ltd.
Founded in 1990, ElcomSoft Co.Ltd. develops state-of-the-art computer forensics tools, provides computer forensics training and computer evidence consulting services. Since 1997, ElcomSoft has been providing support to businesses, law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies. ElcomSoft tools are used by most of the Fortune 500 corporations, multiple branches of the military all over the world, foreign governments, and all major accounting firms. ElcomSoft and its officers are members of the Russian Cryptology Association. ElcomSoft is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and an Intel Software Partner. More information at http://www.elcomsoft.com/
Create a Website without Any Programming Knowledge
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.16.10 under ASP Member Companies, Web Development
Adritech Software has announced the launch of Website Realizer, an efficient solution to reduce the costs for building a web site. Website Realizer 1.0 provides all the necessary tools to create a full-fledged, neat looking website without writing a single line of code.
They say “If you want something done right, do it yourself”. This is especially true of building a website, since it represents you or your business. But what if you know exactly what you want, but have no idea how websites are made? That’s not a problem if you have Website Realizer – the software aimed at those who want to have complete control over the look and feel of their site.
Developed to save your time and effort, the program makes building a site quick and easy. What’s fascinating about Website Realizer is the fact that it requires no programming skills, as the HTML code is generated automatically. If you’re not a techie, it’s okay – with Website Realizer you can create professional looking, easily navigable sites without any coding experience. You won’t have to become a CSS expert either, as the software provides CSS Style Editor allowing you to style your website to make it look exactly the way you want.
Website Realizer offers you a set of templates that can be customized to your liking with just a few clicks. The program features WYSIWYG web page editor enabling you to insert text, tables and forms, add images, audio and video files to make a site even more informative and visually appealing. You can also integrate PayPal buttons so that customers could buy your products or services online. And these are just a few of the advanced capabilities offered by the software.
Whether you want to save money or unleash your creative side, you can do it now with Website Realizer!
Pricing and Availability
Website Realizer 1.0 runs under Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7, and costs $59.95. Further information on the product as well as the 15-day free trial version is available at http://www.websiterealizer.com/
About Adritech Software
Founded in 2004, Adritech Software is focused on the development of easy-to-use products for cost effective web design. The company delivers quality website creation solutions for both businesses and individuals.
Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Tools Rolled Out
[ Comments Off ] Posted on 03.15.10 under Development
LAS VEGAS – March 15, 2010 – Charlie Kindel, one of the key thinkers behind the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform that’s being unveiled today here at MIX10, admits he’s the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. Talk to him about technology, and his passion bursts at the seams.
Now that he’s done leading the engineering efforts to build a development platform for the new Windows Phone, he’s ready to take his passion on the road and pitch it to developers.
“Evangelism is a great word to describe what we do,” says Kindel, partner group program manager for the Windows Phone 7 Developer Experience. “In many ways, if you want to be successful in getting a platform adopted, you need to get people to believe. You need them to have faith that the tools and opportunities are really great and exciting.”
His role as evangelist officially begins today in Las Vegas at MIX10, a three-day conference for Web developers and designers. After a month of hearing little about how to build games and apps for the Windows phone, developers at the conference are being introduced to the Windows Phone 7 Series development tools and given a tour of the platform, which uses both XNA Game Studio and Silverlight.
Onstage at MIX, Kindel will announce the availability of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, which is specifically designed for building Windows Phone applications and is now available free in a single download at http://developer.windowsphone.com. Visual Studio 2010 Express includes an emulator that will allow developers to build and test their applications directly on their PCs in a virtualized Windows Phone 7 OS environment. That means developers won’t need the phone hardware to get started at building phone apps.
Kindel will also tell attendees they can get a free version of Microsoft Expression Blend specifically designed to help them build apps for the new phone. They can use it to build graphical interfaces for Silverlight applications.
As Kindel views it, the aim of the new tools is to give developers a “friction-free” way to build Windows Phone 7 Series applications and games. The goal is to make developers “super-productive very quickly” building “innovative and beautiful user experiences.”
Perhaps no one is more prepared to tell developers what the new suite of Windows Phone tools can do.
The longtime Microsoft employee joined the phone team a little more than a year ago. Previously he was focused on designing and building Windows Home Server from the ground up, which he viewed as a perfect job. “In many ways, I was living the dream,” he says. “I had plugged away for many, many years at Microsoft on the big idea that I had about enabling the connected home and building a home server.”
Then he was approached by Andy Lees, senior vice president of the Mobile Communications Business, about joining an effort to redesign Microsoft’s mobile phone offering.
Kindle soon became part of the team that was making big changes on everything from the core engineering systems to the partner ecosystem. Now, a year later and with the new Windows Phone coming out in the upcoming holiday season, Kindel is proud of what’s coming. But the job isn’t done yet, he said. Now it’s time to get the people who will build the applications and games that will run on the new phone excited.
Kindel will do it by sharing his passion, which has been burning for a long time. As he likes to joke: “People will say, ‘My first experience on a computer was with a punch card.’ Well, when I started out with computers, we didn’t have ones; we only had zeros.”
When he was 10, Kindel visited his uncle’s factory in Michigan. His uncle sat him down in front of an Apple II and fired up a video game. As Kindel played Castle, he noticed the manual for the Applesoft programming language sitting next to the computer. He cracked it open and realized he could in essence break into the monitor and lift the source code. He did just that, modifying the game to the point it was no longer playable. He saved the file, shut off the computer, and never told his uncle.
Kindel was hooked by that little escapade. “That excitement always stuck with me,” he said, “that realization that, ‘Hey, you can go inside these things and change them and make them do interesting things.’”
The passion for computing hit a fever pitch when he was a college student in Arizona, where he started a business writing shareware. It was then, during the days of Windows 2.1, that he realized Microsoft’s OS would win. “I read the tea leaves then as a college student and decided I wanted to come work at Microsoft,” he said.
After graduating college in 1990, he left Arizona for the Pacific Northwest. His first job at Microsoft was supporting third-party developers on Windows 2.1 and 3.0. Even back then, he was focused on getting developers excited about Microsoft’s platform. He hopes to continue doing that today with the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform, because that’s what it will take to win in the mobile phone space, he said.
“More than anything, my job is to get all sorts of developers, both here at Microsoft and outside of it, to effectively do my job for me,” Kindel said. “And not because they’re marketers, or simply because they understand the story, but because they just know it’s the right thing. We’ll be successful when we have everybody else talking to everybody else about how great it is to build for this platform.”
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