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Avast halts support service after claims of iYogi misconduct

Avast has suspended phone support for its free

antimalware offering following reports of 

misconduct at the technical support firm

associated with the product. Chief executive Vince Steckler said in a company blog post that

the firm would not be offering iYogi support

services for at least the next few weeks as the

company's look into claims that support staff hadbeen misleading customers in order to sell iYogi

products. The two firms had previously worked togetheron a deal in which users of the free versions of 

Avast security software could contact iYogi callcentres in order to receive support. Under the

terms of the deal, iYogi salespeople were able to pitch users on the company's premium

support projects after addressing the technical issue. The partnership hit a roadblock,

however, when security researcher Brian Krebs issued a report outlining the misleading

behaviour being employed by support staff. In the report, Krebs describes a call in which an

iYogi technician tells the researcher that his fully updated and uninfected machine may 

contain errors and would require an upgrade to premium software.

"I can’t understand why a company like [Avast] would risk its reputation by partnering with a

support organization whose sales tactics are practically indistinguishable from thoseemployed by peddlers of fake antivirus software or scareware," Krebs said. "What’s more,iYogi’s implied response to my initial support request was to inform me that Avast’s freesoftware wasn’t working, and that in order to be fully protected against the latest malwarethreats, I needed to upgrade to the paid version of the software." Following publication of the

report, Steckler announced that Avast would be suspending the service and that the company 

would meet with iYogi and determine whether to continue with the support partnership. "We

believe that this type of service, when performed in a correct manner, provides immense

value to users," Steckler said. "As such, over the next weeks, we will work with iYogi todetermine whether the service can be re-launched."

Larry Gordon, president of global channel sales at iYogi, admitted that misleading behaviour

by support staff has been an ongoing problem with the company's "freemium" supportservice model and that the company would need to change the way it manages sales

operations and presents its service to users. Gordon told that iYogi would be working to

tighten oversight of support operations and that it would be making changes to its

commission and incentive structures in order to ease pressure on staff to meet sales goals.

"I feel this is a Tylenol moment for us," Gordon said. "We are out there helping people, we aregood guys, but there is a crisis in the quality of the product were are offering."

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China takes over as top smartphone market

China has supplanted the US for the world's largest mobile smartphone market amidst a

surge in adoption amongst developing countries. Research firm IDC found that over the

second half of 2011, mobile use in China outpaced that of the US and is expected account for

20.7 per cent of smartphone sales this year. While US maintained the overall lead in 2011,analysts believe thecountry will have just

a 20.6 share at the end

of 2012. The UK, meanwhile,will see its share of the

smartphone space

drop to 4.5 per cent.

By 2016, analystsbelieve that Brits willaccount for just 3.7

per cent of the world's

smartphone sales. Part

of that drop will be

due to soaring sales indeveloping nations such as India and Brazil. IDC projects that both countries will soon

surpass the UK, with India logging a 9.3 per cent share and Brazil a 4.7 per cent stake of the

market by 2016. The rise in smartphone sales comes as China, India and Brazil continue to

expand their mobile infrastructure and transition to wireless broadband networks. Mobileinternet platforms have proven popular in developing nations, which often lack widespread

availability of traditional wired internet service.

A drop in market share will not necessarily mean less attention on the UK from vendors and

carriers, however. IDC senior research analyst Ramon Llamas told that the UK and other

developed nations will likely remain a popular testbed for the latest handsets. "Developednations are the ideal place to launch new smartphones and follow up with strong marketing

efforts," Llamas explained. "It is where the high-profile, flagship devices are first launched so

as to grab the so-called early adopters' attention."

Salesforce moves into content management with Site.com

Salesforce.com is looking to expand its operations into the website design and publishing

space with the release of its Site.com platform. The company said that the Site.com platform

would be aimed at corporate marketing staff, allowing users to design and publish customer-facing pages across multiple web sites. The design tool will also support integration with

social networking platforms and will allow for embedded content such as video and widget

tools. 

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Designed to compliment the company's Salesforce CRM, Force.com and Service Cloud

offerings, the Site.com service will also integrate with the company's Database.com and

Chatter platforms. Salesforce.com is looking to further expand its social networking reachwith the integration of the Rypple

service. Acquired by the company 

last month, Rypple will allow managers and administrators to

recognise and reward employeesthrough the Salesforce.com portal

and Chatter service.

"Salesforce.com is seeing

unstoppable demand for the social

enterprise as companies see their

customers and employees become

more social and mobile by the day,"said chairman and chief executive

Marc Benioff. "With SalesforceRypple and Salesforce Site.com, we're excited that companies will now be able to extend their

social enterprise to reach every employee and every customer." The company will offer both

the Site.com and Rypple platforms for a monthly subscription fee priced per user and site.

Mozilla plans silent Firefox updates to help avoid ‘update fatigue’ 

Firefox browser maker Mozilla has announced its intention to bring silent updates to the

software from Firefox 13 in order to avoid "update fatigue" now that it is updating thebrowser on a six-week cycle. Outlining several of its plans for

the coming years, Mozilla said

that it was aware users of thebrowser are becoming frustrated

with the rapid release cycle it

introduced last year and so will

bring in silent updates to counter

this. "To cater to update fatigue,

updates will now be downloadedand installed silently in the

background. It means that startup

and shutdown of the web browser

won't be affected by installationroutines," Mozilla's technical

evangelist Robert Nyman said in a

blog post. "Additionally, the

 What's New page displayed after

an update can now be displayed depending if there is important information needed to be

displayed to the end user. Silent updates are currently planned to land in Firefox 13."

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Nyman also outlined plans to improve add-on compatibility between browsers so applications

work on numerous version of the browser, to make its web sockets match the W3C protocol

and general improvements to Firefox web applications. On Wednesday, announced Mozillaannounced it was releasing version 11 of Firefox, extending its Firefox Sync capabilities to

include add-ons, and adding new developer tools such as a style editor and WebGL

visualisation tool. The firm also confirmed it is working on a version of Firefox for Windows8 but said it has run into issues including a lack of documentation regarding application

programming interfaces (APIs) for the new Metro user interface.

HTC and Samsung detail Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades

Smartphone makers HTC and Samsung have both disclosed upgrades to the Android 4.0 Ice

Cream Sandwich

platform will becoming soon for their

respective handsets.  With user interest

still high in the latestversion of Google's

mobile platform,

Samsung has begun

answering queries on

Twitter. One responsedivulged that

Android 4.0 Ice

Cream Sandwich will

start rolling out for

its Galaxy S IIsmartphone from the

start of next week. Samsung also promised that "ICS for Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II LTE,

Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1 will follow soon." Meanwhile, HTC has posted an update to its

official blog listing handsets that will be getting an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream

Sandwich in the near future.

The list includes models such as the Desire S and Incredible S, with HTC stating it is in "the

early stages of rolling out Android 4.0 for the HTC Sensation and HTC Sensation XE and

upgrades will be more widely available in the next few weeks". However, many users have

already posted comments querying the absence of models such as the HTC Flyer tablet fromthe list. "We are working closely with our carrier partners to nail down update schedules for

our other smartphones and will have more to share very soon," the HTC blog stated.

Both Samsung and HTC warned that although the upgrades are now starting to roll out, itwill be up to the individual network operators in each country to approve the updates and

make them available to customers, so users may have to be patient for a little while longer.

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Android tablets increase in popularity at the expense of the iPad

Android tablets are

fast eroding the

iPad's dominance

of the tabletmarketaccording to new 

figures from IDC

on 2011 tablet

sales. In the last

quarter of 2011,

Android increased

its tablet market

share from 32 per

cent to 45 per cent,while the iOS

slipped fromholding a 62 per cent stake to a 55 per cent, according to the figures. The analyst firm said that it expects Android to continue to grow its share in the market at

the expense of the iOS. A large contributing factor to Android's recent success was thelaunch of the $199 Kindle Fire by Amazon, which runs a custom version of Android, said

IDC. The Fire shipped almost exclusively in the US in the fourth quarter of 2011 but still

managed to take a 17 per cent share of the worldwide tablet market. IDC said that it expects

Apple will only lead the tablet market for another three years.

"As the sole vendor shipping iOS products, Apple will remain dominant in terms of 

worldwide vendor unit shipments," said Tom Mainelli, IDC research director. "However, the

sheer number of vendors shipping low-priced, Android-based tablets means that Google's OS

will overtake Apple's in terms of worldwide market share by 2015." Also, according to IDC's

figures, Blackberry sales slipped to encompass less than one per cent of the market, whileHP's WebOS, which owned five per cent of the worldwide market around nine months ago,

no longer even registers in IDC's figures.

IDC said tablet sales have seen stronger than expected growth across many world regions,

reaching 68.7m sales in total in 2011. The firm said it expects sales will be even stronger this year, forecasting 106 million tablets will be sold. In related news, Apple has announced that

the new iPad will be available from 8am on Friday, 16 March, in the UK.

Yahoo-Facebook spat could spark patent reform

Technology entrepreneur Mark Cuban has weighed in on Yahoo's patent suit against

Facebook, suggesting that the case could generate reform in the way intellectual property 

cases are handled. In a post to his personal blog, the Broadcast.com founder and technology investor said that he hopes Facebook gets "crushed" by Yahoo and pushed into financial

obilvion. Cuban said that the opinion was not based on ill will towards Facebook, but rather

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his belief that high-profile case could finally bring home the battle being waged by 

technology vendors over patents. "When I read that Yahoo was suing

Facebook my immediate reaction wasdisdain," Cuban wrote.

"As I thought more

about it, I came to

realise that this case

could be the watershed

moment that causes

enough people to

recognise just how 

horrific our patent law is." The remarks come

 just one day after Yahoo filed suit against Facebook. 

The search vendor claims that Facebook is using its patents without compensating Yahoo or

paying a licence. Among the patents said to be involved with the case are technologies used

in the Facebook news feed and the social network's advertising platform. Facebook disputes Yahoo's claims. Cuban argues that should Yahoo prevail and win a large settlement against

Facebook, the public would demand patent reform. "I hope Yahoo is awarded $50bn. It is the

only way that consumers will realise what is at stake with patent law as is," he wrote. "Then

maybe we can get it right and further innovation and competition in this country."

Sony unveils Xperia sola Android phone touting 'floating

touch' navigation

Sony has unveiled its latest Xperia Android smartphone,featuring a novel screen interface for web navigation, a high-

resolution Reality Display and featuring near-field

communications (NFC) capabilities. Due to be available in second quarter of the year, the Xperia

sola features a 1GHz dual-core processor and will runAndroid 2.3 initially, with an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice

Cream Sandwich promised for the summer. One novel

feature of the new handset is a new "floating touch" user

interface, which has been designed to make web browsingeasier. According to the firm, it allows the user to highlight

the link they are interested in by moving their finger just

above the screen so it acts like a mouse pointer, without

actually touching the screen. Once the desired link is

highlighted, a quick tap activates the link.

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The Xperia sola also has NFC capabilities, which are often used for contactless payment

applications. However, out of the box the Xperia sola supports NFC pairing, whereby two

users can touch their handsets together to setup a communications link. Sony also includeswith the phone a pair of SmartTags, small NFC-compatible key fobs that can be configured

to trigger specific actions when touched to a compatible handset. Out of the box these are

configured as a Wi-Fi tag, which turns on wireless and launches Google News, while thesecond turns on the phone's alarm function and switches to silent mode. The Xperia sola's

screen is a 3.7in Reality Display with a resolution of 854x480 pixels and a mobile version of Sony's Bravia TV technology. The new handset weighs just 107g and features a 5-megapixel

camera. It ships with 8GB of internal storage, expandable via microSD card, and supports

GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA connectivity.

Apple posts security update for Safari browser

Apple has posted a security update for the Windows and OS X versions of its Safari web

browser. The company said that the Safari 5.1.4 update would address a number of vulnerabilities in the browser itself and its WebKit engine. Among the fixes in the update is a

patch which addresses dozens of memory 

corruption vulnerabilities in WebKit

which, if exploited, could allow an attacker

to remotely execute code on a targeted

system.

Other WebKit fixes include a cross-site

scripting vulnerability and a flaw which

could potentially allow an attacker toaccess a user's coo  kie data. The updatealso addresses vulnerabilities in the Safari

application itself. Among the issues

addressed was a flaw in the handling of 

 JavaScript code which could potentially 

allow sites viewed in private browsingsessions to be logged to the Safari history 

file. Additionally, the update will address a flaw in the handling of International Domain Name

(IDN) code which could leave users vulnerable to attack sites using look-alike URLcharacters. The Safari update comes one day before Microsoft is due to release its monthly 

security update. The March Patch Tuesday  release will contain fixes for vulnerabilities in

 Windows as well as patches for Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression. Safari 5.1.4 will run

on Windows XP SP2 systems and later and on OS X 10.6.8 and later systems.

SoftMaker promises beta of delayed Android office suite

Developer SoftMaker is set to make a public beta of its SoftMaker Office suite for Androidavailable, having seen development of the platform delayed by Google's frequent changes to

the operating system. The move follows a long hiatus in updates regarding the Androidversion of SoftMaker Office, which was first disclosed towards the end of 2010. The company 

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first promised a public beta of the suite about a year ago. SoftMaker chief executive Martin

Kotulla told that the numerous changes to the Android system had caused several

development headaches.

"Things that work fine on one device fail on another. This is due to different versions of 

Android with different sets of bugs, different GPUs, different implementations of hardwarekeyboards, bugs in software keyboards," he said. However, SoftMaker is now in a position tostart the public beta later this month, Kotulla added, with the service set to deliver a raft of 

productivity applications for Android-based tablets and smartphones.

In a blog post, SoftMaker said its team has been working on SoftMaker Office during the last

few months, ironing out bugs and taking on board feedback from volunteers during aninternal beta test of the suite.SoftMaker already has versions of SoftMaker Office for

 Windows and Linux PCs, plus Windows Mobile smartphones, with the same level of 

functionality across all versions. The latest version, SoftMaker Office 2012 for Windows, was

reviewed by in January.

SoftMaker's selling point is a high level of compatibility with Microsoft Office document

formats, with the TextMaker word processor reading and writing DOC and DOCX files, the

PlanMaker spreadsheet reading and writing XLS and XLSX files, while the SoftMaker

Presentations app similarly supports PPT, PPS, PPTX, and PPSX files. SoftMaker Office forAndroid will support advanced features such as tables in documents, PDF export, exact

rendering of Excel charts in PlanMaker, and support in SoftMaker Presentations for all

PowerPoint animations and transitions. In addition, the suite will integrate with the Dropbox

cloud storage service to let users access files directly from the application. The firm said it is

also working on similar integration with the Evernote web service.

SoftMaker may also release a version for the iPhone and iPad in future, if the Android

version is well received, according to Kotulla. "A lot of the groundwork has been done

through the Android version - both systems use OpenGL ES for accelerated graphics, and

SoftMaker Office supports this in Android," he said.

Bitdefender offers free cloud computing storage service

Security firm Bitdefender is the latest provider to get into the cloud computing storagemarket with a service that

lets PC and Android usersstore files remotely and

sync them between

devices. Available now,

Bitdefender Safebox offers

three tiers of service, with

a free plan providing 2GB

of online storage. Users requiring more

storage capacity than thiscan opt for a 30GB service for £24.99 per year, or a 60GB service for £54.99 per year. Like

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Dropbox, Bitdefender's product is based around an application that runs on the PC or mobi  le device, which keeps files and folders synchronised with those stored in the cloud, while

users can also access their files via a browser. "With just a click, users can sync, store andshare documents with any number of friends," said Bitdefender's product manager Cosmin

Sandu. However, Bitdefender added that Safebox allows you to backup and sync an unlimited

number of folders, no matter where they are stored on the PC hard drive.

Safebox also guards the privacy of user content by encrypting files when they are uploaded,

and maintains a backup copy. While Safebox currently supports Windows PCs and Android

devices, this will be extended with apps for the iPad and iPhone in future, the firm said.