DevExpress tools upgrade focuses on touch development

Touch-friendly application development for Microsoft Windows developers is a central theme of upgraded tools being offered this week by DevExpress, which is launching its DXv2 tools series.

DX2 enables developers to build applications for Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, and ASP.Net. “It’s a library of tools that we make available covering all types of new capabilities,” said Tammy Kaneshige, vice president of marketing at DevExpress. The first release in the DX2 series, DXperience 11.2, is being unveiled Tuesday and features accommodations for touch. “We’re looking at enabling touch across all of the platforms,” including Microsoft’s upcoming Metro interface planned for Windows 8, she said. The tools also provide a bridge from ASP.Net to Apple’s iPhone and iPad, enabling developers to build Web applications to run in the browser on those devices.

[ See InfoWorld's developer's guide to touch-oriented application development. Also, take a visual tour through Windows 8 Metro. | Subscribe to InfoWorld's Developer World newsletter for more coverage of software development. ]

For touch, the 11.2 release offers such capabilities as a tile control and a touch-enabled grid control. “All of our controls now have touch support, including grid,” said Dave Mendlen, DevExpress chief marketing officer and a former Visual Studio official at Microsoft. DevExpress tools can complement Microsoft’s Visual Studio IDE.

A beta user of DX2, Tim Huckaby, chairman of software development company Interknowlogy, sees DevExpress taking a lead in touch-based development. “I’m all about multi-touch and the natural user interface, and this is the first company of the major tools and frameworks and controls vendors to build tools to help developers build apps for touch, so this is pretty exciting stuff.”

DX2 is intended to enable development of rich user experiences. Also featured in 11.2 is a duplicate code detection capability in the DevExpress CodeRush tool for code generation and refactoring. “The intent is to simplify the amount of code that people have to write themselves,” Kaneshige said. An updated release of DevExpress’s XAF application framework, meanwhile, leverages Web and cloud capabilities by offering better performance for AJAX-style applications and offering preliminary support for running applications in the Windows Azure cloud. Subsequent DX2 releases will add more support for touch. DevExpress, for example, wants to expand its currently limited support for touch experiences on Google’s Android mobile platform.

Ruckus tackles channel-changing in Wi-Fi

Ruckus Wireless took another shot at optimizing Wi-Fi capacity on Monday, introducing a technology called ChannelFly that is designed to place network clients on the best possible channel based on the actual capacity of that channel.

Because Wi-Fi uses unlicensed radio spectrum, Wi-Fi networks are susceptible to interference from Bluetooth devices, microwave ovens and other spectrum users, as well as from other Wi-Fi systems. The two bands where it works, in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ranges, can be divided into several channels. But the growing number of Wi-Fi devices and networks all have to contend for the use of those channels.

Intelligently assigning clients to the various channels is one way of making the best use of a network’s capacity, and other vendors have targeted this solution. For example, in 2008, Aruba Networks introduced its Adaptive Radio Management 2.0 network management software, one purpose of which was making better channel assignments. Ruckus, which pioneered beamforming, another Wi-Fi optimization technique, said it has taken a new approach to picking channels with ChannelFly.

The software, which is available free for all Ruckus access points, determines how long it takes each packet to traverse the network in order to gauge the performance offered by each channel. It uses both current and cumulative results to predict which channel will be the best for a client to use. The access point communicates a change of channel to the client via the IEEE 802.11h standard.

By contrast, most other channel selection systems involve an access point passively listening for evidence of interference or congestion in adjacent bands, said David Stiff, director of product management at Ruckus. ChannelFly directly measures the impact of interference or congestion on actual packets.

In addition, ChannelFly performs this real-time monitoring without forcing the access point to briefly switch over to the adjacent channel to gauge its performance, Stiff said. This also improves performance, he said. Ruckus claims its new software can deliver capacity improvement between 25 percent and 100 percent in congested environments.

Ruckus uses the same real-time packet monitoring concept in its BeamFlex technology, which selects among different signal paths created by Ruckus’s adaptive antennas. The company decided to adapt the software to channel selection after seeing demand for better channel management from customers that operate Wi-Fi in public areas, including service providers and hotels, Stiff said. Ruckus said ChannelFly was invented by Bill Kish, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

The more devices there are on a wireless network, the smarter that network has to be about assigning channels, Farpoint Group analyst Craig Mathias [cq] said. The problem is getting worse even though all major Wi-Fi vendors are addressing it, because Wi-Fi has become the default network of choice for a widening array of devices including tablets, smartphones and traditional PCs, he said.

“Demands for capacity are increasing quite dramatically,” Mathias said. “Efficient management of wireless channels is going to continue to be a challenge for the foreseeable future.”

Microsoft expected to trumpet Office 365 momentum on Tuesday

Microsoft on Tuesday is expected to tout what it considers strong momentum in the adoption of its Office 365 cloud-hosted collaboration and communication suite, particularly among small companies that previously were unable to afford on-premise implementations of Exchange and SharePoint, according to people familiar with the announcement.

It will likely trumpet strong sales of Office 365 among organizations with 50 or fewer employees, a segment that has historically been dominated by Google Apps in the market for cloud-based collaboration and communication suites.

Microsoft may also announce a number of product improvements to Office 365 across the board, including the availability of mobile client software for its Lync Online component, which offers instant messaging, online meetings, audio and video communications, these people said.

The company is also expected to launch tools to simplify and automate Office 365 deployments and migrations, and may announce expansion of the data center infrastructure supporting the product, they said.

Announced in 2010 and launched in June of this year, Office 365 is a major upgrade to its predecessor, the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). In addition to Lync Online, Office 365 also includes hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office.

Office 365 is considered a stronger competitor than BPOS to Google Apps, which Google has been beefing up in the past two years to make it more attractive for large enterprises.

Two weeks ago, Google hosted about 350 CIOs from around the world in its Atmosphere conference, where it announced a series of improvements to Apps, including around-the-clock phone support for the core components of that suite, like Gmail, Calendar, Sites, Docs, Talk and Video. Google also improved abilities for Apps administrators to manage mobile devices and broadened availability of a cloud-based data analysis service.

Microsoft declined to comment about its plans for Tuesday’s announcement.

Facebook denies disputed page to both Merck companies

Facebook may take away the disputed page on Facebook from both Merck in Germany and Merck in the U.S., if the two companies do not come to an agreement, a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

The page Facebook.com/Merck was not accessible by late Monday, and the Merck U.S. page had moved to another location on the social network.

Germany’s Merck KGaA threatened legal action after it said it lost its Facebook page apparently to rival Merck & Co. in the U.S.

Facebook on Monday apologized for what it described as an “administrative error”.

The dispute reflects the growing importance businesses attach to having branded pages on Facebook and other social networks.

In a filing last week before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Merck Germany said that as Facebook is an important marketing device, the page is of great value, and its misappropriation is causing harm to the company.

By about Oct. 11 this year, it said it found that it had lost administrative rights to the page which now had content that appeared to be “created by, and is related to” Merck & Co. in the U.S.

“The transfer of the vanity URL Facebook.com/Merck from Merck KGaA to Merck & Co. was due to an administrative error,” Facebook said in a statement. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” it added.

A vanity URL (uniform resource locator) on Facebook and other social networks is a distinct web address that reflects a user name.

Facebook will however make Facebook.com/Merck unavailable unless and until the two companies mutually agree that one can use it, said the person who requested not to be named.

Facebook has contacted Merck KGaA and Merck & Co. to explain the situation and inform them of Facebook’s intention to remove the vanity URL. Each company will however be welcome to set up a new username and vanity URL reflecting their particular company, or is welcome to maintain an official page on Facebook without a vanity URL, the source said.

Merck & Co. and Merck KGaA were not immediately available for comment. Merck & Co. said on its new page that earlier on Monday, “Facebook announced plans to decommission our vanity URL due to an administrative error on Facebook’s part”.

“We want to assure you that our Facebook page will remain active and continue to serve as a helpful resource for information on health and well-being,” Merck U.S. added. On Sept. 16, it carried a post welcoming users to “Merck’s official Facebook page!”

Merck & Co. was formed in 1891, but became an independent U.S. company after World War I reparations.

RIM to offer multiplatform device management

Research In Motion is taking on mobile device management for Android and Apple iOS devices as well as its own products, introducing the BlackBerry Mobile Fusion product on Tuesday.

BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is designed to simplify the management of phones and tablets that run RIM’s current BlackBerry OS and the emerging BBX platform, which is based on the QNX software that currently powers RIM’s PlayBook tablet. But Mobile Fusion will also manage devices using the two biggest mobile OSes, Android and iOS.

The growing number of corporate and employee-owned mobile devices poses a challenge for enterprises that want to let employees choose their own devices, while making sure sensitive data remains secure and business applications uncorrupted. Numerous vendors have weighed in with tools to handle these tasks, including Sybase, Zenprise and FiberLink. But RIM, which largely introduced mobile devices to large enterprises and is still a major player in this market, has not managed other vendors’ devices.

When companies allow employees to bring their own smartphones and tablets into corporate offices and to use them for work, they can no longer dictate a standard platform and build a device management strategy around it. Managing those diverse fleets of devices has fallen mostly to third parties rather than mobile platform purveyors themselves.

Because of its long enterprise experience and reputation for security, RIM may be better suited than its mobile OS rivals to dive into mobile management as a business. But the company also is strongly motivated to make its customers happy, as sales of its smartphones decline and shipping dates for some products slip. Version 2.0 of its PlayBook operating system, originally expected in October, now is set for delivery in the first quarter of next year. The company hasn’t even given a firm date for availability of the first smartphones based on QNX.

Other big mobile OS vendors are making strenuous efforts to capture market share from RIM in enterprises. With its planned purchase of Motorola Mobility, Google will also acquire 3LM, which makes software to secure all the apps on an Android phone. The 3LM software is already built into the entire phone lineups of a dozen handset makers, Motorola said last month. Apple has steadily added enterprise-friendly features to iOS, and a survey released earlier this month showed iPhones overtaking BlackBerry devices among workers at 1,100 companies around the world.

HP pairs Autonomy and Vertica software

Hewlett-Packard is quickly putting to use its recent acquisitions of Autonomy and Vertica, integrating the software from these companies into a single software package, called the HP Next Generation Information Platform.

Customers will be available to use the combined offering, which will be made available at the end of January, to search and analyze both structured and unstructured data, said June Manley, who is HP’s director of information optimization business solutions.

The Vertica Analytics Platform is a data warehouse software for storing and analyzing structured data, or data that has been stored in a relational database. Autonomy’s IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) server can index unstructured data within an enterprise, providing users with a search-based interface.

HP completed its purchase of Autonomy in October, and purchased Vertica in March.

HP’s Autonomy unit has updated IDOL so that it includes a set of hooks that would allow it to be easily integrated with Vertica, said HP Autonomy chief marketing officer Nicole Eagan. IDOL version 10, available Dec. 1, will offer users the ability to work with structured data that is being held in the Vertica platform, she said.

“Autonomy’s strength has been in text, audio, and video, while Vertica brings more of the columnar database processing and analytics,” Eagan said.

The unified interface could be handy for synthesizing in a single workflow both structured and unstructured data, which are typically dealt with by separate systems within an enterprise, Eagan said.

For instance, data culled from social media sites such as Twitter, which is typically captured as unstructured data, could be explored using Vertica’s social graphing functionality and projective analytics. The package could also combine click-stream analytics captured in Vertica with sentiment analysis data captured in Autonomy.

Video or audio, both of which IDOL can ingest, could be paired with related sensor data or historical data stored in Vertica for real-time intelligent monitoring. As an example, a bank could monitor a phone call with a customer requesting credit, which can be parsed through Autonomy. “If during that call, the caller said something to cause the mortgage provider or bank to be worried about a credit risk, they might want to run that against a Vertica credit risk analyzer in real time,” Eagan said.

The paired offering could also provide a single interface for working with both IDOL and Vertica data. Ovum enterprise software analyst Tony Baer has stated that the Autonomy and Vertica software would be a good fit for each other, because the Autonomy software could provide a superior user-facing front-end for the Vertica software.

Beyond the HP Next Generation Information Platform, HP may also combine IDOL and Vertica for other analytic packages, Eagan said. “This is a great starting-off point. With things like big data and social media being as hot as they are, you will see different things evolve,” she said.

The Week in iOS Accessories: Power to the people!

Every week, our iOS accessories roundup offers more proof of the versatility of our iPhones and iPads. Love sports? Photography? Mother Earth? Good design? There’s something for you here

Enandis: Something about this company’s new Megaphone makes us want want to shout Ricola! We’ll resist the temptation, but Enandis’s line of passive-amplification devices for the iPhone and iPod touch does remind us quite a bit of the Alps. Just place your iOS device’s speaker at the small end, and the ceramic horn will create big sound for music or hands-free phone conferencing. To purchase the Megaphone, you’ll have to navigate the company’s multilingual website–not necessarily an easy task. The basic model starts at €399.

The Joy Factory: Bicyclists and stroller-pushing parents are the target audience for The Joy Factory’s $50 StormCruiser, a mount for the iPhone 4 and 4S that attaches to the handlebars of whichever wheeled contraption you’re using. The mount includes an element-proof enclosure that offers protection against water, dust, and grease, while giving users access to their music, exercise apps, or GPS programs while out on the trail.

Onkyo: The veteran audio company has unveiled its $299 CS-345 CD Mini System, a compact stereo that can play CDs, tune in AM/FM radio, and host your iOS device. The CS-345 can also play video from your iPhone or iPad on a TV. The system includes a pair of two-way, bass-reflex speakers, as well as a remote control. Onkyo pitches the system as perfect for a dorm room or home office.

Photojojo: Designed for serious iPhone photographers, Photojojo’s $250 iPhone Lens Dial is a protective can that lets iPhone users choose between three high-quality optical lenses–wide-angle, fisheye, and telephoto–that add versatility to the phone’s camera. The accessory does more than just enables great photo-making, though, as the aluminum design brings a steampunkish quality to your phone. The Lens Dial sports two tripod mounts, allowing you to take photos in either portrait or landscape mode.

Powerbag: Charging your iPhone or iPad can be a tricky proposition when you’re on the go. Powerbag offers a solution with its new line of backpacks, messenger bags, and briefcases. The bags, which range in price from $140 to $250, include a built-in battery capable of powering up to four devices–including e-readers and some laptops–at the same time while you’re in transit. The developers say the battery holds enough juice to top off your iPhone twice.

This year’s H-1B cap is reached at quicker pace

The annual H-1B cap has been reached for this year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and at a pace that is two months ahead of last year.

The U.S. issues 85,000 H-1B visas each year under its cap, with 20,000 of that number set aside for advanced degree graduates of U.S. universities.

The USCIS, which begins accepting H-1B petitions on April 1 of each year, announced on Wednesday that the openings for fiscal 2012 have been filled.

In 2010, the H-1B cap wasn’t reached until Jan. 26 of this year. In 2009, the H-1B cap was reached on Dec. 21, 2009.

Prior to the recession, the cap was often reached in as little as a week .

The H-1B visa is one of the most controversial issues in tech.

Opponents say it’s facilitating job losses through offshoring , lowers wages and leads to age discrimination for U.S. workers. Supporters argue that the visa is needed to hire foreign graduates of U.S. universities, as well as allow firms to be economically competitive by moving work to lower wage regions.

In the U.S. House, the recent focus has been on permanent residency. Bills by both parties have been bill introduced in the House to make green cards available to advanced degree graduates of U.S. universities.

In the Senate, Sen. Charles Schumer has promised an immigration bill that would include H-1B reforms. Last year, Schumer sponsored legislation. later signed into law, which increases H-1B fees by $2,000 on offshore firms. He said the visa has created ” multinational temp agencies .”

One of the most ardent advocates of late for increasing the H-1B cap has been New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently called for eliminating the caps on H-1B visas and on employment based green cards. He said the caps are a form of ” national suicide .”

Apple’s ‘Black Friday’ sale cuts Mac prices up to 10%

Apple today cut Mac prices up to 10% in a repeat of the last two years’ stingy “Black Friday” deals, which authorized resellers again trumped.

For the second year in a row, Apple also sold the iPad at a discount.

Apple’s one-day sale reduced most Mac prices by $101, a 10% cut on the entry-level 11-in. MacBook Air, which sold for $898 on Friday. The across-the-board $101 translated into discounts of 6%-8% for 13-in. MacBook Airs, 4%-8% for MacBook Pros and 5%-8% for iMacs.

The Mac Mini and the Mac Pro were not included in the deals.

Apple’s Mac discount was identical to those of the last two years’ Black Friday sales, although unlike in 2010 , Apple did not exclude its lowest-priced notebooks this year’s.

The iPad 2 was reduced between $41 and $61 depending on the model, a discount of between 8% and 9%, and for the priciest iPads, slightly more than in 2010. Apple also dropped the price of the iPod Touch between $21 and $41, and cut prices for the iPod Nano by $11.

Apple’s prices were good at both its online and brick-and-mortar stores through the day. Many of the latter opened at 6 a.m. local time in the U.S., several hours earlier than usual.

Some rival online sellers, however, beat Apple’s sale prices.

Amazon.com, for example, listed the least-expensive 11-in. MacBook Air at $849.99 and the entry-level 21.5-in. iMac for $1,049.99.

Apple also discounted several software packages today, including the three-license edition of Microsoft’s Office for Mac Home & Student 2011, which was priced at $128. But others beat Apple’s sales price on that product, too: Amazon listed the application suite at $99.99, or 33% below list.

Amazon, Best Buy Open Cyber Monday Deals On Sunday

Cyber Monday shoppers who can’t wait until Monday to snap up popular tech items online at special prices need not worry. Some retailers were making deals available Sunday.

Amazon and Best Buy were starting the Internet frenzy a day early, similar to how some retailers opened stores for Black Friday shopping on Thursday.

Amazon, which says Cyber Monday was its best-selling day last year, will be adding new deals to its Cyber Monday site all week long. Last year on Cyber Monday, Amazon sold a mind-blowing 158 items per second.

For tech lovers, it appears there will be plenty of deals on electronics available, although Amazon is staggering the ones it opens up to customers. For instance, on Sunday morning, it offered a 40-inch iSymphony HDTV with Internet apps for the “Lightning Deal” price of $299.99, or 45 percent off the list price. That particular deal only lasted a few minutes before it was 100 percent claimed and had a full waitlist.

That means if you’re in the market for tech items you should check the site early, find out when deals will open for buying and set your clock to get in on the action right away.

Beyerdynamic MMX 101 in-ear headphones, normally $89.99 at Amazon, also sold out quickly for $60.99 but at least initially still had room on a waitlist. By late morning, a little more than half of the i.Sound Portable Power Max units on sale were still available for $59.99, 54 percent off the list price, and a 14-inch Hewlett Packard laptop was about to hit and site visitors were told to check back according to a countdown to get the discounted price.

Amazon’s strategy to tempt visitors with good deals on electronics, but not give them access to all deals at once, is a pretty smart trick to keep people returning again and again to the site where they could find even more items to buy.

Other Amazon deals that will be available at various times starting at midnight Sunday and continuing through the end of the week in Amazon’s Cyber Monday Deals Store include:

• Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V 10.2 MP Digital Camera: $199 (save $150)
• Pentax K-5 Digital SLR (Body Only): $999 (save $200)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 250GB Holiday Bundle (includes Fable III and Halo Reach): $199 (save $100)
• Nokia N8 (Unlocked): $299.99 (save $249)
• Monster Diddybeats Headphones: $59.99 (save $89)
• Up to 50 percent off select VTech electronic toys

Best Buy also is promoting its online Cyber Sale, which it says is Sunday and Monday, as opposed to Amazon’s weeklong event. Its carrot for shoppers is also different — if you spend $100 or more and use in-store pickup Best Buy will email you a $10 electronic gift card you can use online or in stores. Best Buy also doesn’t show you how much of a discount you’re getting when you put an item in your shopping cart, so it will help if you know the normal selling price of any items you might want to buy.