10 great Google tools you need in your business workflow

Google is so ubiquitous in our everyday digital lives that it's easy to overlook the many tools it offers that have a business slant. But there are lots of them, and I'm not just talking about Microsoft Office equivalents such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, or Google Analytics.

Gathered here are ten serious Google services that can boost your productivity, get your team on the same page, and market your company. You probably already use some of these services for funlike Hangoutsbut they have powerful business applications as well.

Blog: Google and Your Business 

If you haven't stumbled across Google and Your BusinessGoogle's blog for businessesyou owe it to yourself to check it out. It's a gateway to all sorts of resources, including tip collections, case studies, and news about relevant hangouts and sites, such as Google for Entrepreneurs. The fly-out toolbar on the right makes it easy to archive posts, apply labels, add to your RSS feed, and find other useful Google blogs.

Google Places for Business

With Google Places for Business, you can add salient details about your businessnot just name, address, and phone number, but business category, hours of operation, types of payment accepted, and areas servedto Google's database without paying Google a dime. The informationincluding a small mapappears in relevant Google search results. Google Places previews what your listing will look like even as you provide the information in a questionnaire. While this service is free, Google does encourage you to increase your business's visibility by buying an AdWords ad, but the sales pitch is low-key.

Google+ Pages

Google+ Pages is Google's equivalent of a Facebook page, but with a couple of customization options specifically designed for businesses. You start by choosing the type of businesses (brick-and-mortar companies have options to help people locate them), then add content such as a cover photo, your logo, and a brief description. As the creator of the page, you can designate other administrators or even transfer ownership of the page. Use it to promote your business with photos, videos, news, links to Hangouts, and more.

Google+ Hangouts

Google often promotes Hangouts as a video chat room for friends and family, but the chat rooms also have features that make them useful for business meetings. Not only can you see and hear up to ten participants, but you can collaborate on Google Drive documents, share your screen, or run third-party apps. A Hangout may not offer all the features of a commercial Web-conferencing tool such as WebEx or GoToMeeting, but the ones it does have may be all that a geographically dispersed team needsand it's free.

Google Voice Global Spam Filtering

Sadly, spam is no longer confined to the email inbox. Robocalls can be a major time-consuming distraction. But just as Gmail's spam filter quite effectively winnows out a lot of junk mail, Google Voice (Google's universal call forwarding/voicemail service) offers tools for discarding these unwanted calls before they ring through. Primary among them is Global Spam Filtering, which immediately discards calls coming from numbers Google has identified as spam sources. Activate it by clicking on Calls in Google Voice's settings.

Smart Rescheduler for Google Calendar

If you need to reschedule a meeting you've created in Google Calendar, you could look through participants' shared calendars to see when everyone is freeor you could enable Smart Rescheduler inGoogle Calendar Labs (which you access from the GCal settings menu), and let Google do the searching for you. Once enabled, Smart Rescheduler appears as a widget on the right side of the Calendar window; to use it, highlight the event you wish to reschedule, and click the Find a new timelink. You'll get a list of alternative times, each with a Schedule This button to click for the time you choose.

Google Forms

Google Forms, a capable and easy-to-use survey tool, is a free Google Drive add-on you can download at the Chrome Web Store (which also has free and paid business apps from third-party vendors). Create your survey from question templates (choosing between types such as multiple choice, checkbox, scale, or text answers), then either post it in a Google+ Hangout or distribute it via email. Recipients submit the completed form by clicking a button at the end. The survey itself and the responses are all automatically stored on your Google Drive, and you can view the results in either summary form (with auto-generated graphical aides) or in a spreadsheet.

GoMo

In the era of the smartphone, having a website created for desktop browsers may not be enough. GoMoby Google is a site for businesses that want to investigate creating a mobile-friendly version of their site, or at least that want to test how accessible their site is to mobile users. There's a tool that shows what your site looks like on a smartphone and that rates its mobile-worthiness by asking a couple of questionsfor example, whether you can click links with your thumb. If nothing else, GoMo makes you give some thought to these issuesand if you want to act, it has links to developers that can help you out or do the work for you.

GMail Priority Inbox

Gmail puts yellow arrows next to messages it believes, based on Google algorithms, you'll find important, and you can modify its choices manually (by clicking on the arrows) to help teach it what really matters to you. The visual cues save you time in sifting through your mailbox, but you can speed things up even further with Gmail's Priority Inbox feature. Just click on Inbox in the left nav bar (to bring up the inbox-style menu) and choose Priority Inbox, which will group at the top of your inbox all unread messages with yellow arrows. If you want to go back to sorting mail according to when it arrived, just pick Classic from the Inbox style menu.

Two-step verification for Google accounts

If news about hackers gaining access to password-protected data has made you nervous (or even if it hasn't), consider beefing up your Google account security by activating Google's two-step verification for account logins. This adds a second password (in addition to the usual password entry) for logins: a code Google sends to your cell phone or landline, or that you store on paper in your wallet (in case you're not near a phone). After an initial setup, you can waive the requirement on trusted computers and mobile devices for 30 daysand you can always revoke waivers from your security settings. Read adetailed explanation and setup guide here.

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The 4G ad wars: Evaluating AT&T and Verizon Wireless

Wireless carriers are battling in print, TV and Web commercials that focus on having the biggest 4G network or the most 4G coverage. All these commercials create a phony issue that doesn't relate to the actual reasons for choosing 4G service or choosing a given carrier to provide it.

We looked at two TV ads, from AT&T and Verizon Wireless, posted on their YouTube accounts.

Who really has the most 4G wireless coverage?

Performance and pricing determine the "4G experience"

The AT&T commercial consists of nearly 30 seconds of listening to the monotonous guitar hammering of "Memory Lane" by Eddy Current Suppression Ring and watching a young Dude appearing in about 40 different locations, with not quite that many girls, and with his trusty AT&T smartphone. He talks, laughs, smiles, walks, lies on a beach, looks at stuff, texts, takes photos of himself with one or another of the girls, and stuff like that.

At the end, and 30 seconds rarely has felt so long, the voice-over says, "AT&T. The nation's largest 4G network, covering 2,000 more 4G cities than Verizon."

Or as the YouTube text helpfully elaborates, "This spot follows our main character as he uses his AT&T smartphone throughout his adventures across the states. He chronicles his travels and shares his memories and experiences with the people he cares about thanks to AT&T, the nation's largest 4G network."

The concept of the "nation's largest 4G network" is a key message for AT&T. The carrier arrives at "largest" by adding together cities covered by two different cellular technologies, both of which AT&T labels 4G: LTE, in 103 cities at this writing, and HSPA+, which covers a whole lot more.

AT&T's website distinguishes between the two. 4G LTE represents the "fastest mobile Internet speeds," whereas "4G Mobile Broadband" is the carrier's "4G HSPA+ network with enhanced backhaul. AT&T's 4G HSPA+ network is capable of delivering 4G speeds when combined with enhanced backhaul."

Apparently our Dude in the TV commercial is On the Road, an epic journey of exploration and discovery. Who is this guy? He's young. A casual dresser. He laughs a lot. His one obvious flaw is that he favors clear plastic parasols on rainy days. Perhaps he's a successful high-tech entrepreneur who's cashed out on some esoteric Web technology and retired at what looks like about 26 or so, and with time to kill and money to spend, decides to have adventures across the states. All 50 of them it seems. Maybe he's decided to visit the "2,000 more 4G cities than Verizon" that AT&T covers with the nation's largest 4G network.

Verizon Wireless takes a less impressionistic approach: It focuses on, you know, facts. This commercial, called "Easy Choice," opens with the headline "4G LTE Focus Group," so we know the people we're about to see are "real" people.

It's a conference room, clean, well-ordered, spare. The Focus Group Guy (FGG) begins helpfully by telling us that 4G LTE "has the fastest speeds."

"So, let's talk about coverage," he says, getting right to The Point. We see an easel with a bar chart, labeled "U.S. Markets with 4G LTE Coverage." A humongous red bar -- Verizon! -- rears up from the x coordinate, towering above the shrimpy little LTE bars for AT&T, and Sprint and poor T-Mobile.

"Based on this chart, who would you choose?" he asks the focus group. And they are wowed, stunned, impressed. Eventually, they all agree that they'd choose Verizon. The voice-over, as the words "It's an easy choice" appear on screen: "It doesn't matter how you present it. Verizon. More 4G LTE coverage than all other networks combined."

But what are these people "choosing" Verizon for? The FGG's question is ambiguous. He could be asking, "Based on this chart, which carrier would you choose as having the most LTE sites?" In that case, it's a simple matter of counting, and currently Verizon does indeed have the largest number of LTE cities. But he could also be asking, and this clearly seems to be the implication of the commercial, "Based on this chart, which carrier would you choose as your LTE provider?"

Both AT&T and Verizon are trying to persuade people that having a lot of LTE or 4G base stations somehow makes for a superior or better network, and therefore becomes a reason, or even the reason, for choosing the carrier. But you'd have to be as peripatetic as AT&T's Dude before a nationwide network of Verizon LTE base stations actually becomes a tangible benefit.

About one mile from where I live there's a main drag with a McDonald's, a Burger King and a Mexican restaurant that's part of a small Massachusetts chain. Based on the number of fast food restaurants owned by McDonald's, Burger King and this Massachusetts restaurant chain, which would you choose?

The answer is: The number doesn't have any bearing on my choice. I don't care if McDonald's has eleventy zillion stores in 50 states. I only care if it's got one where I live. And if I want TexMex instead of a Big Mac, I don't care even if there is a McDonald's where I live.

Consumer Reports, while not the last word on cellular service and phones, lists a "reader score" of overall satisfaction with their cellular service and then a set of criteria that CR's experts created for measuring specific features or attributes. "Voice and texting scores are relative (reflecting differences from the average of all providers)." It then goes on to give mean scores on a scale of "Very poor" to "Excellent" for: "value for money, satisfaction with data service, ease and speed of reaching support staff through the phone system, and support staff knowledge. Issue resolved ratings are relative as well."

There's no rating of coverage, reflecting the fact the total number of LTE or 4G cities served by a carrier is simply not a criteria for buying a particular phone or choosing a particular provider. In fact, the major wireless carriers in CR's most recent ratings scored well below much smaller providers, which often make use of one of the major's wireless network and may focus only on a given region.

CR concludes: "On the whole, readers who prepaid for their service (without a contract, for monthly minutes, unlimited or pay-as-you-go) were more satisfied overall than respondents with standard service. Customers at prepaid carriers were also happier with the value for money of their service."

Data speeds, the latest network technology, are only one part, and apparently often not the biggest part, in customer satisfaction with wireless service. TV commercials that focus on the number of cities covered by a 4G service simply try to deflect attention from more substantive and more relevant issues.

John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for Network World. Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnwcoxnww Email: john_cox@nww.com

Read more about anti-malware in Network World's Anti-malware section.

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AC/DC finally rocks the iTunes Store

Apple and Columbia Records on Monday announced that AC/DC's complete catalog is available digitally for the first time--exclusively at the iTunes Store. The rock band had long been missing in action from online music stores, but now the entirety of the band's discography is available for digital purchase. All the music has been Mastered for iTunes as well.

According to a press release, all sixteen of AC/DC's studio albums, along with four live albums and three compilations, are now on sale in the iTunes Store.

Two collections are available: The $100 Studio Collection encompasses all of AC/DC's 176 studio-recorded songs, complete with an iTunes LP featuring photos and liner notes. The $150 Complete Collection adds in rarities, demo tracks, the four live albums, and an iTunes LP with "a detailed essay and photos from the era," according to iTunes. The compilation includes 312 tracks.

The iTunes Store also now offers AC/DC ringtones.

The AC/DC announcement comes two years after another significant iTunes hold out finally arrived in the store.

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US lawmaker asks Reddit for ideas on website seizures

A U.S. lawmaker has asked users of Reddit for their ideas about legislation to address the controversial recent practice by two U.S. agencies of seizing websites for alleged copyright infringement.

U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said Monday she is considering legislation to address free expression and due process concerns with the website seizures by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the past two years, the two agencies have seized about 1,500 websites they accused of selling pirated digital goods or counterfeit products.

Users of Reddit, a popular social news site, showed a "strong dedication to free expression" during a debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act, Lofgren said in a statement. SOPA, defeated after millions of Internet users protested earlier this year, would have expanded the DOJ's powers to seize websites for alleged copyright infringement.

Reddit was one of the first sites to announce it would go black for a day to protest SOPA and the Protect IP Act, a similar bill. With Reddit's involvement in the SOPA debate, "I thought I would attempt an experiment: crowdsourcing a legislative proposal on Reddit," Lofgren said.

Lofgren will consider proposals from Reddit users in the drafting of legislation, she said.

Lofgren's move toward introducing legislation shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of the seizures, she said.

"Although I am considering introducing a bill on domain name seizures for infringement, that does not mean I accept the practice as legal or constitutional," she said. "Nonetheless, since these seizure actions are occurring, I thought it worthwhile to explore a legislative means providing appropriate protections for free expression and due process."

Critics of the seizures have said the DOJ and ICE give website owners no notice before seizing the sites. In some cases, the websites seized may include blog posts, discussion boards or other material protected by U.S. free speech rights, critics have said.

Supporters of the seizures, including many in the U.S. entertainment industry, have argued that the seizures are necessary to stem rampant copyright infringement online.

New legislation from Lofgren would focusing on requirements that the agencies provide notice to website owners and an opportunity for them to defend against a seizure, she said.

Four Reddit users had submitted comments as of Tuesday afternoon.

"Domain Name seizures should be made completely illegal, with no compromises or exceptions," one Reddit user wrote. "The government has taken down countless websites across the internet with absolutely no due process with only a judge's signature on a piece of paper with most of the evidence for the take down coming from the biased entertainment industry."

Representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both supporters of the website seizures, didn't immediately return messages seeking comment on Lofgren's proposal. A representative of the Recording Industry Association of America declined to comment.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

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With Intel's Otellini phasing out, new CEO may bring fresh mobile focus

Intel CEO Paul Otellini is getting ready to leave the company, and analysts say this could be a good change for the world's largest chip maker.

Intel announced on Monday that Otellini, 62, will retire in May after nearly four decades with the company. The company's board of directors will conduct a search for his replacement.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini gives a keynote address during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2012. (Photo: Steve Marcus / Reuters)

Whoever takes over as Intel's next CEO will face a daunting job. The company has been struggling to find its way into the burgeoning mobile market and faces tough competition from Arm Holdings, whose processors and technologies are widely used in mobile devices. The company has also been challenged by the depressed PC market.

While most industry analysts say Otellini is leaving the company of his own volition, Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, Inc., said other issues could have influenced his decision.

"Anytime this type of thing happens, it's a bit of a surprise, but he's been there a long time," Dulaney said. "And there are other factors that may be a 'slight' influence, such as the decline in PC shipments and the fact that Intel has missed the growth in mobility in categories such as smartphones."

However, Dulaney noted, Intel is a very strong company with top-of-class manufacturing and a particularly strong server business. With that strong base, new leadership could be a welcome change, he said.

Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said he's waiting to see who's on Intel's short list for the CEO position before commenting on Otellini's departure.

"I don't think it's necessarily bad, or good, news," he said. "It definitely means change, and some uncertainty, which is disruptive, but, Intel is fighting on a number of fronts and could probably use the shot in the arm that a new leader can bring."

With about six months to prepare for the big leadership transition, Intel is in a good position, according to Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT, Inc.

"Today's announcement begins an orderly preparation for his departure, with the Intel board having plenty of time to search, vet and choose a replacement," he added. "This is diametrically opposite from instances where CEOs are shown the door without warning or even a prospective replacement standing by."

It also means the company's board should have time to find a new leader who has a firm grasp of mobile technologies and the expanding mobile market.

However, a new leader, whether well-versed in mobile or not, may not change the company, or its future direction, all that much, said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

Intel is such a strong company with a new mobile strategy that the departure of one CEO and the entrance of another shouldn't alter its course much, Moorhead said.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.

Read more about it leadership in Computerworld's IT Leadership Topic Center.

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Meraki buy more than cloud Wi-Fi to Cisco

Even though Meraki made a name for itself in cloud-based WLANs, Cisco's long-term goals for its new acquisition go beyond just Wi-Fi.

Cisco acquired Meraki on Sunday for $1.2 billion. Meraki is a privately held company that specializes in cloud-based management of wireless LAN, security appliances, and mobile devices for midmarket companies.

HOT MARKET: Top Tech M&A deals in 2012

But analysts see Meraki's infrastructure playing a much broader role at Cisco over time. Indeed, Meraki becomes Cisco's new Cloud Networking Group.

"Meraki is to become the new 'Cloud Networking Group,' which would imply more than just Wi-Fi," says Mike Spanbauer of Current Analysis.

Mark Fabbi of Gartner agrees.

"It's pretty clear Cisco bought Meraki because of their ability to manage cloud infrastructure and Meraki has proven that the model works and is robust," Fabbi says. "I would expect that it will become the platform for Cisco to offer different delivery and management models to a much broader product and customer set."

Cisco Senior Vice President Rob Soderbery said Meraki will appeal to midsize companies that have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT systems. Meraki's infrastructure is already used by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices, he said.

Zeus Kerravala sees Meraki playing a key role in Cisco's Cisco ONE programmable networking strategy and its onePK API set.

"It's more cloud management than Wi-Fi," says Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research. "It's software control pushed into the cloud. It's a front-end to onePK on the back-end. Cloud networking is actually the long term value."

Jon Oltsik of Enterprise Strategy Group sees Meraki as a delivery model for some Cisco technologies that currently require on premise hardware.

"I see Meraki as the managed networking part of the cloud strategy," he says. "Think of Cisco technologies like TrustSec, ISE, QoS, WLAN, etc. Cisco makes these things work with its own hardware and software to offer solutions with central policies, reporting, etc. The problem is that not everyone wants to buy or operate this stuff. I can manage network policy in the cloud or on-premise and it's likely that Cisco will integrate the two for a common solution."

Fabbi says that even though Meraki will be anchoring the new Cloud Networking Group, it won't be Cisco's only cloud offering. They already have cloud-based WebEx conferencing, unified communications and IronPort security services.

But Meraki could very well become Cisco's biggest cloud offering, he says.

"They wouldn't have spent over $1 billion for some WLAN bits and pieces," Fabbi says.

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 25 years, 21 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

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Hottest Android news & rumors (in brief!) for the week of Thanksgiving

(Author's note: Since I'll be way too full of turkey and stuffing and all the rest of it to fill you in on the latestAndroid news on Thursday, here's a brief update on what's happening early in the week. Enjoy!)

Big screen? No big deal for Samsung, apparently -- last week's murmurs that the South Korean giant was maybe sort of going to think about a full HD screen on what may or may not be the Galaxy S 4 crescendoed into a remarkably unified chorus over the weekend, thanks to a Friday article from the Asia Economy Daily.

'TIS THE SEASON (ALREADY): Network World's holiday gift guide

The idea that Samsung is getting ready to release a 1080p Galaxy S 4 at CES in January makes a lot of sense -- I doubt they're happy about HTC having the only high-profile full HD Android phone on the U.S. market right now (in the form of the Droid DNA), so they'll be eager to get it out the door as quickly as possible. The interesting part will be to see how HTC responds.

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Android Police has officially dubbed the problems many users have reported with Android 4.2 a "-gate," which is how you know it's serious business. Still, given the severity of some of the bugs -- including serious system instability, broken Bluetooth and battery life issues -- it's tough to argue that Google doesn't have some explaining to do.

What's more, the article doesn't even mention the weirdest glitch of them all -- the month of December, apparently, has gone completely missing, as far as the People app is concerned. Bad news for fans of the holiday season and temporal continuity alike, it seems. (The Post story notes that it'll still keep appointments for you and everything, though.)

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Still, don't you fret, because Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie might be on the way! Well, OK, it's probably not, but Android Authority seems to have gotten hold of a benchmark showing what could be a Sony Xperia T with a new version of Android on it. AA itself, however, urges the consumption of a large grain of salt with this rumor, and I wholeheartedly concur -- it would be very strange indeed to have another new Android version in the offing at this point. Maybe in a few months.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold. Oh, and happy Thanksgiving.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.

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SC2012: Top500 expects exascale computing by 2020

If the increase in supercomputer speeds continue at their current pace, we will see the first exascale machine by 2020, estimated the maintainers of the Top500 compilation of the world's fastest systems.

System architects of such large computers, however, will face a number of critical issues, a keeper of the list warns.

"The challenges will be substantial for delivering the machine," said Jack Dongarra, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher who is one of the principals behind the Top500. Dongarra spoke at the SC2012 conference, being held this week in Salt Lake City, during a presentation about the latest edition of the list, released Monday.

We still have a way to go before exascale performance is possible. An exascale machine would be capable of one quintillion FLOPS (floating point operations per second), or 10 to the 18th FLOPS. Even today's fastest supercomputers offer less than 20 percent of the capability of an exascale machine.

In the most recent edition of the Top500 list of supercomputers, released Monday, the fastest computer on the list was the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Titan system, a machine capable of executing 17.59 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion floating point calculations per second, or 10 to the 15th FLOPS.

But each new Top500 -- the list that is compiled twice a year -- shows how quickly the speeds of supercomputers grow. Judging from the list, supercomputers seem to gain tenfold in power every 10 years or so. In 1996, the first teraflop computer appeared on the Top500, and in 2008, the first petaflop computer appeared on the list. Extrapolating from this rate of progress, Dongarra estimates that exascale computing should arrive around 2020.

The High Performance Computing (HPC) community has taken on exascale computing as a major milestone. Intel has created a line of massively multicore processors, called Phi, that the company hopes could serve as the basis of exascale computers that could be running by 2018.

In his talk, Dongarra sketched out the characteristics of an exascale machine. Such a machine will likely have somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 nodes and will be able to execute up to a billion threads at any given time. Individual node performance should be between 1.5 and 15 teraflops and interconnects will need to have throughputs of 200 to 400 gigabytes per second.

Supercomputer makers will have to construct their machines so that their cost and power consumption do not increase in a linear fashion along with performance, lest they grow too expensive to purchase and run, Dongarra said. An exascale machine should cost about $200 million, and use only about 20 megawatts, or about 50 gigaflops per watt.

Dongarra expects that half the cost of building such a computer would be earmarked for buying memory for the system. Judging from the roadmaps of memory manufacturers, Dongarra estimated that $100 million would purchase between 32 petabytes to 64 petabytes of memory by 2020.

In addition to challenges in hardware, designers of exascale supercomputers must also grapple with software issues. One issue will be synchronization, Dongarra said. Today's machines pass tasks among many different nodes, though this approach needs to be streamlined as the number of nodes increases.

"Today, our model for parallel processing is a fork/join model, but you can't do that at [the exascale] level of a parallelism. We have to change our model. We have to be more synchronous," Dongarra said. Along the same lines, algorithms need to be developed that reduce the amount of overall communication among nodes.

Other factors must be considered as well. The software must come with built-in routines for optimization. "We can't rely on the user setting the right knobs and dials to get the software to run anywhere near peak performance," Dongarra said. Fault resilience will be another important feature, as will reproducibility of results, or the guarantee that a complex calculation will produce the exact same answer when run more than once.

Reproducibility may seem like an obvious trait for a computer. But in fact, it can be a challenge for huge calculations on multinode supercomputers.

"From the standpoint of numerical methods, it is hard to guarantee bit-wise reproducibility," Dongarra said. "The primary problem is in doing a reduction -- a summing up of numbers in parallel. If I can't guarantee the order in which those numbers come together, I'll have different round-off errors. That small difference can be magnified in a way that can cause answers to diverge catastrophically," he said.

"We have to come up with a scenario in which we can guarantee the order in which those operations are done, so we can guarantee we have the same results," Dongarra said.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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Logitech introduces Mac-based video surveillance

Logitech on Wednesday introduced new software that turns Mac computers into video surveillance command centers.

Once installed, the Logitech Alert system can be viewed on a variety of devices.

Logitech Alert Commander for Mac allows users to tie six Logitech Alert security cameras into a single HD dashboard, viewed live or in playback, giving them full surveillance over households and small offices. (Users can also set up motion alerts that send text or images to your phone or email.) And once set up, the feed can be viewed privately but remotely at Alert.Logitech.com or via the company's iPad app.

It works with systems including the $350 Logitech Alert 750e Outdoor Master System and the Logitech Alert 700i Indoor Add-On Camera, for either external or internal views of the premises.

Until Wednesday, Logitech's security products had been compatible only with PCs running Windows software.

Logitech Alert Commander for Mac is free; it is compatible for users running Mac OS 10.6.8 and later.

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Skype disables password reset after security flaw exposed

Microsoft has disabled the option for users to reset their Skype passwords after security experts uncovered a serious flaw in the software that allowed anyone who knows your email address to hack your Skype account.

The vulnerability allowed people to sign up to Skype with email addresses already in use by others and then force password resets for accounts associated with that address in order to gain access to your account. Basically, anyone who knew your email address could sign up for a new Skype account with it and then reset the password for your current account, thus hacking in.

The exploit first appeared on several Russian forums, and has been actively exploited since, Costin Raiu, a senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said in a blog post. To protect against this vulnerability, Raiu advises that users change the email address associated with their Skype account to a new, never-before-used address.

Rik Ferguson, director of security research & communication at Trend Micro, explainedhow easy it was to hack into someone's Skype account: "In essence the procedure is so simple it could be carried out by even the most inexperienced of computer users. [...]This would lock the victim out of their Skype account and allow the hacker to receive and respond to all messages destined for that victim until further notice. I tested the vulnerability and the entire process took only a matter of minutes."

Skype also said in a statement that it is aware of the new security vulnerability issue. "As a precautionary step we have temporarily disabled password reset as we continue to investigate the issue further. We apologize for the inconvenience but user experience and safety is our first priority," the statement said.

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Nine security controls to look for in cloud contracts

To help ease the concerns of cloud security, which Gartner says is still a chief inhibitor to enterprise public cloud adoption, buyers are looking to contracts and service-level agreements to mitigate their risks.

But Gartner cloud security analyst Jay Heiser says SLAs are still "weak" and "unsatisfying" in terms of addressing security, business continuity and assessment of security controls.

RELATED: Gartner's state of cloud security: Outages are bigger risk

"A lot of these things are getting a lot of attention, but we're seeing little consistency in the contracts," he says, especially in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) controls are "primitive, but improving."

Below are some of the common and recommended security provisions in cloud contracts and how common and effective they are.

Customer audits on demand

These clauses allow customers to audit vendors.

Effectiveness: Partial, depending on how much the vendor allows the customer to inspect

How common? Sometimes

Data deletion certificate

Proof that data is deleted when service expires.

Effectiveness: High, legally defensible

How common? Never

Disaster Recovery

Many vendors claim cloud services, by their nature, equate to disaster recovery, but that cannot always be the case. If, for example, data is only stored in a single location of a cloud provider without an offline backup, that creates a single point of failure.

Effectiveness: High, but difficult to verify. While vendors may claim they have robust systems, they are often reticent to provide evidence, citing security concerns.

How common? Not typically in contract clauses.

Downtime credits

These provide the user credits or some sort of reimbursement in case of downtime.

Effectiveness: Partial. While a credit may be helpful, it is a post-factor remedy and does not prevent an outage from happening in the first place

How common? Often found in contracts

Encryption

Effectiveness: Varies. There are multiple encryption methods. If encryption is done by the vendor when the data reaches the provider's cloud, it is less expensive and less secure compared to if the user encrypts the data before sending it to the cloud. Important factor is who stores and has access to the encryption keys. The more copies of the keys, the less secure it is. Beware of vulnerabilities related to losing keys.

How common? Varies by provider. Third-party tools can also be used to provide encryption as a service

Evaluations

Many buyers use third-party security services to verify their providers' security controls, such as ISO27001 or SOC1 and SOC2 audits. But, a vendor simply reporting that it complies with these audits in many cases does not provide end users with the information they need to evaluate the provider's system for their specific security needs.

Effectiveness: Believed insufficient

How common: Common

Full indemnification for security failure impact

In this situation, a contract would outline that if there is a security breach that the provider would be responsible for losses of the customer.

Effectiveness: Theoretically high

How common? Never

Hacking insurance

Insurance by a third party, or by the vendor could help displace costs resulting from a security or data loss issue.

Effectiveness: Potentially helpful, but like the downtime credits, does not necessarily create incentive for provider to avoid a breach

How common? Rare, but growing

Negotiate security clauses

These allow customers to negotiate higher levels of security for certain programs or data.

Effectiveness: Potentially high

How common? Mostly for large customers only

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.

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Online tool 'PlagSpotter ' allows for plagiarism checks

A Ukraine-based startup, Devellar, has launched an online plagiarism tool that checks online content to see whether it has been duplicated.

The beta version of PlagSpotter features an algorithm that "enables bloggers, journalists, writers, priests, politicians, or any type of public figure to track if someone posts any of their material online," the company said in a statement.

PlagSpotter offers free unlimited individual URL checks as well as three paid subscription plans for automated scanning and monitoring of web content for plagiarism.

For $49.95, the "Guru" plan allows up to 50 URLs to be checked for plagiarism daily, offers email notifications and day-by-day weekly reports. For $10.95, the "Master" plan offers 25 URL checks and email notifications, and for $7.95, the beginner plan offers 10 URL checks and email notifications.

Currently, the beta version of PlagSpotter offers free unlimited individual URL checks.

Devellar, which was originally founded in 2004 to develop products for its own use, is pitching its duplicate content checker as an important tool for preventing Internet copyright infringement, avoiding Google ranking penalties and improving search engine optimization.

Devellar said the tool can also be used by websites to ensure that they use only original content, thus avoiding any problems by easily identifying whether their content is truly original. Additionally, anyone who has written any original material can find out whether their material has been duplicated online without permission.

"Google constantly tries to provide the most relevant websites a searcher is looking for. If a website has too much duplicate content, then its SEO is compromised and can be put last in a Google search or removed entirely," Devellar said.

Computerworld tested PlagSpotter on one of its stories and the tool found 21 other sources that had quoted sections of the story.

"Duplicate content is becoming more important and relevant for websites as a result of Google's latest penalties and algorithm updates," Devellar said. "This means that websites that copy and paste stolen content unto their website risk not only poor SEO but copyright infringement as well."

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

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