Craig Mundie takes new role at Microsoft, will retire in 2014

Craig Mundie has left his role as Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer to become senior adviser to the CEO, as he winds down before retirement.

Mundie had led strategy since founder Bill Gates stepped down from full-time work at the company in 2006.

Ina Fried of All Things D first reported the move Monday morning, noting that it was announced in an internal memo from CEO Steve Ballmer on Dec. 14, which also included news that Mundie plans to retire in 2014.

Chief Technical Strategy Officer Eric Rudder has taken over most of Mundie's former duties, including overseeing Microsoft research.

Mundie, who will turn 65 in 2014, joined Microsoft in 1992 in the consumer platforms division, where he managed production of Windows CE. Before then, he had co-founded Alliant Computer Systems, which filed for bankruptcy in 1992, and previously was director of Data General's advanced development facility at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

"Over his career, Craig has brought great value to the groups and initiatives he has started and overseen and now brings that wealth of experience to his new role," Ballmer said in the email, according to All Things D. "Craig has also been instrumental in building relationships with governments and policymakers around the world."

Mundie has been the company's primary technology-policy liaison to the U.S. and other governments, according to his biography on the Microsoft website, which was updated Dec. 17 to reflect his new role. Mundie has particularly focused on China, India and Russia in the liaison role, and also served on the U.S. National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. President Barack Obama appointed Mundie to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in April 2009.

As senior adviser, Mundie works on "key strategic projects within the company, as well as with government and business leaders around the world on technology policy, regulation and standards," according to his biography.

Read more »

Windows 8's uptake falls behind Vista's pace

With just a week left in the month, Windows 8's usage uptake has slipped behind Vista's at the same point in its release, data from a Web measurement company showed.

According to Net Applications, Windows 8's online usage share through Dec. 22 was 1.6% of all Windows PCs, an uptick from 1.2% of November. Windows 8 publicly launched on Oct. 26.

At the same two-month mark in Vista's release timetable, that OS accounted for 2.2% of all Windows systems, double the month prior.

Net Applications measures operating system usage by recording the specific operating system and version used by the machines of visitors to approximately 40,000 sites it monitors for clients.

The slowdown in uptake of Windows 8 and its poor performance compared to Vista is a troubling sign for the new operating system. Vista has been labeled a rare Microsoft failure, in part because it was adopted by far fewer customers than either its predecessor, Windows XP, or its successor, Windows 7.

Vista's online usage share peaked in the fall of 2009 at 20.3% of all Windows systems.

While there are nine days of Windows 8 data for December still to be released by Net Applications -- including Christmas, when a substantial number of Windows 8 PCs may have been given as gifts, and thus not included in the online estimates -- the new OS would have to record an amazing usage jump during December's final week to put it on par with Vista's 2007 pace.

By Computerworld's calculations, Windows 8's share of all Microsoft-powered PCs would have to leap to 4% in December's final week to equal Vista's second-month total. To give an idea of the magnitude of that required fourth-week increase, Net Applications said that Windows 8's share of all Windows PCs for the week ending Dec. 22 was 1.7%, and for the week ending Dec. 15, was 1.6%.

Net Applications' statistics continue to corroborate data from others that show Windows 8 has not generated the PC sales "pop" historically seen after the launch of a new Microsoft OS. In late November, the NPD Group said that in four weeks surrounding Windows 8's Oct. 26 debut, 21% fewer PCs were sold to U.S. consumers than during the same period in 2011.

Newer NPD numbers, cited by the New York Times last weekend, said U.S. consumer sales of Windows machines from late October through the first week of December were down 13% compared to the same stretch last year.

And even if Windows 8 makes a showing strong enough this month to match Vista, it will continue to have difficulty keeping pace: By the end of Vista's third month, it accounted for 3.3% of all copies of Windows. To equal that, Windows 8 would have to double its current share by the end of January 2013.

Windows 8's uptake trajectory fell behind Vista's for the first time this month. Note: Windows 8's usage share is through Dec. 22 only. (Data: Net Applications.)

Windows 8's uptake was even more sluggish when compared to Windows 7, the 2009 operating system that has flourished as much as Vista flopped.

By the end of its second month of availability, Windows 7 accounted for 6.2% of all Windows machines, or nearly four times that of Windows 8 as of Dec. 22.

At this point, it looks virtually impossible for Windows 8 to do as well as its immediate predecessor, at least in the short run: At the end of Windows 7's third month -- analogous to Jan. 31, 2013 for Windows 8 -- it had gained another two percentage points to end with an 8.2% share of all Windows systems.

In fact, Windows 7 continued to gain share in December, according to preliminary numbers from Net Applications. Through Dec. 22, Windows 7's usage share of all personal computers was 45.6%, or nine-tenths of a percentage point higher than at the end of November.

To put that in perspective, Windows 7 gained more than twice the share through Dec. 22 than did Windows 8.

Windows 8's failure to stay abreast of Windows 7 or even Vista is not hard to explain, said analysts, who have been predicting a weak reception for the new operating system, blaming a weak economy, the OS's confusing dual user interfaces, enterprise upgrade fatigue after migrating to Windows 7, and competition from rivals' tablets -- including Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus -- for customers' technology dollars.

Neither Vista nor Windows 7, of course, had to face competition from tablets.

And that, experts have said, is paramount. Because Windows' success is directly tied to the number of new PCs sold, sluggish system sales caused by defections to tablets translates into a slow-down in operating system's uptake.

And people, whether consumers or enterprise workers, are increasingly turning to tablets -- virtually all of which run a non-Microsoft OS -- as their preferred mobile device, reducing sales growth of Windows notebooks and generally stretching everyone's PC refresh cycle. Research firm IDC, for instance, recently raised its 2012 tablet sales forecast to 122 million devices, up 72% from 2011.

Earlier this year, IDC said that total worldwide PC shipments would reach 367 million in 2012, less than 1% above 2011's 364 million.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about windows in Computerworld's Windows Topic Center.

Read more »

Windows 8 PC orders weak, says analyst

Computer sellers have scaled back their expectations of the sales pop they'll get from Windows 8 this year, an analyst said today.

Brian White, of Topeka Capital Markets, said that his checks of Asian computer manufacturers -- the relatively unknown firms that build desktop and notebook PCs to specifications issued by the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Dell -- found that orders last month climbed by less than half the average of the last seven years.

"With all of the sales numbers out for our ODM Barometer, October sales rose by 2% month-over-month and below the average performance of up 5% over the past seven years," White said in a note to clients earlier this month. "This is weaker than our preliminary estimate of up 5% month-over-month in October and speaks to the continued challenges in the PC market."

White's ODM Barometer -- ODM for "original device manufacturer" -- is a metric of sales by the Asian companies that assemble PCs for brand-name computer sellers. It does not show sales of those PCs to buyers, but hints at the orders those computer sellers have placed for inventory.

The ODM Barometer for October was also down in a year-over-year comparison, repeating a less substantial slide in September, White said.

"The sales cycle has decelerated further into negative territory, dropping to down 13% year-over-year in October from down 9% in September," he wrote. "This weakness is unusual given that PCs with Windows 8 and new ultrabook products are ramping."

PC sellers had hoped that the release of Windows 8 would kick-start sales, which first flattened, then fell in the face of still-unsettled economies and fierce competition from smartphones and tablets for customers' dollars.

It seems that computer sellers expected more from Windows 8 earlier this year, but have since rethought, said White. "Sales [by ODMs] in October will clearly be helped by the ramp of Windows 8, [but they're] much lower than the PC makers originally expected a few months ago."

His conclusion: "The macro [economic] weakness is weighing in on PC demand and the plethora of new tablets is driving more conservatism on the part of the PC makers," he said in an email reply to follow-up questions.

The result: "The Windows 8 ramp is much lower than expected a few months ago, partly related to these issues and others," White said.

ODM sales -- again, a harbinger of orders placed by computer sellers for future PC deliveries -- this year were also weak when compared to the months leading up to Windows 7's launch in 2009.

"During October 2009, sales rose a similar 2% month-over-month," White added in his email. "However, the three prior months [then] were much stronger than July, August and September of this year."

Previously, Computerworld has tracked usage patterns of Windows 8 in the months leading up to, and including, the Oct. 26 launch, and found that the new operating system is being run by less than a fifth as many people as ran Windows 7 in the same months before its debut.

Although many analysts and Microsoft watchers have cautioned that it is too early to conclude that Windows 8 sales -- and by extension, those of Windows 8 PCs -- are sluggish, others, including David Johnson of Forrester and Paul Thurrott, who writes the popular "Supersite for Windows" blog and is the co-author of Windows 8 Secrets, have claimed that that is exactly what is happening.

Thurrott, who last week cited unnamed sources within Microsoft, said that Windows 8 sales were below the company's internal projections and had been called "disappointing" internally. According to Thurrott, Microsoft has put the blame at the feet of its OEMs (original computer manufacturers), the vendors that contract with ODMs to build their wares.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.

Read more about windows in Computerworld's Windows Topic Center.

Read more »

Microsoft moves to relegate Windows 7 to second-class status

As Microsoft goes full speed ahead on Windows 8, a number of signs suggest that Windows 7 is fading fast in Redmonds rear view mirror.

On Monday, Microsoft program manager Daniel Moth confirmed in a support forum that DirectX 11.1 will only work with Windows 8. The company has no plan to bring DirectX to earlier versions of Windowsincluding Windows 7.

DirectX 11.1, Microsofts API for 3D graphics, isnt a major update from DirectX 11, but it adds features to take advantage of high-end graphics processors. It also includes native support for Stereoscopic 3D. The news will mainly affect gamers who want to keep upgrading their rigs but would rather not move to Windows 8.

Thats not the only indication that Microsoft is starting to leave Windows 7 behind. Reportedly, Microsoft wont release a second service pack for Windows 7, unnamed sources told The Register last month, and the company does not plan to offer an Xbox Music app for its older operating systems. For Windows Phone 8 users, Windows 8 has a slick modern-style app for syncing and viewing media, whereas Windows 7 only has a more bare-bones Windows Phone app for the desktop.

To be clear, Microsoft will support Windows 7 through 2015, meaning that itll offer both security and non-security updates for free. Extended support, which provides free security updates but requires a subscription for other hotfixes, will continue through 2020.

But when it comes to individual applications and services, Microsoft is starting to move on. Even Internet Explorer 10, which is already available on Windows 8, is only getting a preview version for Windows 7 this month, with no word on final availability.

Its not unprecedented that Microsoft would start treating its older operating systems as second-class software. After all, Office 2013 wont support Windows Vista or XP, and neither will Internet Explorer 10. Still, the Microsofts willingness to leave Windows 7 behind in some areas shows just how eager the company is to push Windows 8, lest we forget how big of a bet this new operating system is for Microsoft.

Read more »

Microsoft patches critical flaws in Windows 8, Windows RT

Microsoft today patched 19 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), Excel and the .Net development framework, including four flaws in the just-released Windows 8 and its tablet spin-off Windows RT.

Of Tuesday's six security updates, four were labeled "critical," Microsoft's most-severe threat ranking, while the remaining pair were pegged as "important" or "moderate." Of the 19 vulnerabilities patched today, seven were tagged as critical.

"The IE9 [bulletin] is the one that should be patched first," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, in an interview today. "It's a drive-by," he added, referring to the tactic that only requires hackers to trick users into browsing to a malicious website.

Doing that with an unpatched copy of IE9 could result in a successful hijacking of a Windows 7 or Vista PC. IE9 only runs on those two operating systems.

No other versions of Microsoft's browser, including the new IE10, were affected by MS12-071. IE10 is bundled with Windows 8 and Windows RT, and today shipped as a "Release Preview" for Windows 7.

Storms put MS12-075 second on today's to-do list.

That update patches three vulnerabilities in Windows kernel mode drivers, one of which was labeled critical. The latter was a bug in the operating system's parsing of TrueType fonts, which could be exploited only by determined attackers, said Storms.

"Despite the fact that it looks nasty, it's not very realistic to expect working exploits," argued Storms, ticking off the many requirements for a successful attack, including the need to spoof a proxy server.

Microsoft rated the bug as "2" on its exploitability index, the company's threat estimate, essentially agreeing with Storms. "Exploit code would be difficult to build," Microsoft said of the TrueType bug.

That vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by Google's bug bounty program. In late September, Google paid a pair of researchers $5,000 for rooting out the vulnerability, part of a $29,500 payday for nine different researchers.

Windows 8 and Windows RT harbored four of the 19 bugs, three of them critical and the fourth ranked important.

The two critical flaws in MS12-072 were pegged for Windows 8 and its offspring, as was the TrueType font bug in MS12-075 and one of the vulnerabilities in MS12-074, which patched all versions of the .Net framework.

A Windows RT-related vulnerability was also fixed in MS12-076, an update for all versions of Excel, including the one within Office RT, the mini-suite bundled with Microsoft's tablet OS. Only the not-yet-available-at-retail Excel 2013 escaped unscathed.

"I'm sure Microsoft is disappointed to have released Windows 8 in late October and have already issued patches for it," said Storms. "But truth be told, a lot of code is reused, and it shouldn't be surprising to see bug fixes in Windows 8. Despite all the hype about newer platforms being the most secure, bugs will be found and bugs will be fixed."

November's six security updates can be downloaded and installed via the Microsoft Update and Windows Update services, as well as through WSUS.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

Read more about malware and vulnerabilities in Computerworld's Malware and Vulnerabilities Topic Center.

Read more »

Most memorable tech industry apologies of 2012: From Apple to Google to Microsoft

Tech vendors have been as bombastic as ever promoting the magical and amazing things their latestsmartphones, cloud computing wares and network gear can do. When things go wrong, they're naturally a little less visible, but plenty of companies have sucked it up and done the right thing this year (perhaps with a little legal prodding here and there) and publicly apologized for minor and major customers inconveniences.

Here's a brief rundown of the sorry, sorry action so far in 2012:

*Apple Maps flap

Apple has a reputation for not apologizing for much of anything (or even deigning to comment on anything slightly controversial). It even twisted a court order in the U.K. in October into a sort of non-apology apology/advertisement and then a snoozy newspaper ad.

But actually, the company has said sorry numerous times in recent years, for everything from long waits for buyers of the first iPhones in 2007 to the notorious antenna-gate problems with the iPhone 4. This time around, CEO Tim Cook issued an apology in the wake of the company's release of disappointing maps technology in iOS 6. The apology read, in part:

"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

One Apple executive who reportedly didn't want to sign off on the apology -- iOS chief Scott Forstall -- has now left the company in a management shake-up. And Forstall was joined in departing by John Browett, Apple's retail chief, whose group's problems with store staffing over the summer resulted inanother Apple apology. 

*Cisco stops pushing cloud on customers

Responding to customer backlash over making Cisco Connect Cloud service a default management system for high-end Linksys routers, Cisco apologized and made it so customers need to opt in to the service if they want it. The default is now a traditional setup for management over the LAN.

Customers balked at Cisco Connect Cloud for numerous reasons, including worries about Cisco snooping on their network use and strict terms of service that restricted access to certain content, possibly including spam and porn, among other things.

Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager of Cisco Home Networking, wrote in July:

"We believe lack of clarity in our own terms of service has contributed to many of our customers' concerns, and we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused. Cisco Connect Cloud and Cisco Linksys routers do not monitor or store information about how our customers are using the Internet and we do not arbitrarily disconnect customers from the Internet. The Cisco Connect Cloud Service has never monitored customers' Internet usage, nor was it designed to do so. Cisco will not push software updates to customers' Linksys routers when the auto-update setting is turned off."

*T-Mobile: Sorry about the sneaky ads

T-Mobile USA begged for forgiveness in April after slipping advertisements onto Android smartphone customers' update notification screens promoting the carrier's free VIP Zone offering. The carrier stopped the practice after the complaints came rolling in.

The apology: "During a recent software update, a message to promote T-Mobile's free VIP Zone was mistakenly sent to certain customers and appeared on the notification bar for some Android devices. After T-Mobile was made aware of this mistake, the company stopped the notifications. T-Mobile apologizes for the inconvenience this may have caused customers."

~~

*Motorola, Woot clean up their acts

Motorola Mobility in February warned people who bought but then returned Android-based Motorola Xoom tablets between March and October last year that the devices might have been resold by bargain-of-the-day website Woot with the ex-owners' sensitive data still on them. Motorola said that about 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Xoom tablets that it refurbished "may not have been completely cleared of the original owner's data prior to resale." The tablets were resold by Woot between October and December 2011.

Data possibly accessible on the uncleaned tablets could include photos and documents, as well as user names and passwords for social media, email and other accounts, Motorola acknowledged.

The company issued a statement of apology: "Motorola sincerely regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused the affected customers. Motorola is committed to rigorous data protection practices in order to protect its customers, and will continue to take the necessary steps to achieve this objective."

*Google earnings snafu, Gmail outage

When you're a company as wide-ranging as Google, you're always good for at least a few high-profile apologies during the year. Among the 2012 offerings: A hoarse-voiced CEO Larry Page apologizing during an analysts' call in October for the company's accidental release of its numbers too early ("I'm sorry for the scramble earlier today") , and then in April and June, mea culpas issued for Gmail outages. In April, Google apologized "for the inconvenience," thanked Gmail users for their "patience and continued support" and said that it is continually making improvements to its "system reliability," which the company considers "a top priority." However, as many as 4.8 million users were affected by another outage in June. In July, Google found itself apologizing for a Google Talk outage as well. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

As for the premature release of its earnings statement, Google ultimately pointed to a mistake by financial printer RR Donnelley. Google's stock price got pounded for the error and hadn't quite recovered even a month later.

*Naughty Microsoft

With all the challenges to its Office and Windows products, does Microsoft really need headaches like these, too? Among the issues Microsoft has apologized for in 2012: a coder slipping the term "big boobs" into software code connecting the Linux kernel to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization product, and a raunchy dance routine that preceded an Azure presentation in Norway. 

As Network World's Paul McNamara wrote about the coding issue: "Some chucklehead working for Microsoft thought it would be funny to slip a thinly camouflaged sexist remark - 'big boobs' -- into software code that connects the Linux kernel to Microsoft's HyperV virtualization product. Naturally, someone noticed -- that was the intent (snicker, snicker) - and, as should surprise no one, criticism has ensued, since the vast majority of grownups have come to recognize that this kind of juvenile nonsense has no place in the business world."

Microsoft issued an apology: "We thank the community for reporting this issue and apologize for the offensive string. We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel."

As for the dance routine in June, Microsoft's Azure team issued this apology: "This week's Norwegian Developer's Conference included a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language. We apologize to our customers and our partners and are actively looking into the matter."

Once that was settled, Microsoft was able to focus on apologizing for interruptions to Azure service, such as it did in July when its cloud offering went on the fritz in Western Europe. "We sincerely apologize for any issues this caused impacted customers, and will make the necessary adjustments to help prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future. Impacted customers should contact support to file an SLA credit," wrote Mike Neil, general manager, Windows Azure, on a company blog. 

On the less racy side, Microsoft also apologized to a blogger in March in the wake of a Windows Phone marketing promotion called "Smoked by Windows Phone" that proved unfair when store employees failed to recognize the blogger's Samsung Galaxy Nexus the winner of a $1,000 laptop prize. Microsoft PC evangelist Ben Rudolph came to the rescue, via Twitter, once the story got picked up: "Hey @sahaskatta , @Microsoftstore & I want to make things right. So I've got a laptop & phone (& apology) for you. Email me!," @BenThePCGuy tweeted.

*Amazon cloud crash

People tend to notice when Amazon Web Service's cloud offerings collapse, not that they necessarily realize Amazon is involved. Rather, it's the companies whose websites depend on AWS that get noticed, and often wind up apologizing to their customers.

That's exactly what happened in October when AWS had an outage (its third major one in two years) following a new hardware installation ("latent memory bug" issue) at one of its northern Virginia data centers. Websites such as Reddit and Imgur were left to do the explaining to their would-be website visitors, while Amazon followed up with credits for its customers and a promise to fix the underlying problem, including an overaggressive traffic throttling policy. Amazon also apologized, writing in part on its AWS support site: "We apologize for the inconvenience and trouble this caused for affected customers. We know how critical our services are to our customers' businesses, and will work hard (and expeditiously) to apply the learning from this event to our services. While we saw that some of the changes that we previously made helped us mitigate some of the impact, we also learned about new failure modes. We will spend many hours over the coming days and weeks improving our understanding of the event and further investing in the resiliency of our services."

Amazon was forced to publicly apologize for another outage of its Elastic Compute Cloud lasting several hours in June that it blamed on power outages (caused by storms), software bugs and rebooting bottlenecks. Amazon's team wrote: "We regret the problems experienced by customers affected by the disruption and, in addition to giving more detail, also wanted to provide information on actions we'll be taking to mitigate these issues in the future."

~~

*LinkedIn passwords free-for-all

LinkedIn, in June, confirmed reports that some of its users' passwords were compromised after reports surfaced that about 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were compromised and posted online in a Russian hacker forum, in large part because LinkedIn was using a weak hashing algorithm.

The business-oriented social network site quickly updated its security and ensured users who updated their passwords that they'd be in much better shape. Even so, it was hit with a $5 million lawsuit over the breach. 

Here's what one LinkedIn VP blogged, in part: "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven't read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices."

*BlueToad victimized by hackers

Digital publishing company BlueToad revealed in September that the unique identifiers of some 1 million Apple iOS devices that hackers leaked were swiped from its servers. CEO Paul DeHart's admission that his company was the hacking victim helped clear suspicion from the FBI, which the Antisec-affiliated hacking group claimed to have taken the UDIDs from. DeHart said in an interview with MSNBC (and he might be the only exec from any of these companies that apologized on camera) that his company did change its code to comply with stricter Apple guidelines earlier this year, but that the hackers got access to information stored via older code.

DeHart wrote in a blog post that: "We sincerely apologize to our partners, clients, publishers, employees and users of our apps. We take information security very seriously and have great respect and appreciation for the public's concern surrounding app and information privacy. BlueToad does not collect, nor have we ever collected, highly sensitive personal information like credit cards, social security numbers or medical information. The illegally obtained information primarily consisted of Apple device names and UDIDs - information that was reported and stored pursuant to commercial industry development practices."

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*GoDaddy goes down

GoDaddy's internal investigation of a six-plus hour outage on Sept. 10 for website and domain service business and its 52 million customers concluded that it was caused by a "series of internal network events that corrupted router database tables," not a hacker attack, as was first suspected by many after a supposed Anonymous affiliate initially took credit. GoDaddy emphasized that while customers websites went dark, their personal data was not compromised.

CEO Scott Wagner issued an apology in which he wrote in part: "Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it. We take our business and our customers' businesses very seriously. We apologize to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience."

GoDaddy also awarded customers one month of credits in attempt to keep disappointed ones from fleeing.

*RIM CEO: Sorry about the outage

In the grand scheme of things, RIM BlackBerry network outages haven't been the worst of Research in Motion's problems this year. Rather, the company's loss of market share, weak financial results and new product delays have been front and center.

But RIM did have a three-hour network outage in September in Europe and Africa that affected about 6% of customers and prompted CEO Thorsten Heins to apologize: "I want to apologize to those BlackBerry customers in Europe and Africa who experienced an impact in their quality of service earlier this morning. The BlackBerry service is now fully restored and I can report that no data or messages were lost. Up to 6 per cent of our user base may have been impacted. Preliminary analysis suggests that those customers may have experienced a maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages. We are conducting a full technical analysis of this quality of service issue and will report as soon as it concludes. I again want to apologize to those customers who were impacted today."

*Nokia's camera trick

Nokia's big Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 splash in September got off to a rough start when the company overreached in a video promoting the camera's Pureview camera technology. Yes, Nokia resorted to the old not-so-hidden cameraman trick.

As NW's Colin Neagle wrote in September, "Nokia was caught red-handed in a lie, after tech bloggers spotted a cameraman capturing a video the company claimed was shot with its new, highly touted Lumia 920 smartphone. After apologizing, Nokia posted a real video shot with the smartphone, displaying the optical image stabilization (OIS) camera technology that was faked on the first try."

Tech bloggers spotted in the video a reflection of a cameraman with a professional camera actually taking the shot of a women on a bicycle.

The company said its main fault was failing to publish "a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only."

~~

*Yahoo's massive breach

Yahoo apologized for a network breach in July that involved exposure of some 400,000 Yahoo user names and passwords, among other information. The breach was especially bad because it tied in with Gmail, Hotmail and other online accounts. The group claiming responsibility for the hack said it used a SQL injection. Yahoo's apology went like this: "At Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products. We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday,July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com."

*Path goes down wrong privacy path

Path, a social journal app for iPhone and Android devices, apologized in February after it came to light that the company was grabbing iPhone contact info and sticking it on its own servers. CEO Dave Morin wrote in part: "We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts. ... Through the feedback we've received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our 'Add Friends' feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts."

The revelation, in turn, led to more revelations that bigger name apps like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare were doing likewise. Apple took steps to require app makers whose wares are in its App Store to ask permission if they want to take contact info.

*McAfee: Just kidding about that malware

Read more »