Ubuntu Founder Officially Gives up Trying to Topple Microsoft

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced on Thursday that Ubuntu Linux bug #1 – "Microsoft has a majority market share" – is now officially closed. Rather than boasting about his victory, he gives much of the credit to iOS and Android. “Android may not be my or your first choice of Linux, but it is without doubt an open source platform that offers both practical and economic benefits to users and industry. So we have both competition, and good representation for open source, in personal computing.”
We use the term “victory” above very loosely since it’s quite clear Shuttleworth didn’t achieve his overarching goals of dominating the PC industry. Back in 2004 he believed pretty strongly that all PC’s should ship with primarily free and open operating systems, a goal which quite clearly hasn’t played out like he expected. Even Android phones for the most part ship with locked boot loaders, and OEM’s do everything possible to restrict access.

Despite the technicalities, Shuttleworth notes that the Microsoft of 2013 is nothing like the company he declared war on back in 2004. He writes that Microsoft Azure in particular is "a pleasure to work with" on Linux, and that today "circumstances have changed.” 

U.S. Goverment Texas cops will soon need a warrant to search your e-mail

Texas is poised to become the first state in the U.S. to require law enforcement officers to get a search warrant based on probable cause before they access any electronic communications and customer data stored by a third-party service provider.

The Texas legislature this week passed a bill (H.B. 2268) mandating the warrant. The measure now only needs a signature by Gov. Rick Perry to become law.
The bill would be the first to address what many, including courts, say are glaring shortcomings in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The ECPA was drafted in 1986 and does not always require law enforcement authorities to obtain a search warrant to access email, instant messages and other customer data stored by Internet service providers and online storage services.

In many instances, the ECPA only requires them to give prior notice and obtain an administrative subpoena to access customer data. The only situation where existing federal law mandates a search warrant is for unopened email messages that are less than 180 days old.
Concerns over warrantless email searches by police have prompted sweeping calls for ECPA reforms, both at the state and federal level.
Just last week, for instance, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act of 2013, which stipulates a search warrant requirement similar to the Texas bill. In March, three lawmakers introduced an ECPA reform bill that would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant to intercept or access stored electronic communications and geolocation data.
Similar bills have been proposed by others in recent years, but the Texas statute looks to be the first effort to actually become law.
The measure requires a warrant for all law enforcement access to stored electronic data, regardless of how long it has been stored, who is storing it or how it is being stored. All applications for search warrants would need probable case and have to be supported by an oath by the officer making the request.
In most cases, companies served with such warrants would be required to comply with them within 10 days. In some instances, a judge could require compliance in as little as four days if police are able to prove than a delay would jeopardize an investigation, put someone's life at risk or let someone to escape prosecution.
The bill is important for two reasons, said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). First, it creates stronger privacy protections by updating the state's electronic privacy laws.

"Second, although this bill only covers Texas, it will hopefully spur other states to do the same and for Congress to update ECPA, too," Fakhoury said.
California, for instance, is currently considering a similar bill (SB 467) sponsored by the EFF. It has been passed by the California Senate and is now awaiting action in the Assembly, he said.
Separately, ECPA reform has been steadily moving through Congress, with entities as varied as Google and the U.S. Department of Justice now backing a warrant requirement, he noted. "Having individual states demonstrate to Congress that email privacy legislation is both politically and practically feasible, necessary and desired is only going to make the law better for everyone, no matter what state they're in."

The Texas law would only apply to state investigations -- not federal investigations, which will still be governed by ECPA requirements.

Dropbox goes down for more than an hour

Cloud storage service Dropbox users were hit with a widespread service outage this morning that lasted a little more than an hour.
Tweets from outraged users around the world appeared to show the breadth of the service outage.
According to the web monitoring site Is It Down Right Now, Dropbox's servers were unresponsive at 6:32 a.m. Pacific Time and appeared to be down for a little more than an hour. During that time, the Dropbox website was displaying 404 server error messages.

After coming back online, Dropbox Support tweeted the statement: "We apologize for any inconvenience that might have been caused. Dropbox is back to normal."
When contacted by Computerworld, a spokeswoman didn't elaborate on the reasons for the outage.
Web monitoring site Isitdownnow.com shows Dropbox servers as unresponsive on the morning of May 30

Dropbox's last service disruption in January lasted more than 15 hours.

Computer scientists oppose Oracle's bid to copyright Java APIs

Some prominent scientists, including the inventor of JavaScript, have backed Google in its court battle with Oracle

Nearly three dozen computer scientists have signed off on a court brief opposing Oracle's effort to copyright its Java APIs, a move they say would hold back the computer industry and deny affordable technology to end users.

The group, which includes prominent names such as MS-DOS author Tim Paterson and ARPANET developer Larry Roberts, signed the amicus brief in support of Google in its copyright lawsuit with Oracle.
Oracle accuses Google of infringing the copyright on its Java APIs (application programming interfaces) in the development of Google's Android OS, and it is seeking billions of dollars in damages. Google denies any wrongdoing and has argued, in part, that software APIs aren't eligible for copyright protection under U.S. law.
Last year, a district court in California largely agreed with Google and ruled against Oracle in the case. Judge William Alsup determined that the Java APIs in the case can't be covered by copyright because they're a functional part of the Java platform and required by others to use the Java language. Copyright law typically does not extend to works that are functional in nature.
Oracle appealed the decision, and Thursday's brief aims to sway the court that will eventually decide that appeal. It was filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of 32 computer scientists and software developers. Other signatories are Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript and the CTO of Mozilla; Michael Tiemann, author of the GNU C++ compiler and an executive at Red Hat; and Samba developer Andrew Tridgell.
"The freedom to reimplement and extend existing APIs has been the key to competition and progress in the computer field -- both hardware and software," the brief states.
"It made possible the emergence and success of many robust industries we now take for granted -- such as industries for mainframes, PCs, peripherals (storage, modems, sound cards, printers, etc), workstations/servers, and so on -- by ensuring that competitors could challenge established players and advance the state of the art."
For instance, the brief argues, the spread of affordable PCs was made possible because IBM held no copyright on its BIOS system, allowing competitors such as Compaq and Phoenix to create their own BIOS implementations and build PC clones. The open nature of APIs was also essential to the development of the Unix OS, the C programming language and the open protocols on the Internet, the brief says.
"Should the court reverse Judge Alsup's well-reasoned opinion, it will hand Oracle and others the ability to monopolize any and all uses of systems that share their APIs. API creators would have veto power over any developer who wants to create a compatible program," the brief states.
Oracle responded sharply. "I guess everyone is having collective amnesia about the uncontroverted testimony that Android is not compatible with Java," said spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger.
At trial, Oracle argued that the complex structure and syntax of the Java APIs make them a creative work worthy of protection. Google knowingly copied the APIs, it said, and has since made billions of dollars from the success of Android, which is now the world's top-selling smartphone operating system.
James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_niccolai@idg.com

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Oracle Company changes plans for Java security improvements

Oracle Company plans to make changes to strengthen the security of Java, including fixing its certificate revocation checking feature, preventing unsigned applets from being executed by default and adding centralized management options with whitelisting capabilities for enterprise environments.

These changes, along with other security-related efforts, are intended to "decrease the exploitability and severity of potential Java vulnerabilities in the desktop environment and provide additional security protections for Java operating in the server environment," said Nandini Ramani, vice president of engineering for Java Client and Mobile Platforms at Oracle, in a blog post on Thursday.
Ramani's blog post, which discusses "the security worthiness of Java," indirectly addresses some of the criticism and concerns raised by security researchers this year following a string of successful and widespread attacks that exploited zero-day -- previously unpatched -- vulnerabilities in the Java browser plug-in to compromise computers.

Ramani reiterated Oracle's plans to accelerate the Java patching schedule starting from October, aligning it with the patching schedule for the company's other products, and revealed some of the company's efforts to perform Java security code reviews.
"The Java development team has expanded the use of automated security testing tools, facilitating regular coverage over large sections of Java platform code," she said. The team worked with Oracle's primary provider of source code analysis services to make these tools more effective in the Java environment and also developed so-called "fuzzing" analysis tools to weed out certain types of vulnerabilities.
The apparent lack of proper source code security reviews and quality assurance testing for Java 7 was one of the criticisms brought by security researchers in light of the large number of critical vulnerabilities that were found in the platform.
Ramani also noted the new security levels and warnings for Java applets -- Web-based Java applications -- that were introduced in Java 7 Update 10 and Java 7 Update 21 respectively.
These changes were meant to discourage the execution of unsigned or self-signed applets, she said. "In the near future, by default, Java will no longer allow the execution of self-signed or unsigned code."

Such default behavior makes sense from a security standpoint considering that most Java exploits are delivered as unsigned Java applets. However, there have been cases of digitally signed Java exploits being used in the past and security researchers expect their number to increase.
Because of this it's important for the Java client to be able to check in real time the validity of digital certificates that were used to sign applets. At the moment Java supports certificate revocation checking through both certificate revocation lists (CRLs) and the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP), but this feature is disabled by default.
"The feature is not enabled by default because of a potential negative performance impact," Ramani said. "Oracle is making improvements to standardized revocation services to enable them by default in a future release."

The company is also working on adding centrally managed whitelisting capabilities to Java, which will help businesses control what websites are allowed to execute Java applets inside browsers running on their computers.
Unlike most home users, many organizations can't afford to disable the Java browser plug-in because they need it to access Web-based business-critical applications created in Java.
"Local Security Policy features will soon be added to Java and system administrators will gain additional control over security policy settings during Java installation and deployment of Java in their organization," Ramani said. "The policy feature will, for example, allow system administrators to restrict execution of Java applets to those found on specific hosts (e.g., corporate server assets, partners, etc.) and thus reduce the risk of malware infection resulting from desktops accessing unauthorized and malicious hosts."
Even though the recent Java security issues have generally only impacted Java running inside browsers, the public coverage of them has also caused concern among organizations that use Java on servers, Ramani said.
As a result, the company has already started to separate Java client from server distributions with the release of the Server JRE (Java Runtime Environment) for Java 7 Update 21 that doesn't contain the browser plug-in.

"In the future, Oracle will explore stronger measures to further reduce attack surface including the removal of certain libraries typically unnecessary for server operation," Ramani said. However, those changes are likely to come in future major versions of Java since introducing them now would violate current Java specifications, she said.



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Cloud Computing AWS Online Training

Cloud computing term is the use of computing resources, it could be in form of hardware or software or network or database those are distributed as a service over a globe. Cloud Computing is a broad term for everything that involves distributing hosted services over the Internet.
This online training course is designed for Developers, System Admin and Project Managers to manage a complete cloud solution for their respective clients on IAAS, PAAS and SAAS models. Weather these people are working on cloud deployment and security, will learn how to build, launch, and scale an application using Amazon Web Services and Java development tools.

Day 1

• What is AWS?
• Getting Started with AWS
• Introducing Amazon EC2
• Launch EC2 Instance
• Deploy First Web Application
• Amazon Management Console
• Elastic Load Balancer
• Auto Scaling
• Monitoring using CloudWatch
• Deployment & Automation using AWS CloudFormation
• Clean Up
• Cost Breakdown

Day 2

• Amazon S3
• Amazon RDS
• Amazon Route 53
• Amazon CloudFront
• Amazon SimpleDB
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Elastic MapReduce
• Big Data with AWS
• Amazon EMR
• Amazon CloudSearch

Day 3

• Identity & Access Management
• AWS Import/Export
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Amazon VPC
• Amazon Direct Connect
• Amazon EBS
• AWS Storage Gateway
• Amazon SWF
• Amazon ElastiCache
• Messaging using SNS, SQS, SES
• Amazon Giacier
• Libraries & SDKs    

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LinkedIn trying to make themselves safer from hackers : Login and Password

Once the feature is enabled, users will get a code sent to them when logging in from a new device

Add LinkedIn to the list of Internet companies trying to make themselves safer from cyberattacks by adding two-step authentication.
Users of the professional social-networking site now have the option to add two-step verification to their accounts, which is designed to add another layer to the sign-in process when logging in from a new or unknown device. With the feature enabled, users will be prompted to type a numeric code sent to their phone via SMS when logging in from an unrecognized computer or device for the first time.
Most Internet accounts that have become compromised are illegitimately accessed from a new computer or device, LinkedIn said Friday in a blog post. When enabled, the new feature makes it more difficult for unauthorized people to access users' accounts because both their password and mobile phone are needed to log in, LinkedIn said.

Two-step verification can be turned on using the site's settings page for users' security options. After the feature is enabled, the site will send the code upon sign-in once per device. A user will be notified via email each time his or her account is signed into using a new device.
The changes come one week after Twitter introduced two-factor authentication following a series of recent hacks targeting high-profile businesses on the blogging site. Security experts had long been calling for the company to make two-factor logins an option.
Last year, LinkedIn users were advised to change their passwords after it was reported that millions of "unsalted" hashed passwords had turned up on a Russian hacker website.
Apple, Facebook and Google are among other companies that also offer two-step authentication as an option for users.
But while two-factor login does add an extra layer of security, it is not a panacea, some security experts have said. With an email phishing attack, for instance, a hacker could fake a login page to ask for the code the user just received, it has been argued.
Aside from two-factor logins, Google on Thursday laid out several safe password tips for users to follow, though some of the advice was fairly basic. "Use a different password for each important service" and "make your password hard to guess," the company said.

Google Company Launches Display Benchmarks Tool for Advertiser

Google is offering advertisers the chance to instantly check how their ads are performing with the latest addition to its arsenal – the Display Benchmarks Tool. It will show how display ads are faring relative to aggregated campaigns, which will allow marketers to see their marketing activity in context and to compare their own performance, Google´s DoubleClick Advertiser Blog informed.
Users of the tool have the option to select the criteria with which their ads will be compared, according to geographical coverage, type of media, size and formats. After the analysis has been completed, the tool prepares a report that can either reveal current information, or look at trends going back more than a year.
What the Display Benchmarks Tool tracks is the average interaction rate, average duration of interaction and the expansion rate for rich media ads. In addition, it also gives marketers the opportunity to compare the overall click-through rate with those recorded for standard media and rich media, Google explained. Information regarding the length of time during which expander ads stay expanded and video completion rates, as well as the average amount of time that rich media impressions were displayed, can be also be obtained.

While utilising the tool, Google noticed certain trends that have evolved over the past few months. Since last summer, users interact with ads 50% to 60% more frequently. Meanwhile, video completion rates grew almost 24% and reached a 60% completion rate, the blog post said.

Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy returns Infosys'

 Infosys' co-founder and first CEO N. R. Narayana Murthy has returned to the company as executive chairman, amid concerns that the outsourcer's performance has not been as good as that of some of its Indian peers.
Murthy, 67, said he would be "adding value" to CEO S.D. Shibulal, who has initiated a strategy called Infosys 3.0, which aims to focus the company on high-margin businesses like consultancy, reusable platforms and products.
Once the darling of investors, Infosys has seen lackluster growth in revenue and profits in comparison to some of its Indian competitors such as Tata Consultancy Services. Murthy could now help Infosys recover from problems it has had in executing on its strategy, analysts said.

Murthy was chairman and CEO of Infosys from its founding in 1981 to 2002, and remained as chairman until 2011, when he was appointed chairman emeritus, largely an honorific position.
He brings to Infosys his son Rohan Murthy, as executive assistant in the chairman's office, ending an over 30-year-old corporate policy not to employ family members of the company founders.
Shibulal is also a founder of the company. The CEO's has remained among the founders, which has been criticized by analysts who said the company was not giving an opportunity to high-performing insiders or to outside recruits for that job.
Shareholder approval is required Murthy's appointment as executive chairman and director for a period of five years, the board said Saturday.

Besides Murthy and Shibulal, former CEO S. Gopalakrishnan will steer the company as executive vice chairman. Gopalakrishnan was co-chairman of the company until the changes announced Saturday. Chairman K.V. Kamath returned to being an independent director on the board.

Online Activiti BPM training

  Advantages of Activiti BPM training on June 13,14,15 - 2013

• To understand Business work flow easily
• By this training you will able to implement business work flow using Activiti BPM
• You can deploy Activiti process definitions to specify workflows
• We cover Introduction to BPMN, BPMN Modeling, BPMN best practices, Overview of Activiti, Activiti tool stack, Activiti Modeler, Integration with JBoss Drool and many more
• After this training, you will be familiar with BMPM 2.0 business processes, services orchestration, process deployment, execution, testing and monitoring using Activiti
• You will also learn how to deploy custom workflows

  Why Attune University?

•  We are fully committed to provide the most comprehensive curriculum in every aspect of our certification training
• As the industry advances, we make sure our courses are completely current with the latest technologies
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• Our experts have experience in configuration of Business process using Activiti in various projects
• We offer a range of public and corporate training courses that are built-up and delivered by our highly experienced trainers
• Easy language, friendly interface and well structured study materials

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SEO Dying?

It’s good to see a post from Mani Karthik on Search Engine Land following an article published in SiliconIndia saying that SEO is one of the skillsets that will no more get you job.

Image Courtesy: Donhalbert.com

I first disagree, and then agree with what Silicon India publishes. Similarly, I first agree, and then I disagree with what Mani puts his opinion forward. I have published my opinion on the comment section of Search Engine Land, and I also feel that I need to extend this discussion further. Hence, I decided to publish a full post on my blog.  

Mobile Is Killing SEO: There is growing trend in mobile usage. The users' search pattern is getting different. Mobile users are mostly logged in, and keep chatting, checking mails, updating on FB, and tweeting throughout the day. Well, they are socially engaged. It’s true. What perplexes me is how ‘we' ensure that a particular keyword ranks if users on mobile devices are logged in? Google under SSL/HTTPS frequently tends to show personalized results. A few days back, Google has come up new content recommendation for mobile users. 

Image Courtesy: mobileresponsivewebsite.com

The content recommendation works for logged in users. Furthermore, mobile users tend to get more personalized results behind secure log ins. Add to this apathy, Google never shows search queries, and mask them as ‘Not Provided’ in GA, even if keywords for optimization purpose matter to SEO professionals.

Social Media Is Killing SEO: The traditional algorithm of Google and its search results are primarily based on ‘Links’ from authority domains. This has been manipulated for a decade. Going social, and considering number of likes, re-tweets, +1d in G plus, users’ ratings and reviews, etc. look more prominent as valid social references of a quality site or post, for such site/post represents the quality content that creates utility for both socially and commercially engaged users.

Image courtesy:alphaspirit /Shutterstock

Many people in the industry believe that social is not about shares, and likes. If social is not about shares, and likes, then how Google considers these as valid references for measuring the quality versus Kolaveri (hype)? Engagement in social media comes from metrics like ‘shares’, 'comments in thread', ‘likes’, ‘re-tweets,’ 'Influences,' etc. Do you believe the value of a STAR cast on an advt. you see on TV, and then make decision to buy a product or you read the reviews of a product, ask your peers, and then make purchase decision? Social reviews, and recommendations based on likes, and shares are our Zero Moments of Truth (ZMOT). Not sure how SEO fits in ZMOT?

Technology Is Killing SEO: Regardless of technology you use to develop your website, almost all of them have a library of various SEO plugins that address SEO technical issues within no minute. PHP, .NET, WordPress, IBM Web Sphere, and Magento have excellent SEO plug ins, modules, and extensions that address the complex SEO issues of a CMS based website/portal.

For example, if yours is an ecommerce site built on Magento, buy or download free versions of SEO extensions, and install them to address SEO issues related to domain canonicalization, duplicate pages, URL pattern, handling dynamic URL parameters, Robots.Txt, Header Tags, Site Maps, etc.                 

Google Is Killing SEO: Panda, Penguin, and Zebra, hopefully some more animals to bring in at Google zoo to drive SEO out of its reach! The logic seems simple -Quality, Quality, and Quality! Quality comes from users, and users are socially engaged via multiple devices. Yes, the search engine is taking a paradigm shift from showing automated algorithmic results to incorporating social KPIs which are indeed more semantic and realistic.  

Image courtesy: Webimize.net

The way reviews, and likes are evolving as key metrics, the way users' search behavior across the devices is changing, the way ZMoT is gaining momentum, Google is changing its algorithm to value users’ recommendations and engagement more than valuing inbound links from different domains.

If Google continues to value the traditional ranking algorithm, Facebook will change the whole search game. Google has no option but to drop its legacy algorithm and care for more social signals. This is what Google these days is doing. No wonder to know that Google no longer has a Search group. It's now called "Knowledge." This proves that the search engine does not want SEO to be alive for ever, of course, for its valid reasons. That's why the giant keeps recommending on users' experience and quality content.  

It seems logical that socially archive content and content freshness based on number of 'likes', 'tweets', 'shares', 'influence,' etc. look more prominent than showing results based on the traditional 'archive' search results based on manipulative inbound links, and stale content. Google discourages such old tactics of link building, and officially announced that press release or artificial links will not help in SEO.  And, this is where "future Google" is hopefully moving towards, and is giving enough indications for social signals.

When AOL acquired Huffington Post, we saw a closure of offshore SEO unit based out of Bangalore, India. Huffington Post never believes in SEO but a leading proponent of quality content. Furthermore, Forbes published an article” TheDeath Of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, And Real Content that quotes Adam Torkildson, one of the top SEO consultants in Utah,  "Google is in the process of making the SEO industry obsolete, “SEO will be dead in 2 years.” Matt Cutts' recent video gave hints about Google Penguin 2.0 update, and diplomatically says “some of us would be in for a long summer”. 

User Is Killing SEO: SEO is dying because we are going more social, and Google is going where trends are moving towards. Practically speaking, the trends are upward, as growing number of mobile users is increasing by leaps and bounds, minutes by minutes, hour by hour, and day by day. Social media usage is growing at phenomenal rate. Users’ search pattern, their needs, their queries, their privacy, and their expectations are changing.

Let’s embrace this change, and accept the reality than simply satisfying ourselves with X, Y, & Z analysis to prove SEO is not dead.

End of the Tunnel? The death of SEO never means that no new life is born. We need to be reborn with new set of skills. We need to upgrade skills in a new transitioning digital economy. Remember, the ‘search intent’ of human beings can never be lost. As long as there is search intent, search engines continue to add value. It’s just that we need to explore ourselves to fit in a new digital ecosystem. 

Image Courtesy: Doodle Lounge

Liferay Training For Developer

Liferay Training Course for Developer

This training course is designed for developers, architect and project managers to get handson on Liferay Portal administration, System administration, Plugin development and Extension development. This is a required training for individuals who wish to become Liferay Portal expert. One will get benefited from hands-on approach to learn the material effectively and quickly.

http://www.attuneinfocom.com/training/liferay-training.html

Attune Infocom’s client Daniel Schneider is sharing his experience working with Attune Infocom Pvt Ltd

Daniel Schneider Shares his Experience with Attune Infocom Pvt Ltd






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IT Looking for New Jobs ?

A new survey by Jobvite, a recruiting platform for the social web, found that unemployed Americans aren’t the only ones looking for jobs. Sixty-nine percent of employed respondents are considered job seekers—meaning they’re actively seeking a new job or open to the idea, and it turns out they’re using social media to do it.
“Inside every employed worker is a job seeker,” says Dan Finnigan, president and chief executive of Jobvite. “Because of pent-up demand now that the economy is growing, those workers are looking for the next step in their career.” According to the 2012 Social Job Seeker Survey, which asked 2,100 people about their current employment status and the role of social networks in their job search, 52% of all job seekers (employed and unemployed) have used Facebook to look for work, 38% have used LinkedIn, and 34% have used Twitter. One in six employed respondents credit social media for their current job.
When asked about how they’ve used Facebook to find work, 25% of respondents said they updated their profile and added professional information; 17% provided their Facebook profile information on a job application or during an interview; 15% modified privacy settings with work in mind; 14% used the site to search for jobs; 9% used it to research a potential employer; 8% connected with a potential employer on the site; and 6% communicated with a recruiter on the site. Almost half (49%) said they’ve used their Facebook contacts for “career gain.”


Finnigan says, “It is extremely important to be a well-rounded job hunter, and that absolutely includes maintaining your professional presence on the three most-used social networks for recruiting: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For many professional and managerial careers, that begins with LinkedIn, as it is the leading social network geared toward people in professional occupations.”
In Pictures: 7 Tips For Landing A Job Using Social Media
Twenty-six percent of surveyed job seekers said they’ve updated their LinkedIn profile with professional information; 11% used the site to search for job opportunities; 9% provided their LinkedIn profile information on a job application or during an interview; 7% modified privacy settings with work in mind; 7% connected with a potential employer; 6% used the site to research a potential employer; and 4% communicated with a recruiter through the site. Thirty-eight percent said they’ve used LinkedIn contacts for career gain.
“Job seekers have become increasingly frustrated at searching for jobs online and getting no response, and they intuitively know that the best opportunities are found through people, not search engines,” Finnigan says. “As social networking has become a core part of our cultural dynamic, we are continuing to see more and more job hunters taking advantage of a vertical they are comfortable with in order to find work. We anticipated growth last year and the numbers do show that job hunters are expanding their presence on social sites. Simply put, social networks provide a way for job seekers to tap into a large pool of job opportunities easily.”
However, he cautions job seekers against spending too much time online because the interaction that comes from an in-person meeting with the employees and potential colleagues at the company you’re interested in can never be replaced by a computer screen, he says.
“For active job seekers, spending an hour or two a day on social media, with the professional mindset of connecting with employers and looking for job listings, can pay off,” Finnigan says. For those who aren’t actively looking but are open to new opportunities, it’s important to make sure your profiles are current and the content is professional and appropriate.
Previous research from Jobvite found that 86% of recruiters are likely to look at social profiles for candidates, with 48% reporting they always do so. If you’re looking to clean up your profile, consider including content about participation in professional organizations. Why? Eighty percent of recruiters said they like to see that on social profiles; but just 1 in 5 job seekers have posted that information.
“My advice to employers is to use the standard employee background check initially and use social media for reference checks rather than prying too deeply into a candidate’s social media background,” Finnigan says. “Regardless, job seekers should know employers are looking at these and should be aware of the content they are putting out there.”


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5 Best Cloud Storage

It's cloud storage week, with Dropbox rolling out an update that improves how its users can share things, Microsoft's SkyDrive getting dedicated desktop apps and a revamped feature set, and Google Drive finally making its long-awaited debut. The market suddenly got much more competitive perhaps even before we all realized it was necessary.
Although there are many more options out there, some serving specific niches, we've hand-picked what arguably are the most high-profile and consumer-friendly cloud storage services currently out. We took them for a spin to see how well they stack against each other, first with a brief overview on the table below and later in better detail, with impressions and commentary to give you a better idea of which one may fit your needs best.

	Dropbox	Google Drive	iCloud	SkyDrive	SugarSync
Free storage	2GB	5GB	5GB	7GB (25GB limited time offer)	5GB
Additional storage (price per year)	50GB ($99); 100GB ($199)	25GB ($30); 100GB ($60)	10GB ($20); 20GB ($40); 50GB ($100)	20GB ($10); 50GB ($25); 100GB ($50)	30GB ($50); 60GB ($100); 100GB ($150)
File size limit	300MB via browser, unlimited from desktop	10GB	25MB free accounts, 250MB paid users	2GB
Desktop apps	Windows, OS X, Linux	Windows, OS X	Windows, OS X	Windows, OS X	Windows, OS X
Mobile apps	iOS, Android, BlackBerry	Android, iOS	iOS	Windows Phone, iOS	iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone
Web interface	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Version tracking	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Multiple folder sync	No	No	No	Sort of	Yes
Sync over LAN	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Stream to mobile	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public sharing	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
File/folder collaboration	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Password protect file sharing	No	No	No	No	Yes

Dropbox

Dropbox wasn't the first cloud-based storage service in the market, but it certainly was the one that pioneered the seamless one-folder synchronization approach that everyone is following now: toss any file into a preset folder and it automatically appears in any other device connected to your account. Make an edit and everything synchronizes instantaneously. Famous for its simplicity and ease of use, Dropbox doesn't fall behind when it comes to features either, with a version tracking system, easy sharing, collaboration options, and more.
Performance-wise Dropbox offers more flexibility than most competing services. You can tweak how fast it uploads and downloads files, which is great if you don't want it to steal bandwidth from other important things, and if two devices are on the same network they will sync much faster over LAN.


The Dropbox client works the same on every major platform -- Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry -- and you can also access your files through its clean and capable web interface on any device with a browser. Another key strength is that its popularity has led a lot of third-party developers to integrate Dropbox synchronization functionality into their apps and services using the public API.
Its main drawback? Dropbox offers just 2GB of storage for free, which compares unfavorably to rivals, but you can bump that up to 18GB without spending a dime by referring new users (at 500MB bonus space apiece). Paid storage is also expensive: 50GB or 100GB of extra storage costs $9.99 or $19.99 a month.

Google Drive

The debutant Google Drive offers the same drag-and-drop synchronization capabilities as Dropbox on the desktop, with clients available for Windows and OS X, but its web portion is more robust than the latter. On the web, Drive ties in with Google Docs and another handful of Drive apps for Chrome to support up to 30 types of files, allowing you to view or edit images and videos, work on documents, and more, right inside the browser.
Sharing capabilities are also present, but as far as I can tell you can't set permissions from the desktop client, so you'll need to go to the web app and click through a few options depending if you want to send by email, share with other users, or make a file public. You can set files as view-only or make them editable.


Search is also a big part of Google Drive -- again, from the web interface -- allowing you to search by document type, owner, and other advanced filters. There's even OCR capabilities built into the service so Google will scan any images on your Drive account for text and make them searchable, or if Google can decipher the contents of your pictures (a landmark, for example), you can just search by subject and it will come up in the results. That's a neat feature indeed, although it might turn off more privacy conscious users -- especially after checking the TOS.
Google Drive is also available on Android and the iOS client is supposedly on the way. It comes with 5GB of free storage (Google Docs files don't count towards that limit), and offers upgrade options like $2.49/month for 25GB of extra storage, $4.99/month for 100GB of storage, and 200GB for $9.99/month.

Apple iCloud

Apple's iCloud lacks many of the features available in cloud storage services like Dropbox or SkyDrive, but still stands to grab a good chunk of the market for a simple reason: its deep integration with iOS. In fact, almost 70% of the 350+ million iDevice users have access to iCloud, with over 100 million using it already.
If you are into the Apple ecosystem this one is a no-brainer. It's virtually transparent to the user and can keep your mail, contacts, calendar, documents, backups, and more, synchronized and stored in the cloud. Apple's iWork suite as well as various third-party OS X and iOS apps come with iCloud sync capabilities built in, but aside from those you won't be able to just throw any type of file into your account. It's definitely a more streamlined yet closed way to manage your stuff in the cloud.


Your music, movies, apps, books, and TV shows purchased from iTunes are saved to the cloud but don't count against your free storage, and you'll be able to stream that content to your iPhone and iPad. Pay an extra $25 a year for iTunes Match and you'll be able to store and stream music obtained from other sources, too.
The web interface is more limited compared to other cloud services but it's there in case you need to quickly check up on you mail, contacts or iWork documents from a browser, or to use the handy "Find My Phone" feature. Otherwise it's available on Mac, Windows and iOS and comes with 5GB of storage for free.

SkyDrive, SugarSync, Our Picks

SkyDrive

Microsoft's SkyDrive has been around for a while but just recently it received a major revamp that puts the service in the spotlight once again. New dedicated apps for Windows and OS X integrate into the OS with a folder where users can drop files into. The service now includes the synchronization abilities of Live Mesh as well as its unique "fetch" feature, which enables you to remotely access any file on your computer, even those outside the default SkyDrive folder. Mobile apps are available for iOS and Windows Phone.


Like Google Drive, SkyDrive's web interface lets you create and edit documents within the browser for Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and everything is searchable powered by Bing. You can also share files and folders with groups or via public links and set them as view-only or allow edits.
Overall SkyDrive is a very well-rounded cloud storage solution. It comes with 7GB of space, which is already enough to beat the other contenders in this round-up, and if you signed up before April 22 you can bump that to 25GB. Extra storage is also the cheapest all around at $10, $25 and $50 per year for 20GB, 50GB or 100GB.

SugarSync

Another well-established cloud storage provider and perhaps one of the most feature rich services you will find. SugarSync is among the very few that lets users pick folders all over your computer to sync, rather than having users reorganize stuff and throw everything into a single folder. This allows very fine-grained control over what to sync to each device connected to your account.
That extra flexibility brings some added complexity that might turn off novice users -- it's not rocket science but it is a bit more work to manage compared to services like Dropbox that require almost no user intervention.


Other features include uploading via email (with Outlook integration), no file size limits, media streaming to mobile devices, and the ability to share files and folders with specific users or publicly, with the option to password-protect said files. There's also version tracking but versions are only saved for 5 days versus 25-30 on all others.
SugarSync is available on Windows and OS X desktops and just about every mobile platform. You get 5GB of free storage out of the box, while additional storage can be had for a monthly fee of $4.99 (30GB), $9.99 (60GB), $14.99 (100GB), $24.99 (250GB), or $39.99 (500GB).

Making some picks

The great thing about having many free cloud storage options is that we don't really need to pick one single winner. Rather, you should pick whatever meets your needs and has the stronger support for the platforms you use. If you are running low on space you could even combine two or three while sticking in the free tier.
In my case, combining iCloud and Dropbox works just fine. The first because I already have a couple of iDevices and using the cloud to backup my data is as simple as flipping a switch. The second because I've been using it for years to store my day-to-day work files and other important stuff I may need access to while on the go. A service like SkyDrive could replace Dropbox for me, but for now at least, since I'm not running low on space, not even the free 25GB are enough incentive to switch.
If I were to pick some winners, however, I'd go for something like this:

• Ease of use without sacrificing features: Dropbox.
• Best deal on free and paid storage: SkyDrive
• Fine-grained control and vast feature set: SugarSync
• Best browser experience (and no-brainer if you use Google Docs a lot): Google Drive