Google Glass software update adds Google+ notifications, limits background uploads

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If you're lucky enough to be an early Google Glass owner, you might want to glance at device settings to see what software your headset is running. According to reports, Google is tonight pushing out a new update, XE5, that contains a number of bug fixes, optimizations, and other changes. First, Google is implementing a new rule on where and when Glass can upload data in the background. From now on, apps will only be able to do so while Glass is connected to both a power source and a local Wi-Fi network. Google doesn't outline exactly why it's suddenly adopting a strict stance on this.

Additionally, Glass now displays incoming Google+ notifications for Hangouts, mentions, comments, and shares. You can even +1 and comment on posts through Glass. And while the update doesn't impact battery longevity directly, Google says its percentage indicator is now more accurate. Transcription of user queries and messages is also "wicked fast" according to the changelog acquired by Phandroid:

Microsoft prepares rethink on Windows 8 flagship software

Microsoft is preparing to reverse course over key elements of its Windows 8 operating system, marking one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.

In a bid to diversify into services, Trulia (TRLA) inked a $355 million deal on Wednesday to acquire real-estate software maker Market Leader (LEDR

In a bid to diversify into services, Trulia (TRLA) inked a $355 million deal on Wednesday to acquire real-estate software maker Market Leader (LEDR

MARKET LEADER INC.

), giving the combined company an industry-leading 46,000 premium subscribers. The cash-and-stock transaction values Kirkland, Wash.-based Market Leader at about $11.33 a share, representing an 18% premium on its Tuesday closing price of $9.61.
Market Leader’s shareholders are to receive $6 in cash and 0.1553 Trulia shares for each share they own.
Generating $45 million in annual sales, Market Leader is a provider of software as a service-based customer relationship management software in the real-estate industry. The company partners with major real-estate brokerages and franchisors to help agents make sales.
“Our acquisition of Market Leader will create unprecedented value for our customer base while also accelerating our growth," Trulia CEO Pete Flint said in a statement.
The combined company will have about 46,000 premium subscribers, giving it more than any other online real estate marketplace.
The acquisition marks a diversification by San Francisco-based Trulia into the service sector of the fragmented real estate software industry.
The deal, which is subject to approval by Market Leader’s shareholders and regulatory approval, is expected to close during the third quarter.
Trulia said the combined company will remain headquartered in San Francisco, although Market Leader will keep a presence in Kirkland.
Shares of Market Leader rallied 16.13% to $11.16 in premarket trading on Wednesday. Trulia’s shares dropped 2.18% to $33.59 in response to the news, setting them up to dip into their 2013 surge of 111%.
J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) advised Trulia on the transaction, while Market Leader was advised by GCA Savvian Advisors.

New software upgrade turns Nook HD into a good Android tablet (Review)

I was pleased that Barnes & Noble (B&N) had updated its HD line with Google Store. I knew this software upgrade would make the low-priced HD — usually $149 to $199 until May 12 — a truly usable Android 4.x tablet. What I hadn't realized was that it would transform it into a good, albeit low-end tablet.

Google Glass software update adds Google+ notifications, limits background uploads

SAP AG (SAP), the largest maker of business- management software, predicted it can add $10 billion in revenue from financial applications as banking clients become the German company’s fastest growth driver.
The internal goal, shared at a meeting this week with employees and sales partners, compares with $2.5 billion it expects to receive from financial services providers this year. To meet its objective, SAP would need to get about 3 percent of banking customers’ annual spending on computer systems, rising from 0.5 percent currently, it said.

Enlarge image

SAP’s financial software includes programs to detect insurance fraud, allocate cash among bank branches, analyze consumer behavior such as comments on Facebook Inc.’s and Twitter Inc.’s social-media sites, as well as applications for risk and compliance management. Photographer: Ralph Orlowski/Bloomberg

4:56

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-chief executive officer of SAP AG, discusses the company's first-quarter profit reported today, growth in Asia and business outlook. He speaks from Walldorf, Germany, with Mark Barton and Anna Edwards on Bloomberg Television's "Countdown." (Source: Bloomberg)

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“Banks, capital markets and insurance firms are embarking on a multi-year transformation, which is dramatic,” Simon Paris, who heads software for financial services, said at the May 6 event in The Hague, Netherlands, that Bloomberg News attended. Standardized and industry-specific programs are “significantly more complete and cheaper than custom-built applications,” he said.
SAP said the aim of adding $10 billion revenue is not an official forecast and didn’t specify a timeframe. The company, which doesn’t usually break out sales by clients’ industries, said its interim goal is for 3 billion euros ($3.9 billion) by 2015. The banking market that SAP can address is currently valued at about $60 billion, spokesman Daniel Reinhardt said.

Most Valuable

SAP shares climbed as much as 2.3 percent to 63.98 euros, and closed 0.5 percent higher in Frankfurt. The stock has gained 33 percent over the past 12 months, valuing SAP at 77.2 billion euros and making it Germany’s most valuable company.
The software maker, based in Walldorf, Germany, says it’s already getting a “share of wallet” of more than 3 percent from banks including Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It’s betting lenders and insurers will ditch legacy software for cheaper and more powerful standardized products.
That drive may be accelerated as profit in the financial sector gets squeezed by tougher capital requirements and declining consumer loyalty because of new service providers, Paris said.
SAP’s financial software includes programs to detect insurance fraud, allocate cash among bank branches, analyze consumer behavior such as comments on Facebook Inc. (FB)’s and Twitter Inc.’s social-media sites, as well as applications for risk and compliance management.

Oracle Suite

Besides Oracle Corp. (ORCL), which began selling a suite of programs for global banks in September, SAP’s competitors include specialists such as Geneva-based financial software maker Temenos Group AG. (TEMN)
UBS AG (UBSN) last month hired SAP’s chief information officer, Oliver Bussmann, for the same role at the lender. The Swiss bank is seeking to cut 5.4 billion francs ($5.7 billion) in annual costs by 2015.
In 2010, banking was SAP’s 12th-biggest industrial sector. It climbed to No. 4 last year and its pipeline of pending deals is now the largest among all industries, Falk Rieker, SAP’s global head of banking, said at the event.
SAP in March started operating its Web-based Financial Services Network, which aims to streamline transactions between banks and corporate clients. Eight banks have signed up to the project, which will help SAP sell services to companies that don’t use its flagship business-management software, said Sanjay Chikarmane, who oversees the project.
This year, SAP’s net income is projected to reach 3.7 billion euros, double its level in 2010, while total revenue is estimated to reach 17.8 billion euros, an increase of 90 percent compared with 2006, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The software maker plans to boost sales to more than 20 billion euros in 2015.
The company said yesterday it plans to offer even its largest programs via the Web, reducing the time and cost for deployment compared with software installed on customer premises.

New CA Chief Vows to Pick Up Software Maker's Pace Read more

By Drew FitzGerald

CA Inc. ( CA ) Chief Executive Mike Gregoire wants his company's name to ring out in Silicon Valley--a place he'll paradoxically see less often as he settles into his role as the head of the New York-based software provider.
Roughly three months after taking the helm at CA, Mr. Gregoire said the company plans to consolidate its California office space in Redwood City, Sunnyvale, Campbell and South San Francisco this summer into a much bigger building complex in Santa Clara, at the heart of Silicon Valley. Its work force in the area, now numbering less than 400, will expand to more than 500 in the coming months.
Mr. Gregoire, meanwhile, expects to spend most of his time in New York--where he said it's easiest for customers to meet executives--though raising the company's profile in California remains a top priority.
"Every technology has a grounding effect" on talent, the 47-year-old executive said in a phone interview. "It would be hard for us to ignore that the Valley has a lot of that. I think that's kind of something that we missed out on over the past few years."
Mr. Gregoire acknowledges he's faced "a huge adjustment" adapting a management style honed during an eight-year stint atop Dublin, Calif., human resources company Taleo to a much larger CA, which is based in Islandia, N.Y. Mr. Gregoire left Taleo last year after Oracle Corp. (ORCL) acquired the software provider for $1.9 billion.
"My experience on the West Coast is that people move faster," he said. "We have got to pick up our cadence."
At the same time, Mr. Gregoire was quick to point out factors he considers key advantages for CA, which began as a servicer of mainframe computers and only in recent years began establishing a presence selling software using the new Web-based model many corporations favor. He said company has a "multi-year head start," for instance, on services that helps other developers test software on different machines--a tall order in an age when employees use hundreds of varieties of smartphones and computers.
CA plans to detail some of its new product offerings next week at CA World, its annual meeting for customers in Las Vegas, with a focus on software development tools and products for mobile devices.
The effort comes during a challenging time for many business software companies. Rival International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Thursday night reported weaker-than-expected core earnings on a per-share basis for the first time since 2005, nearly a month after Oracle Corp. (ORCL) delivered its own disappointing quarterly results.
CA, which reports fiscal fourth quarter earnings next month, has struggled with its own bout of weaker sales, prompting Mr. Gregoire in January to promise a "detailed diagnostic of where we are."
Friday, Mr. Gregoire said the company in general must do a better job turning good ideas into new products.
The new chief executive also said he plans to alter many of the ways the New York company operates, from "old and clunky" enterprise management software CA uses for its own back office, to the simple act of a CEO checking his own email.
"The day of a CEO who sits in his office and has 10 or 15 people taking care of him, those days are over," he said. " That doesn't happen in the Valley."
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@dowjones.com
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(Reuters) - As investigators searched through videos and photos for clues that ultimately led them to the suspects in this week's bombing at the Boston Marathon, their search likely relied more on old-fashioned police work than technology, officials who work on such investigations say.

Advances in facial-recognition technology and related fields have been significant in recent years, but the technology mostly still isn't good enough to match blurry images or those that show a face only from an angle, say people familiar with law-enforcement dealings.
"They probably just applied a lot of eyeballs to this problem," says Todd Waits, digital investigation and intelligence director at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute and a specialist in forensic video techniques. "It would be a very manual process at first."
Investigators would have likely started simply by looking at images of the blast itself and worked backward, looking for any type of suspicious activity. On Thursday, FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers said that law enforcement had observed images of a suspect setting down his backpack at the site of the second explosion.
One suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a shoot-out overnight. His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured in a Boston suburb Friday evening, police said.
Based on similar investigations, technology likely will take on an increasingly important role for the next stages, particularly when it comes to examining the suspects' computers and mobile phones, forensics experts say.
"We would analyze computers, find evidence of Internet searches for bombmaking, that kind of thing," said Detective Andrew Kleinick of the Los Angeles Police Department's computer crimes unit. "Look for emails to see if they've been corresponding with anyone who might have radicalized them."
In the future, facial recognition technology is likely to become increasingly relevant to such investigations, enabling law enforcement to match imperfect images of people captured by video or cameras to databases of mug shots or passport photos. Higher resolutions in newer surveillance cameras should help too, particularly if they are matched by more storage capabilities in those cameras, Waits said.
Over the four years from 2006 to 2010 accuracy in facial-recognition algorithms has improved by a factor of 10, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Some of the biggest improvements lie in algorithms that correct for lighting, pose, and expression, says Brian Martin, director of biometric research at the Safran Group's MorphoTrust, an identity-services company that works with law-enforcement agencies.
The advent of unmanned drones with high-resolution video cameras, deployed over high-traffic events, could also give law enforcement important new tools.
"Once they become more commonplace, you'll be able to honestly go back in time and say, OK, this vehicle or this person came from over here, went there, entered this subway stop," says Chris Westphal, chief executive of software company Visual Analytics. "You'll be able to replay."
While drones have proven controversial because of privacy concerns - Charlottesville, Virginia, recently banned their use - they are likely to prove popular with law enforcement because of their low costs and efficiency.
Expect them over key sporting events, parades and the like in around five years, Westphal says.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Shumaker)