Jack Loo

Businesses in the region are underestimating customer awareness and demand for green products, according to a survey from testing, inspection and certification provider TÜV SÜD.

TÜV SÜD said the study was conducted to compare consumer and corporate attitudes to green products, services, policies and certifications in Singapore, China and India.

There are some 32 million vulnerabilities found in computers worldwide, simply because users are not updating their software, according to findings from security vendor Kaspersky Lab.

"By failing to install the latest updates, users are exposing themselves to an enormous risk and making light work for the cyber criminals seeking to exploit these vulnerabilities," said Jimmy Fong, channel sales director of Kaspersky Lab, Southeast Asia.

Social networking sites such as Facebook not only offer a whole new world of opportunities, but also open up dangers, according to executives at the Computerworld Security Forum in Malaysia last week.

With 400 million users, Facebook is one of the most popular social applications in the world. These tools are created to allow people to share and meet online, according to Joe Lim, country lead, e-Cop.

Agile applications, efficient collaboration among co-workers, and interconnecting people and processes are the three main pillars that optimize business performance, according to an IBM executive.

Artwork: Chip Taylor"How business can change, how people can collaborate, and how technology can support the business are elements of 'Smart Work'," explained Manoj Saxena, vice president, global solutions and asset management, IBM Global Business Services. The Smart Work initiative is one of IBM's global corporate strategy called Smarter Planet. He was speaking at IBM ASEAN Leadership Exchange in Singapore.

Hong Kong has become the most spammed country in the world, according to security vendor MessageLabs.

The May 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report noted that spam levels in Hong Kong rose by 2.4 per cent in May to 92.3 per cent, positioning it as the most spammed country. In comparison, the global ratio of spam in e-mail traffic for May was 90.4 per cent (1 in 1.11 e-mails). For the rest of the Asia Pacific, China took second place with 91.1 per cent and Malaysia was third with 89 per cent.

In a time of poor economic conditions and shrinking marketing budgets, online advertising is increasingly being preferred over traditional advertising forms in Singapore, according to a Frost & Sullivan study.

The report Singapore Online Advertising Market found out that online advertising is being recognised for its ability to achieve precise targeting, measurable ROI and its cost-effectiveness. As today's youths are being hooked onto the Internet, advertisers and media agencies alike are cashing in on this. This age group have subsequently become one of the primary drivers of online advertising in recent years, said Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Kamlesh Kalwar.

Virtualisation specialist VMware has released its virtual desktop manager VMware View 3, which it claims can help solve the 'desktop dilemma'.

Coined by VMware president and CEO Paul Maritz, the situation describes the business choice of whether to provide thick or thin clients for employees.

While the Windows platform has become much more resistant to malware attacks, Microsoft-based applications have now become the focus of vulnerabilities, according to research firm Ovum.

"Microsoft's work in improving its Windows platform has been paying off and attackers are turning to attacking applications rather than platforms," said Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum.

The ubiquitous keyword mode of Internet search technique is about to be taken over by a new breed of semantic search technology, according to analysts at research firm Ovum.

While keyword search remains the most popular method, it is usually not accurate, with users sometimes getting up to 30,000 hits on a search and then having to sift through a list of loosely related keyword results to find relevant documents.

Some 573 million mobile phone subscribers are expected to join from Asia's emerging markets by the end of 2012, according to analysts at Frost & Sullivan.

The number of subscribers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, will then breach the one billion mark to close that year at an estimated 1.06 billion subscribers. This is according to Frost & Sullivan's study Asia Pacific's Final Wireless Growth Frontier.

While smartphones are armed with an array of features like Wi-Fi, touch screens and integrated GPS, their battery life needs to be improved for users to get the most out of their devices, says research firm Canalys.

Recent consumer research conducted by Canalys, in several European countries, reinforces the importance of balancing features against power consumption. In a survey of more than 4,000 mobile phone users in March, battery life came out as the aspect of their phone with which they were least satisfied.

Beware of e-mails with sensational Olympic subject titles. They will likely contain a form of malware called Storm that infects computer systems, according to enterprise security firm, Secure Computing.

The firm has warned that headlines could range from being political in nature, such as "President Bush calls for Olympic boycott", to mails with disaster themes, for instance, "Bird flu breaks out in Beijing."