Rogers kicks off Android ‘revolution’ Monday
Rogers Wireless is hyping its release of the Google Android-powered HTC Dream and HTC Magic smart phones today with the help of Canadian movie star Joshua Jackson.
The Vancouver native will tour secret locations throughout Toronto to give away Rogers phones and gift cards. Fans can track Jackson’s progress at rogersrevolution.com, where he will provide hints about his whereabouts.
Although Rogers has not yet released the full pricing details for the devices, industry observers have speculated that both phones will cost less than the iPhone and comparable BlackBerry devices.
Privacy Commissioner hands out $454,000 for research and awareness
A $50,000 grant from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner will help the University of Guelph’s psychology department advance the understanding of information-sharing on Facebook by high school students and adults.
Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart handed out grants to 11 organizations across Canada for privacy research and awareness programs, totalling $454,697.
Among the recipients were the University of Victoria’s political science department, to create a repository of information about the use of deep-packet inspection in Canada; the Canadian Association of the Deaf, to educate the hearing-impaired about identity theft and Internet scams; and the International Association of Privacy Professionals, to bring free privacy education workshops to Canadian cities.
A full list of the recipients can be found on the commission’s Web site.
Former CEO of MySQL joins RightScale board of directors
Cloud computing management platform provider RightScale Inc. announced yesterday that Marten Mickos has joined RightScale’s board of directors.
Mickos, who served as CEO of MySQL AB from 2001 to 2008, left the position when Sun Microsystems Inc. acquired the commercial open source company in 2008. He subsequently served as senior vice-president of the database group at Sun until 2009.
RightScale plans to tap Mickos’ experience “as we aggressively expand RightScale’s cloud management offerings to new markets,” stated Michael Crandell, CEO of RightScale, in a company-issued release.
More than 400,000 servers have launched on the RightScale platform since the company was founded in 2006.
Digital signatures safeguard e-mail documents
Using e-mail documents as legal evidence requires the assurance that it has not been tampered with since the original sender created it. A Jersey City, N.J.-based vendor of high-assurance digital certificates said that e-mail’s ease and utility make it an obvious target for accessing confidential information and profiting from it.
Comodo CA Ltd.’s Secure Email Pro automates a digital signature process whereby signature is attached to the out-going document. Basically, a digital signature ensures that the intended recipient can decrypt, using a key, the message content. The software is described as “an install-and-forget” software application that automatically digitally signs outgoing messages without the need to pre-exchange passwords.
