Blog

Monday, October 25, 2010

iPhone Seen Helping Softbank Reap Record Op Profit

For iPhone Secure, we have seen BlackBerry as popular to use with our groupware.  However, the iPhone has been taking the cake.  Here’s a recent report to support that.

Quoted from here

TOKYO (Nikkei)—Softbank Corp.‘s (9984) group operating profit appears to have climbed some 40% on the year to a record 320 billion yen for the April-September half.

The company saw higher communications revenue as the popularity of Apple Inc.‘s iPhone smartphone boosted the number of mobile-phone subscribers. In addition, online advertising revenue grew at subsidiary Yahoo Japan Corp. (4689).

Led by its mobile-phone business, Softbank’s sales likely reached 1.45 trillion yen, up some 100 billion yen on the year.

The June release of the iPhone 4 smartphone helped Softbank gain mobile-phone subscribers, which totaled 23.47 million at the end of September, an increase roughly 1.6 million from six months earlier.

Net profit appears to have grown about 10% to 80 billion yen, absorbing an April-June tax-related charge involving Yahoo Japan.

For the full year ending March 31, Softbank projects a group operating profit of 500 billion yen.

(The Nikkei Oct. 25 morning edition)

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Planning An Event Tokyo?  You Need Bluesilver

We are pleased to present AINEO partners with great products and services. 

One of our team met the management of Bluesilver at an event that they put together for an AINEO partner who is in the recruiting business.

Bluesilver orchestrated the event in a large conference area of the partner’s site.  It was a celebration for 10 years of business in Japan.  Nearly 300 clients were invited from our partner and Bluesilver brought it all together.  They

-Prepared the venue
-Catered the food
-Brought a large team of waiters and waitresses to service the guests with food and drink.

The CEO of the firm was invited as well as the country manager there as well to address the guests.  It was an excellent event put on by the Bluesilver team.

For more information on Bluesilver, visit their website at

http://bluesilver.jp/ or contact them in Tokyo at 03-54560-5466

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Why Do Governments Want To Read Your Mail?

Recently, there has been a lot of press about Saudi Arabia, and some of the other monarchies in the gulf.  Why is it that these governments are concerned about individuals using BlackBerry?  Is it really because they are concerned about terrorists have a way to communicate that is unmonitored?

Yes, we believe that it is part of it.  However, in general it seems like governments are keen to spy on their people in the name of security.  They want to monitor what people are doing whether it be email, messenger (as in this case), website, or any other means of communicator.

We have heard recently that even the CIA has a presence in the Silicon Valley in California where they invest in companies that allow them to monitor people.  The CEO of a large IP company based there shared that he found where the CIA had even invested in the highly successful Google.  That is scary if you read our AINEO Insight a few months back here.  Of course, you can have the logic that you are doing nothing illegal, so there is nothing to worry about.  But do you really want the government to know everything about you?

If your company is using Research In Motion’s Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) service, their data center for North America is in Canada, their datacenter for Europe is in Canada, their datacenter for Asia Pacific (that’s us!) is in…. you guessed it…. Canada.  The reason why the Saudi’s want access is that all the data is encrypted in Saudi Arabia by RIM and sent back to Canada.  The security is good and the Saudi government has no access to it, so this is why they we threatening to ban BlackBerry in Saudi Arabia.  Of course, RIM doesn’t want to lose their business in that country hence all the backroom negotiations.

A Swiss banker in Tokyo said his bank banned BlackBerry from their company because of the data being in Canada.  Evidently the Swiss see Canada as a ‘colony’ of the Americans and don’t want the American government spying on them as they feel the US could get easy access.

As you look at what cloud service you are using, you really need to think about where you data is.  For AINEO Secure, all your data is in Japan in multiple data centers.  You don’t have to worry about foreign governments reading your mail, or even the Japanese government for that matter.  Your privacy is important to us and as long as you are not doing anything illegal or immoral, the only person who is going to read your mail is you!

Picture courtesy of Reuters.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

iPhone, iPad Users Be Careful About Opening Attachments

From the beginning of the spam days, bad people have written applications and attached them to emails and sent them out. 

Through our server clusters running AINEO Secure, we see all sorts of scams and attacks.  We nail pretty much everything but that doesn’t mean that any of us should be ignorant users.

For security threats through mail, the usual mode of operation (MO) is to attach some type of software file that contains a variant payload of application that will do something to your computer.

For iPhone and iPad users, there is a new problem variant of similar problems.  Attackers have figured out how to commandeer an Apple device through a compromised PDF file.

If a user opens one of these PDF files from their phone or tablet computer, the software is activated an your device is compromised.  When opening attachments here are some similar things to think about-

1) Do you know the sender?

2) Did you ask for the file?

3) Is it a silly file or something that your sender would normally send to you?

4) What is the filename of the attachment?  If in doubt, call the sender and ask if they sent it.  If you don’t care, just delete it. Better safe than sorry.

Let’s all be smart messaging users.  It will help us avoid compromising our IT systems and ending up suffering any major financial loses.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE67250I20100803

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Exchange Hosting Asia’s Best Groupware New Pricing

AINEO is pleased to announce that we have been able to update our datacenter making more space and cutting costs.  We would like to pass that on to you our partners!

Effective 1st August, AINEO Secure pricing will change.  We will move from a package system to a per account system.  Details here.

We are also increasing all accounts from 1GB standard to 2GB.

Thanks for using AINEO Secure!  We are delighted to serve you.

Sincerely,
The AINEO Secure Tech Team

Monday, August 02, 2010

Using iPad in Business- Japan Email and Web Hosting

On 10 May, the Apple iPad became available for online ordering.  We ordered one immediately as AINEO has had requests to develop applications as well as received calls from our partners on AINEO Secure regarding set up and use the service.  The Apple iPad arrived on 28 May.  Instead of the delivery man saying, “You’ve got a package”, he said “You’ve got an iPad”.  People have been very excited about the iPad.
We have tested the iPad with AINEO Secure and have some comments about it’s use.

-The iPad is a great ‘always on’ device that you can use to access your email, contacts, action and other great services of AINEO Secure or any other MS Exchange compatible server.

-It is not a true replacement for a laptop (notebook) PC.  The keyboard is hard to use and there is no such thing as blind touch unless you buy and exterior keyboard

-The battery life is amazing.  On an airplane, if you have ripped some of your DVDs with HandBrake or some other software, you can watch your DVDs for hours.

-The speaker and microphone are good and work very well as another phone through the Skype service.

-In direct sunlight, it is very difficult to see the screen, but inside the iPad has a beautiful LED display.

-There are many good applications available for iPhone.  Some of our favorites are
Dictionary.com- Access to English word definitions on the go
Facebook- Keep up with the social networks
iBooks- Hundreds of royalty free classic books to read when you have time.
NewsPro- From Thomson Reuters
      Olivetree- Great study tool.
Keynote- Great for showing your company presentations to your clients

-The browsing interface on the iPad is wonderful.  The built in keyboard is more that able to cover all your browsing inputs, touches, drags, pinches, and so forth. 

Overall, we are very impressed with the iPad.  It is more a viewer than an input device.  The battery life is excellent; the display beautiful, and the processor speed is very fast.  Input is a bit tedious so it is not something you would give to a road warrior type of person as their main laptop.  However, it is excellent presentation tool.  We are thinking to give iPads to our sales consultants as they deal with our partners and friends because it is a very natural way to present information to others.

Please contact us if you have any questions.  We would be delighted to give you more feedback.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Looking To Replace Outlook?

Zimbra Desktop combines the best aspects of existing email clients (also known as POP or IMAP email clients) with modern webmail applications to make a totally new and improved experience.
Nowhere else will you find an application with full email, contact, calendar, document management and offline access features for free! (Take a look at this comparison guide.)
You can find out more about Zimbra desktop here.  Better yet, you can use Zimbra Desktop at your company for free with AINEO Secure.  AINEO Networks’ Groupware solution for business and the enterprise.  Look for the plan that matches your business here.
More on Zimbra Desktop-
Key features
Email, contacts, calendar, and documents all in one application
Syncs Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail email, contacts and calendars
Read email from any POP or IMAP email account including AOL, Hotmail or business email
Works on Windows, Apple, or Linux desktop computers
No limit to the size of your email storage
It works online and offline
Available in 20 languages
Email
Easily compose, edit, delete, reply, or make drafts
“Drag and Drop” messages into new folders or the Trash
Supports plain text and html message formatting
Add email signatures for each account and automatically reply with the correct “from” address
Compose email even when you are not online-messages you send are saved in the “Outbox” and are sent when you connect again
Supports any POP or IMAP email plus Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail
Conversation Views, Tags, and Search
Collapse email threads into a single Conversation View to simplify your inbox
Tag messages as important from people you care about
Quickly search your mailbox for pictures, documents or text-even with attachments
Use Advanced Search to easily search by folder, date, person, subject or attachment
Save searches as Virtual Folders- for example “All email with attachments from Joe”
Now features built-in support for Yahoo! Inquisitor
Web mash-ups
View addresses as Yahoo! Maps
Automatically detect your location and find points of interest with Yahoo! Local
Preview web pages at thumbnails instead of opening a browser
See your calendar schedule from within an email message if you hover over a date
Web Search powered by Yahoo! is built directly into Zimbra Desktop
Automatically save pictures to Flickr
Contacts
Store all your contacts in one place for all your accounts
Create groups and tags to organize them
Add photos to contacts
Auto complete email addresses when composing email
Easily import new contacts from other applications as .csv files or export contacts as .csv files for backup
Syncs Zimbra, Yahoo! and Gmail contacts
Calendar
Manage multiple color-coded calendars
View calendars in Day, Week, Work Week, Month or List view
“Fisheye” in the Month view let’s you easily view and edit events
Drag and drop’ events to new days or to change times
Import public web calendars (iCal format), such as sports schedules
Invite others to meetings and view free/busy times
Syncs Zimbra, Yahoo! and Gmail calendars
Documents, Tasks, Briefcase
Edit Documents including add images, tables and spreadsheets; share them in email
Track your to do’s including start and end dates, percent complete
Save attachments in Briefcase rather than as message attachments
Works with any account you set up
Extra features with Zimbra Collaboration Suite on AINEO Secure Hosting
Email, contacts, calendar, documents, tasks synchronize to the Zimbra Server
Access to shared data from peers (email, contacts, calendars, etc)
Works with both Open Source and Network Edition (ZCS 5.0+ servers)
Existing user preferences (folders, signatures, settings, etc) are imported
Access to mobile devices, the Zimbra online Web Client and much more