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SKYPE Beta Adds Group Chat

 

Windows: The latest Skype beta—released today—adds support for group video calling, allowing you to video conference with up to five people simultaneously.
Currently the group video chat feature is only available on the Windows version, and while it's currently free with the beta, there is a catch:

Group video calling is just one in a set of new premium features you'll see us roll out during 2010. We haven't set prices for these premium features yet, but rest assured that we're still absolutely committed to bringing you free voice and two-way video calling.

It's too bad that the group video chat probably won't be available for free in the long term, especially since, for example, iChat's had group video chat for a while now, and for free. Either way, it's good to see Skype move in this direction, and we're assuming that a lot of people will be excited to try it out.

Source:http://dailytechnoapps.blogspot.com

Which music service should you use?

You just want to listen to some good music.

At this point, music lovers and listeners now have 10 scrillion ways to listen to music online. But where to start? Do you patiently upload all your music to Google Music? Do you check out what your friends are listening to on Spotify? Rdio? Mog? Pandora? Which ones are free, and which ones cost money? Or do you just forget about online music and just go back to listening to CDs (assuming they'll even be around in a couple of years)?

Because there are so many ways to listen to music (remember live concerts?), if you have favorites not mentioned here, please share them in the comments. But for the purposes of this post, and for sanity's sake, I'm going to try to flesh out which music services are right for different types of music listeners. Keep in mind that I'm not an audiophile; I'm just a regular music listener, like you probably are.

Also, note that I'm not addressing free radio services like Pandora, Last.fm, TuneIn Radio, Shoutcast, and the like. Many of these services are great, but they're more about tapping into a preprogrammed stream; I'm talking about on-demand services that let you choose your own music.

Before you start
Before we present some of our favorite choices, a few words of advice:

Make sure your service of choice is available on your device(s): Listen to music on your Android smartphone? iPhone? Apple TV? Roku? Sonos? Mac? Many of these services are supported on a wide variety of devices, but few of them are supported on every device. Before you pick one, make sure it works on your device of choice (via an app, software, or a browser).

Make sure your favorite artists are available on your service of choice:

Some notable artists--The Beatles, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Coldplay--are hard (or downright impossible) to find on some services. Search the archives to make sure your must-have artists are available--or be prepared to start ripping some CDs.

Don't be afraid to experiment: Many of these services have free-to-try or free-on-PC versions. Giving them a spin is pretty much a no-risk affair. And even the pay services don't come with contracts or early-termination fees, as a cell phone does. If you sign up for, say, Rhapsody and you end up not liking it after a month, cancel it--you won't be out more than $10.

Music-streaming services

Music-streaming services are a great way to discover new music without actually taking space on your computer, or even buying the music outright. There are free ways to do this, as well as paid ways to do this.

Spotify
Spotify broke onto the scene in a big way in July 2011, when it was finally released in the U.S.

It offers tight integration with Facebook; songs I listen to in Spotify show up in real time on my Facebook Timeline (which can be a good or bad thing, depending on what embarrassing thing I happen to be listening to). In fact, when I open my Spotify desktop app, more than 50 of my Facebook friends are actively using it. By comparison, only seven of my Facebook friends are using Rdio, (which I'll get to later), with only a couple actively using it.

When you click on a grayed-out song, it tells you that it's not available, unless you already have it stored on your hard drive.

(Credit: Screenshot by Karyne Levy/CNET)

Spotify finds songs that are stored on your computer; it feels like an iTunes replacement, plus it adds the ability to find music you might not have in your collection, for free. It's like if iTunes and 1990s-era Napster had a baby, except you can't keep the streaming tracks.

With the free service, there's a limit to how much music you can listen to (unlimited for six months; after that, it's 10 hours per month). It's ad-supported unless you pay $4.99 per month, and if you want to stream to your mobile devices (check if your device is compatible), it's $9.99 per month.

Who should use Spotify: Do you own a lot of music and want to incorporate it with music you don't have? Do you have a lot of playlists already created in iTunes? Spotify lets you import playlists you've already created. Also, if you're a stickler for audio quality, playback on Spotify (320Kbps streams on the premium service) is a tad better than on Rdio. But for casual listeners, the differences are negligible. And with more than 15 million songs in its database, it shouldn't be hard to find music, even if you have more-offbeat tastes. Think of it as an iTunes replacement. And if you want to listen from something other than a phone or computer, Squeezebox and Sonos offer Spotify support.

Spotify's desktop app and integration of local music can really help fill in the typical gaps of subscription music libraries. You can't play The Beatles or Led Zeppelin on Mog or Rdio, but you'll find them on Spotify if you have those artists in your personal collection. If you're an iTunes lover who also loves free music to add to your collection, Spotify is a great option.

Who shouldn't use Spotify: The ads--present only in the free computer-based version--can be jarring and come from seemingly out of nowhere. If I'm listening to Kanye West, the odds of me wanting to hear an ad for a country music singer I've never heard of are slim to none. And they also seem to happen quite often; I sometimes hear two ads in a row.

There's no browser-based version of Spotify, so if you're not allowed to download apps on your machine (say, at work), then you can't use it. Also, Spotify makes you use your Facebook log-in to register. If that makes you uncomfortable, then look elsewhere. Also, if you'd like to purchase songs or albums directly from Spotify, there's no way to do that. Yet.

Rdio
I only just tapped into Rdio, which has been around for a while. In fact, just today I learned how to properly pronounce it (ar-dee-o). Like Spotify, Rdio is a social music service. And like Spotify, it has a desktop app that can incorporate songs from your iTunes or WMP library. And the similarities don't end there. There's a Facebook component, a playlist component, and a paid version component ($4.99 for unlimited streaming, $9.99 if you want to listen on your mobile device, and $17.99 a month for a family plan). There is an Rdio app for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

I can't imagine the green bar ever running out.

(Credit: Screenshot by Karyne Levy/CNET)

And you can try before you buy, which is always nice. In the free version, there's a limit to how many songs you can listen to per month. Rdio displays how close you're getting to that limit with a handy green bar, which looks seemingly endless; I've been streaming Rdio pretty regularly for about a week, and the green bar isn't even halfway depleted. What the limit is, however, is kind of a mystery.

If you find a song you're dying to own, some songs are available as DRM-free MP3 downloads; prices range between 99 cents and $1.29.

Who should use Rdio: Do you like following strangers on Twitter? Are you into music discovery? Rdio's "follow" features is kind of awesome, letting you follow other people and see what kind of music they're listening to. For example, you can follow Spin magazine and be on the cutting edge of music! Or you can follow me, and be embarrassed.

Music discovery is also fairly easy. You can check what's in "heavy rotation," both among friends and all Rdio users. You can also browse new releases, top charts, recommendations based on what's in your collection, and artists similar to those you like.

And there's a browser-based version, which is great for people who don't want to download an app to their computers.

If you love sharing songs with friends, and learning about new songs from friends or strangers, Rdio is a great service to try.

Who shouldn't use Rdio: If you care a lot about the music you actually own, I wouldn't go with Rdio; there's no way to manage the music that's not in its catalog. Rdio's desktop app doesn't import iTunes playlists, and when you try to import a song that's not in its catalog, it doesn't let you import missing songs to be managed by the app. And if you have weird taste in music, Rdio has the fewest songs. Out of the 1,395 songs on my work machine, it only matched 689 of them.

Mog
Mog is yet another music service, with more than 13 million songs in the catalog. Like Spotify and Rdio, it has a free version, and two paid versions: $4.99 per month for unlimited streaming and no ads, and a $9.99-per-month option that allows for unlimited streaming, no ads, and streaming on your iOS or Android device.

Note that Mog limits FreePlay subscribers to a set number of free tracks they can play every month. Users can fill up their listening "gas tank" by using the social features of the site: sharing playlists over social networks, exploring Mog's library, etc. Essentially, the more you use Mog, the more free listening time you'll earn.

Mog's interface is refreshingly clear of clutter, and we love the large cover art.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

Mog boasts support for many devices, including Squeezebox, Sonos, and LG home theater products.

Who should use Mog: Those who prize audio quality above all else should give Mog a try; Web streams are 320Kbps.

If you're an audiophile and are looking to play your music on a home system, Mog is a great option.

Who shouldn't use Mog: Like Rdio, there's no way to manage the music you own that's not in its catalog.

Rhapsody
As with the others, Rhapsody also offers a paid subscription service: $9.99 per month for access to one mobile device, and online streaming via the browser, or Windows client software; $14.99 per month for streaming on three mobile devices. There's a free 14-day trial when you sign up for either of these accounts, so you can try before you buy.

Rhapsody's Web interface looks a little archaic compared with newer rivals, but its Premier Plus subscription plan is the best deal if you want to use multiple mobile devices.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

There's no free version, however. At all. So if you want to use Rhapsody, you're going to have to cough up at least $9.99 per month. That can be a turn-off for the casual listener.

Who should use Rhapsody: Rhapsody has teamed with MTV, so sometimes you get to hear songs before they hit stores. Like Spotify, its desktop app can be thought of as an iTunes replacement.

With the Premier Plus plan, it's $15 for support on three mobile devices, which can be the best deal for a household of mobile subscription music fans.

Who shouldn't use Rhapsody: There's no Mac client, so Mac users who don't want to listen through the browser are out of luck. And Rhapsody's interface is slow and clunky, especially compared with the other offerings. Want a social component? Look elsewhere.

Spotify
Rdio
Mog
Rhapsody

Streaming limits
Free accounts are unlimited for first 6 months, afterward 10 hours of streaming a month and a 5-play limit for any individual track. Paid accounts are unlimited.
The TOS is very vague about limits for free accounts. Access is granted in 30-day chunks; how many songs you are granted each month decreases as time goes on. The TOS also leaves out exactly how many songs: "You may not be advised as to the exact number of songs you have remaining in a given month, but Rdio will provide a meter for you to generally understand how much access is available."
Mog limits FreePlay subscribers to a set number of free tracks they can play every month. Users can fill up their listening "gas tank" by using the social features of the site: sharing playlists over social networks, exploring Mog's library, etc.
No

Cost
Free for basic; $4.99/month for no ads; $9.99/month for premium (mobile access, offline)
Free for limited Web streaming; $4.99/month for unlimited Web going up to $22.99 for three family subscriptions
Free for FreePlay plan; $4.99/month for Basic plan (no ads); $9.99/month for Primo plan (mobile access)
14-day free trial; $9.99/month for Premier plan (mobile); $14.99/month for Premier Plus plan (3 mobile devices)

Offline options
On Premium plan
On Unlimited and higher plans
On Primo plan
Yes

Mobile
On Premium plan
On some plans
On Primo plan
Yes

Requirements
Account and app download (Mac, PC, Android, iOS)
Rdio account
Mog account
Rhapsody account

Music-streaming services overall
All of these services are pretty much the same. If you don't care about owning the music, they're a great, easy way to listen to entire albums that you haven't purchased outright. They're also a great way to see what your friends and even strangers are listening to, in real time. It's like a music party, right on your computer. And with the paid versions of each service, you can stream the music to your mobile devices, too, without having to take up actual space.

It's easy to get bogged down in the minute differences between these services, but at the core they're all pretty similar. Still, certain aspects of the services will appeal to difference kinds of listeners. We're going to paint with some broad strokes here, but our general takeaway is:

Spotify: Best all-in-one music player for local and streaming content.
Rdio: Best for social networking functionality.
Mog: Prettiest user interface, high-quality streaming bit rates, and solid home theater devices support.
Rhapsody: Best streaming value if you want to use more than one mobile device.

If you're into your own music collection, however, read on.

Music locker apps

Music locker apps make it easy (in theory) to upload the music you already own to the cloud, so it's available wherever you go. But even here there are a few different ways to do that.

Amazon Cloud Player
Amazon beat both Apple and Google to the punch when it released Amazon Cloud Player hand in hand with Amazon Cloud Drive. Amazon Cloud Drive allows you to upload 5GB of any type of file, including music files (MP3, AAC), to Amazon's servers for free. After that, there's a tiered-pricing plan, and music you purchase from Amazon doesn't count against your storage limits and is automatically added to your Cloud Drive. At the time of this writing, Amazon is offering unlimited space for music, which doesn't count against your total storage space. So for only $20 a year, you get 20GB of storage space, and unlimited music storage space. Not too shabby.

Uploading music to Amazon's servers could take days if you have a large music collection, but after that, any file you upload is available from any browser. It even allows you to upload your iTunes playlists. The interface is pretty basic: you can sort by song, album, or artist. You can make your own playlists, and even download music from the cloud to your computer.

It will take approximately 30 minutes to upload 54 songs. My calculations show that a decent-size song library will take 45 years to upload. Who has that kind of time?

(Credit: Screenshot by Karyne Levy/CNET)

Who should use Amazon Cloud Player: Amazon's digital downloads are DRM-free, so you can listen to them on multiple devices. Amazon provides you with 5GB of space for free, and then bumps you up to 20GB with the purchase of one album.

Amazon is awesome for deal-seeking music lovers; you can often find $5 album bargains, which are frequent and great, making it easy to get hooked on Cloud Player, since your tunes are automatically in there.

Who shouldn't use Amazon Cloud Player: iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone users should check out a different service, because there's no Amazon Cloud Player apps for these devices (at least, not yet). The upload time takes forever; I tried to upload 54 songs and it said it would take almost 30 minutes. (Got a large digital media collection? Here are some tips on how to manage it.) Also, Amazon Cloud Player doesn't alert you if you have duplicates.

iCloud and iTunes Match
With iCloud, all the music you purchase through iTunes and your Apple ID will be available on all your iOS devices. So if you buy a song on your iPhone, it'll be available on your iPad and on your computer. For $25 a year, iTunes Match allows you to store music (MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC) that you didn't necessarily purchase from iTunes. Any music that's matched is automatically stored in iCloud; whatever music isn't available through Match, is uploaded. Since most of your music can probably found among iTunes 20 million songs, you won't have to upload from scratch, thus saving you tons of time.

iTunes Match and iCloud give you access to your entire music collection on your phone--where you might not have enough storage to hold it all.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

Who should use iTunes Match: If you're in the Apple ecosystem, it's kind of a no brainer. You can also use it to upgrade audio quality on your existing tracks.

The benefit of using iCloud to store your music is that it is supported on home theater devices, such as Apple TV.

Who shouldn't use iTunes Match: Those without an iOS device are out of luck with this one. Also, $25 is kind of a steep when you consider that Apple is basically providing you a copy of something you already own.

A couple CNET editors have had nothing but problems uploading their music to iCloud. Matching doesn't always seem very intelligent, and if you add more music and want to rescan your collection, it goes faster than it did at first, but not as fast as you'd hope.

Because it's not technically a streaming service, songs need to download before they play. In practice, the song will start playing back before it's totally downloaded, but there's a non-negligible delay. It's no Spotify.

Google Music
Google Music came out of beta recently with a splash. The Android Market offers hundreds of free songs and millions you can buy. You can also upload up to 20,000 of your own songs (MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC) to Google's servers, and play them on any device with a standard Web browser. That's right: Google's offering its music services outside the Google ecosystem. Imagine that?

The Google Music interface may not be the prettiest, but its core functionality is impressive.

(Credit: Screenshot by Matthew Moskovciak/CNET)

You can also share music purchased from the Android Market with your friends on Google+.

Who should use Google Music: Android and Google fans will definitely want to give Google Music a try, especially those who want tight integration with Google+. iOS users who want to give it a shot, rest-assured: the non-native Web app works very well. And if you have a Google TV, you can listen to songs from the comfort of your living room.

Who shouldn't use Google Music: So far it's only available in the U.S. Also, it's worth considering that the native app is only available for Android devices. Uploading songs to the Google servers takes a long time, so if you have a large music library, prepare to wait a while.

Apple iTunes Match
Amazon Cloud Player
Google Music

Storage capacity
Unlimited in iCloud for iTunes purchases; songs not purchased on iTunes are limited to 25,000 total.
Options range from 5GB to 1TB. Unlimited for Amazon MP3 purchases for first copy; duplicates are counted toward the Cloud Drive limit.
20,000 songs

Cost
$24.99/year
5GB storage for free; $20/year for 20GB going up to $1,000/year for 1TB. Songs bought on Amazon don't count against the limit.
Free

Streaming service
Yes, via iCloud
Yes
Yes

Offline options
Any song can be downloaded to any authorized device at no additional charge. There's also an automatic download switch so any song bought on iTunes can be pushed to your mobile devices.
Songs can easily be accessed and downloaded from 8 devices maximum.
You can save songs to your phone or tablet for offline use.

Free music
Yes
Yes
Yes

Store
Yes
Yes
Yes

Mobile
On iOS devices
Android app; playable on iOS via the browser
Yes

Requirements
iTunes account
Amazon account
Google account

Cloud locker services overall
Again, all three of these services are very similar. Depending on which devices you have, and how much time you've got, the easiest way to pick a music locker app is to go with the company where you already buy your digital music. iTunes Match makes a lot of sense if you're already into iTunes (and especially if you own other Apple gadgets). Similarly, it's smart to go with Amazon if you prefer its thrifty digital music store. Google Music is the newest and free, so we expect it to be a solid option for those devoted to the Android ecosystem, although we haven't extensively used the Google digital music store yet.

source:  http://www.news.cnet.com

iPhone Turned Into spiPhone: Smartphone Senses Nearby Keyboard Vibrations and Deciphers Sentences

 

It's a pattern that no doubt repeats itself daily in hundreds of millions of offices around the world: People sit down, turn on their computers, set their mobile phones on their desks and begin to work. What if a hacker could use that phone to track what the person was typing on the keyboard just inches away?

A research team at Georgia Tech has discovered how to do exactly that, using a smartphone accelerometer -- the internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted -- to sense keyboard vibrations and decipher complete sentences with up to 80 percent accuracy. The procedure is not easy, they say, but is definitely possible with the latest generations of smartphones.

"We first tried our experiments with an iPhone 3GS, and the results were difficult to read," said Patrick Traynor, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Computer Science. "But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better. We believe that most smartphones made in the past two years are sophisticated enough to launch this attack."

Previously, Traynor said, researchers have accomplished similar results using microphones, but a microphone is a much more sensitive instrument than an accelerometer. A typical smartphone's microphone samples vibration roughly 44,000 times per second, while even newer phones' accelerometers sample just 100 times per second -- two full orders of magnitude less often. Plus, manufacturers have installed security around a phone's microphone; the phone's operating system is programmed to ask users whether to give new applications access to most built-in sensors, including the microphone. Accelerometers typically are not protected in this way.

The technique works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual keys (which still is too difficult to accomplish reliably, Traynor said). It models "keyboard events" in pairs, then determines whether the pair of keys pressed is on the left versus right side of the keyboard, and whether they are close together or far apart. After the system has determined these characteristics for each pair of keys depressed, it compares the results against a preloaded dictionary, each word of which has been broken down along similar measurements (i.e., are the letters left/right, near/far on a standard QWERTY keyboard). Finally, the technique only works reliably on words of three or more letters.

For example, take the word "canoe," which when typed breaks down into four keystroke pairs: "C-A, A-N, N-O and O-E." Those pairs then translate into the detection system's code as follows: Left-Left-Near, Left-Right-Far, Right-Right-Far and Right-Left-Far, or LLN-LRF-RRF-RLF. This code is then compared to the preloaded dictionary and yields "canoe" as the statistically probable typed word. Working with dictionaries comprising about 58,000 words, the system reached word-recovery rates as high as 80 percent.

"The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone's owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn't ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors," said Henry Carter, a PhD student in computer science and one of the study's co-authors. "Then the keyboard-detection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard and start typing, it starts listening."

Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability are pretty simple and straightforward, Traynor said. First, since the study found an effective range of just three inches from a keyboard, phone users can simply leave their phones in their purses or pockets, or just move them further away from the keyboard. But a fix that puts less onus on users is to add a layer of security for phone accelerometers.

"The sampling rate for accelerometers is already pretty low, and if you cut it in half, you start to approach theoretical limitations that prevent eavesdropping. The malware simply does not have the data to work with," Traynor said. "But most phone applications can still function even with that lower accelerometer rate. So manufacturers could set that as the default rate, and if someone downloads an application like a game that needs the higher sampling rate, that would prompt a permission question to the user to reset the accelerometer."

In the meantime, Traynor said, users shouldn't be paranoid that hackers are tracking their keystrokes through their iPhones.

"The likelihood of someone falling victim to an attack like this right now is pretty low," he said. "This was really hard to do. But could people do it if they really wanted to? We think yes."

The finding is reported in the paper, "(sp)iPhone: Decoding Vibrations From Nearby Keyboards Using Mobile Phone Accelerometers," and will be presented on Oct. 20, at the 18th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago. In addition to Carter, Traynor's coauthors include Georgia Tech graduate student Arunabh Verman and Philip Marquardt of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

 

Source: Science Daily

60% Drop In Google+ Traffic Hints At Social Networking Fatigue

The hype machine surrounding the launch of any new social network went into overdrive a few months ago when Google+ debuted to a select group of beta testers, receiving largely positive reviews from the tech elite. But now that the service has been opened to the public, a new report claims that the social networking site has suffered a staggering loss of roughly 60 percent of its traffic.

The report, conducted by data analytics firm Chitika, claims, "The data shows that, on the day of its public debut, Google+ traffic skyrocketed to peak levels. But, soon after, traffic fell by over 60 percent as it returned to its normal, underwhelming state. It would appear that although high levels of publicity were able to draw new traffic to Google+, few of them saw reason to stay."

Of course, this report is just the latest hit to the service, as just last week it was observed that Google's executive team has a spotty record of posting on Google+, breaking the "eat your own dogfood" rule common to most successful social networks.

Sony: 93,000 PlayStation, Online Accounts Hacked

Sony's hacking problems aren't over yet.

On Wednesday morning, Philip Reitinger, Sony's newly hired chief information security officer, said that about 93,000 PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment user accounts have been breached in a Web attack.

The attack is merely the latest for Sony, which has been dealing with online assaults on its user accounts most of the year. So far, more than 90 million Sony user accounts across the company's online services have been breached, which led to online video gaming services being suspended for more than a month.

The security breaches haven't been limited to Sony's gaming business either. Sony's cloud-based Qriocity music service, Sony music websites and Sony Pictures websites have been hacked this year too.

Reitinger, whom Sony hired in September, is a veteran of the online security world and formerly was a top security official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Microsoft Corp.'s chief trustworthy infrastructure strategist. He's also worked for the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice and holds a law degree from Yale.

Sony created an entirely new position for Reitinger in hiring him in a bid to show it was serious about changing what is becoming an image of having a weak security system for users of its online services.

In a statement on Sony's PlayStation blog, Reitinger said it is unsure how successful or widespread the most recent attacks have been, but it has "detected attempts" to crack into Sony's Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and the Sony Online Entertainment services "to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database."

"These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources," he said. "In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks."

Reitinger said that Sony has made moves to fend off the attacks.

"Less than one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of our PSN, SEN and SOE audience may have been affected," he said. "There were approximately 93,000 accounts globally (PSN/SEN: approximately 60,000 accounts; SOE: approximately 33,000) where the attempts succeeded in verifying those accounts' valid sign-in IDs and passwords, and we have temporarily locked these accounts. Only a small fraction of these 93,000 accounts showed additional activity prior to being locked."

The nearly 93,000 accounts that were hacked and then locked down are currently under review by Sony so the company can figure out if an outside party really did access those accounts or not, Reitinger said.

Despite what Sony believes is the likely hacking of the large number of accounts, credit card numbers were not at risk in the security breach, he said. However, Sony "will work with any users whom we confirm have had unauthorized purchases made to restore amounts in the PSN/SEN or SOE wallet," Reitinger said.

"As a preventative measure, we are requiring secure password resets for those PSN/SEN accounts that had both a sign-in ID and password match through this attempt," he said. "If you are in the small group of PSN/SEN users who may have been affected, you will receive an email from us at the address associated with your account that will prompt you to reset your password."

"Similarly, the SOE accounts that were matched have been temporarily turned off. If you are among the small group of affected SOE customers, you will receive an email from us at the address associated with your account that will advise you on next steps in order to validate your account credentials and have your account turned back on."


Source:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com

Apple Opens iCloud Ahead Of iOS 5 Launch

When Apple's iOS 5 launches, iCloud will be waiting.

iCloud.com is now open to everyone. The site provides a suite of Web apps for e-mail, contacts, calendars, document viewing and finding your iPhone. Anything you do in these apps will be synced automatically to all other iOS devices.

To access iCloud.com, you first need to set up iCloud on either an iOS 5 device or a Mac running OS X Lion. Because iOS 5 doesn't go live until later today, Windows users and Mac users running older OS X versions will have to wait a bit longer to try the iCloud website.

iCloud's main purpose is to cut the cord between iOS devices -- such as the iPhone and iPad -- and PCs. Starting with iOS 5, Apple will back up user data to the Internet automatically, making it available to Macs, Windows PCs and other iOS devices without wires.

The services at iCloud.com are just one-half of the equation for accessing your data on a PC or Mac. The other half is iTunes, which can be used to manage music, TV shows, apps and e-books. Apple updated iTunes to version 10.5 on Tuesday, bringing with it the ability to view your entire library of purchased content and download it all to a PC or Mac.

Microsoft Finalizes USD8.5 Billion Skype Acquisition

Microsoft said Friday that it has closed its US$8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, the Internet telephony provider in Luxembourg, and the company will function as a new business division within Microsoft.

Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the new Skype Division immediately, reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The acquisition is however still under review in a few countries, and will be completed in those countries when such reviews are closed, Microsoft said without naming the countries. The deal was cleared by the Department of Justice in the U.S. in June and antitrust regulators in the European Union this month.

Microsoft announced in May that it had agreed to acquire Skype, and said at the time that it would be integrated with Microsoft's products, without affecting availability of the popular Internet telephony application on platforms from competitors.

The Skype division will continue to offer its current products to millions of users globally, Microsoft said on Friday. In the long term, Skype will also be integrated across an array of Microsoft products to broaden Skype's reach and accelerate its growth as a fundamental way for people to communicate online, it added.

Founded in 2003, Skype was acquired by eBay in September 2005, and then acquired by an investment group led by Silver Lake in November 2009. Other members of the selling investor group led by Silver Lake include eBay International, CPP Investment Board, Joltid in partnership with Europlay Capital Advisors, and Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft said.


Source: www.pcworld.in

iPhone 5 release date faces 4S-incuded 4-12 month wait for Sprint etc.

 

The rise of the iPhone 4S dictates that the iPhone 5 release date won’t be in 2011. Not on new favorite son Sprint. Not on uneasy recent partner Verizon. And not on old frenemy AT&T. But rest easy, it won’t be in 2012 either. The fate of the iPhone 5 now comes down to Apple’s strategy as much as whatever manufacturing or component issues which held it up in the first place, as Tim Cook and the company must not only contend with the passing of Steve Jobs a mere one day after the 4S unveiling, but also the fact that it can’t very well turn around and launch the iPhone 5 a few weeks from now even if it is ready; backlash from 4S buyers would off the charts. So while Apple hasn’t said a word about the iPhone 5 or even so much as spoken the words “iPhone 5″ at any point, here’s a look at what logic, circumstance, and common sense dictate are the practical iPhone 5 release date scenarios. Listed by date, and handicapped by the odds of each happening:

January whiplash: This sees the iPhone 5 ready to go by January and, realizing that the iPhone 4S didn’t overwhelm anyone and opting to waste no time, holds a press event in mid January and gives the iPhone 5 a late January release date. Those who skipped the 4S will be thrilled, those who bought it in October will be more than a little ticked that their new iPhone just became obsolete three months later, particularly in light of stringent cell carrier upgrade pricing schemes. The iPhone 4S would also stick around as a bargain model, and would see a price cut of at least $100 as of the iPhone 5 arrival, leaving 4S buyers feeling not just disappointed but ripped off. This “too soon” scenario seems unlikely unless backlash against the 4S is really bad…

Scientists release most accurate simulation of the universe to date

 

The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, gives physicists and astronomers a powerful new tool for understanding such cosmic mysteries as galaxy formation, dark matter, and dark energy.

 

The simulation traces the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe, including the evolution and distribution of the dark matter halos in which galaxies coalesced and grew. Initial studies show good agreement between the simulation's predictions and astronomers' observations.

"In one sense, you might think the initial results are a little boring, because they basically show that our standard cosmological model works," said Joel Primack, distinguished professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "What's exciting is that we now have this highly accurate simulation that will provide the basis for lots of important new studies in the months and years to come."

Primack and Anatoly Klypin, professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University, lead the team that produced the Bolshoi simulation. Klypin wrote the computer code for the simulation, which was run on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center. "These huge cosmological simulations are essential for interpreting the results of ongoing astronomical observations and for planning the new large surveys of the universe that are expected to help determine the nature of the mysterious dark energy," Klypin said.

Primack, who directs the University of California High-Performance Astrocomputing Center (UC-HIPACC), said the initial release of data from the Bolshoi simulation began in early September. "We've released a lot of the data so that other astrophysicists can start to use it," he said. "So far it's less than one percent of the actual output, because the total output is so huge, but there will be additional releases in the future."

The previous benchmark for large-scale cosmological simulations, known as the Millennium Run, has been the basis for some 400 papers since 2005. But the fundamental parameters used as the input for the Millennium Run are now known to be inaccurate. Produced by the Virgo Consortium of mostly European scientists, the Millennium simulation used cosmological parameters based on the first release of data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). WMAP provided a detailed map of subtle variations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the primordial radiation left over from the Big Bang. But the initial WMAP1 parameters have been superseded by subsequent releases: WMAP5 (five-year results released in 2008) and WMAP7 (seven-year results released in 2010).

The Bolshoi simulation is based on WMAP5 parameters, which are consistent with the later WMAP7 results. "The WMAP1 cosmological parameters on which the Millennium simulation is based are now known to be wrong," Primack said. "Moreover, advances in supercomputer technology allow us to do a much better simulation with higher resolution by almost an order of magnitude. So I expect the Bolshoi simulation will have a big impact on the field."

The standard explanation for how the universe evolved after the Big Bang is known as the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, and it is the theoretical basis for the Bolshoi simulation. According to this model, gravity acted initially on slight density fluctuations present shortly after the Big Bang to pull together the first clumps of dark matter. These grew into larger and larger clumps through the hierarchical merging of smaller progenitors. Although the nature of dark matter remains a mystery, it accounts for about 82 percent of the matter in the universe. As a result, the evolution of structure in the universe has been driven by the gravitational interactions of dark matter. The ordinary matter that forms stars and planets has fallen into the "gravitational wells" created by clumps of dark matter, giving rise to galaxies in the centers of dark matter halos.

A principal purpose of the Bolshoi simulation is to compute and model the evolution of dark matter halos. The characteristics of the halos and subhalos in the Bolshoi simulation are presented in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and is now available online. The authors are Klypin, NMSU graduate student Sebastian Trujillo-Gomez, and Primack.

A second paper, also accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal and available online, presents the abundance and properties of galaxies predicted by the Bolshoi simulation of dark matter. The authors are Klypin, Trujillo-Gomez, Primack, and UCSC postdoctoral researcher Aaron Romanowsky. A comparison of the Bolshoi predictions with galaxy observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey showed very good agreement, according to Primack.

The Bolshoi simulation focused on a representative section of the universe, computing the evolution of a cubic volume measuring about one billion light-years on a side and following the interactions of 8.6 billion particles of dark matter. It took 6 million CPU-hours to run the full computation on the Pleiades supercomputer, recently ranked as the seventh fastest supercomputer in the world.

A variant of the Bolshoi simulation, known as BigBolshoi or MultiDark, was run on the same supercomputer with the same number of particles, but this time in a volume 64 times larger. BigBolshoi was run to predict the properties and distribution of galaxy clusters and other very large structures in the universe, as well as to help with dark energy projects such as the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS).

Another variant, called MiniBolshoi, is currently being run on the Pleiades supercomputer. MiniBolshoi focuses on a smaller portion of the universe and provides even higher resolution than Bolshoi. The Bolshoi simulation and its two variants will be made publicly available to astrophysical researchers worldwide in phases via the MultiDark Database, hosted by the Potsdam Astrophysics Institute in Germany and supported by grants from Spain and Germany.

Primack, Klypin, and their collaborators are continuing to analyze the results of the Bolshoi simulation and submit papers for publication. Among their findings are results showing that the simulation correctly predicts the number of galaxies as bright as the Milky Way that have satellite galaxies as bright as the Milky Way's major satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

"A lot more papers are on the way," Primack said.

This research was funded by grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Is Smartphone Technology the Future of US Elections?

With more and more Americans upgrading to smartphones, and as smartphone capabilities continue to improve, even the U.S. government is considering innovative ways to harness this advancing technology. Human factors/ergonomics researchers have evaluated the potential benefits of using smartphones to enable online voting in future U.S. elections and will present their findings at the upcoming HFES 55th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida became a national embarrassment, prompting many U.S. election officials to opt for more technologically advanced voter systems. Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, which aimed, in part, to increase usability and promote accurate election results through the creation and distribution of electronic voting systems. Little research was completed to determine the efficiency of the new systems, however, which has caused additional usability issues. This gap has led some to speculate that mobile voting may prove to be the wave of the future for voters.

In their upcoming Annual Meeting presentation, "Voting on a Smartphone: Evaluating the Usability of an Optimized Voting System for Handheld Mobile Devices," Bryan Campbell, Chad Tossell, Michael Byrne, and Philip Kortum asked more than 50 men and women ranging in age from 18 to 68, with and without smartphone experience, to vote on two types of systems: a custom-built mobile Web application, and either a traditional electronic voting system or a paper ballot. The researchers found that participants who own and use smartphones completed the voting task more accurately than did those without smartphone experience, indicating the need to design mobile voting systems -- including content for such systems -- to accommodate inexperienced voters' mental model to increase usability, effectiveness, and accuracy.

The authors note some potential benefits of implementing smartphone technology for voters: "Mobile voting carries the potential to increase voter participation, reduce election administration costs, and allow voters to interact with familiar technology. In the near term, remote voting should not be considered a viable option for elections. Over the long term, however, with the support of the human factors/ergonomics and computer science communities, mobile voting can be a viable -- and desirable -- means of conducting elections."

Congress has given preliminary approval for remote electronic voting to replace slow and unreliable postal ballots for U.S. soldiers stationed overseas. "As a result," say the authors, "some form of Internet voting seems inevitable, and it follows then that smartphones and other Internet-capable mobile technologies will likely play a key role."

Breakthrough Could Double Wireless Capacity With No New Towers

 

The days of waiting for smartphones to upload video may be numbered. Rice University engineering researchers have made a breakthrough that could allow wireless phone companies to double throughput on their networks without adding a single cell tower.

Get Gmail in MSN messenger…

This tutorial is for all those Gmail Account Holders that whish to use a Gmail account with MSN Messenger & .Net Passport Service

What you will need:

=> A Gmail Account

=> MSN messenger / Window Messenger – use verify your gmail account.

 

Once you have downloaded / obtain all of those you are ready to continue.

1. Log in to your gmail account via – http://www.gmail.com

2. Load up MSN messenger and cancel any automatic sign in attempt so that you have it ready to sign in with your gmail account later on.

3. You will need to visit the Microsoft .Net Passport website- http://www.passport.net

4. Now you will need to click the register for your free .net passport today button that is in the right hand corner of the page.

5. That will take you to a registration page. Fill in the form as you would if you where filling a hotmail account accept when asked for your email account you would enter myaccount@gmail.com

6. Once the registration of your .net registered gmail account has been made, sign in to MSN messenger using this newly registered account, you will notice that when you sign in to messenger your messenger name will be youraccount@gmail.com (un—verified) and you won’t be able to change it, this is solved below.

7. As soon as you have signed in , a messenger will appear in an information box( the same as when a contact sign in), click on this and you will be taken through the process of Verifying your account the reason you have to go through this is because at current gmail is not affiliated with .net passport e.g.  .net passport doesn’t recognise the @gmail.com as a valid email provider therefore they cannot automatically verify your account (hotmail and msn auto verify as there .net passport affiliated websites),

8. Once you have been taken through the verification process you will be asked to log in to your email account and visit the url given in an email form the .net passport verification service, maximize the internet browser window that you signed in to gmail on earlier, you will have 2 emails form .net passport the first will be welcoming you to .net passport, the second will be the one we are after, the verification email, open this up the url to finish verifying your email address(usually its either the first to this url in the email)

9. Once you have completed these actions and you have been told that your gmail account is verified, sign out of MSN messenger, then re sign back in (you don’t need to wait for any period of time just sign out then straight back in again), you will now notice the(not verified) had been removed from your MSN name, and now you are bale to change their name to, if this is so, then congratulations you now have a fully functioning .net passport gmail account( you cannot access your gmail email account via MSN messenger you will still have to visit the gmail login page for this) http://www.gmail.com

10. If for any reason this didn’t work, and you again receive the message asking you to verify, or you haven’t received your verification email from .net Passport, then re-try 2-7 times until you get it working correctly.

 

I hope this helps some of you gmail account users out there that have been wracking your brains over how to get gmail in to MSn messenger..

Hackers steal SSL certificates for CIA, MI6, Mossad

Criminals acquired over 500 DigiNotar digital certificates; Mozilla and Google issue 'death sentence'

The tally of digital certificates stolen from a Dutch company in July has exploded to more than 500, including ones for intelligence services like the CIA, the U.K.'s MI6 and Israel's Mossad, a Mozilla developer said Sunday.

The confirmed count of fraudulently-issued SSL (secure socket layer) certificates now stands at 531, said Gervase Markham, a Mozilla developer who is part of the team that has been working to modify Firefox to blocks all sites signed with the purloined certificates.

Among the affected domains, said Markham, are those for the CIA, MI6, Mossad, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft's Windows Update service.

"Now that someone (presumably from Iran) has obtained a legit HTTPS cert for CIA.gov, I wonder if the US gov will pay attention to this mess," Christopher Soghoian, a Washington D.C.-based researcher noted for his work on online privacy, said in a tweet Saturday.

Soghoian was referring to assumptions by many experts that Iranian hackers, perhaps supported by that country's government, were behind the attack. Google has pointed fingers at Iran, saying that attacks using an ill-gotten certificate for google.com had targeted Iranian users.

All the certificates were issued by DigiNotar, a Dutch issuing firm that last week admitted its network had been hacked in July.

The company claimed that it had revoked all the fraudulent certificates, but then realized it had overlooked one that could be used to impersonate any Google service, including Gmail. DigiNotar went public only after users reported their findings to Google.

Criminals or governments could use the stolen certificates to conduct "man-in-the-middle" attacks, tricking users into thinking they were at a legitimate site when in fact their communications were being secretly intercepted.

Google and Mozilla said this weekend that they would permanently block all the digital certificates issued by DigiNotar, including those used by the Dutch government.

Their decisions come less than a week after Google, Mozilla and Microsoft all revoked more than 200 SSL (secure socket layer) certificates for use in their browsers, but left untouched hundreds more, many of which were used by the Dutch government to secure its websites.

"Based on the findings and decision of the Dutch government, as well as conversations with other browser makers, we have decided to reject all of the Certificate Authorities operated by DigiNotar," Heather Adkins, an information security manager for Google, said in a Saturday blog post.

Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox engineering, echoed that late on Friday.

"All DigiNotar certificates will be untrusted by Mozilla products," said Nightingale, who also said that the Dutch government had reversed its position of last week -- when it had asked browser makers to exempt its DigiNotar certificates.

Google Street view…

 

Google is looking to develop the features of its Street View and further enhance it by refreshing the images every year from now on. This decision was prompted by the fact that urban landscapes are in a state of flux at all times. To be able to keep up with this constant changes happening in the cities, this move was decided upon by Google.

In the same vein, the European Union is reviewing certain regulations concerned with the way Google is trying to make images of the cities of the world available on the World Wide Web for everyone to see. The EU want to know more about Google’s retention policy concerning the Street View Image.

According to Google, the Street View Images should be retained for a year. However, according to the European Union, the officials think that the period of one year is too long and want it to be shortened to six months. Also, the EU wants Google to put out notices in the media so that people know when the company will send their Street View cameras to take the pictures of the cities in general.

ASUS RT-N16: Wifi Router with Torrent,HTTP,FTP Download Support

 

If you are looking for an economical multidimensional router that has support for print server, Home media server and Download support from FTP, FTP and Bit-torrent ASUS RT-N16 is the right choice. This compatible with the modems of the Indian ISPs: Reliance,  Airtel, BSNL, MTNL broadband. Please note that, it is only a router and does not include DSL modem. You need to use the Modem supplied by the ISP and connect it to the router.

The cost of this router in India as on June 2011 is Rs6000/-

Key features:

1. 4 Gigabit Ethernet posts
2. Two USB Ports
3. HTTP, FTP and Torrrent Downloads via Download master. You don’t need to leave your PC running for days to download a big file. RTN16 will take care of that!
4. Network Printer support. See printer compatibility in ASUS support
5. WPS(Wifi protected setup) button support for easy Wifi configuration
6. You can add custom firmware like TomatoUSB and make it a Linux workhorse! You can have your favorite Torrent client that can manage torrent via HTTP instead of ASUS supplied clients. You can also run custom scripts( like automatic login to ISP authentication via Curl/Wget ). The possibilities are infinite!!!

The drawbacks:

1. This router is that it does not support dual-band.
2. USB flash drives works well. But, the USB power of RT-N16 is low that some USB powered hard drives don’t function well. In that case you may have to buy “Powered USB Hub”

Discovery Channel Tamil(தமிழ்): Dedicated new Channel in Tamil

 

Discovery India has launched an dedicated Tamil Channel: Discovery Tamil. Before this, they used to just give multiple audio feed on the Discovery Channel: English,Hindi,Telugu,Bangla and Tamil. The problem with that is , it still has English on video feed and the advertisements are in English and Hindi catering to the bigger market. Probably they should have found that with local advertising they could cater to local advertisements. This indicates they have good amount of viewership for Discovery in Tamilnadu where Sun TV is dominating major viewership.

Now this dedicated Tamil channel is available in most areas in Tamilnadu. But had negative impact on the DTH segment. Now they have removed the Tamil audio feed from the original Discovery Channel. So the DTH like Tatasky does not have Tamil discovery in both forms. They may not add the dedicated Tamil channel as well. Probably other DTH like Dish TV,Airtel,Videocon may add this channel.

Just wear your 3D personal theatre

 

   Models unveil the world's first 3D head-mounted display, a sleek device that enables the wearer to experience cinema-like virtual screen viewing anywhere. The visor-like gadget, weighing 420g, wraps around the head to let the wearer view high definition 3D images using two panels mounted in front of each eye. The device is tethered to a processor unit and boasts of surround-sound via earphones.
The display offers the experience of watching on a 750-inch virtual big screen 65 feet away. It can be used for watching videos, listening to music and playing videogames. It costs $783

Twitter Login

Twitter is the most famous micro blogging website in the world and due to its popularity, Many bad guys try to target twitter or twitter users directly or indirectly using phishing attacks, click jacking and other hacking methods. below we mentioned some general tips and guidelines which you can follow to keep your account safe and secure.

• To login to twitter, always visit official web page www.twitter.com never give your twitter credentials to sites other than official web page.
• To login to twitter, always visit official web page www.twitter.com never give your twitter credentials to sites other than official web page.
• Don’t forget to click on “Sign-out” button at the top right side of the page when you’re done using twitter. If you simply close the browser without signing out there might be chances that, other people who will open the same web browser will be able to access your account.
• Never ever paste any java script or other codes in your web browser while signed into twitter account. No matter what they claims to do. there are many bad codes out there which can gain your account login session or can post tweets behalf of you if you paste that code into your web browser.
• If you find ay tweets on your account which you never posted, immediately change your password anc check the list of applications you given permission to.
  

IBM Combines 200,000 HDDs to Make Giant Data Repository

IBM may have sparked interest lately by making cognitive processors, but it has again looked to the storage segment ,where it hopes to set a massive new record in terms of sheer capacity.

IBM definitely stirred the sleeping curiosity of many feelings by announcing that it had made cognitive computers, systems that can learn through experience, an actual part of reality.

It turns out that the company is not done being shocking, however, as the newest project it embarked in will have this effect simply because of its sheer scope.

Basically, IBM is showing that it has ambition in abundance by starting work on a giant data drive of 120 petabytes.

This capacity is about ten times higher than that of any other data container ever made and will be attained by combining 200,000 hard disk drives.

The company will employ new hardware and software techniques in order to make the project possible, though the main challenge will be to have the merger possess a decent level of efficiency, both performance- and energy-wise.

The other matter they will need to address is the inevitable failure of these drives and how the data on them might be preserved.

Making sure the whole is not disrupted by the collapse of a small part is also necessary.

What remains is to see how much time it takes for this project to come to fruition and, once it does, if it really does give a strong enough kick to the data center industry that such massive arrays become standard.

Mozilla to Develop OS based on android!

Mozilla, who are renowned for their successful internet browser, are entering the mobile race, developing a new web-centric OS that will directly compete with Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Mozilla took the leviathan computing company on with its Firefox browser, and today it stands as the second most popular browser worldwide.

Announced on the Mozilla discussion forum, Mozilla have begun coding for phones and tablets. The BBC revealed the mobile operating system will draw on Android code, with Mozilla writing as much fresh code as possible. The hybrid-like operating system will be named Boot To Gecko.

It is an unusual name for an OS, until you remember Gecko is the rendering engine employed by the Firefox browser that interprets web page coding and displays it in a screen-friendly format, a homage to its origins.

Even though Android coding will form the operating system's foundations, Mozilla hope to add a much more open wrapper around it than Google currently do, making it more versatile as an operating system.

Its shared foundations will also make Boot To Gecko compatible with the same phones as Android, competing as a direct alternative to Google.

Often, when you select a link from an application native to the Android or iOS market, the operating system will have to open a new webpage in the browser. Boot To Gecko aims to limit this by making applications much more web-centric.

If the venture proves successful, Mozilla will be waging war against industry giants, with Google, Apple and Microsoft dominating many facets of the technological world.

Microsoft Windows 8 first look

A first look at the "Windows 8" user interface !!!!!!

Google Buys Motorola For $12.5 Billion

Google announced it will buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in a move that will give the Internet giant a presence in smartphone hardware and bring it thousands of new patents.


The Mountain View, Calif.-based company expects to complete the deal by late 2011 or early 2012 though the purchase may be subject to government approval. Motorola, one of the leading manufacturers of Android devices, will officially become an Google-only phone maker, despite CEO Sanjay Jha expressing interest in developing for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

Google intends to run Motorola as a separate company that will continue to develop Android devices. Android will remain an open platform, allowing other companies to develop devices that run the platform.

But despite Android keeping its status as an open platform, Google’s new purchase makes the company a bit more like Apple.

Facebook Changes Aimed at Improved Privacy

Facebook Tuesday announced changes to its user interface that are designed to improve user privacy and make the social network's privacy options easier to find.

The changes make it easier for a user to control who sees what he or she posts to the social network and what is able to be seen on a user's Facebook page. The changes affect your profile page, your posts, and tagging and adds a new addition: A do-over feature if you change your mind about who sees your post.

Not Enough Privacy?

However, at least one security expert maintains the social network should have gone further to protect users' privacy.

As good as the new changes are, Facebook missed a real opportunity to advance privacy on its network, says Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with Sophos, a cyber security software maker. "A lot of these things are quite cosmetic," Cluley told PC World. "They could have done more about general privacy and safety on Facebook."

"Some of the things they've done here are great, and they're a step in the right direction," he added, "but I worry that there are more fundamental opportunities they could have taken which they ignored with this revamp."

One of those opportunities cited by Cluley was to put more "opt-in" choices in the Facebook system, instead of requiring users to "opt-out" of its offerings. "They've put a nice varnish over Facebook," he said. "But what we haven't got is anything which says, 'From now on, whenever we introduce a new feature, we're not going to share your information without your express agreement."

Changes: Google+ Inspired?

Although Facebook denies it, it appears that the changes are a response to Google's upstart social network, Google+. "Even some of the terminology which Facebook is now using is a direct copy of Google+," Cluley asserted. "For instance, you no longer share with everyone, you share with 'public.'"

"This is a reaction to Google+," he said. "That's not a bad thing. That's how competitiveness develops things. Facebook should be applauded from that point of view."

Intel launches low-cost quad-core mobile chip

Intel has launched a low-cost quad-core mobile processor and added more mobile Core 2 Duo processors to its chip lineup, according to an updated price list dated December 28.quadcore

Acer was one of the first PC makers to announce a system with the new quad-core processor. On Monday Acer released the Aspire 8930G-7665 laptop designed for extreme gaming using the new Intel Core 2 Quad Mobile Processor Q9000, which runs at 2.53GHz. The laptop comes with a 18.4-inch WUXGA screen and Nvidia GeForce 9700M GT graphics. It is priced at $1,799.


The Q9000 processor is listed at $348, significantly less expensive than the existing QX9300 mobile quad-core processor, which is listed at $1,038, and the Q9100, listed at $851. Both of these processors, however, have 12MB of cache memory, twice the amount of the cheaper Q9000, which integrates 6MB of cache. Generally, the more cache memory, the faster the processor.

The Downfall of Nokia- 11 reason why it is doing so badly....

1) Symbian is a sinking ship - the downfall of Nokia

Times have changed and Android and iOS have blown Symbian out of the water. It is still desperately clinging on in some parts of the world but for most it just doesn’t come close to today’s expected level of standard.

2) Windows 7 OS may be too little too late - the downfall of Nokia

Microsoft was even later in latching on to the smartphone advancements than Nokia, and that’s saying something. So far, few consumers have been keen to switch to a Windows Phone 7 device. In this case two wrongs will make one huge wrong.

3) MeeGo is a NoGo - the downfall of Nokia

Back in June it was announced that the Linux-based OS would run on the flagship N9, but it didn't take off. There is nothing majorly wrong with MeeGo, it is just seen as a stopgap between Symbian and Windows Phone 7.

4) Stephen Elop has done nothing to help

Nokia CEO Stepehen Elop made things worse. An internal memo, which Elop sent to staff, leaked in February. In the memo, Elop uses the metaphor of a burning oil station, referring to Nokia "pouring gasoline on our own burning platform". This confirmed just how much trouble Nokia is in.

5) The latest designs look like guess work.

From odd colour choices to varying screen sizes, Nokia seem to have gone for a hit and miss tactic. A more considered, researched and developed approach to hardware would improve Nokia’s chances of revival.

6) Failed to live up to its own hype (new models unpopular)

Nokia has deployed heavy marketing to try to boost sales and popularity of its handsets. From the sheep social network advert to posters plastered all over bus stops, Nokia is setting itself up for a fall, because its current crop just doesn’t improve the user's experience.

7) Revenue is substantially below estimates

'The Finnish firm used to be a hugely profitable company, once it was the only firm in the world whose turnover exceeded the taxation revenue of the country it was from, but now times have changed', should be changed to, 'The Finnish firm used to be a hugely profitable company, once being the only firm in the world that had a turnover which exceeded the taxation revenue of the country it was based in'.

8) Can’t shake the 3310

The 3310 is the handset that springs to mind whenever anyone mentions Nokia. It revolutionised mobile phones when it was first released and just rode the wave of success, doing little to progress designs especially when the iPhone was released. It is now left to regret resting on its laurels.

9) Ovi store never really took off

Say the word App and consumers, as well as developers, immediately think of iTunes or the Android Marketplace. In comparison, Ovi's selection is nowhere near as good and those apps that are similar to offerings from Android and Apple don’t run as well on Nokia devices, with crashing being a frequently reported problem.

10) Blackberry dominates the enterprise

Businesses that once used to hand out thousands of Nokias to their employees have now turned to Blackberrys or iPhones. The improved functionality and reliability dealt a killer blow to Nokia and it has a lot of work to do if it hopes to regain its place in the offices.

11) Could be slow to react to future changes

It’s taken Nokia two years to admit it has been slow in reacting to the changes in the sector and few people would be surprised if it is still playing catch up for the foreseeable future. Apple and Android certainly won’t be waiting for it to catch up, so the gap will only continue to widen.

Simple Security for Wireless !!!!!!

In early August, at the Def Con conference -- a major annual gathering of computer hackers -- someone apparently hacked into many of the attendees' cell phones, in what may have been the first successful breach of a 4G cellular network. If early reports are correct, the incident was a

man-in-the-middle

(MITM) attack,so called because the attacker

interposes

himself between two other wireless devices.

Coincidentally, a week later, at the 20th Usenix Security Symposium, MIT researchers presented the first security scheme that can automatically create connections between wireless devices and still defend against MITM attacks. Previously, thwarting the attacks required password protection or some additional communication mechanism, such as an infrared transmitter.

Showcasing novel ways to breach security is something of a tradition at Def Con. In previous years, MITM attacks had been launched against attendees' Wi-Fi devices; indeed, the MIT researchers demonstrated the effectiveness of their new scheme on a Wi-Fi network. But in principle, MITM attacks can target any type of wireless connection, not only between devices (phones or laptops) and base stations (cell towers or Wi-Fi routers), but also between a phone and a wireless headset, a medical implant and a wrist-mounted monitor, or a computer and a wireless speaker system.

Key change

Ordinarily, when two wireless devices establish a secure connection, they swap cryptographic keys -- the unique codes they use to encrypt their transmissions. In an MITM attack, the attacker tries to broadcast his own key at the exact moment that the key swap takes place. If he's successful, one or both of the devices will mistake him for the other, and he will be able to intercept their transmissions.

Password protection can thwart MITM attacks, assuming the attacker doesn't know the password. But that's not always a safe assumption. At a hotel or airport that offers Wi-Fi, for instance, all authorized users are generally given the same password, which means that any one of them could launch an MITM attack against the others. Moreover, many casual computer users find it so complicated to set up home Wi-Fi networks that they don't bother to protect them; when they do, they often select passwords that are too simple to provide much security. That's led to the marketing of Wi-Fi transmitters with push-button configuration: To establish a secure link, you simply push a button on top of the transmitter and a corresponding button (or virtual button) on your wireless device. But such systems remain vulnerable to MITM attacks.

"None of these solutions are quite satisfactory," says Nickolai Zeldovich, the Douglas Ross (1954) Career Development Assistant Professor of Software Technology, who developed the new security scheme together with Dina Katabi, the Class of 1947 Career Development Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, as well as postdoc Nabeel Ahmed and graduate student Shyam Gollakota, all of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "The cool thing about this work is that it takes some insight from somewhat of a different field, from wireless communication -- actually, fairly low-level details about what can happen in terms of wireless signals -- and observes that, hey, if you assume some of these properties about wireless networks, you can actually get stronger guarantees."

Strength in silence

In an MITM attack, the attacker needs to drown out the signal from the legitimate sender. But the researchers' new system ensures that any attempt to do so will be detected. The trick is that, after transmitting its encryption key, the legitimate sender transmits a second string of numbers related to the key by a known mathematical operation. But whereas the key is converted into a wireless signal in the ordinary way -- it's encoded as changes in the amplitude of a radio wave -- the second string of numbers is encoded as alternating bursts of radiation and silences.

If an attacker tries to substitute his key for the legitimate sender's, he'll have to send the corresponding sequence of bursts and silences. But that sequence will differ from the legitimate one. Through the silences of one, the receiver will hear the bursts of the other. The overlapping sequences will look to the receiver like a wholly new sequence, which won't match up with the transmitted key, indicating an MITM attack.

Of course, the attacker could try to drown out the entirety of the legitimate transmission and then send his own key. But that would require broadcasting a signal of such long duration that it, too, would alert the receiver to an attack.

The reports of an MITM attack on 4G phones are still being verified, and 4G itself is a vague term that encompasses many different technical approaches. But if the reports prove true, then cell phones, too, could benefit from the MIT researchers' security scheme.

Android Finally Taking Steps Towards WebKit And Chromium

Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android?

It’s a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they’re finally taking steps to resolve this. A bit. Maybe.

As a group of Googlers have announced on the WebKit-Dev group today (relayed by Google’s Peter Beverloo), the Android team is now committed to working more closely with the WebKit community. Yes, it’s a bit odd that a product so devoted to “open” wasn’t really working with the open source community before — but hey, better late than never.

The full story is a bit more complicated than it appears on the surface. While Android has its own separate browser which isn’t branded as “Chrome”, the two do share some code. But they’re not the same, and two separate teams work on each. For whatever reason, Google chose not to brand the Android browser as Chrome, and doing so now may cause some confusion since there’s Chrome OS — another operating system built by Google that’s unrelated to Android.

So here’s what happening now: Google’s Android team is going to start making available another, slightly modified build of the Android browser, which will be fully open source. Think of it as Chromium to Google’s Chrome. Android-specific code will be removed and presumably, anyone will be able to use this code to build a new mobile WebKit-based browser.