Sony's 2 new E-Readers

Sony launched two new e-readers, including one that hits the $199 price point and could bring e-books to the masses. Yet Sony is facing stiff competition from Amazon’s Kindle, Plastic Logic (in 2010) and a rapidly expanding field of competitors.

The Reader Pocket Edition : ($199)

The Reader Touch Edition : ($299)

Brennan Mullin, vice president of Sony Electronics’ audio and digital imaging division, said :

On the $199 price point, “Our themes are that we want to make readers and content the most open, available and affordable. Now there’s a device for someone on a budget—$199 is an important price point that makes digital reading available to a wider audience. Until now (the market) has been for early adopters.”

On Sony’s retail distribution heft, “We want to make them available wherever consumers shop. We want them to put the books in their hands and try it. Some people are dubious and putting the devices in their hands allows for trial.”

On the need for improvement, Mullin said that Sony is making tweaks based on user feedback. One complaint about the 700 model of Sony’s Reader was that the screen had too much glare and ambient light. The new Touch fixes that problem.

Speaking of improvements where’s the Wi-Fi? Sony’s latest e-readers, like the ones before them, need to be tethered to a PC for downloading. Compared to the ease of the Kindle, Sony will need a wireless answer. Mullin said:

The wireless products are developing. It is coming separately. It’s an important feature.

Mullin didn’t disclose whether Sony’s future e-readers would have 3G and/or Wi-Fi support. He’d only say that wireless technology is coming.

Does Sony need a partnership with other e-book stores? Mullin said Sony’s plan is to support multiple stores and be wherever consumers buy and use books. Sony sees beyond its SonyStyle.com stores to libraries and other outlets. However, Sony’s store supports its own format while Google features PDFs and e-books on the ePub standard. Mullin said Sony will support them all. “Sony Reader supports ePub and plenty of stores support that format,” said Mullin. “We’re agnostic and encourage the bookstores in the market to provide content in an open format.”

On bigger screens and the B2B opportunity, Mullin said Sony had “no plans bigger screens today.” He was more upbeat on the vertical industry potential. Mullin said that education is a market that Sony is exploring and there’s a lot of potential in the medical industry.
Where are the color screens? Mullin said that color will be very important for B2B applications, but “it’s also important that it’s done well.” In a nutshell, there’s a tradeoff between color and readability. Mullin said:

“When color is brought to market it has to be brought in a way that meets consumer expectations. There’s a tradeoff between readability and color. It’s also a tradeoff we’re not willing to make at this point.”

IE8 outperforms competing browsers in malware protection

A recently released study by NSS Labs is once again claiming that based on their internal tests, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 outperforms competing browsers like Google’s Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera and Apple’s Safari in terms of protecting their users against “socially engineered malware” and phishing attacks.


Not only did IE8 top the chart, but also, the rest of the browsers have in fact degraded their “socially engineered malware” and phishing block rate in comparison to the results released by the company in the March’s edition of the study.

How objective is the study? For starters, it’s Microsoft-sponsored one. Here’s how it ranks the browsers:

Socially engineered malware block rate:

Microsoft Internet Explorer v8 - 81% block rate
Mozilla Firefox v3 - 27% block rate
Apple Safari v4 - 21% block rate
Google Chrome 2 - 7% block rate
Google Chrome 2 - 7% block rate
Phishing attacks block rate:

Microsoft Internet Explorer v8 - 83% block rate
Mozilla Firefox v3 - 80% block rate
Opera 10 Beta - 54% block rate
Google Chrome 2 - 26% block rate
Apple Safari v4 - 2% block rate

What is “socially engineered malware” anyway?

Basically, it’s the direct download dialog box that appears on a, for instance, scareware or Koobface video page spoofing Facebook’s layout, like the one attached. using “socially engineered malware” as a benchmark for malware block rate isn’t exactly the most realistic choice in today’s threatscape.

And even if it is, some pretty realistic conclusions can be drawn by using some internal traffic statistics from Koobface worm’s ongoing malware campaigns. The Koobface worm, one of the most efficient social engineering driven malware, is a perfect example of how security measures become obsolete when they’re not implemented on a large scale.
The stats themselves:

- MSIE 7 - 255,891 visitors - 43.33%
- MSIE 8 - 189,380 visitors - 32.07%
- MSIE 6 - 76,797 visitors - 13.01%
- Javascript Enabled - 585,374 visitors - 99.13%
- Java Enabled - 576,782 visitors - 97.68%

What does this mean? It means that with or without the supposedly working “socially engineered malware” block filter using a modest sample of several hundred URLs, the Koobface botnet is largely driven by MSIE 7 users. The previous edition of the study dubbed IE7 a browser which “practically offers no protection against malware” with the lowest block rate achieved back than - 4%.

Just like the previous edition of the study, this one also excludes the notion that client-side vulnerabilities continue contributing to the “rise and rise” of web malware exploitation kits. By excluding client-side vulnerabilities, the study isn’t assessing IE8’s DEP/NX memory protection, as well as omitting ClickJacking defenses and IE8’s XSS filter, once pointed out as a less sophisticated alternative to the Firefox-friendly NoScript.

Socially engineered malware is not the benchmark for a comprehensive assessment of a browser’s malware block rate. It’s a realistic assessment of the current and emerging threatscape combined with comprehensive testing of all of the browser’s currently available security mechanisms, a testing methodology which I think is not present in the study.

HTC Hero review

The HTC Hero has been an object of lust for some time now for gadget enthusiasts. Even from the earliest days of leaked hardware shots and blurry demo videos of its UI, smartphone fans seemed to agree that the company had finally achieved what has been missing in the world of Android. Namely, a polished and attractive device -- polished enough to go head-to-head with the iPhone -- that kept its open source heart. So, here we are months later with an actual, bona fide Hero in our midst. Yes the reports were true, it is a beautiful device, both inside and out (though of course opinions differ on that chin).

Industrial design


In terms of overall design and layout, the Hero is very much a product of evolution. Like its forebears the G1 (or Dream) and MyTouch (or Magic / Ion), the general stats like screen size, technology, and resolution, button placement, unit size and weight, and basic aesthetic are pure HTC. Like those previous devices, the Hero contains a smattering of hardware buttons on the base (or chin as some call it) of the phone, including a home, menu, back, send, end, and dedicated search key. The device also sports a trackball in this area, which shouldn't surprise any Android aficionados.

Where the Hero breaks from convention, however, is in the overall look and feel of the phone. If the Dream and Magic felt plasticky and cheap (they did), the Hero is quite the opposite -- it's like a solid brick in your hand. The casing is made of a soft-touch material (Teflon on the white version to prevent dirt), and the shape of the device takes a much more severe, almost rectangular slant. The buttons along the bottom are small, evenly spaced ovals (save for the search and back key -- we'll get to that), the earpiece is covered in a stylish mesh, and the volume rocker on the side is a smooth, single button. The screen also uses a new oleophobic treatment (similar to the iPhone 3GS), and thankfully HTC has added a 3.5mm headphone jack to the top of the phone.

Overall the appearance is sleek and modern -- it's like the Magic was beamed to the year 3000 for a redesign. Besides the chin (which some people will nitpick, though we don't mind), the Hero is a home run when it comes to looks, though it's not without issues. One of our main gripes with the phone is the layout of the hard buttons. The four across the top don't bother us much, but the placement of the "back" key is a huge pain. It basically forces your hand into a cramp-inviting position -- it's an unnatural move for a key you've got to use a lot. If you're left handed, it'll seem fine (great even), but as a righty, we found it inconvenient and uncomfortable. It's actually perplexing as to why the back button lives where it does on the Hero -- the Magic's placement is much more accessible and a lot more comfortable to use for righties or lefties.

Internals

The guts of the Hero should seem familiar to most gadget buffs -- they're essentially identical to HTC's Magic (at least the Rogers version). What does that mean for you, end user? It means you're stuck with the same Qualcomm 528MHz CPU, the same 288MB of RAM, and a paltry 512MB ROM. The onboard radios include WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and a quad-band HSPA cell chip. The model we tested is the European release of the phone, and as such is only able to access EDGE networks here in America. Luckily for us we don't leave the house much, so most of the time we were on WiFi. So just to be clear, beyond the new screen coating, industrial design, and improved camera, this phone is the HTC Magic inside.

Camera


The Hero's 5 megapixel camera is pretty darn amazing, we must say. Coming off of most devices with their paltry 3-or-so megapixel entries, it's a real treat to have an onboard cam which can actually stand in for a proper shooter. While the image quality isn't up there with dedicated point-and-shoots, it's certainly leaps and bounds better than the nearest competitor, with near-macro focus length. We take a little bit of issue with HTC's UI design on the camera app -- using the sometimes-slippery trackball for both zooming and snapping shots seems kind of ill-advised to us, though we didn't have much trouble with it (a toggle to cancel zooming would be nice). As with most phone cameras, the colors weren't quite as vivid as we would have liked -- bright hues somehow came out murky with the Hero -- but we weren't expecting the world here. HTC seems to have tweaked shutter speeds and processing as well, as snapping photos was noticeably faster than on the earlier Android phones, though we still think the iPhone 3GS and Pre feel tighter (of course the Pre doesn't have to worry about that pesky focusing stuff).

Speaker


We're big speakerphone users, so the external audio of a device is actually important to us (besides, how else can we entertain friends with the "Ras Trent" video while out and about?). The speaker on the Hero is definitely up to the task, producing loud and clear audio while on calls or listening to music. Of course, no one is really going to jam this way very much, but at the very least you can make our your tracks pretty clearly. For calls, the speaker and microphone seemed pretty outstanding to us (we were testing mostly with T-Mobile, mind you).

Battery life


We were impressed with the Hero's staying power, though we'll reserve our final judgments till we have a device running US 3G to look at. On EDGE / WiFi, we saw impressive, full day use with a single charge. Standby didn't seem to pull much power, though it was obvious that many of the widget updates were just waiting till we woke the phone up, which made for maddening floods of syncing and updating (a real drain on speed). Overall, the Hero beats the pants off of our G1, and gives the Magic a run for its money. Battery life was favorable in comparison with the iPhone 3GS, and obviously puts the Pre in a world of hurt.