ara tech

Toshiba unveils the smallest 8MP CMOS image sensor with Back Side Illumination

2011-07-10T20:13:00.003+05:30

Steve Jobs says it's not all about the megapixels and in this case he might be right. Toshiba's newest creation is a super thin 8 megapixel CMOS sensor, that promises smaller pixels without loss of quality. An issue that rears its head when trying to squeeze higher megapixel sensors in a smaller space is that it usually results in a loss of image quality.

8MP but nothing like we've seen before

What the new Toshiba sensor promises is an 8 megapixel CMOS sensor with the smallest pixel size in the biz at 1.12 micrometers, add to that back-side illumination (BSI) and quality degredation is negligable at best.

Key features

Optical format:	1/ 4 inch
Number of pixels:	8.08 megapixels
Size of pixels:	1.12 micrometers
Frame rate:	30 frame per sec. (8M pixel), 60 frames per sec. (Supports 1080p, 720p)

This means we might be seeing some of the newest 8MP shooters producing some really impressive shots in the not-too-distant future. The new sensor is already in testing and has plans to go into mass production later this year.
For the full press-release from Toshiba click here.

Panasonic launches Lumix Phone P-05C with optical stabilization

2011-07-10T20:03:00.001+05:30

A new cameraphone legend was born on friday(08-07-11) as Panasonic launches its Lumix Phone
P-05C. The 13 megapixel handset is the world's first to feature optical image stabilization, proudly carrying the MEGA O.I.S. branding right next to its lens.
The 27mm wide angle lens of the Lumix Phone P-05C is also as wide as it gets on a mobile phone, allowing you to fit more in the frame. Video enthusiasts will also appreciate the 1080p video recording that the latest Panasonic feature phone offers.

Other photography features that the Lumix Phone P-05 borrows from its Panasonic digicam cousins include the iAuto mode for automatic scene recognition with 11 presets and burst mode, which captures 8 consecutive frames and lets you choose one of them.
The Lumix Phone P-05C is built around a 3.3" LCD screen of unconfirmed resolution (though knowing Japan phones FWVGA seems like a safe bet).

Colors Available :

Available in black, blue, gold and pink colors, the Lumix Phone P-05C is hit the Japanese NTT DoCoMo network. There's no saying if Panasonic plans on bringing an European or American version, though.

Blu-ray Disc and DVD authoring with Adobe Encore CS5

2010-04-17T21:42:00.004+05:30

Adobe ® Encore ® CS5 software is a versatile, interactive authoring tool you can use to deliver projects for DVD, Blu-ray Disc, or web DVD, which is a full-featured SWF file viewable with Adobe Flash ® Player.

What's new

Integrated search capabilities for web DVD titles
Offer viewers a more engaging experience with the ability to search by keyword within the web DVDs you create. Encore builds a search database for your web DVD using metadata from speech analysis, subtitles, and menu and button names. Viewers can search without interrupting current playback.

Multipage menus
Create a smoother experience for viewers when choosing options from across multiple menus. Browsable multipage menus on Blu-ray Disc projects show options across multiple menu pages without interrupting the playback of audio and video background elements.

Sleek new interface for web DVD titles
Create web DVDs that have a sleek new playback interface, offering easy-to-use playback controls plus the option to watch HD video in full-screen mode.

Web DVD enhancements
Deliver web versions of full-featured Blu-ray Disc productions. With new support for pop-up menus and subtitles, viewers of web DVD titles enjoy all the benefits of the Blu-ray experience delivered online.

4K mastering
Take 4K productions directly to high-definition Blu-ray using a workflow that maintains the original 4K content all the way to output. Work with 4K content in the timeline, even using Dynamic Link to incorporate sequences directly from Adobe Premiere® Pro.

24p support
Maintain the 24p look all the way to output with native 24p project support. Encore supports 24p frame rates for Blu-ray, DVD, and web DVD titles with correct display of 24p timecode in the timeline.

AVCHD output to Blu-ray
Publish content from AVCHD cameras to Blu-ray using the high-quality native camera format. By passing AVCHD content directly to disc without transcoding, Encore preserves the original fidelity of the source content.

DDP Master support
Create replicated discs from Encore using direct DDP Master support for DVD discs. The outputted file can then be sent via FTP directly to the mastering facility.

Cross-platform projects
Share Encore CS5 projects without worrying about platform compatibility. Encore projects can be moved between Windows® and Mac platforms freely, without conversion.

Background transcoding with Adobe Media Encoder
Work more efficiently when transcoding files using Encore CS5. Adobe Media Encoder, a separate 64-bit application included with Adobe Premiere Pro, transcodes files in the background, keeping Encore free to focus on authoring tasks. This separation of encoding is particularly important with 4K workflows that can normally tax your operating system.

Third-party encoding integration
Choose the right encoder for the job without sacrificing workflow efficiency. Integrate third-party encoders you already own with the Encore authoring workflow to take advantage of the latest advancements in GPU-accelerated encoding.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

2010-04-17T21:18:00.002+05:30

Story for the next generation to bring excellent editing

With revolutionary native 64-bit, GPU accelerated Mercury Playback Engine, Adobe ® Premiere ® Pro CS5 software to provide superior performance for video production, so that you can substantially increase the pace of work. The machine uses the desired video format, from scripting to editing, coding and final delivery, to achieve full production speed.

What's new in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5 software improves every part of the video production process thanks to the revolutionary 64-bit, GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, a highly efficient script-to-screen workflow, and native support for the latest tapeless camera formats that lets you begin editing without delay.

Industry-leading performance with the new Mercury Playback Engine new
Work dramatically faster thanks to the revolutionary native 64-bit, GPU-accelerated Mercury Playback Engine. Open projects faster, scrub through HD and higher-resolution footage more fluidly, and play back complex long-format and effects-heavy projects more reliably.

Expanded native tapeless workflows enhanced
Edit video natively in the latest tapeless formats, including RED, AVCCAM, XDCAM HD 50, DPX, P2, XDCAM, and DSLR cameras, without transcoding or rewrapping. Do more with tapeless workflows.

Open workflows with Final Cut Pro and Avid software enhanced
Bring the creative benefits of Adobe tools to your entire project by importing and exporting projects from these other NLEs. Do more with open workflows.

Script-to-screen workflow new
Collaborate on scripts, automatically extract shot lists, and generate metadata-rich assets that speed up editing. Do more with script-to-screen workflows.

Tapeless camera support in Adobe OnLocation CS5 new
Use the powerful logging options in Adobe OnLocation™ when working with tapeless cameras.

Native support for DSLR cameras new
Edit native video from the latest DSLR cameras without transcoding or rewrapping.

Streamlined encoding with revamped Adobe Media Encoder enhanced
Produce content in virtually any format, including DPX, FLV, F4V, H.264, MPEG-2, QT, WM, and more.

Client reviews made simple new
Gather feedback more efficiently by sharing work in progress with Adobe CS Review, a new Adobe CS Live online service.* CS Live services are complimentary for a limited time. (Integration with CS Review will not be available for Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 when the software initially ships. Integration capability is expected to be available for Adobe Premiere Pro users later in 2010.)

Eliminate intermediate rendering

Use Adobe Dynamic Link for tighter-than-ever integration and faster project workflows. Share content between Adobe After Effects®, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Soundbooth®, and see changes made in one component reflected immediately in the other, without rendering.

Do more with Creative Suite® Production Premium

Faster editing with metadata enhanced
Gain greater efficiency with powerful new metadata features. Detect faces and turn spoken dialogue into searchable text faster and more accurately.

Dozens of timesaving improvements new
Boost productivity with workflow features and enhancements suggested by users like you. For example, use automatic scene detection to create separate clips from HDV tapes, import assets from DVDs, use new keyboard shortcuts, control keyframes with even more precision, and clean up sequences quickly with new commands for finding and removing gaps. Boost productivity with workflow features and enhancements suggested by users like you.

Ultra keyer new
Experience breakthrough performance and achieve fast, accurate chroma keying — even on challenging HD footage — with the Ultra® keyer.

Searchable web DVDs with Adobe Encore CS5 new

Deliver interactive DVD experiences over the web, complete with chapter menus and search capabilities.

Adobe Contribute CS5

2010-04-17T15:35:00.004+05:30

Simplified site management

Adobe® Contribute® CS5 software is a powerful Web publishing and site management tools, it will create, review and release into a simple to use WYSIWYG based HTML editor. Work together to improve the efficiency of Web publishing, while simplifying the task supervision and approval.

What is Contribute?

Adobe® Contribute® CS5 software is a powerful web publishing and website management tool that integrates authoring, reviewing, and publishing in an easy-to-use WYSIWYG HTML editor. Increase web publishing productivity collaboratively while simplifying oversight and approval tasks.
What's new in Contribute

Predefined content types new
Create content types based on design templates, and review new pages or publish them directly.

XML editing new
Edit site-associated XML files natively, without opening an XML editor.

Cross-browser preview new
Preview drafts in any browser. Windows® users can compare three browser previews side by side.

Apple granted patent on capacitive multitouch displays

2010-04-09T19:23:00.006+05:30

It's not the mythical pinch-to-zoom patent, but the USPTO just granted a fairly broad Apple patent on capacitive multitouch displays. US Patent #7,663,607 describes a "transparent capacitive sensing medium configured to detect multiple touches" by way of two sandwiched layers of conductive lines hooked up to an appropriate circuit, and also covers a specific type of multitouch display with a similar two-layer capacitive sensor made of glass. Now, there are certainly other types of capacitive sensors out there, so this isn't a total lockdown, but it's certainly one more arrow in Apple's patent quiver, and at the very least it should spur some interesting developments as competitors try to design around it. We'll see how it shakes down.

10/GUI interface looks to redefine the touch-enabled desktop

2010-04-09T19:07:00.004+05:30

Redefining the way we interact with computers is a pretty ambitious task as far as things go, but that's just what R. Clayton Miller is looking to do with his so-called 10/GUI project, and he may just be onto something. Miller begins with the notion that the traditional mouse-based interface lacks the "interaction bandwidth" afforded by multitouch interfaces, and that touch-enabled desktops (or laptops) are inherently problematic since they can't be used for prolonged periods of time -- even a flat surface will do a number on your neck if you use it all day. To solve that problem, Miller proposes separating the touch surface from the display and placing it below the keyboard in the form of a large, hybrid capacative / resistive touch panel. That's just the beginning, however, and Miller has also devised a whole new interface that makes use of all your fingers, and a new linear means of displaying windows that strikes a balance ease of use and the ability to manage numerous applications. Of course, there are some drawbacks -- you'd still likely pull out a mouse for Photoshop or a marathon Left 4 Dead session -- but we'd certainly be curious to see how this would play out in practice. Head on past the break for a full video overview.

War With Apple Will Push Google to $300

2010-03-28T17:53:00.004+05:30

Google (GOOG) is in trouble. One can forecast that the next 24 months will take this stock back to its first year IPO levels of $300 a share. They’ve ruffled the wrong feathers. When I hear Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs mention that he feels betrayed by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and when I see Apple go out and buy their own mobile advertising firm I begin to question Google’s future growth prospects. Apple’s Quattro is coming, it’s going to be revolutionary, and it’s going to be the most important contributor to Google’s demise. But it won’t be the only contributor. With Google it’s a matter of picking their poison:

1- Leadership. This company is running like a chicken with its head cut off. CEO Eric Schmidt is flying solo without the help of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin who are actually selling shares themselves. Not exactly a ringing endorsement from the innovators.

2 - Profitable Innovation. In a rapidly changing landscape of mobile innovation, Google is having difficulty making money on anything other than its core desktop search business. Desktop search advertising was a great business to be in during decade 2000 but its growth now looks limited because of the shift towards mobile computing. Schmidt knows they are vulnerable which explains why we hear about yet another Google experiment on a weekly basis. Last week it was Google broadband. This week it’s Google TV. It’s all a big joke. Even Android is a joke. The recent market share gains from Android are misleading because it suggests Google is making money when all they’ve really done is give it away for free. Investors are ready to see profits beyond desktop advertising. 24 months from now, desktop Internet surfing will be in dramatic decline.

3 - Mobile Search Competition. Mobile versions of Twitter, Facebook, and Bing will give Google a run for their money. And I would not bet against Steve Jobs and Quattro. The problem for Google is that the mobile Internet relies on applications rather than websites. Apple controls more than half of the mobile Web market share and Google is one Steve Jobs decision away from being left out of the Apple ecosystem. This makes Google extremely vulnerable. Sources from BusinessWeek revealed that Steve Jobs hopes to ‘overhaul mobile advertising in the same way they had revolutionized music players and phones.’ Appleinsider reported that

Specifics at the moment are not known, but a number of potential approaches were offered: Apple could rely on user data collected through iTunes and the App Store, along with geo-location technology due to GPS in the iPhone, to create targeted, local advertisements that would be more relevant to consumers. The company could also utilize gimmicks, such as having users shake their iPhone to win a prize. “Some developers have profited by embedding ads in their apps, but the payments tend to be insignificant since the ads are usually smaller, less effective versions of their Web banner forms," the report said. "According to a source familiar with his thinking, Jobs has recognized that 'mobile ads suck' and that improving that situation will make Apple even harder to beat."

4 - Brand Trust. Nexus One was a disaster on so many levels. Google rushed the product to market without customer service. Google rushed the product to market and the trademark application was subsequently denied by the United States Patent and Trademark office. Google rushed the product to market and caught all of their Android partners off guard who never thought Google would come out with their own phone to compete. Now do you understand why I compare this company to a chicken running with its head cut off? While Apple spent years securing patents to protect the intellectual property of the iPhone, Google is late to the game and is running scared. How much money will consumers invest in Android apps when they know Google offers no Tablet and might not continue with the Nexus One? Whereas you go with Apple and you know that your apps and iTunes library will work on your iPod, iPhone, iPad, and next year they’ll probably work on the iTV as well.

5 - China. This China thing has been catastrophic for Google. After struggling to gain any share from Baidu (BIDU), Google is out of a country that has more Internet users than the U.S. has people. Not good. Especially if they had any aspirations of growing their Chinese Android platform.

Desktop search advertising is Google’s bread and butter. Two years from now the landscape will be completely different. Investors will look at Google as a declining search market share story. That’s not a good thing when your stock is priced near $600 a share. Google reminds me of Research in Motion (RIMM) two years ago. Back then everyone assumed RIMM was untouchable as well. The problem is, when you go to war against Apple you better be more than a one trick pony.

Google is scrambling to come up with a family of products similar to Apple but it simply is not in their company DNA. They do search, that’s it. Their software is profitless and their hardware is copycat. I’m not saying that Google is going to disappear but I am saying that their days of high growth are over and that means the stock is doomed over the next 24 months. Investors might make more on Google puts than on Apple calls.

Disclosure: Long aapl, short goog

Firefox faces browser clone war in China

2010-01-16T16:05:00.005+05:30

The browser war in China is heating up but not quite in a way that resembles the Western markets, as Mozilla's Beijing chief explains.

While browser makers in overseas markets often tout their products' Web page rendering speeds and ability to run richer apps, China's browser landscape calls for customized browser versions that bring additional features in order to demonstrate value to users.

According to Li Gong, chairman and CEO of Mozilla's Beijing-headquartered subsidiary, Mozilla Online, the proliferation of Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) clones and the dominance of pages coded for IE are among some of the barriers Firefox faces in the country.

"China is different from other markets in that there is a very active IE-clone market," said Li, in an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia.

An IE clone is a browser built on IE's core rendering engine, but carries a different skin and has additional features. Citing numbers from iResearch, Li said there are some 30 different clones in use in China.

Some clone browser makers have employed aggressive tactics to get their browsers adopted, he said. Some have been willing to pay fees to be bundled with pirated Windows disks--"the easiest distribution channel", said Li--while others pay members of the media to tout their wares.

"The most outrageous example is the 360 browser," he noted. Its maker distributes free security software, which upon installation, also stealthily installs the 360 IE clone onto systems and removes other browsers without first seeking user permission, said Li.

"[The 360 browser] makes it very hard to reverse [the implementation] once the software is installed," he added.

Mozilla's answer to the competition is its Firefox China Edition, which integrates a number of services popular among Chinese users, said Li. Examples of such services include IPTV (Internet Protocol TV), music and video, he said.

Mozilla's China team, set up two years ago, also conducts community outreach programs in hopes of educating users on Web standards--a bigger bugbear to Firefox, where the proliferation of IE-optimized pages prevent "even devoted Firefox users" from exclusively using the Mozilla browser, Li noted.

"Most, if not all the large Chinese banks, have online banking [sites] that use proprietary Microsoft ActiveX controls," he explained. "This means that anyone wishing to do online banking has to use IE on Windows."

Furthermore, almost all the country's Web developers test only for IE, resulting in pages that are badly formed and inoperable by browsers using non-IE cores, said Li.

China dominated by IE, clones

According to an online chart citing StatCounter numbers, China stands out with one of the lowest adoption numbers for Firefox globally, at less than 10 percent.

Li would not vouch for the accuracy of the figures, but agreed that China has been "relatively behind" in adoption figures compared to North America and Europe.

Pointing to iResearch figures, he said IE has some 60 percent share of the Chinese market, with more than 20 percent going to IE clones.

Firefox itself has an estimated 7 percent market share, he said, adding that this is higher than the non-IE competition, which includes Opera and Safari browsers.

About 24 million unique users in China use Firefox more than once per month, he said. As of June, China's official statistics show upwards of 338 million Internet users per month, said Li.

Google set to promote Chrome extensions

2010-01-16T13:56:00.003+05:30

Google is on the verge of launching a Web site to showcase its extensions to customize what its browser can do.

The company's latest developer preview edition, Chrome 4.0.249.0, promotes the feature on its opening screen and its new-tab page. "New! Google Chrome now has extensions and bookmark sync," the page reads, offering a link to a site that's not public yet, https://chrome.google.com/extensions. (Bookmark sync is already available.)

Extensions and support for Mac OS X and Linux are the headline features of Chrome 4.0. It's available as a beta for Windows, with Mac OS X and Linux beta availability was expected in early December. According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta was planned for December 8 release and the stable release of Chrome 4.0 is due Jan. 12.

A number of third-party galleries for Chrome extensions already are available, but programmers for the project have said on mailing lists that a Google site is planned. Earlier this year, Google shipped a version of Chrome that pointed to a collection of visual themes before the Chrome themes gallery was actually live to the public.

Extensions are a key asset of one Chrome competitor, Mozilla's Firefox; extensions permit people to customize the browser and add new features without burdening the overall project. Firefox is getting a new extensions framework, Jetpack, starting with version 3.7 due in the first half of 2010, and Mozilla has just launched its own Jetpack gallery.

Google to demo Chrome OS; Detail launch plans

2010-01-16T13:38:00.001+05:30

Google will give a technical update on its Chrome OS.

The company is holding an event at its Mountain View campus. The event will be “a technical announcement,” but Google will be showing a few demos as well as detailing its launch plans for this year.

The Chrome OS is in its infancy, but there has been a lot of buzz around a potential launch. At the event, Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, and Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, will be talking up reporters.

Garett Rogers has wondered if launching a bare bones preview of the Chrome OS is a concern. He noted:

The initial release of Chrome OS will likely be very bare-bones, bordering on useless — but depending on what kind of feedback they get, it may grow rapidly. The “release early and often” mantra adopted by many software companies that use agile practices can be extremely dangerous, however.

Jabra Stone

2010-01-16T13:10:00.005+05:30

Manufacturer: Jabra
Part number: 100-99300000-60

General
Product Type - Headset - Bluetooth 2.1 EDR

Width - 2 in

Depth - 1 in

Height - 2.3 in

Weight - 0.2 oz

Recommended Use - Cellular phone

Compatible Mobile Devices - Bluetooth devices

Additional Features - Multiuse, Voice dialing, Volume control, Answer/end button, Battery level indication, Noise Blackout Extreme technology

Headphones

Headphones Type - Headphone - Monaural

Headphones Form Factor - Over-the-ear

Connectivity Technology - Wireless - Bluetooth 2.1 EDR

Sound Output Mode - Mono

Microphone

Type - Built-in

Microphone Operation Mode - Omni-directional

Remote Control
Type - None

Wireless Link
Transmission Range - 33 ft

Miscellaneous
Included Accessories - Portable charging unit, Belt cup, AC charger, Earge

Power
Power Device - Headset charging stand - External

Battery - Headset battery - Rechargeable

Run Time (Up To) - 8 hour(s)

Standby Time - 288 hour(s)

Manufacturer Warranty

Service & Support - 1 year warranty

Service & Support Details - Limited warranty - 1 year

CNET Review

The Good: The Jabra Stone has a one-of-a-kind design that combines a headset with a portable charger. The headset fits easily over the ear and is small enough not to be noticed. Features include multipoint technology and A2DP streaming.

The Bad: The Jabra Stone's controls are difficult to use; we wish it had a snugger fit; and the call quality could be improved. It also fits around only the right ear.

The Bottom Line: While we love the style, portability, and feature set of the Jabra Stone, it does suffer from a few design and performance issues.

Source code for Skype eavesdropping trojan in the wild

2010-01-16T12:54:00.004+05:30

Earlier this week, Swiss programmer Ruben Unteregger who has been reportedly working for a Swiss company ERA IT Solutions responsible for coding government sponsored spyware, has released the source code of a trojan horse that injects code into the Skype process in order to convert the incoming and outgoing voice data into an encrypted MP3 available at the disposal of the attacker.

Here’s how the trojan, currently detected as Trojan.Peskyspy, works:

“When the Trojan is executed, it injects a thread into the Skype process and hooks a number of API calls, allowing it to intercept all PCM audio data going between the Skype process and underlying audio devices. Note: Since the Trojan listens to the data coming to and from the audio devices, it gathers the audio independently of any application-specific protocols or encryption applied by Skype when it passes voice data at the network level.

Note: The incoming and outgoing audio data are stored in separate .mp3 files. The Trojan also opens a back door on the compromised computer, allowing an attacker to perform the following actions:
- Send the .mp3 to a predetermined location
- Download an updated version
- Delete the Trojan from the compromised computer”

Skype is often dubbed a “national security threat” by governments all across the globe due to their — at least publicly acknowledged — inability to crack the 256-bit encryption VoIP calls.

And while some of these governments are reportedly spending surreal amounts of tax payer’s money (Rental of the Skype-Capture-Unit per month and instance EUR 3.500) in order to achieve their objectives, others are taking the cost-effectiveness path by attacking the weakest link in the process - the end user infected with a targeted DIY government sponsored spyware recording all ongoing and incoming Skype calls, thereby bypassing the need to attack the encryption algorithm.

Thousands of web sites compromised, redirect to scareware

2010-01-16T12:41:00.003+05:30

According to eSoft, they’ve been monitoring the campaign since September, with another 720,000 affected sites back then.

There are now over a million affected sites serving scareware, with only a small percentage of them currently marked as harmful. Google has been notified. As always, NoScript and your decent situational awareness are your best friends.

Security researchers have detected a massive blackhat SEO (search engine optimization) campaign consisting of over 200,000 compromised web sites, all redirecting to fake security software (Inst_58s6.exe), commonly referred to as scareware.

More details on the campaign:

The compromised sites are hosting legitimately looking templates, using automatically generated bogus content, with a tiny css.js (Trojan-Downloader.JS.FraudLoad) uploaded on each of them which triggers the scareware campaign only if the visitor is coming a search engine listed as known http referrer by the gang - in this case Google, Yahoo, Live, Altavista, and Baidu :

“Cyveillance has discovered a complex attack vector that uses Google search results to distribute malicious software (malware) to unsuspecting Internet users. Using this attack vector, users click on links within Google search results and are routed to sites that attempt to download malware to their computers. The attack method also relies on inattentive webmasters who do not update the software on their sites and often unknowingly provide the material that appears in the search results.

The common string albums/bsblog/category is found in the URLs for all these blogs. By simply using the Google search parameter allinurl, along, you can see how many other sites contain the same string. As can be seen in the image above, more than 260,000 URLs are presented in Google’s search index leading to blogs similar to the ones illustrated in our example.

As you can see, only a small portion of sites in the search results carry a warning provided by Google. The reason for the small number of warnings is likely because the actual attacks do not take place on the website URLs in the search results, but on the sites you’re redirected to thereby decreasing the chances that Google will designate the destination sites as harmful.”

At first, it would appear that the campaign is an isolated one and is maintained by a cybercrime enterprise yet to be analyzed. However, analyzing it reveals a rather anticipated connection - the massive blackat SEO campaign has been launched by the same people who operate/or manage the campaigns for the Koobface botnet. For instance, the domains mentioned by Cyveillance, as well as the newly introduced ones over the past couple of hours, are the very same domains currently embedded on Koobface infected hosts.

Go through related posts - The ultimate guide to scareware protection; My scareware night and how McAfee lost a customer; Scareware scammers hijack Twitter trending topics; 9/11 related keywords hijacked to serve scareware; Koobface Botnet’s Scareware Business Model - Part One; Koobface Botnet’s Scareware Business Model - Part Two
How did they manage the compromise the sites? Through web application vulnerabilities as the attack vector, with OWASP’s recently updated Top 10 most critical web application security risks, highlighting some of the riskiest ones.

What's next for Microsoft's Azure cloud platform?

2010-01-16T11:52:00.001+05:30

In the past year, customers and developers testing Windows Azure have been running primarily brand-new (and largely Web 2.0 style) apps on Microsoft’s cloud operating system. But when will Azure be tuned to handle host legacy enterprise apps? And when and how will users be able to take advantage of some of the Azure technologies inside of their own “private clouds”?

Microsoft officials didn’t share dates for its next phases of the Windows Azure platform. But they did talk about some of their plans for their next steps with Microsoft’s cloud platform during meetings and sessions at the company’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on November 17.

Microsoft said the Windows Azure platform — which is the Windows Azure operating system and the SQL Azure database — is feature-complete as of today. (Officials said a few weeks ago that Microsoft wouldn’t begin charging customers to use the platform until February 1, 2010.)

“Our initial focus on the platform was on enabling Web 2.0 customers to develop and run their apps on it,” said Amitabh Srivastava, Senior Vice President in charge of Windows Azure. These kinds of applications are Xcopy-deployable, while older, legacy apps typically are not, Srivastava said.

Microsoft’s next Azure steps — which it will be executing largely in parallel — will be to get existing, and typically more complex, line-of-business apps to run on the platform and to make it possible for customers to implement Azure technologies in their own data centers (a k a, to be able to create private clouds).

To enable existing apps to run on Azure, Microsoft is planning to make virtual machines (VMs) available to developers, which they will be able to customize and run their legacy apps inside them. Srivastava wouldn’t provide a timetable or more details as to how or when Microsoft will do this. Apps running in VMs won’t be able to take full advantage of the elasticity, multitenancy, and other cloud functionality, but they still will derive some benefits, such as automatic cloud backup for apps running on the Azure platform. (The name of this VM capability will be “Windows Server Virtual Machine Roles on Windows Azure,” Microsoft execs later told me.)

On the private cloud front, Microsoft didn’t have much new to say at the PDC. Microsoft officials have said in the past that Microsoft won’t allow customers to run the Azure operating system in their own datacenters. Microsoft’s main focus here continues to be to provide customers with software like Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, etc., for them to run in their own datacenters. That said, Microsoft isn’t simply leaving the delivery of a private cloud solution to Amazon and other cloud competitors.

“Lots of the technologies we have in the cloud are things people want to run in their datacenters,” Srivastava
acknowledged.(He cited as an example the ability to run a scalable cloud-storage appliance on premises.)

Microsoft is working on a longer-term solution that would allow the company to offer datacenter containers that can be dedicated to individual customers, Srivastava said. That way, clouds can be customized for individual users and users will be able to manage these containers themselves. Again, Srivastava wasn’t ready to talk about deployment specifics or timetables for this. That said, “Project Sydney” (Microsoft’s newly announced connectivity offering for private datacenters and public clouds) shows the general direction where we are going,” Srivastava said.

Microsoft officials made a vague reference in this morning’s keynote to System Center in the cloud. I asked Srivastava if this meant Microsoft was looking to offer System Center as a Microsoft-hosted service, the way that it is offering Exchange and Office Communications Server as Microsoft-hosted offerings. That isn’t the case, he said; instead, Microsoft has opened up the Windows Azure management programming interfaces so that System Center — as well as third-party management products like HP OpenView — can manage Azure-hosted applications.

Not everything about what’s next for Azure is a longer-term direction. In sessions on November 17, Microsoft officials outlined some of the nearer term deliverables for Microsoft’s cloud platform. The recently introduced content-delivery-network (CDN) support for blobs in Windows Azure’s storage system is one of those deliverables. Another is a capability Microsoft is calling “Windows Azure Drive” (also known as Xdrive) which allows Azure developers to create a drive inside their virtual machines, providing them with an automatic back up capability. Microsoft plans to officially “turn on” Xdrive support in January, officials said.

Sony's 2 new E-Readers

2009-08-22T15:35:00.006+05:30

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

2009-08-22T15:09:00.005+05:30

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

2009-08-08T20:42:00.004+05:30

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.

King of the QWERTYs

2009-07-21T16:39:00.012+05:30

Capacitive touch screen devices are all the rage today with the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, HTC Hero and BlackBerry Storm. However, there are still many people who want a non-touch screen forward facing QWERTY device that is heavily focused on messaging. While I tend to bounce around quite a bit between different devices, the forward facing QWERTY form factor is one of my absolute favorite. To help you figure out which of these devices might fit your needs we are going to present a three part feature (with a summary post too) looking at the best QWERTY devices running the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian operating systems available from US wireless carriers. The three selected devices are the RIM BlackBerry Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x.
Gallery :

Touch screen smartphones are all the rage today with the iPhone, Palm Pre, and Google Android devices. However, there are still millions of people who enjoy a messaging experience on forward facing QWERTY smartphones. We will be taking an in-depth comparative look at the top three smartphones running Symbian, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry operating systems.

Bottom view of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).

Left side of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).

Right side and top of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).

Back view of the BB Tour, T-Mobile Dash 3G, and Nokia E71x (top to bottom).

Here you can get a glimpse of how each of the three keyboards compare to each other.

The BB Tour, Dash 3G and E71x forward facing QWERTY keyboards.

Microsoft beefs up Xbox 360's entertainment offerings with 1080p HD streaming

2009-07-15T17:15:00.002+05:30

It hasn’t beat out the Wii, but Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is doing fine in second place in sales of the current generation of videogame consoles. It helps that it costs quite a bit less than the PlayStation 3, though a lot of that price difference comes in the form of the PS3’s Blu-ray drive. Today, Microsoft is answering its competitor’s 1080p video playback in the form of “instant-on” streaming of films and TV shows via the Xbox Live service.
While Xbox Live supports Netflix’s video-streaming service, the 5.1 channel, 1080p HD titles, available starting in the fall, will come from Microsoft’s Zune Store, which presumably will usurp many of the functions of the video section of the Xbox Live Marketplace. You can use the Xbox Live Parties feature with video streams, allowing you to watch the same movie with up to seven friends who are online Xbox Live subscribers and take turns talking back to the screen using voice chat.
The catch, of course, is that you need to be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber to get many of these enhancements—a $49.99 annual expense. No details were announced about how much additional cost the 1080p streaming titles would require to watch. Both the Wii and PS3 have the same connectivity as the Xbox 360, but haven’t offered as robust a set of entertainment features to date. As the E3 expo continues, we’ll see if Sony and Nintendo have a response to Microsoft’s latest developments.

AMD to ship DirectX 11 GPUs this year

2009-07-15T16:56:00.009+05:30

If you’re planning to put down some cash for a new GPU, you might want to wait. At COMPUTEX, AMD announced that it plans to deliver DirectX 11 GPUs to support Windows 7 later this year, ahead of the competition.
DirectX 11 brings with it three major improvements to the DirectX API:
Tessellation - Allows higher definition 3D models to be created.
Compute Shader - Parallel processing capability
Improved multithreading - Better support for multi-core CPUs
Rick Bergman, senior vice president of AMD’s products group called DirectX 11 “the biggest inflection point in graphics in 10 years.”
The new GPUs will be based on 40nm fabrication technology and produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
What all this means is that it’s now a bad time to spend much money on a GPU, certainly a high-end one. While DirectX11 is backward compatible, I expect that there will be a performance overhead similar to that you see with DirectX10.1 running on DirectX10 hardware.
Check out these cool DirectX 11 demos caught over at COMPUTEX (via HEXUS):

Sony unveils PSP Go, motion-sensing

2009-07-15T16:08:00.020+05:30

At E3 no big surprise was Sony's unveiling of an updated portable gaming controller, the PSP Go. Big surprise was the unveiling of a motion-sensing device to combat the Ninetendo Wii and Microsoft's new Project Natal.
Kaz Hirai (CEO of Sony's Networked Products and Services Group) introduced the much-anticipated the PSP Go, also known, he joked, "as the worst-kept secret" in the video game business.

The PSP Go, Hirai says, will feature 16 gigabytes of internal Flash memory; built-in Wi-Fi; integrated Bluetooth and a new system, Media Go, which will be the application used on the PSP Go to access the PlayStation Store. It is expected to be available on October 1 in the U.S.

PSP Go has slideout controls.

The PSP Go will also come in lavender.

Resident Evil comes to PSP with the Go.

The Sony motion-sensing system is still in the deveopment stage and won't be available until the spring of 2010. The controller has a real one-to-one relationship between the person wielding it and what is seen on-screen. And it also offers tension-based control, such as pulling back the string on a bow to shoot an arrow.
Here. Sony shows off motion-sensor controls where a real person controls the avatar of a knight.

Assassin's Creed demo.

Square Enix would be releasing "Final Fantasy XIV" exclusively for the PS3 in 2010.

A scene from Final Fantasy XIII.

God of War III gets introduced at E3

Sony Consumer Electronics of America President and CEO Jack Tretton introduced an upcoming game, "MAG," which can support 256 simultaneous players, including people playing remotely.

AMD announces ATI Theater HD 750 "HDTV on a chip"

2009-07-15T16:00:00.001+05:30

Some owners of home theater PCs (HTPCs) want as much of the same experience as a typical cable user as possible, which means they need to install CableCards into their systems to access scrambled digital channels and the like. For those whose TV needs are less demanding, a PC with a TV tuner can get you unscrambled cable channels and over-the-air HD stations. AMD is courting the latter group with the launch of its new ATI Theater HD 750 video chip, which the company promises will provide superior image processing and signal reception compared to its competitors (and, presumably, AMD/ATI’s previous entries in this arena).
The new chipset supports NTSC, ATSC, and ClearQAM broadcast signals to fulfill many of your U.S.-based TV-watching needs, and lets you record broadcasts in such formats as H.264, DivX, and MPEG4. If you make use of Windows Media Center, you can schedule recordings to tape on your hard drive, as well as pause and rewind live TV. None of this is revolutionary stuff, but one novel wrinkle is that if the ATI Theater HD 750 is coupled with an ATI Radeon graphics card, ATI Stream technology (which harnasses a GPU’s processing power for CPU-like tasks) can be used to speed the transcoding process.
AMD hasn’t announced any specific products that will make use of the new chipset, but the company promises that its partners will release them starting later this year and that they’ll take the form of discrete PCI Express cards, USB sticks, and “other” solutions (whatever those turn out to be).

Acer Aspire Timeline: A thin-and-light notebook with 8 hour battery, gestures for $598

2009-07-15T15:50:00.003+05:30

The world’s second-largest laptop manufacturer, Acer, introduced the U.S. availability of its Aspire Timeline series of business notebooks that average more than 8 hours of battery life, the company says.
The Aspire Timeline is a thin and light mainstream notebook that combines Intel’s ultra low-voltage processors with a palatable price tag: the series ranges from $598 to $899. The company is calling the series “all day computing” notebooks because you can (theoretically) work from 9 to 5 without stopping to plug in and recharge.
(Wondering about those battery life figures? The company says it measured systems using Bapco’s MobileMark 2007 Productivity benchmark test and got more than 9 hours per notebook.
There are three flavors of Timeline: the 3.5-lb., 13.3-in. AS3810 is a road-warrior companion; the 4.2-lb., 14-in. AS4810 is best for bigger hands (and those who need an integrated optical drive); and the 15.6-in., 5.3-lb. AS5810 manages a dedicated numeric keyboard on the old laptop size standard.
All models are less than an inch thin (and just over an inch at their thickest).
Outside, a brushed aluminum finish provides a little bling and a multi-gesture touchpad (pinch, flick, swirl, scroll) provides the power to manipulate the system. Inside, you’ll find either Intel Pentium, Intel Core Solo or Intel Core 2 Duo ultra low voltage processors and 3GB or 4GB of memory, a high-definition CineCrystal LED backlit widescreen display (16:9 ratio), Gigabit Ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11b/g Draft-N, a Crystal Eye webcam, built-in digital microphone and two built-in stereo speakers.
The systems are also lead- and mercury-free.
Like Dell, Acer offers many configurations, but here are some examples:

Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T-6415
Intel Core 2 Duo processor SU9400 (1.40GHz, 3 MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, 10 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
13.3-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
4 GB of DDR3 1066MHz dual channel memory (runs at 800MHz)
500GB SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11a/g/Draft-N wireless LAN WiFi certified
Bluetooth 2.0
3 – USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
Standard 6-cell Li-ion (5600 mAh) Battery
3.5 lbs.
12.67” (W) x 0.92” to 1.13” (H) x 8.97” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $899.99

Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810T-8480
Intel Core 2 Solo processor SU3500 (3MB L2 cache, 1.40GHz, 800MHz FSB, 5.50 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
14-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
4 GB of DDR3 1066MHz dual channel memory (runs at 800MHz)
320GB SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
8X DVD SuperMulti double layer drive
Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11a/g/Draft-N wireless LAN
3 – USB 2.0 ports
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
Standard 6-cell Li-ion (5600 mAh) Battery
4.2 lbs.
13.32” (W) x 0.94” to 1.13” (H) x 9.44” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $699.99

Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4657
Intel Pentium processor SU2700 (2MB L2 cache, 1.3 GHz, 800MHz FSB, 10 W)
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
15.6-inch HD Acer CineCrystal LED-backlit TFT LCD (resolution 1366 x 768, 16:9 aspect ratio)
Mobile Intel GS45 Express Chipset
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD
3GB of DDR3 1066MHz memory (runs at 800MHz)
320GB(3) SATA hard drive
Acer Crystal Eye webcam
Multi-in-1 digital media card reader
8X DVD SuperMulti double layer drive
Acer InviLink Nplify 802.11b/g/Draft-N wireless LAN
4 – USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port
Multi-gesture touchpad pointing device supporting circular-motion scrolling, pinch-action zoom, page flip
Acer touch-sensitive hotkeys (Touchpad Lock, Backup Manager, PowerSmart)
6-cell (5600 mAh) Li-ion Battery
5.3 lbs.
14.88” (W) x 0.97” to 1.16” (H) x 10.19” (D)
Energy Star 5.0 compliant
MSRP $598.00

Morro (Microsoft Security Essentials)

2009-07-04T15:19:00.008+05:30

Microsoft's free security software is almost here (in beta form, anyway). Microsoft intends to make Morro available as a download next week on Tuesday the 23rd, and you'll want to act fairly quickly in order to get a copy.

On Tuesday, the first 75,000 individuals to visit www.microsoft.com/security_essentials are supposed to receive access to Morro, or, as it's also known, Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft's not making any promises beyond that point.

Of course, the company might expand the offering, depending on demand and so long as its servers don't get swamped. Just don't say we didn't warn you.

Anyway, Microsoft Security Essentials is supposed to remove malware, spyware, and viruses, and provide real-time protection against malware and viruses, too. And although part of the reason it's being put out in a limited batch is so that further tests can take place, reports say that the software's in decent shape.

Ed Bott, for example, recently tested it and wrote, "I'm sufficiently impressed by MSE in operation to give it a more in-depth workout on multiple systems here."

So if you're looking for an alternative to other free forms of protection, consider staying especially near your computer on the 23rd.

The smallest threat to open source in 2009

2009-02-03T20:39:00.000+05:30

How much of a problem is security updating for open source software going to be in 2009?
On Jan. 1, Dana Blankenhorn published the sensationally titled The biggest threat to open source in 2009.
His thesis is simple: that, because open source software usually lacks any mechanisms for easily updating to the latest security patched version, the growing popularity of open source software will render it more vulnerable to problems than its closed source counterparts.
As a lead-in to his main point, he said:
There is no longer any doubt that hackers and malware writers are going after open source projects as they once went after Windows. Vulnerabilities are being found, discovered, created, exchanged.
There seems to be a common malady amongst opinionated tech writers--that of never quite getting it when it comes to the fundamental principles of security. A particular favorite for being ignored is that of security through obscurity.
Many many moons ago, I wrote what I think is a decent treatment of the subject as it applies to open source software, Security through visibility. While it makes a pretty strong case for ignoring the bleatings of "popularity is insecurity" doomsayers, it's really only the first step toward full understanding of all the problems with the assumption that the only thing "secure" about open source software is obscurity.
Obviously, based on his start to the article, I was already expecting very little in the way of useful information. His next statement left me even more mystified at what appeared to be a towering edifice of ignorance, however. Specifically, he said:
The best protection against vulnerabilities is to keep software updated, but most open source lacks update services. That's one part of the Windows license that is worth paying for, and there does not seem to be an open source equivalent.
As a long-time user of open source operating systems, previously favoring Debian GNU/Linux, and subsequently moving on to FreeBSD, I was stunned to see this in writing, published for all the world to see. Was he serious? Could he really believe that?
One of the most visible wins for open source Unix-like OSes, once one has learned a fair bit about them, is the casual availability of superior software management systems. Ive written a brief primer for effective use of APT for TechRepublic, Efficient software management with the Advanced Package Tool in Debian. Ive also addressed the excellence of a security tool integrated with FreeBSDs ports system, How FreeBSD makes vulnerability auditing easy: portaudit. Both of these articles illustrate some of the significant benefits of better software management systems than offered by MS Windows.
Perhaps even more relevant to Danas point is the fact that, on open source Unix-like OSes (but not on MS Windows), the software management system typically manages security updates for far more than just the core OS and a couple of applications created by the same vendor. Such Unix-like OSes software management systems tend to provide security update management for literally thousands of software packages originating outside the core OS project itself--in some cases, tens of thousands.
Then, his next statement clarified his meaning:
An exception is Firefox...But how many take advantage of this? And how tied is Firefox to updating for security purposes? Remember were talking about pushing updates, not asking users to pull them.
Suddenly, it all became clear. In Dana Blankenhorns mind, "open source software" refers only to the handful of popular open source applications that are regularly used on MS Windows systems. I find it interesting that the only example of an open source application he offers is an exception to his rule, however.
Where are all the legions of open source applications that dont provide easy software updates? Whose fault is it that MS Windows doesn't have a software management system that can help ease the process of applying security patches for these applications the way open source OSes do? Where are the examples of closed source applications that provide such update management as he describes, where the MS Windows compatible open source alternative does not--thus justifying his singling out of open source software as somehow more notably vulnerable?
Perhaps the worst part of the inaccuracies of the article is the fact that its clear assumptions (that all software worth discussing is MS Windows-centric, for instance) for those of us who know better are opaque to those who do not.
A manager with little or no experience of OSes outside of MS Windows may read this article and come away with the assumption that open source OSes completely lack software management systems. As a result, he or she may scupper any potential plans to deploy open source Unix-like systems in the network. So much for "the best tool for the job"; such decisions are often difficult to make well even when you aren't hampered by wrong-headed ideas like those Dana's article might inspire.
He does make a good point about corporate culture, though:
But until this ramps up (hopefully in a competitive market), enterprise managers have an easy way to say "no" to open source.
Regardless of how dangerous this is, the fact that managers feel it's dangerous makes it so.
Too bad some of those managers might "feel" its dangerous specifically because of his own article.
I'd clarify that to say that managers feeling its dangerous doesn't actually make it so--but it does make it so for all intents and purposes in the corporate environment, when it comes to technology implementation decisions. When the higher-up says "I think the closed source software offering is better, because I have these concerns about the open source software alternative", his or her subordinate (and perhaps more technically inclined) IT worker will eventually reach a point where he or she must either make decisions limited by the managers fears or polish his resume. Take it from someone who knows from personal experience.
On one hand, I'm inclined to be dismayed by this common bureaucratic failure of corporate culture, and feel the urge to rail against it. After all, security is everybody's problem; it's not just a problem for "that guy over there". Your problem, to a significant extent, becomes my problem when you connect to the Internet.
On the other hand, knowing something about security that others don't provides something of a competitive advantage. Where competitors may stumble and fall, the organization with a knowledgeable IT department will remain stable and secure, and prosper where others have failed.

First look - Internet Explorer 8 RC1

2009-02-03T20:29:00.003+05:30

On 26th January Microsoft made available Internet Explorer 8 RC1 (release candidate 1), which means that as far as Microsoft is concerned, IE8 is cooked and that barring anything major, this will become the final release. So, what’s the new browser like?

A new release of IE is always important because this is the browser that many millions of Windows users will be surfing the web with daily. Like it or not, by the very fact that IE is knitted into every Windows installation makes this an important event.
After what seemed like years of stagnation, Microsoft is continuing the tradition of kitting out IE8 with features that users of other browsers take for granted. That said, there are very nice features built into IE8, which include:
Smart Address BarThe address bar isn’t now just a place to type URLs into. The Smart Address bar in IE8 tries to make sense of what the user is looking for by retrieving sites visited from the history and bookmarks. This is handy for those times when you want to find something but can’t remember where you saw it.
Enhanced findSometimes it’s not finding the site that’s difficult, but finding where on the page you need to look for the information that you are after. IE8 offers a broad range of enhanced and improved tools to help you spot the information you are after. One such example if this is result highlighting.
Tab groupsWhen one tab is opened from another one, the new tab is placed next to the one from which it was opened, and both are marked with a colored tab. This is a good way to keep track of your open tabs.
InPrivateAlong with keeping track of stuff that you might later want to refer back to, IE8 also gives you powerful tools that allow the browser to have temporary amnesia in relation to the sites you’ve visited by temporarily halting the writing of information to the cache and history.
Crash recoveryIf your IE locks up of crashes while you’ve a shed-load of tabs open, with IE8 there’s a good chance that when you fire up the browser again that it will remember what what sites you had open and fire them up again. It can also reload information that you had typed into forms.
Your current favorite browser ... (Public view)
Firefox (52%)
Internet Explorer (32%)
Chrome (8%)
Opera (4%)
Safari (2%)
Other (2%)

Near-final IE 8 test build ready for download

2009-01-28T19:52:00.002+05:30

On January 26, Microsoft made available to the public for download a near-final test build of its Internet Explorer (IE) 8 browser.
The IE 8 Release Candidate (RC) 1 is the last public build Microsoft expects to deliver before releasing the final version of the product, which will be available as a standalone download and part of Windows 7. (Microsoft will continue to make smaller private builds of the browser available to select testers in the coming weeks/months.)
Microsoft has made the IE 8 RC1 bits for 32-bit Vista, 64-bit Vista and Windows XP available on its Download Center for anyone interested in trying out the newest browser build.
The RC 1 build includes performance tweaks, compatibility enhancers and a few other fairly minor changes to the Beta 2 version of the product Microsoft made available to testers last summer. Microsoft officials are calling the IE 8 RC 1 build “platform-complete,” meaning that developers and users should expect no more programming- or user-interface changes in the product from here on out.
What’s changed since Beta 2?
The compatibility list enhancements: Microsoft is going to provide users who want it with a list of 2,000 sites that will automatically be viewed by default in compatibility view without users having to press the compatibility view button. (Microsoft will update this list every two months to reflect sites that are updated to be compatible with IE 8, officials said).
A new ClickJacking prevention option: Developers will be able to add a tage in a page header that will help detect and prevent click-jacking. According to Microsoft, IE 8 “will detect sites that insert the tag and give users a new error screen indicating that the content host has chosen not to allow their content to be framed, while giving users the option to open the content in a new window.”
Changes to the Smart Address bar: Besides matching URLs in a user’s site history the bar now also better matches titles in their history and favorites.
Other changes include performance tweaks that will speed up page loading; changes to the Instant Search Box (to include a “quick pick menu” at the bottom, so users can toggle between their favorite search suggestions from different search providers); full support for CSS 2.1; and a renaming of InPrivate Blocking (part of “porn mode”) to InPrivate Filtering. With IE 8 RC1, users can manually adjust the threshold between 3 and 30 in InPrivate Filtering settings. A full list of what’s changed in IE 8 since the beta is here.
As Microsoft acknowledged recently, IE 8 RC1 won’t work on the Windows 7 Beta; Windows 7 testers who want to try the RC need to run it in a virtual machine.

Windows kicks Linux to the curb

2009-01-27T23:32:00.002+05:30

Gosh, that didn’t take long!Last July Linux had a huge opportunity to beat Windows in the red-hot netbook market (see Linux for housewives. XP for geeks. ). But faster than I’d expected Microsoft has kicked Linux to the curb, claiming an 80% attach rate for netbooks.
Windows 7 is the final nail in the desktop Linux market’s coffin. Unless Microsoft gets stupid on pricing, it is game over for Linux netbook market share.
Linux, we hardly knew ye - on the desktop, anyway.
It is tough to compete with “free”Not that Microsoft got off easy. Their 5,000 man layoff is a direct result of the cost of competing with Linux - their client business revenue slid $335 million.
Ballmer’s layoffs mean this is no one-time blip. Linux has changed the competitive landscape in a way Apple never could - after all Mac OS costs twice as much as Windows. And this is just a taste: the economics going forward are brutal.
The birth of free Windows?Windows 7 will run fine on netbooks - a smart move. But how to price it?
Linux is free, and as Moore’s Law drives down netbook prices, any difference will become more obvious. For the several billion people in the developing world, even $20 for Windows 7 may be too much.
If the Window’s netbook share drops below 70%, Microsoft will have no choice but to offer it for free to netbook OEMs. Sure, some nominal dollar figure will attach, but after marketing and developer support costs are figured in, it will be a wash.
This is as it should be: operating systems are becoming commodities, like a cell phone OS. The real innovation will be in netbook pricing models and new applications.
The Storage Bits takeLinux has lost the fight for netbook dominance, but it has inflicted significant pain on Windows. Microsoft faces a do-or-die defense of the Windows monopoly which will no doubt be successful.
The important fact is that for the first time in decades, Microsoft is playing defense, not offense. This is good for everyone, as even a 10% Linux share is enough for a future Linux breakout if Microsoft fails to stay current or raises prices.
Apple gets to watch Linux and Windows fight. If and when Apple offers a netbook, the OS will be an integral part of the package, not a choice. And they won’t be competing on price.

Desktop Unix: MacOS X and SUSE Linux

2009-01-07T21:52:00.000+05:30

As regular readers know my general preference in making IT decisions is to keep the hardware and software as simple as possible while putting the real focus on empowering the people using it. In general, therefore, I see “the right way” as one that centralizes processing for simplicity while decentralizing control for empowerment - but sometimes there’s no sensible way to meet user needs without giving them laptops and the question then is, which ones you should get?

All three of the main OS candidates: MacOS X, Novell’s “Sousa Linicks” and Microsoft’s Windows Vista run on pretty much the same hardware and run broadly comparable applications suites, so the decision must ultimately come down to which one best balances cost versus productivity in your applications area.

Two of these are Unix desktop implementations - as are both outlier options: Solaris and OpenBSD - making Windows Vista the odd man out from an OS technology perspective.

Put them side by side and I think you’ll notice some consequential differences too: MacOS X and Linux (specifically Novell’s latest “enterprise desktop”) have a very different feel to them than Vista does.

In the ideal experiment to see this, you get three OS advocates to put their favorites on similar Apple hardware and then watch as they load email from a common server, find and watch a video from my favorite hot air site and bring three working documents up in separate, side by side, windows.

That’s ideal, but of course most people don’t just happen to have three identical x86 Macs laying around - so try the next best thing: recruit two friends favoring whichever two desktops you don’t, and go do as much of the trial as you can get away with at your favorite local x86 shop: Office Depot, BestBuy, whatever.

It’s worth doing, particularly if you’re a Windows advocate, because it’s absolutely eye-opening. By itself Windows Vista (or XP) looks decent enough: you click, it does - something; the fonts work, the colors look nice, and IE comes up. But, put it right between the two Unix versions and you’ll see that the two Unix desktops, although very different, share a responsiveness, a directness of focus, and a simplicity of operation, that are completely missing in the Windows products - showing Windows Vista as a kind of click hungry hippopotamus in a tutu that simply doesn’t belong on stage with the other two.

Windows 7 will, at least according to the Microsoft press, fix this: recapturing XP’s place in the competition - although even two minutes with the latest Linux desktop should convince you that if Microsoft were showing that to their focus groups as their Next Generation product they wouldn’t have to fake the enthusiasm. Back on planet earth, however, it’s hard to think of an argument for buying a Microsoft desktop that doesn’t start and end with: “because we already have Microsoft…”

If you’re halfway objective about it, that leaves you to choose between the latest Linux desktop and MacOS X for your users - a choice most people will, I think, find to be an absolute no brainer.

For those who put a premium on cost savings, Linux is the no brainer option: it runs on cheaper hardware and you get it for free or nearly free and with, or without, paid support.

For those who put a premium on user productivity, MacOS X is the no brainer option: it’s more matter of fact than Novell’s new GUI skin and packaging, and mostly just stays out of the way of knowledgeable users. In fact, for many it meets the IT ideal: it works so well, they don’t know it’s there or doing anything to help them - they just click and expect it to work; because, well, it just does.

That’s a different horses for different courses situation: my own bottom line is that a few hundred bucks per laptop is meaningless when set against even a small improvement in user productivity - so I’m picking the Mac. You, on the other hand, may have higher volume, lower complexity, requirements for which cost becomes the decisive criterion - and so pick Linux.

It’s that choice, I think, that forms the real bottom line here: they’re both good choices, and they’re genuinely different - offering different values to different people.

And it’s been awhile since we’ve had a real choice, so how great is that?

2008-10-08T19:46:00.001+05:30

Fun with openSUSE 11.0

2008-10-07T18:01:00.003+05:30

Not a single post I make about Ubuntu goes by without at least one of you making some comment about my distro of choice and suggesting that I try some other distro. Well, never let it be said that I don’t listen to you - so this week I decided to take openSUSE 11.0 for a spin.
I first downloaded the 64-bit LiveCD KDE4 version of openSUSE and took this one for a spin. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the LiveCD to load either on a physical PC or a virtual PC - each time KWin crashed at startup, threw up an error message and the system locked up. Rather than getting caught up trying to figure out what was wrong I abandoned 64-bit KDE4 and instead sent for the 32-bit GNOME openSUSE LiveCD instead.
Check out the openSUSE 11.0 gallery
After a less than promising start, I was expecting more problems with openSUSE, but the 32-bit GNOME version seemed to play well on both physical and virtual systems, so I stuck with this.
After running Ubuntu for a few months it’s hard not to compare openSUSE to it, and the first thing that struck me was how sluggish running the LiveCD of openSUSE felt compared to all Ubuntu LiveCDs I’ve tried. I even went back to an Ubuntu LiveCD to check out if it was just my memory or whether openSUSE did indeed feel sluggish, and it did. No idea why. However, that said, a LiveCD is a temporary thing so I didn’t dwell on the performance issues of the LiveCD too much and just hoped that an actual installation of openSUSE wouldn’t feel as kludgy.

On to the installation.
Installing openSUSE is a snap and I didn’t have any problems. Comparing it to installing Vista or Ubuntu, I’d say that the process is no more complicated, although what I would go as far as to say is that the setup process isn’t as friendly as Ubuntu’s, and it consists of more steps that Vista’s setup process. Given this I’d say that Ubuntu is more friendly to the newbie, but getting openSUSE onto a system shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who has previously installed an OS or a major suite of applications.
Once installed I was pleased to find that openSUSE had picked up the pace quite considerably and the sluggish kludgyness I’d experience with the LiveCD was gone. openSUSE 1.0 was both snappy and responsive, apart from the first time I ran OpenOffice, which caused things to enter that “swimming through molasses” phase and made me wonder more than once whether I’d locked up the system. I hadn’t, and the feeling passed after a few minutes.
So, what do I think of openSUSE?
Overall, I like openSUSE 11.0. After deciding to ignore my troubles with the 64-bit LiveCD KDE4 version of openSUSE and the slowness of the LiveCD, openSUSE certainly seems like a nice, well-rounded OS. Also, while overall I feel that Ubuntu is more newbie friendly, openSUSE starts off by being more pleasing on the eye - the green look (to me at any rate) seems more elegant and less scary.
Then there are the GNOME menus. I have to say that after months of using Ubuntu, I prefer the GNOME menu as seen on openSUSE. Maybe as I use the two distros side by side this feeling will wear off, but right now I prefer openSUSE. Come to that, I think I prefer the entire default openSUSE theme over the Ubuntu one.
I’m told that because of Novell/Microsoft ties, OpenOffice as shipped with openSUSE has more features than the stock OO.o shipped with Ubuntu. I need to investigate this further to have an opinion on the matter (although I can say right away that I don’t have an issue with the politics of this deal …).
I still have a lot of investigating to do, however, in the interim I think that if I had to choose between Ubuntu and openSUSE, Ubuntu would be the winner - familiarity is a key factor.
Things I’ve learned …
A few things I’ve learned, in no particular order …
There are other worthwhile distros apart from Ubuntu.
The more OSes you add to the mix, the harder it becomes to be OS agnostic.
The perfect OS is probably mythical …

(I refers to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes)

Demo exploits posted for unpatched MS Word vulnerability

2008-10-01T17:36:00.001+05:30

A security researcher has released demo exploits for what appears to be a critical – unpatched — memory corruption vulnerability affecting the ubiquitous Microsoft Word software program.
The proof-of-concept exploits accompany a warning that the flaw affects Microsoft Office 2000 and Microsoft Office 2003. In addition to the rigged .docs, there are two videos demonstrating an attack scenario that crashes the program.
From the advisory:
An attacker could exploit this issue by enticing a victim to open and interact with malicious Word files.
Successfully exploiting this issue will corrupt memory and crash the application. Given the nature of this issue, attackers may also be able to execute arbitrary code in the context of the currently logged-in user.
Here are the proof-of-concept documents (download and run at your own risk!):

crash-word-1.doc
crash-word-2.doc
crash-word-3.doc
crash-word-4.doc
[ ALSO SEE: Free Sourcefire tool pinpoints hostile MS Office files ]
The SANS Institute issued a warning in its @Risk newsletter, noting that the issue occurs in the way Microsoft Word handles unordered (bulleted) lists.
Successfully exploiting this vulnerability would allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. Note that, on recent versions of Microsoft Office, Word documents are not opened upon receipt without first prompting the user.
I’ve asked Microsoft for confirmation of this issue and will update this post when I hear from them.
UPDATE: Microsoft e-mailed the following statement on this issue:
Microsoft is investigating new public claims of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Office. We’re currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact. We will take steps to determine how customers can protect themselves should we confirm the vulnerability.
Once we’re done investigating, we will take appropriate action to help protect customers. This may include providing a security update through the monthly release process, an out-of-cycle update or additional guidance to help customers protect themselves.

Gauging the ThinkPad: Before (IBM) and after (Lenovo)

2008-10-01T12:26:00.003+05:30

Has Lenovo lost whatever mojo the ThinkPad had? That simple question raised a lot of discussion at TechRepublic and it’s worth pondering. The problem: Gauging Lenovo’s performance depends on a lot of anecdotes with few concrete answers.
As background, John Sheesley asked a simple question: Has Lenovo ruined the ThinkPad? John outlined the history–IBM unloaded its PC unit to Lenovo in 2005–and noted that the latest ThinkPads just don’t seem to have the fit and finish as before. The questions about Lenovo have popped up before, but are quite current today since I smoked (literally) three T42s–older ThinkPads–on Thursday. The guts of the laptop started smoking so I have a loaner that will be upgraded to another Lenovo in the next few weeks.

Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X301
The talkbacks were lively and John called shenanigans after a bunch of responses spoke glowingly about Lenovo. He thought he was surrounded by a bunch of Lenovo plants.
Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman replied:
I believe ThinkPads are just as good as ever and voted accordingly. Although I suspect there are other Lenovo employees who have voted in this forum, I would wager that you have also attracted voters who are employees of our competitors. While in either case, it’s fairly predictable how each would vote, the interesting fact is that there are really only two notebook PC brands that have their own fan forums and passionate enthusiasts. I’m pretty confident declaring that ThinkPad is one of those two.
In many respects, Lenovo isn’t different from any other PC maker–perception is reality. For instance, a lot of folks have had trouble with Dell’s customer service in the last five years. I haven’t had any problems. Obviously, if I get hit with a survey Dell will fare better than someone who was burned.
But the question about ThinkPad quality in the Lenovo era isn’t easy to answer. The data is inconclusive and what you really have is a bunch of folks opining about the ThinkPad when it was part of the IBM empire against the latest from Lenovo.
To settle this score I went to the place that has the most objectivehistorical data I could find: Consumerreports.org, a service I highly recommend. A Consumerreports.org subscription at $26 a year–$19 if you get the magazine–pays for itself many times over.
I perused the Consumer Reports ratings on laptops in articles published in 2004 and 2008. In 2004, the then-IBM ThinkPad did seem to rate higher in the niches covered by Consumer Reports. In a August 2008 story, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 scored second to last out of eight laptops in the 13.3-inch model category. Lenovo had second place and fourth place finishes out of five 14.1-inch models evaluated. Among 17 15.4-inch laptops rated, Lenovo had a sixth place finisher (ThinkPad T61), 11th place (ThinkPad R61) and last (IdeaPad).
Bottom line: Your feelings about Lenovo are a crapshoot. Lenovo’s X300 was the second most pricey 13.3-inch laptop behind the MacBook Air, but Consumer Reports dinged it in many areas. But corporate workhorses like the T61 did pretty well in the rankings.
Here’s a look at the 2003 repair history for laptops from Consumer Reports, which published the ratings in September 2004.

And then there’s the repair history for laptops tracked via a Consumer Reports survey from 2003 to 2007. Consumer Reports published it in August 2008.

One notable point: These repair figures are all within a 3 percent margin of error. Is it possible that’s because every PC vendor is outsourcing manufacturing to the same contractor? Nevertheless, Lenovo seems to be carrying the ThinkPad torch at least as well as IBM did.
Thoughts?

Nokia to unveil touchscreen phone next week

2008-09-30T13:33:00.003+05:30

Reuters is reporting that Nokia will unveil its first touchscreen phone at a media event next week in London.
The phone, whose leaked pictures were posted on this blog earlier this week, is the result of plenty of market pressure since the iPhone’s debut more than a year ago. According to a Gartner analyst in the article, Nokia’s position as the leader of the mobile market has got the world waiting for their next move.
That move is reported to happen Oct. 2.
Nokia announced back in July that it would introduce its first touch-screen phone this year, and that it would be sold for a cheaper price than rival touch-screen models in order to tap into a higher-volume market.
Of course, the pressure’s on ever since HTC and T-Mobile introduced the Google Android-powered G1 this week, which retails for $179, slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
Would you buy a touchscreen Nokia phone? And for that matter, will touchscreen smartphones replace standard cell phones altogether? Tell us in TalkBack.

Highest-Earning Pirates

2008-09-28T22:16:00.007+05:30

High seas piracy was the colonial era's version of investment banking. Through good positioning, aggressive go-getters could make millions from global trade and commerce in diverse sectors. They were frequently chased off shore to the Caribbean by angry governments. And in the end, they were sometimes sunk without a trace.
Soon after government-hired pillagers like Hernando Cortes started plundering the new world in 1503, an entire class of sailor realized he could profit by stalking the ships carrying the spoils.

Those riches couldn't be sent using wire transfers. So when Cortes wanted to send a bounty of Aztec gold to Charles V, he had to load it onto ships and sail it across the sea, where men like Jean Fleury were waiting. In 1523, the French privateer fell upon a Spanish treasure fleet--a score that helped him net $31.5 million in present-value dollars over his career, making him the sixth highest-earning pirate of all time.
The highest-earning pirate ever was Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy, an Englishman who made his bones patrolling the New England coast in the 18th century. By our calculations, "Black Sam" plundered an estimated $120 million over the course of his career. His greatest windfall occurred in February of 1717, when he captured a slave ship called the Whydah, which reportedly held more than four and a half tons of gold and silver. Bellamy, known for his relative generosity, took the Whydah as his new flagship and gave one of his old vessels to the defeated crew.
In second place, with lifetime earnings of $115 million: Sir Francis Drake, a 16th century British privateer who saved England from the Spanish Armada and went on to a profitable life of plunder at the behest of Her Majesty's Government. Fellow Englishman Thomas Tew places third with earnings of $102 million. His biggest score came in 1693, when he pilfered a ship full of gold en route to the Ottoman Empire from India.
Our wealth estimates are based on information gathered from historical records and accounts from 17th and 18th century sources like Daniel Defoe, as well as contemporary historians like David Cordingly. Whenever possible, we used official records of pirate's claims. So when a 1718 North Carolina ledger says wares seized from Edward "Blackbeard" Teach sold at market for 2,500 pounds following his death, that source was trusted above Blackbeard's claims to a magistrate that a great treasure lay in a location known only to him and the devil. By our count, he amassed a total of $12.5 million in loot over his career.
Depletion of fortune due to rum and wenches was not assessed, nor were divisions of treasure among the crew. Plunders were often split in equal shares, with the captain receiving double--not much of a premium for leadership. A good lesson to modern shareholders: The best way to achieve fair compensation and rule out golden parachutes is to have your leaders expecting murderous revolts if they hoard profits.
All money and goods were converted into present value U.S. dollars. Present values were determined using the retail price index developed by the British House of Commons and MeasuringWorth, a research project founded by University of Illinois Chicago economics professor Lawrence H. Officer.
For the most part, pirates didn't make much money, and they certainly didn't save it. The amount of cash they needed to keep on hand to cover their liabilities cut into their fortunes. Crew members that lost limbs in battle could be compensated at a rate of 1,500 pound per limb. Since infection could easily cause death, the remedy for gunshot wounds was often amputation. With 100 men on a ship, if 10 limbs were lost during battle, that was a 15,000 pound loss, or about $3 million in today's dollars. It's easy to see why pirates tried to take ships without firing a shot. A few drunken sailors getting themselves nicked could negate the entire profit.
Pirates didn't have 401(k) plans, so burying a pile of gold was sometimes the smartest way to save for the future--that is, when they had one. Samuel Bellamy's treasure sank with him off Cape Cod, most of Bartholomew Roberts' fortune ($32 million) was taken after he died in battle in 1722 and Stede Bonnet's wealth ($4.4 million) was absorbed into the South Carolina treasury after his 1718 execution. Jean Fleury's Aztec gold wasn't recovered and was probably spread thin over brothels and saloons from Cuba to France; it's likely been melted down over the last 500 years into gold bars lining national treasuries and formed into wedding rings the world over.
Most pirates died without honor or coin. It was an existence filled with murder, treachery, disease (both tropical and venereal), and it ensured a short life, even by the standards of the day. But for the chance to be rich and unbound from a life of farming or military service, it was an easy choice for many--even if it did come with scurvy.
The 20 Highest-Earning Pirates

Apple as the incumbent against open source G1

2008-09-28T21:41:00.001+05:30

Apple’s reaction to the G1 so far, even its more extreme manifestations, is that of an incumbent politician facing a no-hope reformer. (Picture from our fabulous Apple blog.)
Despite all the hullaballoo, Google’s got a phone that doesn’t ship until next month, on America’s modern equivalent of the Dumont network.
Apple’s response to its channel is, in essence, who’s your daddy? The support from potential G1 partners has been tepid, just the usual suspects. Most have been silent.
In a political race, when an underfunded underdog challenges an entrenched incumbent, this is the right move. Don’t pay any attention, don’t engage in debate.
Trouble is this is not politics.
This is business, where you can change your financial vote at any time. The trailing candidate goes away after the election, but a big-pockets developer with real allies does not.
It’s true that the financial meltdown gives Apple an even stronger position. But Google’s stock remains strong enough to finance its planned network build-out.
And if the race gets closer, Apple’s current actions will come back to haunt it.

Is Chrome a security risk?

2008-09-28T21:30:00.003+05:30

My lovely bride of 30 years worked from home yesterday, hoping to save our city some gas.
An e-mail came in from her administrator around mid-day which she decided to share with me.
It told all users to shut down Chrome.
The e-mail called Chrome a security risk. It told all users within the company to use Firefox or Internet Explorer, to shut Chrome down.
I don’t know how serious those concerns are. Without identifying my wife’s employer I will say it’s a conservative company, very security conscious, and often proactive.
But this is a good time to ask how well Chrome is doing. Google Analytics says 1 in 40 visits to ZDNet Open Source are now done with Chrome. It’s currently on build 2200, Version 0.2.149.30. (Click the wrench, then the About tab.)
Personally I have noticed that Chrome often crashes Shockwave and Flash pages. Thanks to its redundant tab-based design, whole browser sessions don’t die, but these plug-in crashes are more common than with Firefox.
I have also found that, despite its promise, it pays to shut Chrome down every once in a while and re-start it. The lack of add-ons can be annoying, as when I’m asked for personal information or want to search a page for a word or phrase.
Other reviewers have not been so kind. Some bloggers are already calling it a failure, and the criticism is global in scope.
On the other hand, this open source browser is already being forked, as with a German version dubbed Iron.
This, to me, is good news. It may be the most important news.
It is wrong to evaluate Chrome as you would a new TV show. It is wrong to consider it solely in terms of Google because, like Firefox, this is an open source product subject to the open source process.
But what I think or what any other reporter thinks really does not matter. What do you think? Are you using Google Chrome now? Do you plan to? When? And if not, why not?

(I refers to Dana Blankenhorn)

Slingbox PRO-HD now shipping with HD streaming capability

2008-09-28T20:56:00.001+05:30

The Slingbox PRO-HD is now shipping, for US$299.99, and you can now enjoy full HD quality video anywhere you may be traveling. Our own Josh Taylor posted a review of the new unit this morning. Dave Zatz also posted some pics and offers some thoughts on the new Slingbox PRO-HD and links to a full review on Sling Community. The Slingbox PRO-HD offers HD streaming, multiple input, and a built-in digital tuner that allows you to watch TV independently of your cable box in case someone else is watching your TV at home and you still want to connect to your home system.

My Slingbox Classic is looking quite dated now and I may soon have to pass it along to a family member and get myself an updated Slingbox. I wonder what the video quality would be on one of the new high resolution Windows Mobile devices like the Touch Diamond or the Touch Pro HD? The difference between the Classic and PRO HD is incredible and I hope the mobile clients support this improvement too. I just read more details of Josh’s post and see that the upstream won’t support HD outside your home network so it is really designed for working with the upcoming SlingCatcher more than remote viewing.
I also was just sent a HAVA Platinum HD unit to test out and am considering the HAVA Wireless HD that looks to have most of the same specs as this new Slingbox PRO-HD. One thing I can’t wait to test out on the HAVA unit is the free mobile clients for S60, Windows Mobile, and the Nokia Internet Tablet. HAVA doesn’t have a Mac client, but there is no Mac HD client yet for the Slingbox either.
These both look like great solutions for placeshifting your video content and now that the new season of shows has started up and I have some fall travel coming I need to get my system up and running soon.

(I refers to Matthew Miller)

Run, don’t walk, and pick up a REDFLY Mobile Companion for $199.95

2008-09-28T20:53:00.001+05:30

I wrote up my first thoughts of the Celio Corp REDFLY Mobile Companion back in March, then I bought my own in May and then the price dropped from US$499 to US$399.95 in August. Well, now you can pick this device up for only US$199.95 and IMHO that is a steal for anyone with a Windows Mobile device looking to be productive on the go. I understand this is a “seeding” price that is only good until 31 October and I guess the intent must be to get the device out there and have people talk it up.
Celio keeps working on and releasing device drivers so development is continuing with the REDFLY and I sure hope this major price drop is not any indication of trouble in the near future. I like using my REDFLY on my commute and on business trips and want to see driver support continue for years, along with expanded drivers for S60 and maybe even the Android OS.
I think this is a perfect enterprise device since you can send employees out on the road with it and their phone to give presentations and work on Office documents without worrying about security issues or even damage to the device.
I keep reading this price and am just amazed it dropped down this far. I was happy to pay what I paid for mine and really hope this lower price takes price out of the equation for potential buyers as I want to see continued development of drivers and support for this excellent product. I think at just under US$200 the purchase is a “no brainer” for any Windows Mobile enthusiast or enterprise user.

(I refers to matthew miller)

Former Google product manager ‘disappointed’ by T-Mobile G1

2008-09-28T20:50:00.003+05:30

Ulf Waschbusch, a former Google Mobile Product Manager and current MySpace mobile employee, says, in so many words, that the HTC-made, Google Android-powered T-Mobile G1 is far from an iPhone killer — in fact, it’s just downright disappointing:
The reason many people see the G1 as ugly and old-fashioned is simply… because it IS! It’s a design unchanged for a while (it’s now available in Zune-brown along with white and black). The hardware itself though went through many iterations I am sure, as it’s top-notch (3G on AWS, GPS, 3MP autofocus camera etc.).
Waschbusch writes that he’s a fan of how the hardware works and Android OS, but that “the G1 Hardware is somewhat…well…dated” in looks, paling to HTC’s own Touch or Touch HD. “I just don’t like the design/looks of the device,” he writes.
Which, for a mass-market product aimed at consumers, might be a big problem. After all, what family truly cares about the ins and outs of Android? They just care about making calls, checking e-mail, taking photos — the typical package. Doesn’t matter who’s behind it or how “groundbreaking” we all say it is.
Gizmodo reports that Waschbusch also expressed his frustrations with other aspects of the G1 in his Facebook status:
Ulf is disappointed but not surprised about the ‘G1′. Where’s the cheap data plan? Where do I plug in my headphones? No video player? How do I get contacts in it?
Precisely my concerns, too, when I played with the device first-hand at the launch event (same goes for Josh). And if consumers don’t really take to it, who cares what us tech-inclined people think?

Green building gear in Gotham

2008-06-23T20:00:00.007+05:30

Bright lights in the big city. LEDTronics makes LED lights in all different shapes for commercial clients like casinos and high-end homes.

LEDs are still very expensive for regular household use, but good options are expected to be available in the next several years.

LEDs are very energy-efficient; a string of Christmas tree lights only uses a few watts. And they last a long time. LEDTronics representatives said that their LEDs will last 5.7 years with lights on 24 hours a day, or 17 years if they are on 8 hours a day. In addition, the bulbs are made of plastic and so are less fragile than glass lamps.

There are green roofs and "living walls" like this one. Both provide insulation to a building and, in the case of walls, another aesthetic option for building designers.

They can also help manage water, either by cutting down on run-off or to recycle gray water, the water from sinks and baths.

This green wall system from G-Sky is mounted on a frame with a drip-feed water system that can be remotely controlled. A moisture sensor is there to prevent overwatering.

Representatives from G-Sky said they normally grow plants for six months before installing them in restaurants or commercial buildings. These poor plants don't look so happy because they were stuck in there a day before for the trade show.

The gray water filtration system for the G-Sky green walls. The gray box on the bottom right provides an Internet connection for remotely controlling the water-feeding system. Normally, there is a fertilizer feed in here as well.

A new way to heat your home. Radiant heat, where a heating element is placed under floors, has been around for some time and is usually done by sending hot water through tubes placed under the floor.

This is an electric radiant heating system called the Step Warmfloor.

These plastic strips are stapled under the floor and a low-voltage current runs through it to provide heat. The installation is done by an electrician. The company says the system is more efficient than hot water radiant heat and easier to install.

This is a solar panel that's designed to generate electricity from a city balcony rather than a rooftop.

The SolaRail from EPV Solar is encased in glass, weighs 90 pounds, and can generate 42 watts under peak conditions. It's used in a building in the Tribeca part of Manhattan where each balcony has 14 modules. It's a good example of how thin-film solar cells open up possibilities for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).

Another form of distributed generation is combined heat and power systems. This micro-turbine from Capstone Turbine runs on natural gas to produce both electricity and heat. It's 82 percent efficient and has far lower levels of nitric oxide and sulfur oxide compared with diesel generators. The heat can be used for space heating or, with an absorption chiller, for cooling. Several are already installed in New York City in buildings, and a few have been tested in buses. It can also be configured to run off of methane from landfills or waste water treatment plants, according to the company.

Why is a carpet company at a green building conference? Because Shaw Floors has designed a carpet to be completely recyclable. The backing under the nylon carpet has a toll-free number that customers can call to get the distributor to take back unwanted carpet. The backing is separated and recycled by grounding it into reusable pellets. The nylon is also broken up into smaller pieces (represented in these vials) for recycling.

All the major components of a solar hot water heating system, which typically have a quicker pay-back period than solar electric panels. The evacuated tubes heat a liquid that is piped to a heat exchanger that transfers the heat to water. That hot water is stored in a tank.

Nanogel from Duo-Guard is a translucent insulator that can be used for walls or skylights.

The Nanogel can be used on its own, or incorporated with Duo-Guard's Illumall, a modular wall system where each panel changes color on a timer.

Cardboard furniture is displayed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Pfister Energy specializes in building-integrated wind turbines. This vertical axis turbine can be mounted on the ground, a rooftop, or placed on its side.

Free Sourcefire tool pinpoints hostile MS Office files

2008-06-23T19:56:00.001+05:30

Sourcefire, the company behind the popular Snort intrusion detection system, has released a freeware utility to help identify potentially threatening Microsoft Office files.

The tool, called OfficeCat, can be used to process Microsoft Office documents — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Publisher — determine if possible exploit conditions exist.

Unlike products that detect attempts to exploit known Microsoft vulnerabilities, Sourcefire said OfficeCat can determine if a file contains hostile content before it is opened.

From the Sourcefire announcement:

OfficeCat provides reference information on discovered vulnerabilities so users can remediate risks. By detecting these hostile files before they are opened, OfficeCat enables users to proactively increase the effectiveness of their security efforts.

…To create effective rules, the VRT conducts ongoing research into Microsoft Office vulnerabilities and will regularly update OfficeCat with the latest vulnerability information.

The command-line utility ships with rules for a total of six Microsoft Office bulletins and about 45 CVE entries related to Microsoft Office vulnerabilities.

There has been a noticeable surge in attacks exploiting critical security vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Office software suite.

In addition to using Sourcefire’s OfficeCat, I strongly recommend Microsoft Office users to run Microsoft Office Update to ensure installations are fully patched.

Windows Mobile 7 phones coming in Q1 2009?

2008-06-23T19:44:00.000+05:30

Windows Mobile 7 may be closer than many think.

According to a report from at least one major handset maker, Microsoft is planning to make available the final bits of its next mobile operating-system release in time for them to start selling Windows Mobile 7 phones in the first quarter of 2009. If true, that would seem to imply that Microsoft will release the final Windows Mobile 7 by the end of 2008, in order to give phone makers time to test and preload.

As is the case with Windows 7, Windows Mobile 7 is a forbidden topic. Microsoft won’t talk about planned features, beta dates or how/when/if Windows Mobile phones will become more head-to-head competitors with the iPhone.

(I am wondering whether Microsoft might finally share some Windows Mobile 7 info at its Worldwide Partner Conference in early July, given that Andy Lees, the newly appointed Senior VP of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications business is on the keynote line-up. If Microsoft really is going to deliver the final Windows Mobile 7 bits later this year, one would think it needs to be evangelizing about it now.)

There have been a few leaks about what Microsoft is planning for Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8. Not too surprisingly, multi-touch and gesture-recognition support are on the docket. The user interface for Windows Mobile phones is slated to get an overhaul, making it more consumer friendly. And, at some point, consumer-focused services beyond Windows Live — things like music and photo-management, will find their way onto Windows Mobile devices via Microsoft’s Project Pink and Danger acquisition.

Until now, the only target date for Windows Mobile 7 I had seen leak was “some time in 2009.” But the Phone Report earlier this week quoted an official with HTC saying the company planned to deliver a Windows Mobile 7 phone in Q1 2009, and an Android-based HTC phone in Q4 2008, by the way.

From recent executive remarks, it sounds like Microsoft is trying to get Windows and Windows Mobile to be more in sync. Might this mean with Windows Mobile 8 — which Microsoft has told certain folks will be built from scratch — Microsoft might make Windows Mobile a “real” version of Windows, with the same core as Windows client?

Microsoft blames ‘human issues’ for Bluetooth patch hiccup

2008-06-20T19:58:00.001+05:30

Microsoft has re-released its critical MS08-030 bulletin for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 users, warning that “two separate human issues” caused a major hiccup with the critical security patch.

The original version of the patch, which corrects a remote code execution flaw in the Windows Bluetooth stack, failed to properly fix the vulnerability for Windows XP users, according to Christopher Budd, a program manager in the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center).

[ SEE: Critical IE, Bluetooth, DirectX flaws highlight MS Patch Tuesday ]

Budd said an initial investigation into the hiccup identified “human issues” but he did not elaborate.

After we released MS08-030 we learned that the security updates for Windows XP SP2 and SP3 might not have been fully protecting against the issues discussed in that bulletin. As soon as we learned of that possibility, we mobilized our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP) to investigate the issue.

Our investigation found that while the other security updates were providing protections for the issues discussed in the bulletin, the Windows XP SP2 and SP3 updates were not.

Our engineering teams immediately set to work to address the issue and release new versions of the security updates for Windows XP SP2 and SP3. These are available now and are being delivered through the same detection and deployment tools as the original update.

It’s important to note that this re-release only applies to users running Windows XP SP2 or SP3. “If you’ve deployed security updates for MS08-030 for other versions of Windows, you don’t need to take any action for those systems,” Budd said.

Microsoft has had trouble in the past with faulty security updates but it’s somewhat rare for to see a bulletin re-release because the patch missed an entire OS version. The very reason we have a Patch Tuesday release cycle is to avoid situations where IT admins cannot properly prepare for testing and deploying updates.

Having two Patch Days in a month is borderline unacceptable, especially when it involves the “human issues” excuse.

Local root escalation vulnerability in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 discovered

2008-06-20T19:48:00.003+05:30

Yesterday, an anonymous reader released details on a local root escalation vulnerability in Mac OS x 10.4 and 10.5, whichworks by running a local AppleScript that would set the user ID to root through ARDAgent’s default setuid root state. Here’s how it’s done :

“Half the Mac OS X boxes in the world (confirmed on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard) can be rooted through AppleScript: osascript -e ‘tell app “ARDAgent” to do shell script “whoami”‘; Works for normal users and admins, provided the normal user wasn’t switched to via fast user switching. Secure? I think not.”

Find out how to fix it.

You’ve got several possible workarounds, you can remove the Apple Remote Desktop located in /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/, or you can go through the visual Workaround for the ARDAgent ’setuid root’ problem.

Moreover, the AppleInsider speculates on the potential for abuse :

The effects of malicious code run as root may range from deleting all the files on the Mac to more pernicious attacks such as changing system settings, and even setting up periodic tasks to perform them repeatedly. Not all Macs are vulnerable, however. If a user has turned on Remote Management in the Sharing pane of System Preferences under Mac OS X 10.5, or if a user has installed Apple Remote Desktop client under Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier and has activated this setting in the Sharing preferences, the exploit will not function. Mac OS X 10.5’s Screen Sharing function has no effect on this vulnerability.

And even though the vulnerability can also be executed via a remote connection under specific circumstances based on the configuration, physical security to prevent the unauthorized local access is as applicable as it’s always been.

About-face: Apple patches Safari ‘carpet bombing’ bug

2008-06-20T19:43:00.002+05:30

In what amounts to a major about-face, Apple has patched the Safari “carpet bombing” vulnerability that led to a Safari-to-Internet Explorer remote code execution combo threat.

After insisting for weeks that the issue is more of an irritant than a security risk, Apple today released Safari v3.1.2 for Windows with a patch warning that saving untrusted files to the Windows desktop may lead to the “execution of arbitrary code.”

From Apple’s advisory:

An issue exists in how the Windows desktop handles executables. Saving an untrusted file to the Windows desktop may trigger the issue, and lead to the execution of arbitrary code. Web browsers are a means by which files may be saved to the desktop. To help mitigate this issue, the Safari browser has been updated to prompt the user prior to saving a download file. Also, the default download location is changed to the user’s Downloads folder on Windows Vista, and to the user’s Documents folder on Windows XP. This issue does not exist on systems running Mac OS X.

The bulletin cites Microsoft’s security advisory on the combo-threat discovered by researcher Aviv Raff.

Safari v3.1.2 for Windows, available for Windows XP and Vista, also fixes at least three additional vulnerabilities that could lead to information disclosure and code execution attacks.

One of the other three bugs also describes a combo threat that goes the other way – Internet Explorer to Safari:

Visiting a malicious website which is in a trusted Internet Explorer zone may lead to the automatic execution of arbitrary code
Description: If a website is in an Internet Explorer 7 zone with the “Launching applications and unsafe files” setting set to “Enable”, or if a website is in the Internet Explorer 6 “Local intranet” or “Trusted sites” zone, Safari will automatically launch executable files that are downloaded from the site. This update addresses the issue by not automatically launching downloaded executable files, and by prompting the user before downloading a file if the “always prompt” setting is enabled.

The IE-to-Safari threat was reported by Will Dormann of CERT/CC .

The browser refresh also plugs a memory corruption issue in WebKit’s handling of JavaScript arrays. “Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution,” Apple warned.

The fourth vulnerability is an out-of-bounds memory read that may occur in the handling of BMP and GIF images.

Finjan uncovers half a gigabyte of stolen data on crimeware servers

2008-06-20T19:41:00.000+05:30

Finjan’s Malicious Code Research Center has uncovered a half of gigabyte of stolen data from US Healthcare organizations and from a major airline on crimeware servers in Argentina and Malaysia.

A representative of Finjan stated:

“Hackers incorporated sophisticated attacks using crimeware toolkits, Trojans, and Command and Control servers to drive traffic from a specific region with specific characteristics. The increase in web attacks is skyrocketing with industry figures that include a growth of more than 200% of web-based malware with an increase of more than 800% in backdoor and password-stealing malware.”

This is obviously a major case of data theft and I feel this is the knockout blow that might force our government to start imposing some strict laws around compliance for security related issues. It would be nice to see something like HIPPA compliance drive places that house medical data towards requirements around Attack & Penetration assessments, code reviews, data at rest/in-transit analysis, etc.

Everytime I go to the doctor, I look at their wireless devices, their Citrix into legacy apps, etc. and just shudder. Apparently it’s even easier than I would’ve thought as a half a gigabyte of medical records would seem to be a large amount. I think you’ve all seen my numerous comments on airline security, so I won’t even broach that this early in the morning.

For the full press release, read below.

-Nate

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
News Release
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Finjan Discovers more than 500 Mb of Stolen Medical, Business and Airline Data on Crimeware Servers in Argentina and Malaysia

In its latest Malicious Page of the Month report, Finjan unveils medical, business and airline data stolen and traded by cybercriminals using targeted campaigns San Jose, CA, USA, June 18th, 2008 - Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products, today announced its discovery of a server controlled by hackers (Crimeserver) containing more than 500Mb of premium data. The data included healthcare and business related data, as well as personal identifiable information (stolen Social Security Numbers). This data is part of the premium offering that the cybercriminals operating the Crimeservers were selling to the highest bidder online.

The compromised data came from all around the world and contained information from individuals, businesses, airlines and healthcare providers. The report contains examples of compromised data that Finjan found on the Crimeserver, such as:
Compromised medical related data of hospitals and publicly owned healthcare providers
Compromised business related data of a U.S. airline carrier
Identity theft (stolen Social Security Numbers)

Some of the implications of stolen medical and patient data include: illegal and/or bogus treatments; obtaining prescription drugs for the purpose of selling them; loss of health coverage for the victimized patient; inaccurate records of victimized patients, which could result in incorrect and potentially harmful treatments. Healthcare providers could also face potential HIPAA violations or breach of general data protection legislation.

Finjan’s Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) detected a Crimeserver operated by cybercriminals who used campaigns to steal data. These campaigns consisted of highly sophisticated attacks, incorporating Crimeware toolkits, Trojans and Command and Control (C&C) servers to drive traffic from a specific region, with specific characteristics.

“This report illustrates the latest development in cybercrime. It shows the business cycle of data collecting and trading by today’s cybercriminals. Crimeware infecting PCs is a serious business problem that has far-reaching consequences, such as impacting the security of businesses and patients around the world,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO of Finjan. “We see that cybercriminals go after premium data that they can trade for substantial profit. The increase in Web-based attacks is staggering. Industry figures include a growth of more than 200% of Web-based malware, with an increase of over 800% in backdoor and password-stealing malware, illustrating that sensitive corporate and medical are at risk.”

According to Finjan, the fact that sensitive business, patient and personal data were compromised in a timeframe of less than one calendar month underscores the necessity for enterprises and organizations to have a comprehensive security technology in place that provides effective protection against these sophisticated threats.

The compromised data and the Crimeserver applications were detected using Finjan’s patented active real-time code inspection technology while diagnosing users’ Web traffic.

The research is described in detail in Finjan’s latest “Malicious Page of the Month” report released today. To download the report, please visit http://www.finjan.com/mpom

Code execution vulnerability found in Firefox 3.0

2008-06-20T19:35:00.002+05:30

It’s not all about world records for Firefox 3.0.

Just hours after the official release of the latest refresh of Mozilla’s flagship browser, an unnamed researcher has sold a critical code execution vulnerability that puts millions of Firefox3.0 users at risk of PC takeover attacks.

According to a note from TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) , a company that buys exclusive rights to software vulnerability data, the Firefox 3.0 bug also affects earlier versions of Firefox 2.0x.

Technical details are being kept under wraps until Mozilla’s security team ships a patch.

According to ZDI’s alert, it should be considered a high-severity risk:

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, permitting the attacker to completely take over the vulnerable process, potentially allowing the machine running the process to be completely controlled by the attacker. TippingPoint researchers continue to see these types of “user-interaction required ” browser-based vulnerabilities - such as clicking on a link in email or inadvertently visiting a malicious web page.

It looks very much like the vulnerability researcher was hoarding this vulnerability and saving it for Firefox 3.0 final release to make the sale.

In the absence of a fix, Firefox users should practice safe browsing habits and avoid clicking on strange links that arrive via e-mail or IM messages.

There are no reports of this issue being exploited but, if you are worried about being at risk of drive-by attacks, consider using a different browser.

Xohm WiMAX service to launch in Baltimore in September 08

2008-06-20T19:30:00.001+05:30

We have been hearing about the on and off story of Sprint, Clearwire, and Xohm for quite some time now and I pretty much had given up hope of really seeing any commercial release of WiMAX with 4G right around the corner. According to Sprint CTO Barry West, Xohm will launch in September of this year. Apparently, the first rollout will start in Baltimore, Maryland and then move to DC and Chicago later in 2008.

There are 575 Xohm WiMAX base station sites up and running with different devices being tested. The devices you will be able to connect with Xohm at launch include a Samsung AirCard, modem from ZyXEL, a ZTE USB dongle, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, and selected laptops. I think it would be great to use WiMAX with a device like the Nokia N810 and look forward to trying it out when Xohm hits the Puget Sound area.

The pricing plans have not yet been revealed, but it may now only be a few months until we get a chance to try out this high speed network. Then again, I’ll wait to get too excited until I actually hear reports of people in Baltimore using the network.

Roadrunner: World's fastest supercomputer

2008-06-19T19:47:00.005+05:30

IBM once again tops the Supercomputer 500 list but this time it's with Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to be able to process 1 petaflop or 1 quadrillion calculations per second. Roadrunner connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron chips as well as 12,240 Cell chips and runs on open-source Linux software from Red Hat.

Roadrunner resides at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory where its primary task will be to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S's nuclear weapons stockpile.

Some of the cable used to wire Roadrunner.

Technicians crawling through the floors to hook up Roadrunner.

Wiring the rack from the back.

The First CU Compute Racks (front).

Two IBM QS22 blade servers and one IBM LS21 blade server are combined into a specialized "Triblade" configuration for Roadrunner. A production Triblade.

A schematic view of the Triblade which consists of two dual-core Opterons with 16 GB RAM and four PowerXCell 8i CPUs with 16 GB Cell RAM. Click on the image to enlarge.

Los Alamos and IBM researchers tested Roadrunner with "Petavision" which models the human visual system--mimicking more than 1 billion visual neurons and trillions of synapses.

Another view from Los Alamos.

Roadrunner at Los Alamos.

A schematic overview created for Wikipedia of the Roadrunner supercomuter. Click on the image to enlarge.

NVIDIA launches the ‘best performing GPU on the planet’

2008-06-18T19:10:00.001+05:30

Accordingly, NVIDIA announced the release of their latest line of graphics cards this morning. The GTX 260 and GTX 280 mark the debut of the upcoming 200 series GPUs. The GTX 280 counts 240 processing cores and 1GB of RAM under its hood, while the 260 claims 192 cores and 896MB of memory. Either way, we’re talking serious graphic and physics horsepower.

Where there’s eyeball-popping graphics, there’s always an eyeball-popping price tag, and these two chips don’t disappoint: the 280 runs for $650 and the 260 at $399. Both require two PCI-E power connections to run and a huge power supply (perhaps 1,000W?) if you’re even thinking about daisy-chaining them a la Scalable Link Interface, or SLI.

Good news, though: this series actually draws less idle power than the company’s last generation of ultra high-performance cards.

What do you think, readers? ‘Best performing GPU on the planet,’ or a lotta horse for too much cash?

How to recover GPcode encrypted files?

2008-06-18T19:07:00.001+05:30

Got backups? In response to the security community’s comments on the futile attempt to directly attack the 1024 bit RSA keys using distributed computing, Kaspersky Labs are now reasonably recommending that affected end users lacking backups of their encrypted data, take advantage of data recovery tools :

Currently, it’s not possible to decrypt files encrypted by Gpcode.ak without theprivate key. However, there is a way in which encrypted files can be restored to their original condition. When encrypting files, Gpcode.ak creates a new file next to the file that it intends to encrypt. Gpcode writes the encrypted data from the original file data to this new file, and then deletes the original file.

It’s known that it is possible to restore a deleted file as long as the data on disk has not been significantly modified. This is why, right from the beginning, we recommended users not to reboot their computers, but to contact us instead. We told users who contacted us to use a range of utilities to restore deleted files from disk. Unfortunately, nearly all the available utilties are shareware – we wanted to offer an effective, accessible utility that could help restore files that had been deleted by Gpcode. What did we settle on? An excellent free utility called PhotoRec, which was created by Christophe Grenier and which is distributed under General Public License (GPL).

Find out how to restore files encrypted by the GPcode ransomware by exploiting a weakness in the process in which the malware deletes the original files, why directly attacking the encryption algorithm was a futile attempt right from the very beginning, how would the malware authors adapt in the future and what can you do about it?

As I’ve already pointed out in a previous post “Who’s behind the GPcode ransomware?” even through they’ve successfullyimplemented the encryption algorithm this time, the only weakness in the process remains the fact that the malware authors are not securely deleting the original files, making them susceptible to recovery using data carving techniques, or through the use of plain simple point’n'click forensics software. If backups are not present, you would have to apply some marginal thinking given that not all of your affected files can be recoved, and therefore, recovering 500 out of 1000 is better than recovering none, isn’t it? Whatever approach you take try to adapt to the situation, and don’t pay. More info on the Stopgpcode utility released by Kaspersky :

To complete the recovery process, we’ve created a free utility called StopGpcode that will sort and rename your restored files. The utility will process the entire disk and compare the sizes of encrypted and recovered files. The program will use the file size as a basis for determining the original location and name of each recovered file. The utility will try to determine the correct name and location for each file, recreating your original folders and file names within a folder called “sorted”. If the utility cannot determine the original file name, the file will be saved to a folder called “conflicted”.

Next to the step-by-step tutorial on using PhotoRec, a data recovery utility, you can also watch a video of the process, or consider using third-party data recovery utilities next to their web based alternatives.

Why was the distributed cracking futile at the first place?

Mostly because the lack of easy to measure return on investment and applicability in a real-life situation - they could have simply started using GPcode variants with new and stronger keys on a per variant basis. The malware authors were also smart enough not to release a universal decryptor including the private key for all of their campaigns, instead, upon providing a custom built decryptor to the affected party, first they request the public key used in the encryption process to later one ship a customer tailored decryptor that works only for the encrypted files using the public key in question. Compared to the majority of malware variants attempting to infect as many hosts as possible, GPcode’s currently targeted approach is willing to sacrifice some efficiency and emphasize on quality.

How would the malware authors adapt in the future?

According to the author of Gpcode, or the person responsible for processing the decryptor requests, new versions with stronger encryption are already in the works, including commodity malware features such as anti-sandboxing, polymorphism and self-propagating abilities. This would result in a awkward situation, for instance, for the time being two out of the four emails used by the authors of GPcode aren’t even bothering to respond back to the infected party, so you can imagine the delays with responding given that GPcode starts self-propagating. They will basically end up with a situation where the number of affected people would outpace their capability to provide them with a custom built decryptor in a timely manner, even if someone’s willing to pay the ransom.

With the entire GPcode ransomware fiasco slowly becoming a tool in the marketing arsenal of a backup company that can now use GPcode as a fear mongering tactic, malware free backups are once again reminding us of their usefulness.

Laptop wars: Toshiba goes thin with 128GB solid state drive

2008-06-18T19:04:00.001+05:30

Toshiba on Tuesday added a 128GB solid-state drive to its Portege laptop lineup in the latest move toward flash-based drives.

According to Toshiba, its Portege R500-S5007V (gallery right) is 2.4 pounds and is the lightest laptop with a 128GB SSD and DVD SuperMulti drive. Under that logic, any laptop with unique specifications can claim to be the lightest. For instance, the next company with a 140GB SSD can claim to be the lightest. The latest Portege is 0.77 inches thick.

The thin is in crusade was kicked off by Apple and its MacBook Air and was quickly followed by Lenovo, HP and others.

Toshiba, however, is driving home the storage capacity (statement). Many thin laptops expect you to live in the cloud and store information there too–or use attached drives. Toshiba maintains that by including a SSD and 7mm DVD SuperMulti drive that its travel weight is light because you won’t have to lug additional drives and cables.

Among the other key points:
The Portege R500-S5007V has eight hours of battery life.
Vista Business with downgrade media to Windows XP professional.
12.1 inch widescreen high brightness display.
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor U7700–1.33GHz, 2MB L2, 533MHz FSB with 64 bit.

Toshiba’s recommended configuration will run you $2,999.Separately, Toshiba expanded its Qosmio lineup with three laptops for gamers and multimedia users. The big takeaway is that the Qosmio G55 uses the Cell processor developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM. This chip is the one used in the PlayStation 3.

Klipsch Image X5 Headphones

2008-06-17T17:27:00.003+05:30

A while ago, Klipsch introduced the "world's smallest heaphones" with the Image X10. The company has recently introduced something slightly larger (at 2mm) with the X5.

The X5 has some nice contoured ear gels that fit very comfortably in the ear canal. They are designed for noise filtering, but mostly for those who love bass in their music.

In addition to their sound, they have a distinct look with electroplated aluminum housings and streamlined, aerodynamic black tails. There are also 50 inch vinyl cables that are quite durable for life on the road. The Image X5 is compatible with iPod, iPhone, and just about anything else with a headphone jack.

The Klipsch Image X5 will be available later this month for about $250.

JDOME

2008-06-16T18:54:00.002+05:30

The popularity of MMO games in the last few years has created a whole new market of gaming mice and other accessories to help players really get into the game.

Welcome to the age of the jDome, a system with a semi-transparent dome that enables a gamer to be immersed in their game. Images are projected onto the jDome, so that the viewer can see a 180-degree view of their player character.

The jDome has been patented by John Nilsson, and he is developing the concept with an estimated cost of about $125-200. I have no idea when he intends to put it out on the market, but we'll see if he succeeds.

Ori-ori-Moshi-moshi

2008-06-16T18:42:00.003+05:30

If you were to get your hands on a Flux Capacitor and traveled to the year 2014, Marty McFly style, you might see some gadgets that will blow your mind. The Ori-ori-Moshi-moshi device (that name might be hell on its marketing) is a conceptual multimedia device made of a semi-flexible OLED display, which uses an origami-like form factor for pure awesomeness.

Just like many dream gadgets from the future, the Ori-ori-Moshi-moshi from AntennaDesign consolidates about every electronic function under the sun into one compact and pretty device. You name it, it can do it. You can use it as a phone, a gaming device, a media player, a camera, and photo editor. The OLED display can be folded in an assortment of ways to adapt to its present use.

Remember that pre-Matrix Keanu Reeves movie Johnny Mnemonic, the one that showed us that the Internet of the future is accessed via virtual reality and is some weird origami interface. I believe this film was supposed to take place in 1995, and that vision never came to pass.

This could be the case for the Ori Ori Mochi Mochi, a mobile device designed by Antenna design. It is predicted to be the iPhone of 2014, and it is a device that relies on folding at certain angles. For example, a rectangle is a cell phone, and all folded out for a map.

Memo to me: Follow up on this story in 2014. Perhaps I'll be writing that follow-up on an Ori Ori Mochi Mochi.

Opera Wireless Headphones

2008-06-16T18:05:00.004+05:30

I'm not much of an Opera-buff, but I do like the DigiFi's Opera wireless headphones.

I'm not certain whether you can tell from this photo, but the Opera is designed to go around the back of your head. You can then plug the wireless transmitter into your iPod, and you will hear excellent wireless sound. The Opera uses Kleer technology, a wireless transmission technology that has higher specs than Bluetooth.

If wireless sound is important to you, then you should be able to purchase the Opera for about $98.

DigiFi has been showing off their new Digital Opera wireless headphones, which combine an over-the-ear headset with an iPod adaptor. Using Kleer’s wireless audio technology, the system includes “point to multi-point” Listen In. That means that up to four people can hear music from one transmitter. Through Kleer’s RF wireless connection, it promises “lossless CD-quality stereo”.

DigiFi claims that you can get in excess of 10hrs of playback through the headset, with a 20HZ to 20KHz frequency range, 86dB signal to noise ratio and less than 0.1-percent distortion. The short-range Kleer wireless has 2.37Mbps bandwidth and a range of up to ten meters. When the Digital Opera set goes on sale in Korea first, then in the US and Japan it’ll cost around $98.

Microsoft and Yahoo stop talking, and Google wins

2008-06-15T20:33:00.000+05:30

Today Microsoft and Yahoo officially stopped talking — the day, I’m sure, Yahoo investors were dreading. The hope that Microsoft and Yahoo might still work out a deal fizzled, and as result, Yahoo shares plummeted 10% before trading ended today.

today announced that discussions with Microsoft regarding a potential transaction — whether for an acquisition of all of Yahoo! or a partial acquisition — have concluded. The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo! and Microsoft on June 8th in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent Board members from Yahoo! participated. At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo!, even at the price range it had previously suggested.

It worked out well for Google though — no Microsoft/Yahoo merger on the horizon, and a fresh partnership that lets them put ads directly onto Yahoo properties. Jackpot! They are careful to point out why this deal is good, and not evil on their blog:
This is not a merger. Rather, we are merely providing access to our advertising technology to Yahoo! through our AdSense program.
This does not remove a competitor from the playing field. Yahoo! will remain in the business of search and content advertising, which gives the company a continued incentive to keep improving and innovating. Even during this agreement, Yahoo! can use our technology as much or as little as it chooses.
This does not prevent Yahoo! from making similar arrangements with others. This arrangement is not exclusive, meaning that Yahoo! could enter into similar arrangements with other companies.
This does not increase Google’s share of search traffic. Yahoo! will continue to run its own search engine and advertising programs, and the agreement will not increase Google’s share of search traffic.
This does not let Google raise prices for advertisers. Google does not set the prices manually for ads; rather, advertisers themselves determine prices through an ongoing competitive auction. We have found over years of research that an auction is by far the most efficient way to price search advertising and have no intention of changing that.

Here are some excerpts from the announcements made by Google and Yahoo:

“[Google] has reached an agreement that gives Yahoo! the ability to use Google’s search and contextual advertising technology through its AdSense(TM) for Search and AdSense for Content advertising programs. Under the agreement, Yahoo! has the option to display Google ads alongside its own natural search results in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, Yahoo! can serve contextually targeted ads on its U.S. and Canadian web properties as well as on its current publisher partner sites.” — Google

“Yahoo! believes that this agreement will enable the Company to better monetize Yahoo!’s search inventory in the United States and Canada. At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.” — Yahoo

Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the cellular and electronics industry.

HP should be shipping the iPAQ 900 series Mobile Messenger soon

2008-06-15T20:30:00.001+05:30

There is definitely not a lack of choice in new mobile phones this year with the Apple iPhone 3G, HTC Touch Diamond, Samsung OMNIA, Nokia E71, BlackBerry Bold, and more being announced/leaked and shown all over the internet. It was last September when HP announced new Windows Mobile devices and thanks to a post at jkOnTheRun I found out that HP’s new HP iPAQ 900 Series Business Messenger announcement made yesterday.

The iPAQ 910 is shown on the HP site as coming soon and is expected to start shipping at the end of June for an undisclosed price. Specifications include a Marvell PXA270 processor running at 416MHz with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, 2.46 inch 320×240 touch screen, 3 megapixel camera, 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, tri-band UMTS/HSDPA, quad-band GSM, integrated GPS receiver, integrated QWERTY keyboard, and huge 1940 mAh battery. It also looks like it has a Pearl-like center trackball for navigation.

I used to only buy HP Pocket PC devices and the specs on this one may actually bring me back to HP again as it looks to have everything I could ask for in a single device. It may sell as an unlocked device too since there were no carrier announcements and HP has done that in the past with their devices.

I am very interested in testing this out to see if HP is back in the game again and I have high hopes for the device. My only concern is the processor, but I am willing to give it a chance and see how it performs. It is going to be very tough to figure out what device to get with all of these great units hitting the street this summer and fall.

Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle.

Samsung announces the OMNIA Windows Mobile device with 5 megapixel camera

2008-06-15T20:03:00.003+05:30

It is great to see so many new and innovative Windows Mobile devices being announced and launched from the likes of HTC, Sony Ericsson, and now Samsung. Samsung announced the Samsung OMNIA (SGH-i900) on Monday and my buddy, Arne Hess, already had a chance to put his hands on an early protype and provides some more photos, including photos with the HTC Touch Diamond and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1.

The Samsung OMNIA is a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional (touch screen) device with a xx MHz processor, 8GB or 16GB flash drive plus an additional microSD expansion slot, 3.2 inch WXVGA (240×400) display, 5 megapixel camera (top of the line for Windows Mobile), FM radio with RDS, integrated GPS receiver, quad-band GSM and HSDPA support, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, TV out capability, and a 1440 mAh battery. The device has haptic feedback on the display so you feel a vibration when the display is touched.

The photos of it look impressive and it has a real iPhone-like look to the UI, but with the power of Windows Mobile behind it. Samsung calls its new interface, TouchWiz, that allows you to customize and personalize their “widgets” on your device. It is interesting to read that it has out-of-the box multicode support for DivX, Xvid, and other video formats so multimedia fans may love this device with the large high resolution display.

It will be available in Southeast Asia starting next week and in Europe in July. There was no announcement of a U.S. release so this may be one to look for from a U.S. importer. Again, like the HTC Touch Diamond I think it is great to see manufacturers pushing the limits and taking Windows Mobile to the next level.

Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle.

iPhone 2.0 lets open source in through back door

2008-06-15T19:53:00.000+05:30

With the first Apple iPhone open source developers were like burglars breaking windows, forcing their software onto the device.

Thanks to the Apple iPhone SDK they’re more like beggars now. Knock on the back door politely and you might get a beer.

But that’s a long way from walking through the front door like an honored guest, Funambol vice president-marketing Hal Steger told ZDNet today.

“They’ve been less than forthcoming in extending the olive branch directly to us. We’re viewing Apple as a proprietary mobile platform. They’re still basking in the glow of their success.”

The Mac-ambivalence may be behind media response to Funambol’s Wireless Sync announcement yesterday. The Washington Post called it a direct competitor to Apple’s own MobileMe.

Not really, said Steger. “It’s apples and oranges.” MobileMe is far more limited, almost a MiniMe next to the synchronization services Funambol is offering.

Apple’s attitude will change only when it faces real competition, and Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco writes in his blog that the iPhone 2.0’s pricing is designed to forestall that. “Surprise. It is a mass market phone,” he enhused.

The low price is based on direct carrier subsidies, just as your “free phone” is subsidized now, as Apple is forced to forego its piece of AT&T’s data revenue and the carrier, in turn, raises the price for those contracts.

You can do that when you’re the only game in town. When will that change? “We’re tracking the other platforms closely,” Steger said, predicting some Android kit will arrive by year-end.

Funambol will be ready. ”We are a Switzerland, in that our strategy is to provide solutions for all the leading platforms,” Steger concluded. Hopefully that doesn’t mean they outplay the Czechs, lose, and get their key man’s knee broken.

Fake ImageShack site serving malware, links distributed over IM

2008-06-15T19:39:00.002+05:30

In a combination of domain typosquatting next to spoofed image files, malware authors managed to successfullyimpersonate ImageShack, the 5th largest image hosting website on the Internet, the result of which is a malware campaign circulating over MSN, enticing users into infecting themselves by clicking on the spammed links to fake image files.
This currently active IM malware campaign is yet another indication that the “don’t click on executable files” security tip is on the verge of irrelevance. Social engineering, however, isn’t, since impersonating ImageShack to serve fake images which are in fact trojans turning the infected hosts into zombies is a well coordinated social engineering campaign combining several difference tactics.

The real ImageShack site is imageshack.us, however, the malware authors are impersonating ImageShack and using imageshaack .org, in particular imageshaack.org /img/Picture275.jpg, which is where the malware is. Once the user gets infected with the malware, Backdoor.Win32.SdBot.eiu in this case, the host joins an IRC channel where the botnet masters continue issuing commands for the campaign to spread, like the following :

!msn.msg lool!! :D http ://imageshaack.org /img/Picture275.jpg |!trition.msg lool!! :D http ://imageshaack.org/img /Picture275.jpg topic set by Everglades on Wed Jun 11 15:41:57

“!msn.msg Haha is that you;)? http ://imageshaack.org /img/Picture275.jpg?|!trition.msg http: //imageshaack.org/img /Picture275.jpg

Until the site gets shut down, consider being extra vigilant on IM messages received, and while this is a bit more creative social engineering attack then the majority of average ones I’ve seen this month, non-executable files are apparently just as dangerous as executable ones.

Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and E-crime incident response. Dancho is also involved in business development, marketing research and competitive intelligence as an independent contractor. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis.

Adobe's Acrobat.com office suite

2008-06-10T19:00:00.008+05:30

Adobe launched Monday a beta version of Acrobat.com an online office suite that allows you to create word processing documents, share files, convert PDFs and hold Web conferences.

The Acrobat.com word processing tool is called Buzzword. Here's what the blank page looks like.

Warning, remember this is a brand new, free beta. The problem only lasted a few minutes.

Opening a document.

In Buzzword, Adobe uses a toolbar, similar to Photoshop, for the main edit tools, such as paragraph, font, lists, and images.

Add images by choosing the "Insert Image" icon, choose an image off your hard drive, drag and drop the image to the position you choose, and resize by clicking on the corner of your image.

When sharing a Buzzword document you can add a comment by clicking on the comment icon.

To create a table, hit the table icon and a box that you can click on to create a table will appear next to it. Then you can fill it out.

On the lower right is an icon that shows whether your work has been saved or not.

And of course, there's a spell check. There's no grammar check.

ConnectNow, Meet Anywhere is a meeting tool that is available on Acrobat.com. Here's the room you enter.

You can chat and share documents in ConnectNow.

This tool allows you to create PDF files.

You can embed a Flash preview of a file in a Web page, blog or Wiki page.

You can share files with this tool.

Acrobat.com also includes a tool that helps you manage your files.

In your file mangager, you can locate your documents through a variety of searches.

First impressions of the Nokia N78 with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and FM transmitter

2008-06-10T18:36:00.007+05:30

Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle.

When it rains, it pours and I am getting swamped with new mobile devices to evaluate right now with the HTC Advantage 7510, Nokia N82, and now the Nokia N78. The Nokia N78 is the successor to the very popular Nokia N73 with significant improvements, including WiFi, GPS receiver, S60 Feature Pack 2, and a FM transmitter. The image gallery and some thoughts below form my first impressions since I have only had the device for about a day and a half. I plan to post a more detailed review after at least a couple weeks of using the device, especially in regards to S60 Feature Pack 2.
The Nokia N78 is the first device shipping with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.

The Nokia N73 has been one of my favorite Nseries devices because I liked the camera cover design, it has a nice and compact form factor, the battery lasted forever, the display was beautiful, and it was a solid device. Back at Mobile World Congress in February, Nokia announced the N78, but it was kind of lost in the shadow of the N96 and other devices. I didn’t get too much time with the N78 then, but thought it could definitely be a dark horse this year when it was released. After spending just over a day and a half with it so far, I am very impressed with it and think I found a new home for my T-Mobile SIM.

The model I was sent is the N78-1, which is the European 3G model, and Nokia has stated that a North American model with support for AT&T’s 3G network will be coming eventually. Thus, I placed my T-Mobile SIM in the device since T-Mobile only supports EDGE data at this time. The specifications of the Nokia N78 include:
Dual mode WCDMA (900/2100 MHz), Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2
ARM11 processor at 369 MHz
Integrated A-GPS reciever
802.11 b/g WiFi
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
2.4 inch QVGA (240×320 pixels) display
70MB internal Flash memory and 96MB RAM to run applications
3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and flash, 15 fps video capture
Forward facing camera (for European conference calling)
microSD card slot with 2GB card included
Stereo FM radio receiver
3.5 mm headset jack
FM radio transmitter (extend the device output to your radio)
USB 2.0 through the microUSB connector
Amazing battery life with the 1200 mAh BL-6F battery
Talk time: up to 190 minutes (WCDMA); 260 minutes (GSM)
Stand-by time: up to 320 hours (WCDMA); 320 hours (GSM)
Music playback: up to 24 hours (offline mode)
Dimensions:
Weight: 3.59 ounces
Length: 4.45 inches
Width: 1.93 inches
Thickness: 0.59 inch

I opened up the box to setup and start using the device and after taking some photos, I removed the entire back cover to insert my SIM and the battery. The back cover takes a bit of effort to remove since the two side clips seem to stick tight and I thought I was going to break it as I pulled off the cover. The SIM card was easily inserted and I then closed everything up and charged the device with the very nice compact travel charger.

Box contents include:
Nokia N78 (including Nokia 2GB microSD Card MU-37)
Nokia Battery BL-6F
Nokia Travel Charger AC-5
Nokia Stereo Headset HS-45/AD-54
Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-101
User guide
Quick Start guide

After the device was fully charged up, I turned it on and was immediately impressed with the very bright display. The new S60 Feature Pack 2 includes some new settings wizards that make configuring the device for your connection, e-mail, and more much easier for a good out-of-the box experience for the new buyer. You can even transfer info from an existing Nokia device to the N78. I also noticed the cool new transitions, icons, and menu options scattered throughout the device. For lots of details on the new S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 functionality, I recommend you check out Mobile Review’s coverage which is quite extensive and detailed.

One aspect that I was at first a bit concerned about was the keypad design. There are no distinct buttons, but there are four very thin bars that extend under the backlit numbers. I find that my fingers slide back and forth across the bars and I am able to text quite fast. When the backlight is off you will also only see the four bars, the Tiles button, and the directional pad/naviwheel since the other buttons are all flush and not distinct except for the backlit areas. So far this design is working quite well, but I find the menu button to be a bit low down on the left so it is requiring a bit of effort to make sure I extend down to press it.

The naviwheel is similar to the touch sensitive wheel on the Nokia N81 8GB and can be turned on and off. I used it for a day and then turned it off because I kept accidentally selecting things with the directional pad when I did not mean too. You see with Feature Pack 2 there is now a left, right, and center soft key on the display.

The device feels great in my hand and the thinness really makes it very pocketable, even in a shirt. The stereo speakers are about as far apart as you can get on the device to give you a stereo experience. The camera has been working pretty well, but unfortunately there is no lens cover. There is no accelerometer in the device so you don’t get autorotate functionality like that seen on the Nokia N82.

I’ve already loaded it up with quite a few applications and I am finding that some applications do not yet work with FP 2. For example, Mail for Exchange, WorldMate, and Nokia Conversations do not work on the N78 at this time. Luckily, RoadSync is working so I was able to sync my hosted Exchange data and email with the device and get setup and running.

Another very cool thing that I found was that you get full screen caller ID images appearing on the Nokia N78. This is a great feature of the iPhone and as you can see in my image gallery photo, full screen caller ID is helpful to quickly identify who is calling.

I have much more to play with on the device and look forward to using it as my primary device for a couple weeks. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask me and I’ll try to answer them in my full review.

The power button and 3.5mm headset jack are found on the top of the Nokia N78.

On the left side you will find the microUSB slot, microSD card slot, charging port, and left stereo speaker.

The camera includes Carl Zeiss optics and takes nice photos.

The keypad has 4 bars with 3 keys across the device for each bar.

The back cover, device, and battery are exposed to insert the SIM and battery.

The N78 follows the N73 in the progression and slims down quite nicely.

You get a wired stereo headset and controller in the box.

In the bottom section, you will find the A/C adapter, USB to microUSB cable, and manuals.

You can now get full screen caller ID with Feature Pack 2 on the Nokia N78.

TouchFLO 3D, FM radio, YouTube and text input methods on the HTC Touch Diamond

2008-06-10T18:03:00.007+05:30

I=Mathew Miller.

One new utility included with the HTC Touch Diamond, also seen in the new HTC Advantage X7510 is the ability to have the internal flash drive appear in drive mode with PCs and Macs. I was able to view the flash drive on my MacBook Pro just by connecting the device to my Mac in drive mode. Thus, you do not even need to have ActiveSync on your PC or Mac to access the 4GB flash drive with full USB 2.0 support for fast transfers.

TouchFLO 3D: My screenshots and the following video take you through the new TouchFLO 3D UI on the Home screen and as I think you may agree there is a ton of cool functionality right on the Home screen. I was also a bit surprised at how responsive everything was because the earlier version of the software I saw had a bit of lagging here and there, but none of this appears to be present in the current shipping ROM on the Touch Diamond. I really enjoy viewing the Weather module, especially when it is raining and the windshield wiper goes across the display to clear it of the rain drops. These kinds of animations make the user experience more fun, which I think is much more important today as people are looking for more from their mobile phones.

Opera Mobile 9.5: I already showed Opera Mobile 9.5 browser running on the HTC Advantage X7510 and the version on the HTC Touch Diamond is pretty much the same browser. A couple of differences is that you are now limited to 3 tabs of browsing windows, compared to 7 on the HTC Advantage, and you can dynamically zoom in by circling your finger around the directional pad to multiple levels not seen elsewhere. The cool thing is that text on a web page will reflow to fit the screen in most zoom levels. The browser experience is fantastic with Opera Mobile 9.5 and it is the default browser on the HTC Touch Diamond.

I also quickly showed Internet Explorer Mobile and how the only change is the ability to zoom out and view an entire page. The real innovation in Internet Explorer Mobile will be coming later in 2008 with the version 6 release.

FM radio: The inclusion of an FM radio receiver is rare for Windows Mobile and I only know of one or two HTC devices that have had this before. You do need to have the HTC stereo headset plugged into the device because it serves as the antenna and without it you will get an error message when you launch the application. After launching the application you will see you can quickly scan and save stations as presets, listen via the headset or integrated speaker, change presets, or listen in stereo or mono. The radio also supports RDS so you can see the station id, artist playing, and title of the song in a scrolling part of the FM radio application. I listen to a lot of radio since I don’t own many songs and was very pleased to see this functionality.

Video of Opera Mobile 9.5, YouTube application, and FM radio application

Phone application: With all of the wireless connectivity options and focus on data and applications, I sometimes forget the HTC Touch Diamond is also a mobile phone. The integrated dial pad has large keys so you can easily dial your contacts and like the non-touch screen devices the device will smart filter your contact list as you dial numbers and spell a contact’s name. The phone menu includes options for call history, speed dial, saving to notes, and video call options.

There is a forward facing camera, but unfortunately in the U.S. video calling is not yet supported so I cannot test out this functionality. I showed the options screen in my video because a reader asked about it and you may want to look for a review from another country where this is supported to see how it works.

One phone function that I think I will be using quite a bit is the way the phone automatically starts a note, associated with the call, when you slide out the stylus on the device.

One thing I didn’t show in the video is the cool feature where you can quickly mute an incoming call by setting the device face down on a table when a call comes in. I can see this being useful when in a meeting or other location where a call isn’t convenient at the time.

Text input methods: There are three included HTC text entry methods, including a phone keypad, compact QWERTY keyboard, and full QWERTY keyboard. The phone keypad has an on-screen traditional phone keypad with the ability to toggle between ABC and T9 modes and a symbol key that gives you access to 13 screens of symbols you can enter. There is also a 123 key to enter numbers and common punctuation. Tapping and holding on the key activates the light gray letter/punctuation above that key

The compact QWERTY keyboard is the SureType keyboard where most keys have two letters on each key. The ABC/T9 toggle switch is also present, along with the 13 screen symbol options and 123 key. Tapping and holding on the key activates the light gray letter/punctuation above that key, just like you see with the phone keypad.

A full QWERTY keyboard option is also present and it is actually large enough to easily hit the keys with your finger. Again, the ABC/T9 toggle and tap and hold functionality is present. Tapping the 123 key opens a number/punctuation keyboard and then gives you access to 9 more screens of symbols and characters to choose from.

In addition to these three finger-optimized HTC keyboard options, you can always use the Windows Mobile Block Recognizer, Keyboard, Letter Recognizer, and Transcriber options on the HTC Touch Diamond.

Video of the phone application and text input methods

Camera quality and functionality: One thing I was really looking forward to try on the HTC Touch Diamond was the 3.2 megapixel camera and after using it to take some photos and video, I have to say I am quite impressed. The device takes very good photos in good lighting and obviously since there is no flash the photos in low or no light conditions are poor. The display auto rotates when you look at photos and videos too.

The photo application works like the previous photo application where you can dynamically zoom into features on the photo by drawing a clockwise circle around the object. Going counter-clockwise zooms you out. The experience of flipping through photos is much like the iPhone and again is another fun feature. You can check out one photo below and three others I took with the Diamond in my image gallery.

Thoughts and 2nd impressions of the HTC Touch Diamond: The more I use the HTC Touch Diamond, the more I like it and I wasn’t quite sure about it since I really do like integrated QWERTY keyboards. This device really isn’t targeted to the power user, but has just about everything you need and so far is appealing to this power user. The extremely small size and FUN features though really make it a compelling device and if it had 3G support in the U.S. then I would be even more impressed. There will be a North American version coming later in 2008 so that will be taken care of eventually.

The device feels great in my hand and fits well in my shirt pocket since it is so light. It is amazing how much is packed into such a small form factor. The angled back is so subtle that you cannot really feel the ridges on the back, but yet it adds some styling to the device. The VGA display is absolutely fantastic and impresses me every time I interact with the device.

I have loaded up about 10 of my own 3rd party applications and after two days of heavy usage have yet to need to reset the device and I have charged it fully twice. I have to still do more extensive battery testing since the 950 mAh capacity seems small. I also plan to try other 3rd party applications that are important to me.

It has been tough to come up with any cons of the device so far, but I do plan to use it for a couple of weeks and write up more thoughts. The only cons I can think of that may concern people is the 3 tab limit in Opera Mobile 9.5 and the lack of a camera flash. That’s not much, but there really isn’t much not to like in the device.

IBM to cool chips with H20

2008-06-06T23:16:00.002+05:30

Much like a Porsche boxer engine — only much, much smaller — scientists from the IBM Zurich Research Lab and the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin are working on a microchip that uses micro pipes of water to cool itself, IBM announced this morning.

The chip’s components are built in a three-dimensional stack instead of side-by-side on a silicon wafer. Water is pumped a cooling container (purple in the image above) through the chip’s layers through spaces directly integrated within the chips’ structure (orange, above).

Chips built in a three-dimensional stack formation offer more pathways for info to be processed and can shorten the distance chip information needs to travel by as much as 1000 times, according to Thomas Brunschwiler, a senior engineer in the Advanced Thermal Packaging Group at the IBM Zurich Research Lab who has been working on the chip for almost two years.

The trouble, of course, is that this type of experimental chip structure also generates a large amount of heat. To address the problem, the team has developed a cooling system consisting of micro pipes of water as narrow as 50 microns — about as thin as a strand of human hair — that are interspersed between each chip layer.

To prevent an electrical short, the hair-like water pipes are hermetically sealed from the chip’s other components first with a silicon wall and then a layer of silicon oxide, Brunschwiler said. The scientists used a solder consisting of a mixture of gold and tin, which has a low melting point, to bond the individual pipes from layer to layer without damaging other chip components.

Intended for use in supercomputers, the chip is five to ten years away from being commercially available.

“But before that one would probably see chips with one core layer and a memory layer sitting on top that can still be cooled with outside system,” Brunschwiler said.

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time water has come up on the drawing board for cooling. As many of you are aware, companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard sell server racks with liquid cooling systems. Researchers at the Tyndall Institute in Cork and the University of Limerick announced in March that they are working on a liquid cooling system incorporated into the packaging that encases chips. And in April IBM announced a supercomputer that uses water alongside its processors to cool them.

Leaked Flip Mino camcorder official, touch sensitive

2008-06-06T23:11:00.002+05:30

The leaked Mino camcorder from Flip is now official, and from the looks of it, it’s still got the stripped-down appeal of its sibling Video.

New features on the Mino include touch sensitive buttons (as opposed to click) and an increased video bit rate of 4.0 Mbps (doubled from before), giving the user an hour of capture.

What’s more, the built-in sharing function will now upload to MySpace, YouTube and AOL. Dimensions are a lithe 3.94″ x 1.97″ x 0.63″.

On the flip side (no pun intended — well, okay, maybe a little), the camera’s resolution is still 640 x 480, and the lens and 2X zoom remain the same.

One change in particular should be noted: AA battery capability has been swapped for a non-user replaceable Li-ion cell, doubling battery life to four hours at the expense of quick-fire, on-the-go replacement. It will take a minimum of two hours to recharge using a new power adapter or three hours plugged into a USB port.

The Mino is available now for $180.

Andrew J. Nusca is an assistant editor for ZDNet.com.

Asus R700t

2008-06-06T22:17:00.005+05:30

The good: The Asus R700t portable navigation system features a slim design and has an integrated traffic receiver. You also get a complimentary subscription to the traffic services, integrated Bluetooth, and 3D building renderings.

The bad: The R700t doesn't include text-to-speech functionality, route recalculations weren't always efficient, and general performance can be slow at times.

The bottom line: For the company's first stab at the GPS market, the Asus R700t is an impressive debut, offering some great navigation features. However, we'd like to see the addition of text-to-speech functionality and smoother performance before completely committing to it.

While best known for its computer components and motherboards, Asus is branching out to all sorts of consumer electronics, including GPS. The Asus R700t is one of its first portable navigation devices, and we must admit we're pleasantly surprised. The slim device is easy to use and features some great navigation tools that aren't commonly found in other PNDs. For example, the R700t shows 3D building renderings on its maps, and it has an embedded traffic receiver. In addition, you get a free lifetime subscription to the Traffic Message Channel. Given all these great features, we were shocked and ultimately disappointed that the system lacked text-to-speech functionality. If Asus adds this technology and fixes some of the performance glitches we experienced during our test period, the company could compete well in this space. The Asus R700t is available now for $325.

Design
At just 3.1 inches high by 5 inches wide by 3.1 inches high by 0.5 inch deep and weighing 7 ounces, the Asus R700t is one of the slimmest portable navigation systems we've seen in a while--quite a feat considering the number of features that are crammed into the device. On front, there's a 4.3-inch touch screen that shows off 65,000 colors at a 480x272-pixel resolution. The display has a light-sensing technology that will automatically optimize the backlighting for your current environment. During our test drives, we didn't have any problems viewing maps and the touch screen was responsive.

The R700t's interface is pretty intuitive with large icons and clear identifications, and we were able to figure out most functions just by playing around with the device. From the main menu, you can choose from the various functionalities of the device--navigation, video player, photo viewer, music player, or phone. Once in the Navigation application, you can choose from two menu options--Advanced and Simple. Advanced gives you a few more routing options and navigation tools, such as a track log, saved routes, and search. If you're new to GPS, you may want start with the Simple mode and then switch to Advanced after you have more experience using the R700t.

There's a microSD expansion slot on the left side while there's a mini USB port and a 2.5mm headphone jack on the right side. On top of the unit, there's a power button but the main power switch is on the bottom. The speaker is located on the back as well as an external antenna jack.

The Asus R700t comes packaged with a car charger, an AC adapter, a USB cable, a pair of earbuds, a vehicle mount (windshield only), a protective carrying case, a 2GB microSD card, desktop software, and reference material. The vehicle mount securely held the unit in place, but like the TomTom GO 930, Asus doesn't include a dashboard disc, which is a problem for California and Minnesota drives since drivers are prohibited in these states to have anything mounted to the windshield.

Features
The Asus R700t has an impressive feature list, though there's one omission that perplexes us (more on this later). To start, the R700t is equipped with a SiRFstarIII GPS receiver and comes preloaded with TeleAtlas maps of North America, including Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Canada. Planning a trip can start several ways. You can enter a specific address, coordinates if you know them, select a point of interest, or choose a location from your Favorites or History list.

The R700t can calculate routes in one of four ways--fast, easy, economical, and short--and gives you the option to allow or avoid highways, toll roads, carpool lanes, and so forth. There are also pedestrian, bicycle, taxi, bicycle, and emergency route options. The Asus R700t also has an embedded traffic antenna and comes with a complimentary lifetime subscription to the Traffic Message Channel, and it can provide alternate routes around heavy congestion or accidents. Other standard navigation features include automatic route recalculation, multistop trips, simulated demos, speed alerts, and, of course, text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions. Unfortunately, the R700t does not include text-to-speech functionality, which is our biggest beef with the device. For a GPS to have so many advanced and useful features but not text-to-speech, baffles us.

You can view maps in 2D or 3D mode, and with day or night colors. The map screen shows you plenty of data, such as the name of the street you're on, distance to next turn, estimated time of arrival, remaining distance, a compass, signal strength, and more. In addition, the Asus R700t offers 3D building renderings, which is pretty cool to see as it runs you through the route.

The R700t has integrated Bluetooth 2.0, so you can pair with a compatible Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and use it as a hands-free speaker system. Once paired with your handset, you can make calls using the system's onscreen dialpad or if there's a number associated with a point of interest you can dial out directly. Unfortunately, however, you can't transfer your phone's contact list or call history.

Finally, the Asus R700t has multimedia capabilities, including a video and music player and an image viewer. The system supports MP3 and WMA music files and WMV videos. The player itself is fairly basic with just the standard functions--play, forward/rewind, shuffle, and repeat. You can create playlists on the device, and there is a full-screen mode for videos. The image viewer can show JPEG and BMP files. The R700t has 1GB Flash ROM and 64MB RAM. For multimedia files, we recommend using a microSD card; the R700t can accept up to 4GB cards.

Performance
As far as general performance, the Asus R700t could be sluggish at times, despite having a 400MHz processor. It takes several minutes for the Navigation application to start up, so don't freak out if you don't see anything happening for a while. Also, there were a couple of times where we had to reset the device after the system froze on us. It only happened twice but still, a little cause for worry.

For our road tests, we took to the streets of San Francisco and from a cold start, it took about three minutes to get a fix on our location under cloudy skies. Subsequent starts were a bit mixed; sometimes satellite acquisition would be instantaneous while at other times, it would take a couple of minutes. Once locked on, the R700t did a good job of tracking our location, and as we noted earlier, it was pretty cool and useful to see the 3D building renderings, as it gives you a more accurate idea of your position with points of reference. We found the POI database to be fairly up to date, though we noticed some missing listings.

We also entered our standard trip from the Marina District to CNET's downtown headquarters. The R700t quickly returned with directions based on the fastest route. The list of turn-by-turn directions were accurate so we headed off on our journey. The voice-guided directions were loud and clear, but again, we missed having the text-to-speech functionality. We also missed several turns to test the route recalculation rate, which was quick but we didn't always necessarily agree with the new route, as some suggestions seemed roundabout to us.

We were also able to successfully pair the R700t with the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 and make and receive calls. And while we're not huge fans or proponents of multimedia in GPS, the R700t was actually quite a decent image viewer. Watching videos in full-screen mode was pretty bad since you could see all the pixelation; it's much better on the smaller screen. Music playback through the system's speakers sounded pretty weak, but you can pipe audio to your car stereo via FM transmitter.

for Asus R700t
Prices and availabilityfor Asus R700t

Price Range: $377

Manufacturer: ASUSTek Computer Inc. Part number: 90WG-S03100002T

The enchantment of Google Earth

2008-06-06T22:04:00.008+05:30

On Thursday, Disney and Google announced an initiative that brings Walt Disney World into Google Earth. That means that most of the Manhattan-size group of theme parks is now available to view in 3D in the latest version of Google Earth. The partnership allows users to look up-close at the seemingly endless rides, attractions, shops, lakes, and other features of the various parks that make up Disney World.

This is the view in Google Earth of Cinderella Castle, the signature structure of both Disney World and Disneyland.

Another one of Disney World's signature features is the giant dome of Epcot Center. This is a view of the dome from the new Google Earth 3D Disney World initiative, which was announced Thursday.

For many people, Space Mountain, though one of the older rides at Disney World, is still the most fun. Here is the famous building with its well-recognized spires, as seen in Google Earth.

Another well-known ride at Disney World and Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean was the inspiration for the series of movies of the same name. This is a view in Google Earth of the entrance to the ride at Disney World.

For kids, Dumbo the Flying Elephant is one of the more attractive rides, but many parents and other adults enjoy it as well. This is an aerial view of the ride as seen in Google Earth.

The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, as seen in Google Earth.

One of the themes of Epcot is its national pavilions. This is the American Adventure, as seen in Google Earth.

The giant Tree of Life is the center of the Animal Kingdom at Disney World. It is an artificial tree, built on the structure of an old oil platform. Here, it is seen from inside Google Earth.

An aerial view of the Enchanted Tiki Room, as seen in Google Earth. On Thursday, Disney and Google announced an initiative that brought most of Disney World into Google Earth in 3D.

Expedition Everest, as seen in the new Google Earth-Walt Disney World 3D initiative.

The search engine conundrum

2008-06-06T21:33:00.004+05:30

i=Zack Whittaker.
Amongst many things, Zack Whittaker is a good-for-nothing, pink-sock wearing, British student at the University of Kent in Canterbury UK studying computer science.

I was looking through the Channel 8 Students Union earlier on and noticed an important point concerning search engines. It’s widely known that search engines are the most viewed websites on the Internet because they are the starting point to look for something. We may even know the direct link to the website we’re looking for, but sometimes people find it simpler to plug in a quick query to get there faster, after all we are getting more and more impatient when it comes to browsing.

I thought it would be a good idea to weigh up the differences and also to see which works better for students using the two most rivalled search engines in the world - Google and Live Search.

Which search engine is better for students? Which allows you access to the data faster, in a better readable format, and which ultimately benefits the user without raising blood pressure levels? I’m taking a stab in the dark at this one, with little-to-accurate results likely.

Note: for you eagle eyed nutters, people with too much time, those who hate me already readers, you’ll notice these screenshots aren’t 100% accurate. The data should be, but I’ve cropped and moved some bits around to get them to fit on screen without breaking the backend engine.

Test 1 - The Maths Question
Most of you already know you can type in a simple maths query into a search engine and get an answer, or at the very least a link to a page which will help. I tried 3x + 2 = 15, which should give me a result for x. I know by working it out in my head it’ll be around 4. I tried Google first.

It failed me. I’m impatient, I’m tired, and I haven’t had a cup of tea in a while - I want an answer straight away and Google hasn’t given it me. I tried Live Search next, with a much more desirable result.

My first result was the answer, and accurate to 6 decimal places too. It doesn’t help when it’s a recurring number, but even still, Google 0, Live Search 1.

Test 2 - The Geography Question
A student isn’t necessarily a solitary being - we need to move from place to place, normally to find more sources of alcohol. When that is the case, we rely on a good old web search to point us in the right direction. Say I wanted to get to Canterbury and I had no idea where it is (I realise now it’s stupid, because I already live here, but go along with me for the time being). I’ll tap it into a search engine. Live Search worked last time so this time it’s first up.

What? I don’t care about the news articles, I was hoping for pretty pictures telling me how to get there! I tap it into Google and get this:

Now that’s more like it - a little map telling me where about it is in the country, and one click to a full size map for better viewing. What’s better is the application of a start address, allowing me to tell Google where I want to travel from and it’ll return driving directions. Without a doubt, Google 1, Live Search 1. Level pegging.

Test 3 - The Ultimate Question
Philosophy students are well known for asking the impossible and questioning reality - but most students do that as they’re stumbling to another bar after being kicked out the last one. In the spirit of the late Douglas Adams (of which his death confirms for me - exercise is bad for you), I thought it’d be a good idea to question both search engines for the ultimate question - the answer to life, the Universe and everything.

Both produce the same result, which means philosophy students will be happy content (at least) and drunken students can sleep easy that night. Google 2, Live Search 2.

Test 4 - The Scientific Question
Everyone at some point will need to know that 26Mg is a radiogenic daughter product of 26Al but for the time being, a simple scientific answer needs to be on hand. Say you’re a budding scientist and you need to quickly find out the electron configuration of Einsteinium - plug in a few keywords and hopefully we’ll get a result straight away.

Again, except this time with Live Search rather than Google, impatience is definitely not a virtue and we want the answer here and now without any screwing around. Sure, the answer is there in the first result, but something big and bold would be nice to point it out. I try Google:

There we have it - written right at the top in bold letters to point it out to me. Considering most students seem to work well in the dead of the night, eyesight suffers and a visual indicator does help. Google 3, Live Search 2.

Test 5 - The Language Question
Every student will need to look up a definition of a word at some point - whether you’re doing a science degree and need to know what ionisation is, or studying 18th century Spanish history and don’t know what enlightened absolutism is. Forget using a dictionary, you thought you could survive on Wikipedia. You need a definition function compatible with a search engine. In this case, I want to know what “defenestration” is:

Ahh - straight away we have a definition of defenestration, and a link to an external site. What’s even better is Google returns often a .edu, .ac.uk or a .gov address which is deemed “more accurate” than other domains for the reason they have to be accurate. Not ruling out other search engines, I try Live Search anyway:

The define: function works in both search engines, but this is what really pisses me off. Live Search provides a link to its own MSN Encarta dictionary instead of providing links to other “more trustworthy” sites like seen in Google’s results, that of Princeton University. I’ll have you know I clicked the “No” link when it asked me whether it was useful. Even though the result was the same, the principle of not linking elsewhere shows they’re greedy. Even students have principles - granted, not many, but still some. Because of this, Google 4, Live Search 2.

Overall I’ve come to the conclusion that even though Google seems to score higher in some areas, Live Search doesn’t do too badly. They both have some impressive features, and everyone has their own person taste to which engine they prefer. I’ve always preferred Google, but the statistics don’t lie - more people worldwide prefer Google, and in my understanding, so do students

Scaling the cloud, deflating the price of software

2008-06-06T21:28:00.001+05:30

i=Phil Wainewright.
Phil Wainewright is a commentator and strategist on emerging software industry trends. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

After a week of intensive usage last December getting his company’s application to run against Amazon’s SimpleDB cloud database, DreamFactory founder and CTO Bill Appleton wondered how big a bill he’d run up. To his amazement, what had seemed like a week’s heavy usage had cost just a few cents. The discovery was an epiphany both for Appleton and for CEO Eric Rubin. They had stumbled upon what seemed to be a new economic reality for cloud-based application software.

I learnt of all this back in January, and I’ve since been biding my time until last week’s launch of the Amazon-hosted product [disclosure: for which, as a paid engagement, I’ve written a white paper (PDF)]. I’ve been eager to write about it because the story highlights two separate but complementary phenomena that in combination seem to radically undermine traditional on-demand pricing models.

First of all, as Appleton told me in January, “Usage-based pricing is as disruptive to on-demand as on-demand was to enterprise software.” On-demand pricing of anywhere between $30 and $300 per user per month has challenged the high implementation and maintenance costs of conventional on-premise software. But now there’s a new threat to the traditional monthly per-user subscription pricing model for on-demand applications, in which every user has typically paid the same flat (or should that be fat?) all-inclusive price, irrespective of usage.

Appleton’s words were still ringing in my head in April when Bungee Labs [disclosure: which paid me to record a podcast] switched to usage-based pricing for its cloud-hosted application development and deployment platform, resulting in monthly per-user pricing as low as $3.60 for intensive use and anything from $0.48 down to a mere $0.02 for occasional use. That’s at least a tenth — and at the extremes as much as a ten-thousandth — of the traditional all-inclusive monthly per-user fee for on-demand software.

Monthly pricing for DreamFactory’s DreamTeam Suite is $12.95 per account, plus Amazon usage fees per user, which DreamFactory says “per month should be no more than cup of coffee.” Per enterprise — with unlimited administrators, projects and users, private training and live support, is $89.95 plus Amazon usage fees per user. What DreamFactory has done is split off its software licence fee — at either $13 or $90 per account depending on complexity — from the Amazon-supplied computing cost. The outcome is a truly commodity price per user.

Of course this is only applicable for forms-plus-database applications like DreamTeam project management, as opposed to the more complex transaction capability that Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform offers these days (and which vendors such as CODA are tapping at a monthly per-user price well below $20). But for applications like DreamTeam it makes no sense to stay at the $20 per user level of Apex and AppExchange when they can be hosted at Amazon Web Services for a fraction of that monthly cost. DreamFactory is also working on a version for Google App Engine, whose database costs are said to be a further ten times less than Amazon SimpleDB.

The challenge for software vendors is that a lot of these pricing differentials are purely due to how they decide to price their assets. Salesforce has to charge the highest price because it pays Oracle for a commercial database license. Amazon runs an open-source database so can charge much less. Google thinks of its database as more as a file system so sets its charges lower still. Is there a quantitive difference between any of these three infrastructure alternatives?

The second element of DreamFactory’s secret sauce is that its local client architecture means that it has to maintain minimal infrastructure of its own. “We’re using other people’s servers and our customers’ clients and it drives the cost into the ground compared to enterprise applications,” Appleton told me back in January. Others are starting to grok what Appleton has long known — consider this recent post by Dion Almaer (which I discovered via the always-perceptive Dare Obasanjo):

“Gears is so much more than offline, and it is really exciting to see ‘Speed Up!’ as a link instead of ‘Go Offline?’ … With an embedded database, local server storage, worker pool execution, desktop APIs, and other exciting modules such as notifications, resumable HTTP being talked about in the community … I think we can all get excited.”

What’s really exciting about Gears, DreamFactory, AIR and Silverlight is the ability to use the client’s processing resources instead of exclusively overloading the server side of the infrastructure (the architectural failing that has made Twitter suffer so much of late).

Appleton believes that DreamFactory has struck this balance perfectly, keeping the vendor’s own infrastructure overhead predictably low while at the same time leveraging client resources to extract maximum value (at minimum cost) from whichever on-demand server resources offer the best fit for DreamFactory’s applications.

DreamTeam currently works with Salesforce.com AppExchange, Intuit QuickBase, Amazon Web Services (including SimpleDB) and WebEx Connect, with Google App Engine support in the pipeline, and every intention of connecting to Microsoft’s Live Mesh and any other useful cloud resource that emerges. This notion of a cloud-neutral client that ports functionality to wherever it offers most value is intriguing and different from everything else that’s out there (though Gears is perhaps the closest in spirit). I believe it has huge potential — especially in driving forward the commoditization and price deflation of on-demand functionality.

The Death of the SUV

2008-06-06T21:06:00.003+05:30

Dearly beloved. We gather here today to mourn the demise of the sport utility vehicle, or "SUV" as its friends liked to call it.

The gas-guzzler lived a full life, driving in the fast lane from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Alas, it fell ill a few years ago and never recovered. And really, we can't say the death came as a surprise. For years, folks complained about the environmental impact of low-mileage vehicles. Over time, those voices grew louder, but still the SUV fought on, proudly taking up two parking spaces and scaring hybrids from its lane.

But then, gas prices soared and the SUV's vital signs plummeted. As much as people love large cars, the costs to keep fuel in the tank proved too much to take. As the New York Times reported, it now costs $100k to own and keep a similarly inefficient full size pickup running for five years. And so people pulled the plug on their trucks and SUVs, taking the beleaguered vehicles off life support and into the museum of dead car fads.

U.S. News and World Report has written a thoughtful and compelling obit on the yuppie chariot. Read it and remember the SUV's positive qualities as well as its faults. It's what it would have wanted.

G-Tech G-Drive mini Triple (160GB)

2008-06-05T22:39:00.005+05:30

The good: Fast FireWire 800 throughput; FireWire interface is bus-powered; OS X-ready, cool and quiet during operation, three-year warranty.
The bad: High cost per GB; subpar FireWire 400 throughput speed; not Windows XP-friendly, USB 2.0 requires separate power adapter purchase.
The bottom line: Unless you are using a Mac with a FireWire 800 port, G-Tech's G-Drive mini Triple portable hard drive holds little appeal.

We have mixed feelings for the G-Drive mini Triple. On one hand, this portable hard drive boasts three connection options, a rugged design, and an internal hard drive that spins at a fleet 7,200rpm (most 2.5-inch drives spin at only 5,400rpm or slower). But a drive's rotation speed offers little difference in performance, particularly when operating on a FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 connection as we saw in testing. The other interface option is FireWire 800. The drive is quite friendly with Macs, but those running Windows XP will need to engage in a rather advanced reformatting process before you get up and running. We also found that when operating via USB 2.0, the drive requires you to purchase the separate power adapter. Finally, at around $250 for the 200GB model, the G-Drive mini Triple does not offer good value per GB. Thus, we are left to conclude that the G-Drive mini Triple is suited only for Mac users with FireWire 800 ports. The SimpleTech Signature Mini Black Cherry or the OWC Mercury are portable drives with broader appeal--both offer more storage space, a lower cost per GB, and better support for USB 2.0 connections.

Drive type External hard drive
Connector options FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB2.0
Available capacities 160GB, 200GB, 250GB
Capacity of test unit 200GB
Drive speed 7,200rpm (200GB version) and 5400rpm (the others)
Cache 8MB
Dimensions (LWH) 4.9 x 3.2 x 0.9 inches
Notable design features Rugged aluminum casing.
OSes supported Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X
Software included None
Service and Support Three-year warranty

Design and features
The G-Drive mini Triple ships in a simple package that includes a traveling pouch, a CD with the manual in PDF format and data cables for all the connection types it supports (USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800). The drive has a power port for an optional $20 power adapter, which is not included. Unfortunately, we discovered that the USB 2.0 connection, unlike the FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 connections, needs this adapter for the drive to operate--with both PCs and Macs. (If you have a MacBook Air , which has no FireWire connection port, make sure you get the adapter when you order the drive.)

The G-drive boasts a very rugged and Mac-friendly design with an aluminum case that also works as a heat sink to dissipate the heat generated by the internal hard drive. On the front, hidden inside the case, there's a LED that glows white, indicating the status of the drive when working. In the G-Drive mini Triple series, the 200GB is the only version that spins at 7,200rpm (which is also the one we reviewed); the other models spin at 5,400rpm.

If you have a Mac running OS X, you need to simply plug the drive into a FireWire port and voila, it works. The drive is preformatted in HFS+ with Journaling and is Time Machine ready right out of the box. However, if you want to use it with Windows, it's a different story entirely.

Unlike any drives we've reviewed before, the G-Drive is preformatted using GUID Partition Table (GPT) mechanism, which is a new and more flexible way to partition hard disks that replaces the older Master Boot Record (MBR) scheme. Though more advanced and compatible with Intel's new Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) initiative, GPT is not backward compatible with MBR and therefore is not supported in Windows XP or older versions of Windows. For this reason, contrary to the instruction of the G-Drive's manual, the disk management tool within Windows XP can't manipulate the G-Drive's default partitioning method. To make this happen, you will first need to use some advanced third-party disk-partitioning software, such as Acronis DiskDirector, to reformat it into an MBR-based file system.

Windows Vista, on the other hand, supports GPT natively, and you will not have much trouble getting it to work with this operating system. However, it's important to note that Windows Vista's built-in tool doesn't change the G-Drive's partitioning mechanism. This means the drive still doesn't work with Windows XP once reformatted by Windows Vista. In order to make the drive work with both operating systems, you need to convert its partitioning scheme from GPT-based into MBR-based using some third-party software as mentioned above.

By comparison, the OWC Mercury drive is also preformatted for OS X but retains the MBR partitioning scheme and therefore can be reformatted to work with other operating systems very easily. Nonetheless, we found the G-Drive mini Triple worked well with Windows XP once successfully reformatted.

Cost per GB
Priced at around $250 and offering only 200GB, G-Drive mini Triple is one of the more expensive drives per GB. Compared with competing portable hard drives that feature 2.5-inch laptop drives, such as the SimpleTech Signature Mini Black Cherry that we reviewed recently, the G-Drive costs more than double per GB. To its credit, however, the G-Drive mini Triple is the only one spinning at 7,200rpm; the rest on the chart spin at 5,400rpm.

Model Capacity Est. street price Cost per GB
SimpleTech Signature Mini Black Cherry 320GB $180 $0.56
Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 160GB $90 $0.56
Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive 160GB $100 $0.63
OWC Mercury On-The-Go 500GB $350 $0.70
Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External HDD 160GB $140 $0.88
G-Tech G-Drive mini Triple (7,200RPM) 200GB $250 $1.25

Performance
Considering the higher revolutions per minute, we had relatively high expectations for the G-Drive mini Triple's performance. The drive failed to meet our expectations and registered mixed scores in CNET Labs' testing.

The drive's FireWire 800 performance was excellent, registering 218.6Mbps, which is a considerable 17 percent faster than that of the OWC Mercury on our write test. As we see with most drives, differences in read speeds were slight, with the G-Drive mini Triple hovering around the 200Mbps mark with the rest of the pack.

The drive's performance using the FireWire 400 connection was disappointing. The drive's 7,200rpm speed didn't translate into better throughput. The G-Drive finished behind the OWC Mercury, which spins at 5,400rpm, on both our read and write tests.

The drive did a little better with the USB 2.0 connection scoring 147Mbps and 163Mbps on the write test and read test, respectively. Its write score was noticeably faster than that of the Mercury but practically the same as the Signature Mini Black Cherry's. Its read score, on the other hand, was about the same as the Mercury's, while significantly faster than that of the Black Cherry.

The G-Drive mini Triple's casing worked very well as the intended cooling solution; the drive managed to operate quietly and stay relatively cool during our testing process.

Service and support
G-Technology has a lot of love for the G-drive mini Triple and backs it up with a three-year warranty. The company's toll technical phone support is available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST weekdays. You can also get help via e-mail. At its Web site, you can download firmware and the manual and browse a rather simple FAQs section.

Portable hard drive read/write tests
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

G-Tech G-Drive mini TRIPLE (FireWire 800)
Write-218.6
Read-200.5
OWC Mercury On-The-Go (FireWire 800)
186.9
197.2
OWC Mercury On-The-Go (FireWire 400)
181.9
194.6
SimpleTech Mini Signature Black Cherry (USB 2.0)
147.4
154.6
G-Tech G-Drive mini TRIPLE (USB 2.0)
147.0
163.0
G-Tech G-Drive mini TRIPLE (FireWire 400)
144.5
149.9
OWC Mercury On-The-Go (USB 2.0)
138.5
162.6

General
Device Type
Hard drive - External hard drive
Width
3.2 in
Depth
4.9 in
Height
0.9 in
Weight
9 oz
Hard Drive
Capacity
160 GB
Interface type
IEEE 1394b (FireWire 800) / IEEE1394 (FireWire) / Hi-Speed USB
Spindle speed
5400 rpm
Storage Controller
Type
None
Storage Controller (2nd)
Type
None
Expansion / Connectivity
Interfaces
1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire) - 6 pin FireWire, 1 x IEEE 1394b (FireWire 800) - 9 pin FireWire 800, 1 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin mini-USB Type B
Compatible Bays
None
Miscellaneous
Included Hard Drive Accessories
Carrying case
Cables Included
1 x USB cable - 1.6 ft, 1 x IEEE 1394b cable - 1.6 ft, 1 x IEEE 1394 cable - 1.6 ft
Power
External Hard Drive Power Source
FireWire bus
System Requirements
OS Required
Apple MacOS 9.2 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000 / XP
Manufacturer Warranty
Service & support type
2 years warranty
Service & Support Details
Limited warranty - 2 years

Missing Cape Cod lighthouse located in California

2008-06-05T21:45:00.007+05:30

A lighthouse at Point Montara is shown in Montara, Calif., Wednesday, June 4, 2008. According to lighthouse researchers, this lighthouse was first erected in 1881 overlooking Wellfleet Harbor in Wellfleet, Mass. and had been moved by the Coast Guard from Wellfleet to Yerba Buena, Calif., and eventually to Point Montara.

WELLFLEET, Mass. - Local historians for decades thought the 30-foot tall lighthouse that once overlooked Wellfleet Harbor had been taken down and destroyed in 1925. ADVERTISEMENT

Turns out, it had just been moved to the California coast.

The fate of the cast-iron tower was uncovered last year by lighthouse researchers and reported by Colleen MacNeney in this month's edition of Lighthouse Digest.

MacNeney told the Cape Cod Times in Wednesday's edition it was her most exciting discovery.

Wellfleet historian Helen Purcell says the discovery of the lighthouse at Point Montara, 25 miles south of San Francisco, was a genuine shock.

MacNeney says she discovered correspondence that proved the lighthouse, first erected in 1881, had been moved by the Coast Guard from Wellfleet to Yerba Buena, Calif., and eventually to Point Montara.

There is no known documentation explaining how it was moved across the country, MacNeney said.

But Jim Walker, chairman of the Cape Cod Chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation, speculates that because it is metal, it could have been disassembled bolt by bolt, with the pieces then transported by rail.

The lighthouse is still used as a navigational aid and a hostel.

NVIDIA announce GeForce 9M Series notebook GPUs

2008-06-05T18:26:00.009+05:30

GeForce 9200M GE

GeForce 9200M GS

GeForce 9300M GS

GeForce 9500M G

GeForce 9500M GS

GeForce 9600M GT

GeForce 9650M GT

Hybrid SLI notebook

GeForce 9 series - 1

GeForce 9 series - 2

GeForce 9 series - 3

GeForce 9 series - 4

Time for LiMo and Android to stop talking

2008-06-05T18:11:00.004+05:30

Ed Burnette has a great piece out today in Dev Connection about Google’s choice of Apache as the main license for its Android phone.

Some pieces will use Eclipse, some GPL V.2, and there will likely be some proprietary bits as well, he writes. That’s nice.

The LiMo folks have also been a-twitter since Verizon decided to join its camp rather than hang out with the Googlers. (The most recently-delivered LiMo phone, the Purple Magic (right) from Purple Labs, looked like a Razr with a penguin on it. Blech.)

But, as a fan of both systems, I would like to kindly ask both sets of developers to close their mouths for a while and get to work.

Press releases, alliances, and application possibilities won’t win this market. It’s designs that will win this market. If neither group can create something as compelling as an iPhone interface, neither will go anywhere.

It’s the proprietary iPhone which has changed the mobile game, demonstrating that with the proper interface people actually will go for mobile data in a big way.

What LiMo and Android are designing, now, is not a mobile phone, but a handheld Internet client. The winner will be the one who makes it most attractive to move the most data back-and-forth on a mobile network.

But as of now, neither group is really in the game. I have yet to see anything compelling from either group beyond press releases.

No more press releases, please. No more FUD. Send me a phone when it’s ready, and I’ll decide whether it’s worthy. By “I” and “me” I mean the marketplace.

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983.

Gadgets for Road Trip 2008

2008-06-05T17:43:00.007+05:30

It's almost summer, and at CNET News.com, summer means road trip time. News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman is about to hit the highways for his third annual gadget-filled trek in search of geek and technology hot spots. This year, he'll travel through the South for three weeks, stopping at sites of note in Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, and more. Here is the gear he'll bring along.

As with road trips past, a big part of Road Trip 2008 will be photographs of the destinations Daniel visits along the way. Last year, he used his own Canon Rebel XT with lenses Canon lent him. This year, he'll be trying Nikon's D60, the company's new entry-level DSLR. It's a 10.2-megapixel camera, and comes with a stock 18-55mm lens. He'll also be using 16-85mm and 70-300mm lenses.

On both Road Trip 2006 and Road Trip 2007, Daniel used a MacBook Pro for his computing needs. This year, Apple lent him a 80GB MacBook Air for the trip. He thinks the Air's extremely thin design will be nice when he's carrying it on his back. Its main drawbacks, he says, are the fact that its battery is internal, and it's therefore not possible to carry a backup, and the fact that it has only one USB port and no FireWire. That means relying on wireless connectivity is crucial, though he also has an external SuperDrive for reading DVDs.

By now, its common to spot iPhones just about everywhere. Road Trip 2008 will be Daniel's first extended trial of Apple's much-touted phone. He's interested in finding out how widespread AT&T's EDGE network is in the deep South, and whether the iPhone works as a wireless Internet device. He's never used a cell phone this big, so it will be interesting to see if the bigger size is uncomfortable. However, its many options and features, including Google Maps and its high-quality camera, are likely to come in very handy.

Verizon's new EVDO modem is much smaller and more streamlined than its previous offerings. The service seems pretty widespread, and the connectivity is fairly high-speed. Daniel will use this modem to connect to the Internet when he's on the move, and in the case of hotels or motels with poor Wi-Fi connectivity, he hopes this device will let him get online easily.
Like Verizon's USB727, the Compass 597 is a high-speed EVDO modem. Daniel will use this in much the same way as the Verizon device, to get online when he's on the move and to work when Wi-Fi is unavailable or too slow. He also plans to compare the performance of the Verizon and Sprint devices during the trip.

With the Flip Ultra video camera, Daniel will be able to take quick and easy video. The Flip allows for easy downloading of video files and then the simple uploading of them to blogs or YouTube. In this case, Daniel will use the device to take short clips and put them up on his Geek Gestalt blog.

Daniel chose the Dash Express because he thinks it's one of the most interesting car navigation systems to come on the market. It's built around giving drivers the best route information in commuting situations, but also has all the features of other navigation systems. For any given route, it offers three alternatives which are based on real-time traffic information. In addition, the device allows users to send addresses from their computers via the Internet and to share data with each other.

Daniel expects the Dash to be useful, as he intends to opt as much as possible for secondary roads over interstate highways, and the Dash is designed to show those routes as well as the main ones.

Qik's technology is still in alpha, but it is being used by some of the most influential bloggers around. The service is designed to be run on smartphones. It works by shooting live streaming video from the phone that is then broadcast to the Internet. Viewers watching live videos shot by Daniel can then send instant messages to him, which appear in the phone's viewfinder. This makes it possible for viewers to send in questions if he's in the middle of interviewing someone interesting.

All completed videos are then archived on a personal Qik "channel" for easy viewing later and each can easily be embedded in a blog entry.

Phoenix Mars Lander’s mission site hacked

2008-06-04T19:01:00.001+05:30

With the world’s eyes on the latest multimedia streaming straight from Mars, during the weekend the Phoenix MarsMission’s site got hit twice, first by an Ukrainian web site defacer who posted a message at the site’s blog, and hours later, the Turkish “sql loverz crew 2008″ redirected the official mission’s site, as well as the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory site to a third-part location serving the defaced page. The Phoenix Mars Lander mission’s security staff are aware of the issue, and seem to have fixed it already, right before making an announcement - Hacker changes Phoenix Mars Lander Web site

A spokeswoman for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission says a hacker took over the mission’s public Web site during the night and changed its lead news story. Spokeswoman Sara Hammond says a mission update posted Friday was replaced with a hacker’s signature and a link redirecting visitors to an overseas Web site. Hammond says the site hosted by the University of Arizona has been taken off line while computer experts work to correct the problem.

Meet the latest group of script kiddies empowered by publicly obtainable remote SQL injection scanners, that each andevery site that’s been affected in the past could have downloaded, and self-audited itself. The perspective that if you don’t take care of your site’s web application vulnerabilities, someone else would, fully applies here. No malware, or false information was distributed despite that the defacer linked to what looks like his homepage and therefore could have embedded malicious links or directly pointed the surfer to them.

And while this doesn’t seem to be what them wanted to achieve, in three of the most recent web site defacement incidents, we have defacers fully abusing the access they have. Last month for instance, Russian nuclear power websites were attacked and nuclear accident rumors spread using them, the Pro-Serbian hacktivists attacking Albanian web sites to spread propaganda messages, as well as a fake rumor for upcoming earthquake spread on the site of a Chinese seismological bureau.
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and E-crime incident response. Dancho is also involved in business development, marketing research and competitive intelligence as an independent contractor. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis.