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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Security holes discovered in iPhones, iPads (AP) : Technet

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Security holes discovered in iPhones, iPads (AP) : Technet

Security holes discovered in iPhones, iPads (AP)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 03:57 PM PDT

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Jul 7, 6:57 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – A new security hole has opened up in Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, raising alarms about the susceptibility of some of the world's hottest tech gadgets to hacker attacks.

Flaws in the software running those devices came to light after a German security agency warned that criminals could use them to steal confidential data off the devices. Apple, the world's largest technology company by market value, said Thursday that it is working on a fix that will be distributed in an upcoming software upgrade.

With the security hole, an attacker can get malicious software onto a device by tricking its owner into clicking an infected PDF file. Germany's Federal Office for Information Security called the flaws "critical weaknesses" in Apple's iOS operating system.

Internet-connected mobile devices are still subject to fewer attacks than personal computer, but they could eventually prove a juicy target for hackers because they are warehouses of confidential banking, e-mail, calendar, contact and other data.

Software vulnerabilities are discovered all the time. What makes the latest discovery alarming is that the weaknesses are already being actively exploited — albeit in a consensual way.

The latest concerns were prompted by the emergence of a new version of a program to allow Apple devices to run any software and circumvent the restrictions that Apple notoriously retains over software distributed through its online store. There are security risks of doing so, but many people find it liberating to install their own software.

Although this program is something people would seek out, the weaknesses that its authors discovered could easily be used for malice, security experts say.

There is an irony in the controversy: The site distributing the program offers a fix for the problem, but to get the fix, a user has to first install the program in question. So a user must defy Apple's restrictions to get the protection until Apple comes up with a fix of its own.

Charlie Miller, a prominent hacker of Apple products, said it likely took months to develop the program to break Apple's restrictions, but a criminal might need only a day or two to modify it for nefarious purposes.

Apple Inc. spokeswoman Bethan Lloyd said Thursday the company is "aware of this reported issue and developing a fix." She would not say when the update will be available.

One reason for gadget owners to take heart: Attacks on smartphones and other Internet gadgets are still relatively rare. One reason is PC-based attacks are still highly lucrative. Still, vulnerabilities such as the ones Apple is confronting show that consumers should take care of securing their mobile devices as they would their home computer.

"These things are computers — they're just small, portable computers that happen to have a phone tacked onto them," said Marc Fossi, manager of research and development for Symantec Security Response. "You've got to treat them more like a computer than a phone. You have to be aware of what's going on with these devices."

Amid scandal, Murdoch kills off News of the World (AP)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 06:35 PM PDT

By JILL LAWLESS and ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Jill Lawless And Robert Barr, Associated Press – 2 hrs 25 mins ago

LONDON – The Murdoch media empire unexpectedly jettisoned the News of the World Thursday after a public backlash over the illegal guerrilla tactics it used to expose the rich, the famous and the royal and remain Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper.

The abrupt decision stunned the paper's staff of 200, shocked the world's most competitive news town and ignited speculation that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. plans to rebrand the tabloid under a new name in a bid to prevent a phone-hacking scandal from wrecking its bid for a far more lucrative television deal.

"This Sunday will be the last issue of the News of the World," James Murdoch, son of the media magnate, announced in a memo to staff.

Mushrooming allegations of immoral and criminal behavior at the paper — including bribing police officers for information, hacking into the voice mail of murdered schoolgirls' families and targeting the phones of the relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the victims of the London transit attacks — cast a dark cloud over News Corp.'s multibillion-dollar plan to take full ownership of British Sky Broadcasting, an operation far more valuable than all of Murdoch's British newspapers.

Faced with growing public outrage, political condemnation and fleeing advertisers, Murdoch stopped the presses on the 168-year-old newspaper, whose lurid scoops have ranged from Sarah Ferguson's claims she could provide access to ex-husband Prince Andrew to motor racing chief Max Mosley's penchant for sadomasochism.

James Murdoch said all revenue from the final issue, which will carry no ads, would go to "good causes." The paper has been hemorrhaging advertisers since the phone hacking scandal escalated this week, with companies including automakers Ford and Vauxhall, grocery chain J. Sainsbury and pharmacy chain Boots pulling ads from the paper.

Police say they are examining 4,000 names of people who may have been targeted by the tabloid, which sells about 2.7 million copies a week.

The paper has acknowledged hacking into the messages of politicians, celebrities and royal aides, but maintained for years the transgressions were confined to a few rogue staff. A reporter and a private investigator working for the paper were jailed for hacking in 2007.

But in recent days the allegations have expanded to take in the phone messages of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who disappeared in 2002 and was later found murdered, as well as the families of two other missing schoolgirls.

James Murdoch said if the allegations were true, "it was inhuman and has no place in our company."

"Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad," he said, "and this was not fully understood or adequately pursued."

"While we may never be able to make up for distress that has been caused, the right thing to do is for every penny of the circulation revenue we receive this weekend to go to organizations — many of whom are long-term friends and partners — that improve life in Britain and are devoted to treating others with dignity," he said.

The announcement sent shock waves across the British media establishment, and among News of the World staff. Features editor Jules Stenson said the news was met with gasps and some tears.

"No one had any inkling," he told reporters outside the company's London headquarters. "There was no lynch mob mentality, there was just a very shocked acceptance of the decision."

Some suspected shutting the paper was a ploy to salvage Murdoch's British media empire as well as the job of Rebekah Brooks, the trusted chief executive of his British news operation.

"News Corp. has taken a bold decision to stop printing the News of the World and close the title. Mr. Murdoch was clearly not willing to jeopardize his bid for BSkyB," said markets analyst Louise Cooper of BGC Partners in London. "Murdoch has shown what a brilliant operator he really is."

Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was one of the 52 people killed in the 2005 London transit bombings — and who suspects his phone may have been hacked — said the paper's closure was "a cynical decision" by Murdoch.

"The only language (Rupert) Murdoch speaks is the dollar and this must have hit him hard," Foulkes said.

The 43-year-old Brooks, editor of News of the World at the time of the eavesdropping allegations, has maintained she did not know about it. James Murdoch said he was "satisfied she neither had knowledge of nor directed" the phone hacking.

News International spokeswoman Daisy Dunlop denied rumors that The Sun, the News of The World's sister paper that publishes Monday through Saturday, would now become a seven-day operation. Still, she seemed to leave room for further developments.

"It's not true at the moment," she said.

According to online records, an unnamed U.K. individual on Tuesday bought up the rights to the domain name "sunonsunday.co.uk."

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, one of the tabloid's alleged hacking victims, said closing the paper would not resolve the problems at News International.

"Cutting off the arm doesn't mean to say you've solved it," he said. "There is still the body and the head and the same culture and that's why there has be a public inquiry into it. I cannot accept for a moment that at the top of the company, Mr. Murdoch — and certainly Rebekah Brooks — didn't know what was going on."

But Charlie Beckett, director of the POLIS media institute at the London School of Economics, said it was a bold move aimed at resolving a situation that had got out of control.

"This is a fantastically brave move to try and cleanse everything and put a stop to it," Beckett said.

The long-running hacking saga exploded Monday with the revelation that the News of the World had hacked into Milly Dowler's voice mail soon after her 2002 disappearance and deleted some messages, giving her parents and police false hope the girl was still alive and hampering their investigation. Her body was discovered months later.

Later, newspapers alleged the tabloid obtained the phone numbers of relatives of people killed in the July 7, 2005, terrorist attacks on London's transit system, as well as those tied to two more slain schoolgirls and the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

What many saw as an acceptable, if illegal, tactic used to gather scoops on drug-using celebrities, philandering politicians or cheating star athletes suddenly became completely unacceptable when missing children and grieving families were targeted.

There is so far no evidence the soldiers' and bomb victims' families' phones were hacked or that the newspaper did anything illegal in obtaining their numbers. Nonetheless, a storm of outrage followed.

The scandal has come uncomfortably close to Prime Minister David Cameron, who, like predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, courted the powerful Murdoch empire whose endorsement is considered capable of swinging elections.

Cameron is friendly with Brooks, and even appointed a former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, to be his communications chief. Coulson resigned from the paper after its former royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking into voice mail messages in 2007, but has always insisted he knew nothing of the eavesdropping.

In January, as the hacking allegations widened, Coulson resigned from 10 Downing St.

The Guardian newspaper and the BBC's "Newsnight" program reported late Thursday that Coulson had been told by police that he would be arrested Friday and questioned about hacking. Several News of the World journalists have already been arrested and quizzed over the allegations, but Coulson would be by far the most senior. No one has been charged since the two convictions in 2007.

Police declined to comment on the reports.

This week Cameron spoke out against the culture of hacking at the paper, calling for public inquiries into the News of the World's behavior as well as into the failure of the original London police inquiry to uncover the extent of the hacking.

"We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into," Cameron said during an emergency debate Wednesday in the House of Commons.

The Metropolitan Police force is also facing an inquiry by the police watchdog over claims its officers took money from the News of the World in exchange for information. The original police investigation into phone hacking, shelved after Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed, was reopened earlier this year.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said he was "determined" to see any officers who received payoffs from journalists facing criminal conviction.

Brian Paddick, a former senior police commander, told the BBC one journalist paid $50,000 (30,000 pounds) for police information and others paid cash in envelopes handed over at a drive-thru fast food restaurant near the News International headquarters.

Some payoffs were "jeopardizing serious criminal investigations by giving out confidential information that could be useful to criminals," Paddick said.

Rupert Murdoch — a global media titan with newspaper, television, movie and book publishing interests in the United States, Britain, Australia and elsewhere — is seeking to buy full control of broadcaster BSkyB, in which he owns a 39 percent share.

His British arm of News Corp. was within reach of gaining the British government's approval to make a bid for BSkyB when the scandal exploded, emboldening rivals and critics, who called on the government to block the takeover.

As the week went on, BSkyB's share price sank, reflecting market anxieties there might be no takeover bid. On Thursday they were down 1.8 percent on the London Stock Exchange.

Shares in News Corp., however, were up 1.6 percent after Thursday's announcement, at $18.22 on the Nasdaq index in New York, although they have fallen from above $18.50 since Tuesday.

Cameron's Conservative-led government had insisted the News of the World scandal had nothing to do with a pure competition decision, and News Corp. had offered to spin off Sky News as an independent company to allay concerns it would have a too-dominant position in the British news market.

Rupert Murdoch refused to discuss the situation Thursday.

"I'm not making any comments," he said when ambushed by reporters at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

____

AP writers Gregory Katz, Raphael G. Satter, Cassandra Vinograd, Danica Kirka and Jonathan Shenfield in London contributed to this report.

Cuba reports 16 percent online in some capacity (AP)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 02:50 PM PDT

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press – Thu Jul 7, 5:50 pm ET

HAVANA – About 16 percent of Cubans are online in some capacity with access to email, the island's intranet or the worldwide Web, a government agency says.

Cuba's National Statistics Office said in a report posted online this week that nearly 1.8 million of the country's 11.2 million residents used some kind of "Internet service" in 2010, a 12 percent increase from 1.6 million the previous year.

The report shows a generally steady increase since 2005.

The U.S. trade embargo has long kept Cuba from connecting to nearby undersea fiber-optic cables, forcing the island to rely on slow, expensive satellite service.

Cuba currently has the second-worst connectivity rates on the planet, according to a report by Akamai Technologies Inc. But a $70 million undersea cable laid with Venezuelan help arrived this year and could come online as early as this month.

The new usage figure is separate from a survey last year by the same office that found only 2.9 percent of Cubans reported having access to the Internet, mostly through schools and workplaces.

The previous survey likely suffered from underreporting of access to black market dial-up accounts. It also was apparently more narrowly focused on direct access to the Web.

The island's intranet is a limited but more widely available online service in which people can surf local sites and open email accounts to send and receive correspondence, including to and from other countries.

Outside experts put the real number of Cubans with access to the larger worldwide Web at about 5 percent to 10 percent.

Cuba treats its limited bandwidth as a precious resource and gives priority to usage deemed to have social merit, such as at universities. Scarce home dial-up accounts are expensive and not available to most Cubans.

The Statistics Office's new report also cited a boom in cellphone usage since President Raul Castro loosened restrictions in 2008. While mobile users numbered just 200,000 in 2007, just over 1 million were registered by last year, it said.

Computing Everywhere: How to get work done in a public place (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 05:45 PM PDT

Colorful project maps the U.S. through phone calls rather than state lines (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 05:24 PM PDT

First iPhones in Space: Final Shuttle Astronauts to Deliver $1 App (Mashable)

Posted: 06 Jul 2011 06:13 PM PDT

Chris Taylor Chris Taylor – Wed Jul 6, 9:13 pm ET

If every government program were this cheap, we'd have the debt problem licked in no time. The final, much-delayed mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis, which has a 30% chance of lifting off this Friday, will be carrying with it the planet's first astro-phones -- a pair of Apple iPhone 4s, ready for a first-of-its-kind experiment aboard the International Space Station, using a $1 app.

[More from Mashable: BlackBerry's Blues Continue as Platform Falls to Third Place]

The app, SpaceLab for iOS [iTunes link], uses the iPhone 4's in-built three-axis gyroscope to replace far more expensive custom-built equipment. It will measure altitude, the curvature of the Earth, and locate itself by looking for recognizable coastline via the iPhone camera. (Astronauts aboard the ISS will be taking the snapshots; no word yet on whether they'll also be choosing filters and posting them to Instagram.)

The idea is to help future spacecraft that might get knocked out of position, lost in low-Earth orbit. In other words, this may be the beginning of a GPS for space.

[More from Mashable: Top 10 TrueHDR iPhone Photos]

But that's not all. NASA is also interested in discovering how well iPhones can withstand the rigors of space travel, particularly how much radiation they are exposed to. The phones will also be taking snapshots of QR codes to help calibrate their sensors, and because QR codes are impossible to avoid these days, even in orbit.

The one experiment that must be on the mind of every iPhone user -- seeing whether you can pick up an AT&T or Verizon signal from space -- is not an official part of the ISS experiment. But the iPhones will be hooked up to bulky external batteries, so astronauts won't need to worry about a weak signal draining their phones or finding somewhere to plug them in.

[via Macworld]

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Twitter security lags some other sites: experts (Reuters)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 06:07 PM PDT

By Jim Finkle and Roy Strom Jim Finkle And Roy Strom – 2 hrs 55 mins ago

BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The fast-growing microblogging site Twitter has fallen behind some other Internet services in introducing tools to help secure the accounts of users, security experts say.

Weaknesses in Twitter's security became apparent on the U.S. July 4 Independence holiday as an unknown hacker took control of a Fox News Twitter account and sent out messages falsely claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama was dead.

While the hijacking of Twitter accounts is not new, the false Tweets about Obama generated headlines around the world.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter. Fox News has said it is unsure how the attacker gained control of its account, but complained that it took Twitter more than five hours to return control of the account to Fox.

"What Twitter needs to do now is to commit to a thorough review of their security practices," said Daniel Diermeier, a professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "For Twitter this is a very serious problem."

Security experts said the attack might have been prevented if Twitter had offered two-factor authentication technology to secure its accounts.

In two-factor authentication systems, a user must enter a second code in addition to a fixed password to access its account. The code changes every minute or so and is sent to a cell phone or other electronic device.

Google Inc and FaceBook already offer two-factor authentication to confirm the identity of users.

Security experts said Twitter could soon come under pressure to do so as well, particularly from influential users such as politicians, major corporations or news outlets.

"They won't have a choice. I think if they want to stay viable they'll have to," said San Diego State University professor Murray Jennex, who teaches information security.

He warned that Twitter would be "flirting with disaster" if it did not proactively add two-factor authentication, and that more high-profile attacks could harm the company's reputation.

In addition to the Fox News heist, PayPal's Twitter account in the United Kingdom was also hijacked this week and followers urged to visit the website www.paypalsucks.com.

SCRAMBLING PASSWORDS

Twitter allows its users to communicate with the site using an ordinary, unscrambled connection, which makes it easier for potential hackers to steal passwords.

The site does offer the option of scrambling that traffic, but users must type "https" before entering the Twitter URL into the Web browser to call up an encrypted connection, or change their options to request https as a default.

Chris Palmer, technology director for the privacy-promoting Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Twitter should use https by default because not all users are aware of the option or care to use it. Google uses https encryption by default for many of its services.

"Basically, if nothing bad happens, it's because no attacker cared to attack," Palmer said of Twitter.

Twitter spokeswoman Lynn Fox declined to say whether the company intended to add two-factor authentication. The company has said in a blog that it hopes to make https encryption the default for all users.

"We take security very seriously and we're always looking for ways to help users make their accounts more secure," she said.

Yet she added that Twitter's users are responsible for securing their own passwords.

"We can't anticipate compromises that occur offsite," she said. "That's one of the reasons we very clearly recommend to users that they be extremely careful with the security of their passwords."

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, Roy Strom in New York and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang)

ISPs, movie, music, TV groups in copyright deal (AFP)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 04:32 PM PDT

by Chris Lefkow Chris Lefkow – Thu Jul 7, 7:32 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Major US Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and music, movie and television industry associations unveiled a long-awaited agreement on Thursday aimed at curbing online copyright infringement.

The Copyright Alert System calls for ISPs to send a series of email notices to Internet subscribers whose accounts have been identified by content owners as illegally downloading music, movies or television shows.

After five notices, subscribers could be subject to "mitigation measures" by an ISP, including temporarily reducing their Internet speed or redirecting their account to a landing page with information about copyright infringement.

The voluntary agreement does not oblige the ISPs to take punitive action, however, which they have been reluctant to do in the absence of a court order.

ISPs will not provide customers' names to rights owners and subscribers can seek an "independent review," at a cost of $35, to determine the validity of an infringement claim.

The Center for Copyright Information, a new group founded by the ISPs and entertainment associations, stressed that the alert system "does not, in any circumstance, require the ISP to terminate an Internet subscriber's account."

But digital rights groups Public Knowledge and The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) warned that it "lists Internet account suspension among the possible remedies" to copyright infringement.

"Today's agreement has the potential to be an important educational vehicle that will help reduce online copyright infringement," Public Knowledge and the CDT said in a joint statement.

"A voluntary, notification-centric approach can sidestep many of the serious concerns that would be raised by government mandates, the adoption of new snooping or filtering technologies, or a draconian 'three strikes' approach centered on disconnecting Internet users," they said.

"But whether the agreement will meet its educational promise or instead will undermine the rights of Internet users will depend on how it is implemented," they said.

"We believe it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court."

Participating ISPs will begin sending out copyright alerts later this year and next year.

AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon signed on to the agreement along with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) and the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).

US ISPs already forward copyright violation notifications from content owners to subscribers but the new agreement standardizes the practice.

The Center for Copyright Information and supporters said the escalating notification system will help reduce online copyright violations.

"We are confident that, once informed that content theft is taking place on their accounts, the great majority of broadband subscribers will take steps to stop it," said James Assey, executive vice president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

RIAA president Cary Sherman said the "groundbreaking" agreement ushers in a "fresh approach to addressing the digital theft of copyrighted works.

Verizon general counsel Randal Milch described the agreement as "a sensible approach to the problem of online-content theft and, importantly, one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers."

The Obama administration welcomed the agreement.

"The administration is committed to reducing infringement of American intellectual property as part of our ongoing commitment to support jobs, increase exports and maintain our global competitiveness," said Victoria Espinel, the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator.

"The joining of Internet service providers and entertainment companies in a cooperative effort to combat online infringement can further this goal and we commend them for reaching this agreement," Espinel said. "We believe it will have a significant impact on reducing online piracy."

L.A. Noire expansion Reefer Madness fires up a new trailer (Digital Trends)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 04:05 PM PDT

Ryan Fleming Ryan Fleming – Thu Jul 7, 7:05 pm ET

The newest downloadable content for L.A. Noire, a vice case, is on the way and we have the new trailer below to prove it. The DLC titled "Reefer Madness," will be released on July 12 on both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network for 320 MS points or $3.99 respectively. Those that purchased the Rockstar Pass for $10 will receive the case as part of that fee.

The "Reefer Madness" case pits Vice Detective Cole Phelps against drug smugglers pushing the vile weed known as marijuana onto the streets of L.A. In order to stop people smoking it and possibly committing suicide or committing rape as the 1936 film of the same name suggests will happen, Phelps and his partner must crack one of the city's largest narcotics rings.

The "Reefer Madness" DLC is the second additional case for the game, and it joins the arson-based investigation currently available under the name "Nicholson Electroplating," as well as two other cases that were originally pre-order bonuses, but can both be purchased as well.

 

Insanely impractical lens mount turns iPhone into a DSLR... sort of (Digital Trends)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 06:46 PM PDT

Mike Dunn Mike Dunn – 2 hrs 16 mins ago

iphone slr mountHow many times have you been taking pictures with your trusty iPhone and thought to yourself "this camera is so great, I wish I could put some huge telephoto lenses on it"? Like most normal people, we are assuming that you have never thought that, but on the off chance that you have, Photojojo might have just the thing for you: an SLR lenses mounting bracket for your iPhone 4, 3G or 3GS.iphone slr mount

The case is made of aluminum, and once installed on your phone you are able to attach either Canon EOS or Nikon SLR lenses to your phone. Hopefully the case is sturdy, since it will cost you $190 for the iPhone 3G and 3GS version and $249 for the iPhone 4 mount. We already know that the iphone 4 is the most used camera on Flickr, but this might be a little overkill. This case joins the likes of the Lecia i9 in the realm of ridiculous iPhone accessories.

Photojojo supplies several sample pictures taken with a SLR lenses attached and a similar photo without one. Even with our untrained eye, we can see that it does enhance the depth of field in the pictures. Photojojo did not have to provide proof that the zoom with the attached lenses is better than a stock iPhone, but you'll find side-by-side pictures as well, just in case you had your doubts.

If you have several unused lenses laying around your house, no DSLR camera, and a lonely iPhone then this might be the perfect product for you. Sadly, in you include the price of the iPhone's required service your iPhone might be the most expensive camera your lenses ever get attached to.

Google's Schmidt sees room for several social networks (Reuters)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 08:02 PM PDT

– 1 hr 1 min ago

SUN VALLEY, Idaho, July 7 (Reuters) – Google Inc is leaving open the door to more co-operation with social-media giants Facebook and Twitter, and believes there is room for multiple social networks as it rolls out its own, executive chairman Eric Schmidt said.

He also said the company will cooperate fully with U.S. antitrust regulators but will not let the formal probe launched last month distract or disrupt its strategy. He was speaking to journalists at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Schmidt, who vacated his CEO seat to co-founder Larry Page in April and now oversees government affairs, said it was too early to say how its new social network, Google Plus, was faring -- but one key indication of success is the number of people clamoring to be part of the limited group currently using Plus, which launched in trial mode last week.

One of the more popular features on Plus, especially with younger users, was online video chat, he said.

Singling out two services where Google Plus can now be viewed as a competitor, Schmidt said he would "love to have deeper integration with Twitter and Facebook."

Google's search deal with Twitter recently expired, and despite "a substantive and lengthy discussion," the companies couldn't agree on terms, he said.

And Google's overtures to Facebook to discuss letting Plus users import Facebook friends also went nowhere, Schmidt said.

Schmidt laid out a future with multiple sources of online identity and multiple social networks, even as detractors say Facebook's service, with millions of users around the world, is too entrenched to allow for serious competition.

Schmidt also said Google executives -- though not he himself -- had discussed the recent hacking of email accounts with Chinese officials.

Google last month revealed a major hacker attack that it said originated within China. It said hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Google email account-holders, including those of senior government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

"We tell the Chinese what we know ... and then they publicly deny their role. That's all I have to say about that," Schmidt said.

Closer to home, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has started a formal review of Google's business, raising concerns among investors about a lengthy, distracting probe and potential legal action.

The FTC is expected to address complaints from Google's rivals that its search results favor the company's own services. Google, which runs an estimated 69 percent of Web searches worldwide, can make or break a company depending on its search ranking.

Some worry that Google's desire to stand firm against government intrusion -- as with its protests against Chinese censorship of search results -- will trigger a long battle that ultimately does more damage than a quick settlement.

"We've had some meetings internally, (but) we haven't changed anything," Schmidt said.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Gary Hill and Lincoln Feast)

Neil Burger attached to write and direct the Uncharted adaptation (Digital Trends)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 02:09 PM PDT

Ryan Fleming Ryan Fleming – Thu Jul 7, 5:09 pm ET

When it was announced back in October that Oscar nominated director David O. Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings) was attached to write and direct the adaptation of the PlayStation 3 exclusive game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, it seemed as if the project was on track and doing things right. Video game adaptations have not had the best of luck—in fact most of them could be used to torture terrorists for information as an alternative to waterboarding—but simply not hiring Uwe Boll was a good step, and hiring someone with the Hollywood clout that Russell is packing was a great sign.

Then things got weird. Russell brought in his frequent collaborator Mark Wahlberg to play the main character of Nathan Drake, and the story began to expand. The game featured the treasure hunter Drake, his partner Sully and the resident love interest/damsel-in-distress Elena, as they searched for the treasure of Nathan's ancestor, Sir Francis Drake.

Russell's vision had Drake as part of a world renowned family of art-collectors and dealers that was rumored to include Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. The family would be globetrotters and jet-setters, mixing with power merchants, heads of state and glamorous people around the world while seeking lost treasures.

As the gap between the story of the game and the proposed movie grew, so too did the budget, which also increased the distance between what Sony wanted and what Russell planned. Then in May it was announced that Russell had left the project.

It seemed like Uncharted may have entered the dreaded development hell, where many a' good movie has gone to die quietly and ignominiously. But with the popularity of the games, the hype surrounding the third title which is due out this November, and Sony's determination to make a movie based on a video game that is actually good (we hope), the property is still alive and well, and Comingsoon.net is reporting that Russell's replacement has been found. Columbia Pictures has confirmed the news as well.

The new writer and director for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune will be Neil Burger who recently directed Limitless starring Bradley Cooper, but he might best be known for 2006's The Illusionist (which he also wrote) starring Ed Norton. Burger is currently working on Bride of Frankenstein, which is due out next year, so it isn't clear if he will leave that project or begin work on Uncharted after it is completed.

With Russell gone, it also seems unlikely that Wahlberg will take up the role of Nathan Drake. So good news, internets! A new round of speculation on who should play the character of Drake can begin. Given Burger's work, it seems almost impossible to avoid including Ed Norton and Bradley Cooper in the conversation, whether or not either are interested, and you can also expect another groundswell of support for Nathan Fillion. Expect to hear all three actors, plus many more mentioned in the coming weeks and months.

Limit airport unpleasantness with the GateGuru Android app (Appolicious)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 05:30 PM PDT

Baidu, DoCoMo plan venture (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 03:36 PM PDT

– Thu Jul 7, 6:36 pm ET

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU - News), China's largest search engine operator, is joining hands with Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM - News) to distribute content like games, animation and comics to Chinese mobile device users, the Nikkei business daily said. Baidu dominates Chinese Web search after Google (NASDAQ:GOOG - News) moved operations out of the country due to censorship issues. Baidu rose 0.8% and DoCoMo edged up 0.6%.

Code reveals Facebook working on a music service codenamed Vibes (Digital Trends)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 04:05 PM PDT

Molly McHugh Molly Mchugh – Thu Jul 7, 7:05 pm ET

vibesGoogle has infamously "leaked" plenty of Google+ related code, most recently outing some of its future features. Now, the degree to whether you believe all this code continues to surface "accidentally" may vary, but the fact remains that it usually gives us at least a glimpse of things to come. And now Facebook has taken a page out of Google's handbook and some code reveals a project internally called Vibes is on its way.

Programmer Jeff Rose's curiosity about yesterday's Skype integration led him to poke around a bit to see how exactly the install worked alongside his own Skype application. But he found something far better: He discovered a piece of code that all but confirms Facebook will be launching a new application called Vibes. He says it "connects with a music download dialog in the page," reasoning it must be the new music service.

The news coincides nicely with Spotify's announcement that it is launching in the US. A Spotify-Facebook partnership has been rumored for some time now, and yesterday we wondered if Spotify's stateside introduction coupled with Facebook's self-described ensuing launch season meant an application integrating the music streaming service was just around the corner. And don't let the name "Vibes" throw you off: The Skype deal was called "Peeps" in-house.

While we can't say for certain what the music streaming application will be called (although our money's on Facebook Music), we would be surprised if it didn't launch by the end of the summer. Google+ has put some pressure on Facebook to stay ahead of the game instead of sitting on its laurels, and Google, Apple, and Amazon have all launched cloud-based music services that have created a lot of buzz for the respective companies.

And just in case you're interested, a leaked look at Spotify's charging terms surfaced today. It looks like it will be $9.99 a month for the premium plan and $4.99 for the unlimited (cheaper than the subscriptions are across the pond). Spotify will not confirm a firm launch date or pricing details, although a TechCrunch source says it might just be waiting for Facebook to ready its music application.

Secret Service Raids Apple Store Artist (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 03:48 PM PDT

Adam Clark Estes Adam Clark Estes – Thu Jul 7, 6:48 pm ET

Be careful what you do with the free MacBooks at the Apple store. Because if you overstep, Steve Jobs will send the Secret Service to your house with a warrant to steal all of your Apple products. At least, that's what it seems based on one 25-year-old artist's account of recent run-in with agents.

Related: Who's a Bigger Danger to Cloud Innovation: Hackers or the Government?

New York-based visual artist Kyle McDonald wanted to do a project on what people look like when they're using computers. The basic idea sounds innocent enough. 

Related: How iPhone Overcame Hardware Concerns to Massive Sales

“I thought maybe we could see ourselves doing this we would think more about our computers and how we're using them,” McDonald told Mashable, who first published his story. "We have this expression on our face that basically says that we're not interacting with anybody, we're interacting with the machine. Even if there are a lot of people in the room at the Apple store, you're not interacting with them. If something weird happens, you don't say, 'Hey, did you see that?'"

Related: Should You Buy an iPad 2?

To capture images of people interacting with machines, McDonald loaded some simple surveillance software onto the free-to-use laptops at the14th Street Apple Store location in Manhattan. The software uses the MacBook's built-in webcam to snap a photo every hour, and after three days, McDonald had collected about a thousand images of random, unknowing Apple Store customers staring at Apple screens. (Kind of like that iPhone 4 commercial!) McDonald posted a number of the photos on a Tumblr called "People Staring At Computers" and hosted an exhibition of sorts at the Chelsea Apple Store that resulted in this video:

Related: The Mobile Payment Wars Are Officially Underway

Related: Adobe Fires Back at Apple in Open Letter

McDonald's project sounds a little shady at first, but it sounds like he took some steps to get permission. McDonald said that he received permission from the guard to take photos in the Apple store and asked some customers if they mind being photographed. They all said no, so he assumed most people would be okay with his project, but he never got legal permission from Apple. "As I understand, photography in open spaces is legal unless explicitly prohibited," McDonald told Gawker's Ryan Tate. "The only permission came from the guard."  

Yet somehow the Secret Service showed up at McDonald's Brooklyn apartment Thursday morning to seize his two laptop, two flash drives and iPod. McDonald later said on Twitter, "[The Secret Service's] warrant says [People Staring at Computers] violates 18 USC section 1030. If you're familiar w this law, contact me. I just asked EFF for advice, too."

If Apple files charges and he's convicted, McDonald could face up to 20 years in prison.

Protect your Android device against theft, viruses with McAfee Mobile Security (Appolicious)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 12:15 PM PDT

Murdoch declines further comment on hacking at Sun Valley (Reuters)

Posted: 07 Jul 2011 07:27 AM PDT

– Thu Jul 7, 10:27 am ET

SUN VALLEY, Idaho (Reuters) – Rupert Murdoch declined to comment further on the escalating phone hacking scandal at his British newspapers, saying on Thursday that he would not be adding to a statement he issued a day earlier.

The billionaire mogul cut an embattled figure as he tried to make his way past a pack of reporters and photographers in his first appearance in the public spaces of the Allen & Co conference.

As a throng of reporters rushed toward him and his wife Wendi, Murdoch, 80, mostly kept his head down and swiftly moved through the pack, only repeating that he had nothing more to add to his statement.

Unlike in previous conferences, the News Corp chief executive officer has kept a low profile since arriving on Tuesday at the exclusive conference tucked away between the lush green Sawtooth mountains of Idaho.

The scandal rocking Murdoch's media empire deepened on Thursday with claims that his best-selling News of the World paper hacked the phones of relatives of British soldiers killed in action.

There have been calls in the UK for News Corp to fire Murdoch's top UK executive, Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World at the time of hacking incident. Murdoch came out in support of Brooks in a statement on Wednesday, but described the allegations as "deplorable and unacceptable."

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
at 9:19 PM

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