Sponsoer by :

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Activision Blizzard 2Q earnings rise 53 percent (AP) : Technet

Sponsored

Activision Blizzard 2Q earnings rise 53 percent (AP) : Technet

Activision Blizzard 2Q earnings rise 53 percent (AP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 04:05 PM PDT

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Aug 3, 7:05 pm ET

NEW YORK – Video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday that its second-quarter net income grew 53 percent, boosted by strong demand for digital offerings such as downloadable content for its popular "Call of Duty" games.

Activision earned $335 million, or 29 cents per share, in the April-June period. That's up 53 percent from $219 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue climbed 19 percent to $1.15 billion from $967 million.

On an adjusted basis Activision earned 10 cents per share, double what Wall Street expected. Adjusted revenue grew 2 percent to $699 million from $683 million last year. Analysts expected adjusted revenue of $601.9 million, according to FactSet.

The adjusted results exclude special items and account for the effects of deferring revenue and the related cost of sales for games with online components. Like other video game publishers, Activision spreads these out on its books over time, while the game is played, rather than all at once.

CEO Bobby Kotick called the quarter "phenomenal" and said Activision's focus continues to be investing in online services and its games' online capabilities. Of the company's total revenue, $423 million came from digital channels, such as monthly subscription fees for "World of Warcraft," downloadable content and games for mobile devices.

Activision's forecast for the current quarter fell shy of Wall Street's expectations, but the company raised its outlook for the full year. The fourth quarter is usually the most important one for video game companies because it includes holiday sales. Activision will launch the next version of its best-selling "Call of Duty" series in the fall.

The company now expects adjusted earnings for the year of 77 cents per share, up from its earlier outlook of 73 cents. Analysts predict 75 cents. Activision raised its 2011 adjusted revenue guidance to $4.05 billion from $3.95 billion. Analysts expect $4.06 billion.

Activision, based in Santa Monica, Calif., tends to give conservative guidance that it can later raise or beat. Its guidance for the current quarter is for adjusted earnings of a penny per share on revenue of $530 million. That's below Wall Street's estimates for 8 cents per share in earnings and $636.6 million in revenue.

The company said it has a very light game-release schedule in the current quarter compared with last year, when it launched blockbusters like "StarCraft 2" as well as a "Guitar Hero" and a "Spiderman" game. It only has one big game release, "X-Men: Destiny" in the third quarter of this year.

The fourth quarter, however, will be a big one for the company if all goes as planned. "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" launches on Nov. 8, and Activision said pre-orders for the game are "significantly" higher than they were for its predecessor at this time. That game, "Call of Duty: Black Ops" broke entertainment industry records when it launched last year and made $1 billion in just six weeks in stores.

The company is also launching the full version of its online service for "Call of Duty," called "Call of Duty: Elite." The service, currently available in a "beta" test version, expands on what players already do online and helps them form groups, compete by skill level or share game stats. Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, said in a conference call with analysts that "Elite" should "reset the bar" for multiplayer games.

Activision also has high hopes for "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure," a game aimed mainly at boys aged 6 to 11 that combines real-life toys with online interactions. The game "truly defies categorization and creates an entirely new genre of play bringing the world of toys and video games of the Internet together like never before," Hirshberg said.

Shares rose 22 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $12.01 in after-hours trading. They closed 13 cents higher at $11.82 in the regular session.

Review: Acer media-center PC has built-in touchpad (AP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 11:49 AM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Aug 3, 2:49 pm ET

NEW YORK – Flat-panel TVs and PCs go great together — the PC gets a giant screen, and the TV gets access to tons of online video.

But getting the two together in an elegant way has been difficult. PC makers haven't shown much interest in making computers that work really well when controlled from the couch.

So it's good to see Acer Inc. take a serious stab at the problem with its new Revo RL100. The Windows PC is designed from the ground up to fit into an entertainment center. It's smaller than most DVD players and very quiet.

It's also a good value at $470 with a DVD drive or $570 with Blu-ray.

The most striking thing about the design is that a thin, postcard-sized black slate pops out of the front of the unit. It's a wireless touchpad that turns, at the touch of a button, into an illuminated wireless keyboard. When stored inside the PC, it recharges its internal battery.

So this, finally, is a brand-name PC that comes with a built-in "couch controller."

The Revo's touchpad still leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't come close to replicating the ease with which we control a PC through a regular keyboard and mouse.

The touchpad lacks mouse buttons, so you have to double-tap to register the click of the left mouse button, and hold down to register a right-click. Clicking and dragging is possible, but you need both talent and practice.

Furthermore, the pad can't act as touchpad and keyboard at the same time, so you need to switch between modes frequently. For instance, going to a new website involves steering the cursor to the address field in touchpad mode, then switching to the keyboard mode, then switching back to mouse mode to navigate the page.

The keyboard is small and best used with the thumbs, so it's not suitable for longer typing sessions.

So the Revo falters where it tries the hardest.

In nearly every other respect, it does well.

Setup was commendably easy. It can be difficult to get regular PCs to use the TV display correctly, but with the Revo, it worked the first time. The Revo's only display jack is an HDMI port, the kind used by flat panels. Helpfully, Acer includes an HDMI cable as well. It also has a Wi-Fi chip, so you don't have to draw a cable from your router to get Internet access.

The Revo's processor and graphics chip are about as powerful as you'd find in a small laptop. It played Blu-ray, DVD and streamed Netflix movies fine. It did a good job with Skype videoconferencing, another of the pleasures of having a living-room PC (you supply the webcam). Streaming of high-definition home movies from another PC also worked well.

The Revo has a 750 gigabyte hard drive, enough for several weeks' worth of standard-definition video.

High-definition YouTube videos didn't play quite as smoothly as I'd like, probably because of the limitations of the Nvidia ION graphics chip. Hardcore 3-D action games are beyond the capabilities of the Revo.

There's a USB jack and a slot for a memory card on the front of the unit, but you have to go to the back to find two more USB jacks and the headphone jack. That's not a wonderful layout for something designed to be stuck in an entertainment center. But the back-facing headphone jack isn't an issue if you connect the Revo through a receiver, as I did, as receivers have headphone jacks of their own.

From my point of view, the chief competitor to the Revo is the Mac mini, which is much more powerful but lacks an optical drive and leaves you to figure out how to control it from the couch.

The Revo has a room for improvement in the control department as well. For the next model, I hope Acer figures out how to add mouse buttons and a permanently accessible keyboard to the wireless controller.

"Couch surfing" with a PC will never be as easy as mashing the channel-change button on a TV remote, but we can hope to get closer to this epitome of laziness.

___

Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

Report: Global cyberattack under way for 5 years (AP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 01:25 PM PDT

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Wed Aug 3, 4:25 pm ET

NEW YORK – A computer security firm says cybercriminals have spent at least the past five years targeting more than 70 government entities, nonprofit groups and corporations around the world to steal troves of data.

McAfee Inc. said in a report Wednesday that the attacks have targeted a broad range of organizations, including the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee and companies mostly in the United States.

McAfee did not say who may be behind the attacks but says the culprit is likely a nation state.

The report is short on specifics, as the security firm is not naming most of the victims, nor is it stating exactly what data were stolen. Most of the victims are in the U.S. Other victims were in Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and nine other countries.

The report comes amid a surge in high-profile hacking cases in recent months. Citigroup, Sony Corp., Lockheed Martin, PBS and others have been targeted by hackers this year.

McAfee says the majority of those revelations have been the result of "relatively unsophisticated and opportunistic exploitations for the sake of notoriety by loosely organized political hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and Lulzsec."

But the threats McAfee's report focuses on are "much more insidious and occur largely without public disclosures," wrote Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee and the report's author.

The key to these intrusions, he said, is that the perpetrator is motivated by "a massive hunger for secrets and intellectual property."

U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said McAfee had informed the United Nations that its networks may have been targeted in a broad cyberattack between September 2008 and December 2010. He said the U.N.'s technical staff in New York and Geneva are analyzing logs of network activity for those periods, looking for evidence of such an attack.

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said that, thus far, the attacks are "a claim being made by Mcafee" and that the security firm's researchers "have yet to give us any evidence or detail." "We are unaware of the alleged attempt to compromise our information security claimed by Mcafee," Adams said. "If true, such allegations would of course be disturbing. However, the IOC is transparent in its operations and has no secrets that would compromise either our operations or our reputation."

Although The Associated Press is not named in the McAfee report, the company's research team has said that AP was a victim. Paul Colford, a spokesman for The Associated Press, said the AP does not comment on its network security.

__

AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson in San Francisco and Associated Press Writer Anita Snow at the U.N. contributed to this report.

Undetweetable keeps those embarrassing updates alive even after you’ve deleted them (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 06:21 PM PDT

Are most of Newt Gingrich’s Twitter followers fake? (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 06:14 PM PDT

Outloud.fm Lets Users Share Tracks From SoundCloud (Mashable)

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 06:23 PM PDT

Brenna Ehrlich Brenna Ehrlich – Tue Aug 2, 9:23 pm ET

[More from Mashable: My Morning Jacket Premieres Video on Google+ to Lackluster Response]

As is usually the case with startups, Turntable.fm is not the only music-listening room service on the block. There's also Outloud.fm, which adds SoundCloud into the mix.

Outloud.fm launched back in March without much fanfare. "It's been live all along, though we never had a high profile public launch," says co-founder Mike O'Brien. "Then as the 'social listening' phenomenon started to get a big influx of media attention, the word gradually spread and users also found their way to Outloud.fm."

[More from Mashable: Startup Seeks To Be Online Destination for World's Best Photography]

The phenomenon that O'Brien is referring to is Turntable.fm, a buzzy, still-in-beta app that has in recent months caught the attention of both the tech and music scene.

Outloud.fm is similar in use to Turntable and operates via the same principle of sharing music with friends. "Mike and I worked together at Meetup.com, and during the day we'd chat and share YouTube music links to keep ourselves entertained," says co-founder Number Two, Steven Huynh. "We wanted to build a site to facilitate this in a fun and easy way, and were influenced by our days in AOL chatrooms, so a lot of that shows in the site's design and functionality."

Like those AOL chatrooms, the site is pretty easy to use: Sign in via Facebook or Twitter and you'll be prompted to create a room. Invite friends to the room via the aforementioned social networks to start spinning tracks. You can also join a single public room, if you have no friends. The room itself looks just like your average chatroom -- no avatars and decks like on Turntable.fm -- with music and chat located in the same spot. To listen to music, you can either drag and drop files into the room's DJ queue or search for music on SoundCloud.

Granted, this site is not as built out or popular as Turntable.fm. It also hasn't sealed any licensing agreements, as TT.fm has, and Outcloud.fm is basically a bootstrapped effort. Still, the addition of SoundCloud into the mix is an awesome one. We can see this service being extremely useful for bands and music industry folks who want to easily share and get feedback on their tracks, right from their SoundClouds.

What do you think, Turntable adherents: Will you be checking out Outloud.fm?

Image courtesy of Flickr, Steve Snodgrass

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Google lawyer slams Apple, Microsoft over patents (AFP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 08:00 PM PDT

by Chris Lefkow Chris Lefkow – 1 hr 37 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Google's top lawyer accused Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and other companies of using "bogus patents" to wage a campaign against the Internet giant's Android mobile platform.

In a blog post, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond said Google's rivals were seeking to "make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices."

"Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation," Drummond said.

He said 550,000 Android devices were being activated every day and its success has resulted in a "hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents."

Drummond pointed to last year's $450 million acquisition of 882 patents from software maker Novell by a consortium made up Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle and the more recent purchase by a group led by Apple and Microsoft of 6,000 patents held by bankrupt Canadian firm Nortel.

Google was a bidder for the Nortel patent portfolio but it lost out to a $4.5 billion bid from the consortium made up of iPhone maker Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Blackberry maker Research in Motion and Japan's Sony.

The huge sum spent on the patents and the involvement of many of the world's top tech companies reflected the fierce battle for intellectual property in the tech industry, where firms are often hit with patent-infringement lawsuits.

Google is currently being sued by software giant Oracle over technology used in its Android smartphone operating system.

Drummond said Google's rivals were "banding together" and were seeking a $15 licensing fee for every Android device.

He said they were also "attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android," which Google provides for free to handset makers.

"Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it," Drummond said.

"A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a 'tax' for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers.

"Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means -- which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop," he continued.

Drummond said Google was encouraged that the US Justice Department is looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for "anti-competitive means."

"We're also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio," he said. "We're determined to preserve Android as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it."

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith responded to the Google accusations with a message on his Twitter feed.

"Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no," Smith said.

Apple or Oracle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Software set to track 'net neutrality' (AFP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 07:41 PM PDT

– 1 hr 56 mins ago

LAS VEGAS (AFP) – Computer security star Dan Kaminsky has revealed plans to release software that will track whether Internet service providers are favoring some websites or content over others.

Kaminsky crafted his free "N00ter" software to expose whether Internet service providers (ISPs) are being honest with customers when it comes to the hot topic of "net neutrality."

"You don't need to flat black-out a site to cause pain to it," Kaminsky said during a briefing at a prestigious Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.

"You can just make the website unreliable and then make people pay a little more to make the problem go away," he continued. "Markets should not work on a model of pay-up or things are bad things are going to happen."

Kaminsky sidestepped whether he was championing "net neutrality," contending instead that he designed the software to keep Internet service providers honest by checking whether all online traffic was treated equally.

He planned to make N00ter software available in the coming weeks.

The program can sit between computers and home or office networks, essentially splitting online traffic into two lanes in a way that compares how fast an ISP moves data to a standardized path.

The software could be deployed to test whether an ISP is slowing data flow for streaming video while speeding up traffic to favored websites, such as those used to officially gauge the speed of services.

"I hope the impact of this software is immediate," Kaminsky said.

He explained that his intent was to give engineers at ISPs ammunition if corporate decision makers decide to secretly throttle certain online traffic for profit or other reasons.

"We will find out," promised the chief scientist at computer security firm DKH and the researcher who uncovered a flaw in the structure of the Internet referred to as the "Kaminsky bug."

Dad: 'Shock' over son who died after arrest (AP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 08:58 PM PDT

By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press – 39 mins ago

FULLERTON, Calif. – In the nearly two decades since his son descended into madness, Ron Thomas has worried every day that the schizophrenic 37-year-old would die of exposure or illness on the streets. He never imagined the end would come in a violent confrontation with police.

The death last month was the end of a trajectory that began when Kelly Thomas was in his early 20s and started showing the first signs of what would later be diagnosed as schizophrenia: he shuttled between addresses, preferred to sleep on the floor and stopped showering.

In treatment, Thomas did well and was able to hold down a job — but when he stopped taking his pills, he disappeared onto the streets. He racked up an array of charges, from public urination to assault with a deadly weapon, and alarmed his parents with his bizarre behavior.

"My daughter and I have talked for years that we'd get the call that something had happened to him, whether it was from organ failure because he's not drinking enough fluids or the elements or maybe gang activity," said his father, Ron Thomas.

Last month, he was sitting on a bench at the Fullerton Transportation Center, a hub for buses and commuter trains where homeless people congregate, when six police officers arrived to investigate reports of a man burglarizing cars nearby. Police said he ran when they tried to search his backpack and that he resisted arrest.

The incident was captured by a bystander with a cell phone, and bus surveillance tape released Monday showed agitated witnesses describing how officers beat Thomas and used a stun gun on him repeatedly as he cried out for his father.

On the cell phone video, a man can be heard screaming over a fast, clicking sound that those on the tape identify as a stun gun being deployed.

Thomas was taken off life support five days after the July 5 altercation. His father said Wednesday he was stunned when he learned police officers caused his son's severe head and neck injuries.

"When I arrived at the hospital to see him, I honestly thought that gang bangers had got a hold of him like the cowards sometimes do and just beat him with a baseball bat in the face," he said. "Immediately my thoughts were to get with Fullerton police ... and I didn't learn until a certain amount of hours later the truth. That put me in absolute shock."

A police spokesman, Sgt. Andrew Goodrich, said the case was an isolated incident.

"We have a good department full of good individuals," he said. "We've made more than half-a-million law enforcement contacts over the past 4.5 years ... This is the only instance of this kind that's happened."

Goodrich said officers receive training on how to deal with the mentally ill and the homeless. But an attorney representing the department, Michael D. Schwartz, said that "public perception of officers' trying to control a combative, resistive suspect rarely conform to those officers' training, experiences, and what those officers were experiencing at the time or reality."

The revelations have caused growing outrage in this quiet college town. More than 70 people spoke at the City Council meeting Wednesday, and a city councilwoman called for the resignation of the police chief. Thomas' father and others were planning a protest outside the police station this weekend, the second in as many weeks.

"My son needs a voice," he said. "Now, the people have become Kelly's voice and, yeah, I'm leading the charge."

Kelly Thomas was an outgoing child who loved to play the guitar, participated in Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts and aspired to be a wildland firefighter, said his father, who raised him alone after he and Thomas' mother divorced.

After his diagnosis, he went to a live-in facility that provided meals and monitored his medication, his father said. Thomas was able to hold down a job at a gas station and then a printing facility and even started to train with the California Department of Forestry and Protection.

But each time he began to improve, he stopped his medications and wound up back on the streets, moving between Yorba Linda, Placentia, Fullerton and Cypress — all places where he had once lived or had family and friends. One of the hardest parts of his death has been hearing their son described as homeless, the father said.

"That's the heartbreaking part for all of us. We all have ideas of what we'd like our kids to be like and to do in life. With Kelly, we didn't get to realize that and it constantly broke our heart," his father said. "Kelly wasn't homeless at all, he had so many homes, but he wanted to be a drifter and he did."

Life on the streets led to criminal charges.

He pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm in 1995 and since 2004 has had a string of arrests for a host of lesser crimes including public urination, trespassing, battery, unlawful camping, petty theft and vandalism. He racked up traffic violations for jaywalking and failing to obey traffic signals.

His mother sought a restraining order against him in December 2010 after he refused to leave her front porch, took off his clothes and urinated by the front door, according to court papers. The family said they sought the order to try to get him into treatment as his behavior spiraled out of control.

On the day of the beating, bystanders said Thomas was approached by two officers and ran from them. Bus surveillance video showed witnesses talking about the confrontation to the driver of a bus that pulled up minutes later.

In the grainy, black-and-white video, a woman who appears upset says: "The cops are kicking this poor guy over there. ... He's almost halfway dead."

A male witness says the man, identified as Thomas, was sitting on a bench when he was approached by two officers and ran from them. The man says police used a stun gun on Thomas six times.

"They caught him, pound his face, pound his face against the curb ... and they beat him up," the man said. "They beat him up, and then all the cops came and they hogtied him, and he was like, `Please God! Please Dad!'"

The police department has turned over the investigation to the district attorney's office and placed on paid administrative leave six officers involved in the beating. The FBI also launched a probe into whether the officers violated Thomas' civil rights in the incident.

People with untreated mental illness make up about one-third of the nation's 600,000 homeless, said Kristina Ragosta, legislative and policy counsel for the Treatment Advocacy Center.

More needs to be done by police departments to train officers in how to recognize symptoms and deal with people with mental illness, said Elaine Deck, the senior program manager at the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Sometimes, an untrained officer can make a situation worse, she said.

"Handcuffing them may escalate the behavior where the officer may think they are trying to calm the person," Deck said. "They may not know that this may actually escalate a response."

___

Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Tustin and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Put on a happy face with the Zlango Messaging Android app (Appolicious)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 03:30 PM PDT

Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg quits to start media company (Digital Trends)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 07:59 PM PDT

Trevor Mogg Trevor Mogg – 1 hr 38 mins ago

A Zuckerberg is leaving Facebook. No, it's not that one. It's his sister, Randi.

According to an All Things Digital report, Mark's big sister is packing in her position as marketing director to start a new firm, RtoZ Media, designed "to help companies become more social." She started working at Facebook soon after it was founded in 2004.

The social networking site issued a statement in connection with her impending departure, saying: "We can confirm Randi has decided to leave Facebook to start her own company. We are all grateful for her important service."

In her resignation letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and communications head Elliot Schrage, Randi called it "the perfect time" to leave her brother's social networking company. She wrote: "I have spent my years at Facebook pouring my heart and soul into innovating and pushing the media industry forward by introducing new concepts around live, social, participatory viewing that the media industry has since adopted."

She continued: "We have made incredible progress, but there is still much to be done and other ways I can affect change. Now is the perfect time for me to move outside of Facebook to build a company focused on the exciting trends underway in the media industry."

Suggesting ties with her brother's company are far from over, she also wrote: "I'm proud of what I've done here and the people I have had the chance to work with. But I know I'll be able to do just as much or more for Facebook once I'm on the outside."

As All Things Digital points out, Randi recently gave birth to her first child and so has been on maternity leave. Sources suggest that time away from the busy Facebook office has given her a chance to quietly consider her career.

She ended her letter with: "…I leave with a deep love for Facebook….Be assured I will continue to be a strong, vocal evangelist for the most incredible social platform ever created." Mark will be pleased about that.

Malware Is Rising on 'Wide Open' Android Devices (NewsFactor)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 02:36 PM PDT

Jennifer LeClaire, newsfactor.com Jennifer Leclaire, newsfactor.com – Wed Aug 3, 5:36 pm ET

Mobile malware is on the rise, and Android users are feeling the pain. According to a new report from Lookout Mobile Security, Android users are 2.5 times as likely to encounter malware today than just six months ago.

Of course, Android isn't alone. Lookout estimates three out of 10 mobile users are likely to click on an unsafe link, including malicious and phishing links, over the course of a year. Still, analysts agree that Android's open platform broadens the malware risk.

"Many people are talking about how Android is not safe because of all the malware," said Michael Disabato, managing vice president of network and telecom at Gartner. "Apple checks the code, and there is no undetectable malware on un-jailbroken iOS. Google is not doing any of the checking, so it's wide open."

Android Threats

Discovered in June, GGTracker is the first known Android malware that specifically targets U.S.-based users. This malware signs users up for premium text-message subscription services without their knowledge, charging $10 per service to a person's phone bill.

"Symantec, Sybase, McAfee and others are going to start pushing antivirus scanners for your smartphone, which will render it useless," Disabato said. "What happens when your Windows laptop goes into scan mode? Imagine doing that on a smartphone."

Lookout also reported that attackers employ a tactic called malvertising, where they use mobile ads to direct users to a malicious web site that triggers an automatic malware download. Meanwhile, the number of unique apps with malware grew from 80 to 400 in the first half of 2011.

Two of the most prevalent threats, DroidDream and GGTracker, were regularly published in new mobile apps over the first half of the year. During this period, the authors of DroidDream released more than 80 unique applications with variations of malware to take control of a user's phone.

"I had 28 meetings in three days at Catalyst, and every single one that I went to had concerns about Android. Better than three-quarters of people I talked to said that because of those concerns, they weren't going to let Android connect to the network," Disabato said. "So they may be very cool phones and tablets, but they are not going to be connected to the network -- at least not at work."

Keeping Mobile Safe

So how do you keep your mobile phone safe? Lookout suggests only downloading apps from trusted sources. Also, after clicking on a web link, pay close attention to the address to make sure it matches the web site it claimed to be.

Download a mobile security tool that scans every app you download for malware and spyware, and can help you locate a lost or stolen device, Lookout suggested. For extra protection, the firm said, make sure your security app can also protect from unsafe web sites.

Finally, be alert for unusual behavior on a phone. This behavior could be a sign that the phone is infected, Lookout said. These behaviors may include unusual text messages, strange charges to the phone bill, and suddenly decreased battery life.

"As mobile devices grow in popularity, so do the incentives for attackers," said Kevin Mahaffey, CTO and cofounder of Lookout. "We've seen the prevalence and the level of sophistication of mobile malware attacks evolve significantly in the first six months of 2011. We expect this trend to continue as more and more people adopt mobile devices."

Cosmo introduces iPad-only edition for guys (Appolicious)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 03:00 PM PDT

Google cries foul on Apple, Microsoft mobile gang-up (Reuters)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 06:50 PM PDT

By Edwin Chan Edwin Chan – 2 hrs 48 mins ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Google Inc, fresh from losing a bid to buy thousands of patents from bankrupt Nortel, lashed out at its biggest rivals on Wednesday and accused them of banding together to block the Internet giant in the red-hot smartphone arena.

In a rare public outburst, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond blasted Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and "other companies" for colluding to hamper the increasingly popular Android mobile software by buying up patents, effectively imposing a "tax" on Android cellphones.

Apart from increasing costs for consumers, snapping up the patents will stifle technological innovation, he said.

"Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other's throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on," Drummond wrote in a blog post.

He referred to "a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents."

Microsoft and Apple had teamed up to acquire patents previously owned by software maker Novell and bankrupt telecom firm Nortel Networks Corp. to ensure "Google didn't get them," Drummond added.

But Microsoft's General Counsel Brad Smith disputed Drummond's version on the Novell patent issue on Twitter.

"Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no," Smith tweeted in response to the blog.

Representatives from Apple and Oracle declined comment.

Google -- which is facing a federal antitrust probe in the Internet search market it dominates -- is forging ahead in the smartphone market. But it has been hampered by a lack of intellectual property in wireless telephony, which has exposed it to patent-infringement lawsuits from rivals like Oracle.

It lost out on the Nortel patents to a consortium grouping Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion and others, which together paid $4.5 billion.

Google individually had bid up to $3.4 billion for those patents before teaming up with Intel Corp, which on its own had bid up to $3.1 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter.

They bid through $4 billion and then tapped out, another source had told Reuters.

INCREASING PATENT LAWSUITS

The Android software, now used by phone makers including HTC, Motorola and Samsung, has rapidly overtaken Nokia to become the world's most popular smartphone platform, with about a third of the market.

Drummond said the company was looking to strengthen its patent portfolio. Google, whose crown jewel is its search algorithm, has never placed the same priority on patents as it has on copyright, but is now hoping to stock up. It recently bought more than 1,000 patents from IBM.

The Internet search leader is now in talks to buy InterDigital, a key holder of wireless patents valued at more than $3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That shift in mentality comes as a wave of patent suits crisscross the wireless industry. In past years, incumbents have tried to protect their position against newcomers like Google, which entered the market three years ago with Android.

HTC received a setback last month when a U.S. trade panel said it had infringed on two of Apple's patents.

Also, Samsung has delayed the Australian launch of its latest Galaxy tablet due to a patent dispute with Apple, which says the South Korean electronics giant "slavishly" copied the iPhone and iPad.

And Oracle is suing Google, claiming Android infringed on Java patents that it inherited through an acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010.

Patent acquisitions are expected to accelerate, with IBM and Kodak often mentioned as shopping intellectual property on the market.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Ted Kerr, Phil Berlowitz and Bernard Orr)

Korean Wave starts lapping on Europe's shores (AFP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 08:45 PM PDT

by Jung Ha-Won Jung Ha-won – 52 mins ago

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea's pop music industry is eyeing Europe after taking East Asia by storm, with promoters using the power of the Internet to lure distant fans.

K-pop over the past decade has established a devoted fan base in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, with heartthrobs like Rain and boy bands like TVXQ packing out concerts and topping charts.

Exports of music products surged from $6 million in 2002 to $31.3 million in 2009 as the phenomenon known as the Korean Wave (hallyu) spread.

K-pop's overseas success was driven partly by a need to go beyond the home market, plagued by plunging CD sales and free music downloads on the Internet in the world's most wired country.

South Korea's recorded music sales shrank from 286.1 billion won ($272 million) in 2002 to about 80 billion won in 2009. Entertainers searched for new ways to survive -- by courting fans abroad via the Internet.

Now South Korea's digital music market -- including legal music downloads on mobile phones or the Internet -- is worth 600 billion won after a series of court rulings against free music-streaming and downloading sites.

SM Entertainment, the country's biggest music talent agency, in 2009 opened its official channel on YouTube to release new music videos and broadcast concerts and other public appearances by stars.

The company also has hired composers and choreographers in Europe and the United States and recruited teenagers from elsewhere in Asia to appeal more to global audiences.

Two sell-out concerts in June in Paris, featuring SM's flagship groups like SHINee, Super Junior and Girls' Generation, together drew 14,000 screaming fans singing along to Korean-language numbers.

"The response from European fans totally stunned us," said Kim Young-Min, CEO of SM Entertainment. "Now we feel more confident that we can take a plunge in the European market, albeit step by step."

Kim told AFP in an interview that major global music labels believed it was too risky to expose too much content on the Internet due to copyright concerns, "but it actually helped us gain a global fan base so quickly".

He said he hopes to release English-language albums of the agency's stars in Europe and to partner with mobile phone makers like Apple or Nokia to boost digital music sales -- already the biggest source of the firm's revenue.

"In this age when people search for and own music on a single device, it's more effective to collaborate with global mobile platform producers than with record labels to expand our market," said Kim.

"Gone are the days when one singer can sell 100 million CDs. Now what's important is having artists notching up 100 million online downloads for their songs."

K-pop has long been led by bubblegum pop stars hand-picked by talent agencies -- often in their early teens -- and intensively trained for years before they hit the stage.

Agents like SM handle everything from recruitment to music production and largely dictate their artists' styles -- mostly dance tunes from hiphop to electronics -- and career moves.

Critics liken the process to an assembly-line of similar, robot-like teen stars with fleeting popularity, whose every word and move is rigorously pre-scheduled by the agents.

Lawsuits are rife among top teenage stars including those from SM, who accuse agents of imposing excruciating work schedules and sharing earnings unequally.

Kim disputed the criticism, saying his firm must recoup an investment of up to 4.5 billion won to develop raw teen talent.

"It's not like the US, where record labels pick up musicians ready to hit the stage," he said, adding the agency's singers collect more than 60 percent of earnings from commercial endorsements.

Kim admitted that K-pop performers "may look all similar and appear to sing all similar music", but said the firm would usher in other South Korean artists.

"We're just beginning to open a new door, offering what we do best. People who've come to like our music will soon want to listen to other genres like rock and so on," he said.

Instagram hits 150 million photos, still behind Flickr, Facebook (Digital Trends)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 02:37 PM PDT

Caleb Garling Caleb Garling – Wed Aug 3, 5:37 pm ET

In the shadow of more impressive announcements from Google about Plus's skyrocketing user base, Instagram has released some numbers that should give pause as well. Having only launched in October of 2010, the iPhone-only app now boasts over 150 million pictures across its 7 million worldwide users. Each day these users upload 1.3 million photos; that's about 900 photos each minute, 15 each second.

Where the free iPhone-only app goes from here remains to be seen. In June Instagram reported a user base of 5 million, signifying it may be hitting the real elbow of its growth curve; a million users per month certainly means the word is out. Founder Kevin Systrom says the company plans to expand onto Android, but also said it will focus only on mobile for now. Instagram has not disclosed whether it will expand to Blackberry and other mobile operating systems.

For perspective's sake, it's worth noting that while Instagram's user base and photo catalogues are impressive in growth, it still have a long way to go before catching Flickr. Last September the photo giant reported its 5 billionth photo, and have no doubt ridden similar growth over the past year also.

And to put that number in perspective, Facebook boasted over 750 million photos uploaded just over New Year Eve this past year, roughly a sixth of Flickr's catalogue in 24 hours (albeit, likely of far poorer, shall we say, "photographic quality").

Instagram is showing powerful signs of life, but still has a way to go before the company is truly one of the heavy-hitters in the online photo universe.

 

German official scolds Facebook on privacy (AFP)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 12:30 PM PDT

– Wed Aug 3, 3:30 pm ET

BERLIN (AFP) – A leading German privacy official on Wednesday accused Facebook of using face recognition software in a manner that violates German and European law.

Johannes Caspar, a data protection expert with the city of Hamburg, called on the US-based social networking company to delete from its site the individual biometric data it has collected.

"If the users' data falls into the wrong hands, it would be possible to compare and identify anybody captured in a photo taken with a mobile phone," Caspar told the Hamburger Abenblatt newspaper.

The programme allows Facebook users to locate new "Friends" after discovering their identity through a biometric data scan.

The programme tries to match data captured in a picture with the trove of data it has already collected from its hundreds of millions of users.

"This is what's most problematic. The programme feeds off a stock of data designed to physically identify millions of users," he said.

He further scolded Facebook for collecting and storing biometric data without users' consent, insisting the practice violates privacy laws.

Germany, which is considered a leader on Internet privacy issues, has criticised Google for its "Street View" programme, which makes street-level images freely available online.

German officials also previously urged Facebook to beef up its privacy protections, notably over its Friend Finder feature, which allowed the site to register or even import users' entire email address books without notifying them.

In January, Facebook agreed to inform its members that it had obtained email addresses in their accounts.

Facebook claims to have more than 750 million members.

Chocolate-obsessed hacker breaks into Hershey's website to change a recipe (Digital Trends)

Posted: 03 Aug 2011 08:56 PM PDT

Mike Flacy Mike Flacy – 41 mins ago

hersheys-chocolate

With cybercrime costs on the rise, a successful hacking attempt on Hershey's website caused the chocolate-making company to send out a consumer warning via email to all users of the official Hershey Co. website. The hacking attempt targeted a single recipe before leaving without attempting to access private consumer data. Hershey stressed that no credit card numbers or bank account information is located on the same server as the recipes, but the server did contain passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses and birthdays of any consumer that registered on the site. 

hershey-websiteWhile it's possible the hacker is a food-obsessed, amateur pastry chef, it's more likely that the hacker was testing for vulnerabilities in the security of Hershey's servers and decided to alter a file to test Hershey's ability to discover the hacking attempt. In the public email to consumers, The Hershey Company put emphasis on strong password creation, frequent changes in passwords and for users to be cautious about opening suspicious emails with phishing links. Hershey also claims to have taken steps to close the security hole to thwart future attempts at recipe alterations.  

This story broke after Mcafee released a document yesterday that details a massive hacking operation called Operation Shady RAT, much larger than LulzSec and Anonymous. The hacking group targeted over 72 major corporations and governments over a five year period. RAT stands for remote access tool, a hacking method that provided access to a victim's computer after the victim clicked on a link used in an email phishing scam. Popular targets included many U.S. defense contractors, government agencies both domestic and abroad, tech companies and even the Olympic committee. Victims of these attacks typically had to fend off intrusions for about a month, however some entities were dealing with attacks for about two years.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

at 10:03 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

My Blog List