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Lost iPhone just one headache for Apple security (AP) : Technet |
- Lost iPhone just one headache for Apple security (AP)
- 41 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed (Mashable)
- Google preparing for Senate hearing (Reuters)
- Guest Post: Bridging online communities with real life: 5 lessons learned (Appolicious)
- Three Gadgets You Should Wait to Buy (ContributorNetwork)
- Android App Tablet Review: Zinio (Appolicious)
- Make sure you’re as LinkedIn as possible to your business (Appolicious)
- Looking for iPad 3? Expect to wait until late 2012 (Appolicious)
- Newspapers to insert 'iCircular' ads on phones (AP)
- HTC Sensation XE launches with Beats Audio (Appolicious)
| Lost iPhone just one headache for Apple security (AP) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 01:14 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – Wanted: experienced security professional. Must have plan to thwart Chinese counterfeiters, protect secret blueprints from spies and keep workers from leaving super-secret unreleased smartphones behind in bars. A day after a recent report surfaced that an Apple employee had lost a prototype for a new but unreleased iPhone at a Northern California watering hole, two job listings appeared on Apple's website for managers of "new product security." Such workers would join a team at the $350 billion company that has included ex-FBI agents and other highly trained pros with backgrounds in intelligence and law enforcement. While a private security force might not seem in keeping with its user-friendly image, Apple and other companies in its league need the best protection they can buy, corporate security experts say. And lost iPhones likely don't come near the top of the list of anxieties. "Corporate espionage, that's big money. Billion-dollar money. The paranoia is justified," said Jim Stickley, co-founder of corporate security consulting firm TraceSecurity "Whatever they're trying to do, their competitors want to know. Everybody wants to know." Apple declined to discuss its security operations in detail with The Associated Press, in keeping with the company's longstanding reputation for secrecy. Nor has the company confirmed the existence of the iPhone 5, the rumored latest model, much less a lost prototype. But San Francisco police have said that four officers recently went to a home in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood with two Apple employees, who met with the resident and searched the home for an iPhone prototype. Apple watchers say the company is known for creating many test versions of its new devices before they're released to see how they work in the real world. The reportedly lost iPhone likely would have been far from the only one in circulation. Losing just one such device is perhaps more of a marketing headache than a serious security breach, as was the case for Apple last year when the tech blog Gizmodo posted photos of what turned out to be the then-unreleased iPhone 4 lost by an employee at a San Francisco Bay area beer garden. Once a new device has reached the point where employees are field-testing it, a competitor who obtained one wouldn't have enough time to analyze it and do anything to take advantage of that insider knowledge, Stickley said. Even so, sheriff's deputies seized Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen's computers as part of an investigation into whether the blog's $5,000 payment to acquire the lost phone amounted to a crime. No charges were filed. Such tactics might seem heavy-handed. But for Apple and other tech companies the issue amounts not just to a publicity problem but a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to secure the company's valuable assets, said longtime Apple analyst Tim Bajarin. Companies also have an obligation to try to prevent such a loss from happening again, he said: "If they fail, it's the system that failed as much as the individual." Despite the blogosphere frenzy surrounding the lost iPhone prototypes, experts say the security threats to tech companies are far more serious in China, where thousands of workers labor to manufacture Apple's products. According to a 2008 diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, Apple had only a modest security presence in China until March of that year, when the company hired a team from Pfizer that led a crusade against fake Viagra. Under the leadership of Donald Shruhan, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a Hong Kong-based senior regional director for Apple in security and investigations, the company began taking steps to reign in the country's trade in counterfeit iPhones, iPods and MacBooks. "Early evidence suggests nearly 100 percent of Apple products in unauthorized mainland markets are knockoffs," according to the unclassified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The job of keeping such counterfeits off the shelves, to keep blueprints for new products from leaking and to otherwise secure vital trade secrets falls under the field of information assurance. For information assurance professionals, securing computer networks is only part of the job. They also make sure companies remember to lock their actual doors. "Social engineering" also remains a constant threat in the tech industry, said Gary Kessler, director of the information assurance program at Norwich University, a private military college in Vermont that has trained security personnel at Apple and other high-profile companies. From e-mail scams seeking sensitive personal information to Cold War-style cloak-and-dagger subterfuge, human weakness can be easier to exploit and harder to protect against than digital vulnerabilities. "This stuff has been going on for decades, just in a different guise," Kessler said. "The Internet has just given us a new vector for attack." And in the end, he said, even the best-trained security team in the world can only do so much to protect against someone in a bar who may have been drinking and may have been showing off the most sought-after secret product in the world. Said Kessler: "I'm guessing that Apple probably did everything that anybody could do, and they probably did it right." ___ Follow Marcus Wohlsen on Twitter at http://twitter.com/marcuswohlsen |
| 41 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed (Mashable) Posted: 17 Sep 2011 10:16 AM PDT The features roundup is back and kickin' more than ever. Tune in as we neatly package all of the past week's features coverage, analysis and trending topics that span the digital realm. So, what's breaking these days? For starters, we got a peek at an early beta of Windows 8, and Mashable staff was eager to write about it. We also analyzed daily deals and Facebook contests. Finally, in honor of the anniversary of 9/11, we took a look at the homepages published that day 10 years ago. [More from Mashable: How Bear Grylls & Men's Deodorant Unlocked the Secret of Reddit Marketing] As always, please share further tips, observations and resources in the comments below.
Editors' Picks
Social Media
[More from Mashable: How Airlines Have Taken Flight With Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]]
Tech & Mobile
Business & Marketing
Image courtesy of psdeluxe.com This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Google preparing for Senate hearing (Reuters) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 06:15 AM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google's Eric Schmidt, the online search giant's point man for all things Washington, goes before a Senate panel this week to argue the company is not a rival-abusing bully, but in fact is struggling to stay on top. Google Inc controls more than two-thirds of the global search market. But Web technologies such as social networking and smartphone applications offer new ways for people to find information -- putting pressure on the company. At the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel on Wednesday, Schmidt will argue that Google's critics are wrong to say it gives preference to its own products. Rather, he will say Google is just trying to deliver the best-cultivated search results for users. Schmidt had been Google's chief executive officer, but vacated the post to company co-founder Larry Page in April. He now serves as executive chairman and oversees government affairs -- a position of critical importance as the Federal Trade Commission ramps up its antitrust probe into whether Google favors its own products in search, among other issues. The issue of search ranking is a touchy subject with Google, which says its algorithm is devised to give users the most useful result so they will come back. Google's revenue comes from advertising on the search results page. Schmidt is also expected to try to steer the focus of the hearing to the company's running battles with those who game its search algorithm, for example "scrapers" who take commonly searched words, combine them into a nonsensical block of text and throw it up on the Web to grab eyeballs and advertising dollars. Google believes that, if scrapers succeed too often, consumers will lose confidence in search and turn to other resources. There is thinking within Google that scrapers and others who try to game the search algorithm could pose an existential threat to the company. Google has taken action in the past, penalizing Overstock.com Inc and J.C. Penney Co Inc after accusing them of abusing guidelines to get their websites to rank high in searches. BEST-CASE IS STATUS QUO The hearing carries risk for Google because the panel is looking at its most important product -- search, says Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial in New York. "It's never a positive to have to testify on antitrust on the Hill," said Gillis. "The best-case scenario is that things continue as they are." Gillis added there was an outside chance Schmidt would make a damaging mistake. "He's opening his mouth and he's speaking and there's always the possibility that something will come out of it that he thinks is logical and that the committee may not like," he said. "It's not likely to happen, but it's always possible." Schmidt could also discuss other factors that can bring down a website's ranking, such as whether there are errors on the site, like broken links; the speed of the site and whether the site appears to have malware. Google says it is reaching out to webmasters, letting them know about problems that could affect their search ranking. Schmidt has been defending Google in Washington for years and is well aware many antitrust experts are skeptical that Google always plays fair. Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel, is one of several lawmakers expected to press Google on the issue of search. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who led investigations of Google when he was the Connecticut attorney general, called Google a "great American success story," but says he will have questions. "Concerns have been raised by both regulators and competitors over whether Google has used its dominance of the online and smartphone search markets to impose extra costs on consumers, unfairly preference its own products, or disadvantage competitors through a variety of means, including its search and advertising systems," Blumenthal said in a statement to Reuters. Republican Senator Mike Lee, who is also on the subcommittee, has expressed concern about Google's purchase of ITA travel search software. Competitors such as Expedia Inc have worried Google would abuse its new dominance in travel search. Executives representing Expedia as well as Yelp, another Google rival, will testify at the hearing after Schmidt. (Editing by Andre Grenon) |
| Guest Post: Bridging online communities with real life: 5 lessons learned (Appolicious) Posted: 17 Sep 2011 03:00 PM PDT |
| Three Gadgets You Should Wait to Buy (ContributorNetwork) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 08:32 AM PDT Contribute content like this. Start here. Everyone loves getting new gadgets. (At least, it seems that way when you write about them for a living.) But when's the best time to upgrade ... and when is it best to stick with last year's model? Here are three gadgets you should probably wait on upgrading! Android smartphones and tablets Three words: Ice Cream Sandwich. The new version of Android is coming out later this year, and it's going to change a lot of the things that we take for granted about it. Hardware keys? Separate versions for tablets and smartphones? All that and more is going away, to be replaced by one unified version for everything. Besides that, there's another big issue. The iPhone 5 is supposed to come out later this year, and despite all the rumors, we don't know what it'll be like. Quad-core processor? NFC chip to let you use it as a wallet? Maybe 4G connection speeds. Obviously, if you're an Android fan you're not waiting to see what Apple makes ... but if you're in the market for a new smartphone, maybe you should. Handheld game consoles That'd be gadgets like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable. The PSP's about to be replaced by the Vita, while the DS just saw an upgrade in the form of the Nintendo 3DS. The PSP's case is similar to that of Android smartphones: It's about to receive a major upgrade, and you might ought to hold off until it comes out. What makes the PSP's situation worse is that a lot of today's PSP games and movies come on Sony's proprietary UMD minidiscs, and the Vita won't be able to play them. So now might not be the best time to sink tons of money into PSP discs, unless you're buying them used and planning on selling or trading them in soon. The 3DS, meanwhile, has largely failed to catch on, and has seen huge price cuts in its short lifespan. With game developers reluctant to take chances on it, you might ought to follow their lead for the time being, especially since the original DS has such a huge library already. Caveat emptor? Obviously, a lot of us don't have a choice of whether or not to upgrade. For some of us, we have to whether we want to or not, because it's needed for our jobs. And for many of us, who aren't at the top of the income heap, we simply don't have the money to upgrade without going into more debt. Not having much money is another reason to wait, though: When the new stuff comes out, the old gadgets will get a lot cheaper. Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008. |
| Android App Tablet Review: Zinio (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 05:00 PM PDT |
| Make sure you’re as LinkedIn as possible to your business (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 06:00 AM PDT |
| Looking for iPad 3? Expect to wait until late 2012 (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 12:30 PM PDT |
| Newspapers to insert 'iCircular' ads on phones (AP) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 04:40 PM PDT NEW YORK – Major newspapers and retailers are teaming up to put more advertising on mobile phones through a new service developed by The Associated Press. The feature, called iCircular, will start appearing Monday in the mobile phone applications of the participating newspapers. It's the pilot phase of a project announced nearly a year ago by the AP, a not-for-profit cooperative owned by newspapers. ICircular is meant to be the digital equivalent of coupons and other promotions that are inserted into the print editions of weekend newspapers. Those ads are among the most popular parts of Sunday newspapers. A study by the Newspaper Association of America found nearly three-fourths of readers check advertising inserts, mostly to find out about sales. The initial group of 40 newspapers adding iCircular to their phone apps includes: the New York Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News and San Francisco Chronicle. The phone apps of the newspapers that have agreed to use iCircular reach a combined audience of about 5 million people. Target Corp., Macy's Inc., Kmart, Toys R Us and J.C. Penney Co. are among the 20 retailers committed to running ads in iCircular. Both the newspapers and retailers are trying to figure out how make more money from the explosion of increasingly sophisticated phones that have morphed into miniature computers during the past five years. Publishers are trying to mine digital devices to help recover a steep drop in revenue from print advertising. Retailers are hoping the phones can become a showcase for merchandise while consumers are shopping. If iCircular pays off for newspapers and retailers during its trial period, the AP plans to negotiate the fees it will collect for future use of the service. One of iCircular's biggest advantages: most people carry mobile phones with them while they shop. The AP, newspapers and retailers are hoping shoppers will get into the habit of browsing iCircular for nearby deals — wherever they happen to be. That goal is emphasized in iCircular's design: App users will be able to find the ads by pressing on a "deals" button. The feature allows people to search for specific products and create shopping lists. It will also be able to identify a users' location to point people to the bargains in their vicinity. Users have to give their consent, so iCircular shouldn't raise privacy concerns, said Jeff Litvack, the AP's general manager of global product development. Both iCircular's deals button and the location feature are a way for newspapers to counter the proliferation of online coupon services such as Groupon that dangle daily discounts on products and services in specific regions. Neither newspapers nor retailers are paying to use iCircular through the rest of the year. The AP wants to study user behavior before figuring out iCircular's ad rates and possible service fees, said Mary Junck, the chair of the revenue committee on the AP's board of directors. Junck is also CEO of Lee Enterprises Inc., the publisher of the St. Louis Dispatch and other newspapers. If it's successful, iCircular will likely be expanded to work on the iPad and other tablet computers, Junck said. Newspapers have been increasingly focused on the Internet and mobile devices while their print editions have been losing subscribers and advertisers. So far, newspapers' digital advertising growth hasn't been nearly enough to compensate for the downturn in print advertising. Last year, for instance, print advertising at U.S. newspapers totaled $22.8 billion and digital advertising was $3 billion. In 2005, U.S. newspapers got $47.4 billion from print ads and $2 billion from the digital side, according to the Newspaper Association of America. The AP has been hurt, too, because a large chunk of its revenue comes from newspapers. Driven in part by newspaper fee reductions, the AP's revenue has fallen from a peak of $748 million in 2008 to $630 million last year. The main problem for newspapers has been the abundance of free or low-cost advertising outlets offered by Craigslist, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Facebook and other marketing channels on the Web. Some of newspapers' own digital advertising may have simply replaced their print ads, too. Junck doubts that iCircular will cannibalize the print version. "We think this mobile version may reach a slightly different audience," she said. "It's complementary, not at all a replacement. It's just another great way to shop." |
| HTC Sensation XE launches with Beats Audio (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Sep 2011 10:00 AM PDT |
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