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Apple: IPhone not tracking users, will get update (AP) : Technet |
- Apple: IPhone not tracking users, will get update (AP)
- Experts: Apple should've addressed concerns sooner (AP)
- Hynix Semiconductor 1Q profit falls 66 percent (AP)
- 5 worst digital security breaches of all time (Yahoo! News)
- Visa backs mobile payment startup Square (Yahoo! News)
- Get Daily Dates Instead of Daily Deals With InboxCupid (Mashable)
- N.Korea demands U.S. security guarantee for nuclear talks:Carter (Reuters)
- Verizon's New 4G Mobile Hotspots: Which One Works Best? (PC World)
- Sony shares fall 5 percent as Playstation woes threaten (Reuters)
- Google Docs app released for Android (Digital Trends)
- Apple Plans Update To Resolve iPhone Tracking Issue (NewsFactor)
- Sony to Restart Blu-ray Disc Production in Late May (PC World)
- Experience hyper space flight with Hyperlight game (Appolicious)
- Verizon Finds Cause of LTE Outage (PC World)
- Delicious has a new home: YouTube founders scoop up the forsaken site (Digital Trends)
- T-Mobile bets $1,000 the Galaxy S 4G is faster than your iPhone (Digital Trends)
- Nokia Trims Workforce In Anticipation of Phone 7 Shift (NewsFactor)
- Feds to remotely delete Coreflood from infected PCs (Digital Trends)
| Apple: IPhone not tracking users, will get update (AP) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 03:14 PM PDT NEW YORK – Apple denied that the iPhone has a privacy problem Wednesday — and then promised to fix it. It took the technology giant a week to respond to a brouhaha over how the devices log their owners' movements. Privacy concerns erupted last week when security researchers said a file found on PCs linked to iPhones allowed them to create maps of the phones' movements for up to a year. Combined with similar questions about Google's Android smartphone software, the news left privacy-conscious smartphone users wondering how much information they were unknowingly giving up. Apple denied claims that it was keeping tabs on its customers, saying the file records Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers in the general area of iPhones, not the whereabouts of their users. The company implied that the privacy concerns raised by that file were partly based on a misunderstanding. But it also said that a software error was the reason the files are storing up to a year's worth of information, and that it would fix that issue and others in a few weeks. "Users are confused, partly because creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date," Apple said in its first comprehensive response to the allegations. It had revealed the nature of the location file in a letter to Congress last summer following an earlier round of questions about its location-tracking practices. The data help the phone figure out its location, Apple said. They allow the phone to listen for signals from hot spots and cell towers, which are much stronger than signals from GPS satellites. Wi-Fi signals don't reach very far, which means that if a phone picks up a signal it recognizes, it can deduce that it's close to that hot spot. Taken together, this means navigation applications can present the phone's location faster and more accurately than if the phone relied on GPS alone, Apple said. However, it's still not clear why the files are so detailed that they allow the reconstruction of the phone's movements. In its 10-point question-and-answer statement, Apple didn't address why the files contain "timestamps" that link a phone to certain hot spots and cell towers at a certain time. Those timestamps are what allowed the researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden to construct animated maps of a phone's movements over a year. Warden said that as far as he could tell, Apple could have used the location data productively without storing timestamps. He said he's pleased the company is applying software fixes to safeguard the data. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based privacy rights group, commended the company for quickly making significant changes to the iPhone operating system. But Larry L. Smith, the president of the Institute for Crisis Management, a public relations company, said Apple should have responded to concerns last week even if it didn't have all the answers ready. Questions such as "Is Apple tracking my iPhone's location?" are not entirely unexpected, and Apple should have had some standby statements ready to go, Smith said. Apple's reaction is reminiscent of its response last summer, when Consumer Reports and others reported that the iPhone 4 suffered from signal loss when held a certain way. Apple stayed quiet for a week after the launch of the phone, then denied there was a hardware problem but said it would fix how the iPhone displayed its signal bars. Two weeks later, it offered free protective cases that insulated the antenna, mitigating the signal loss. It still denied the design was flawed. The phone's appeal stayed intact. Apple is not the only technology company addressing allegations that it's tracking customers. Google Inc. acknowledged last week that phones running its Android software store some location data directly on phones for a short time from users who have chosen to use GPS services. Google said that was done "to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices." Apple said iPhone data are stored for up to a year because of a software error. The company said there's no need to store data for more than seven days, and a software update in the next few weeks will limit the size of the file. The iPhone will also stop backing up the file to the user's computer, a practice that raised some concerns. Computers are much more vulnerable to remote hacking attempts than are phones. A third planned fix is to encrypt the file, and to stop downloading the data completely to phones that have all "Location Services" turned off, Apple said. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law, said he still has questions about why Apple didn't tell users what it was doing. "This has raised larger questions of how the locations of mobile devices are tracked and shared by companies like Apple and Google, and whether federal laws provide adequate protection as technology has advanced," Franken said Wednesday. He plans a hearing on cellphones and privacy next month. The way an iPhone stores its own location appears to be at most a minor privacy threat. A snoop would need access to the victim's phone or PC, both of which usually store lots of other personal information. Phones contain texts, emails and lists of phone calls. PCs contain such information as tax returns, logs of websites visited and passwords. There's a separate issue of smartphones like the iPhone transmitting their location wirelessly to corporate servers. In Wednesday's statement, Apple reiterated that iPhones regularly send their location to Apple, but do so anonymously, so the company isn't able to track users. IPhones can also transmit a user's location to companies that run applications with location-based services, with the user's consent. Companies that buy ads through Apple's iAds advertising system can also locate users, but only ones that specifically approve of a location request from a particular ad. Apple shares fell 27 cents to $350.15 on Wednesday. ___ AP Technology Writers Joelle Tessler in Washington and Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report. ___ Online: Apple Q&A on location tracking: http://bit.ly/fvsEiM |
| Experts: Apple should've addressed concerns sooner (AP) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 09:24 PM PDT NEW YORK – Apple should have responded much sooner to concerns about location data stored on its iPhones, even if the company didn't have all the answers ready, marketing and crisis-management experts say. The company took a week to deny that the phones track the precise location of their owners, as some users and privacy watchdogs had feared. As soon as it started selling the devices, Apple should have said how it uses, or doesn't use, location data, said Joe Marconi, a DePaul University marketing professor and author of "Crisis Marketing: When Bad Things Happen to Good Companies." "The whole problem could have been a non-problem if Apple had done some kind of disclosure of this in some kind of a privacy statement," he said. "Apple customers are fiercely loyal in a way we can say few (others) are today. With that comes a responsibility." In a list of 10 questions and answers published Wednesday, the company explained that a data file publicized last week by security researchers doesn't store iPhone users' physical locations — just a list of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding them. Apple said the data help phones figure out their location without having to listen for faint signals from GPS satellites. The company did acknowledge that the data are stored for up to a year because of a software bug. It promised a fix in the coming weeks to reduce the duration of the storage. Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, a public relations company, said Apple should have said something sooner in some form, even if it didn't have all the details right away. "To me there is no excuse to stonewall, to put off facing your customers, your partners, your shareholders, your employees," he said. "When there is a problem, or an issue has been raised, it's so counterproductive to put off responding." Even a response of "I don't know, I will get back to you" is better than none, he said. "You are not always going to have immediate answers." Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris would not comment on why the company waited to respond. Despite all the hoopla, Smith said he doesn't expect Apple's latest blunder to hurt the company in the long run. Apple quickly recovered from "antennagate," a problem with the iPhone 4's antenna design. It caused reception issues when people covered a certain spot with a bare hand. CEO Steve Jobs apologized last July to people who were not completely satisfied with the iPhone 4, but denied there was an antenna problem that needed fixing. Even so, the company gave out free protective cases. "Antennagate" didn't seem to make a dent in the iPhone's popularity or sour Apple's devoted fan base. And, Smith said, the "flap over data won't do the harm today that it might have done a few years ago when our attention span was a little longer. Somebody else will do something tomorrow." Companies that handle public relations crises well are not remembered long — that's the whole point. But Apple might learn from fast food companies such as Domino's Pizza and Taco Bell. When video of a Domino's employee appearing to do disgusting things to food appeared on YouTube, Domino's responded by firing that person and the co-worker who recorded him. Later, CEO Patrick Doyle posted a video in response, saying the store had been sanitized "top to bottom" and that the company is re-examining how it hires workers "to make sure that people like this don't make it into our stores." Taco Bell, meanwhile, spent millions of dollars on ads to counter a lawsuit that questioned whether the filling in its tacos was actually beef. The lawsuit has been dropped. Smith said Taco Bell realized their taco customers were mostly men who bought it for the taste and price, not for its nutritional value. Similarly, Apple might find that many users don't mind their location being tracked because this allows them to get directions, find nearby restaurants and use a slew of other apps and features of the iPhone. In Wednesday's statement, Apple said the data file in question helps speed location-based services. |
| Hynix Semiconductor 1Q profit falls 66 percent (AP) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 09:23 PM PDT SEOUL, South Korea – Hynix Semiconductor's quarterly profit fell 66 percent as sales declined and memory chip prices remained weak, though the company said business conditions should improve in the second quarter. Hynix, the world's second-largest manufacturer of computer memory chips, earned 273.5 billion won ($254.9 million) in the three months ended March 31, it said in a regulatory filing Thursday. It had net profit of 808.1 billion won a year earlier. Sales in the first quarter fell 1.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.79 trillion won. "The business environment was very challenging," Hynix's chief financial officer Kim Min-chul told an earnings conference call. Prices for dynamic random access memory or DRAM chips, used mostly in personal computers, remained weak and uncertainties about global economic growth persisted, he said. Investors appeared optimistic, however, sending Hynix's share price 3.1 percent higher to 34,950 won in morning trading. Hynix announced earnings shortly before the stock market opened. Hynix Semiconductor Inc. ranks No. 2 globally in DRAM chips behind South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co. It also ranks No. 4 in NAND flash memory chips used in products such as digital cameras, music players and smartphones. Hynix said its average selling price for DRAM chips fell 13 percent in the first quarter from the final three months of last year. Shipments, however, increased 15 percent. The company said its average selling price for NAND flash memory chips, meanwhile, was flat, while shipments also increased 15 percent. Kim Ji-bum, Hynix's chief marketing officer, said that demand for chips used in PCs was weaker than expected during the first quarter as manufacturers reduced inventories amid slower-than-expected demand for personal computers from consumers. He said Hynix expects that its chip customers will replenish inventories during the current quarter amid worries about possible supply shortages due to the massive March 11 earthquake in Japan. Japanese companies are key suppliers of high-tech materials and components. "Demand for NAND flash was stronger than our expectation of normal seasonability in response to strong market demands for smartphone and tablet" devices in the first quarter, Kim told analysts. He said the market environment should be "stable" in the second quarter as DRAM customers, also concerned about possible supply disruptions, likely move to secure supplies. Kim said that while Hynix currently sees no "significant supply chain disruptions" as a result of Japan's disaster, that could change in the second half of the year if supply constraints for raw materials and components linger longer than expected. "Therefore, we still remain cautious on the long term impact of (the) earthquake," he said. Separately, Hynix said it adopted international financial reporting standards, or IFRS, from the first quarter of this year and has restated previous earnings to conform. |
| 5 worst digital security breaches of all time (Yahoo! News) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 04:12 PM PDT
Breaking in to computer networks and stealing data is not a new thing — it's been happening since the advent of computer networks — but as the number of people on the internet grows and more and more sensitive data is being stored by online services, the problem of data security becomes more important. These databases tend to be incredibly secure, but the fact is, your name, email address, and credit card details are worth real money to hackers and spammers, who'll do almost anything to get their hands on them. While the PlayStation Network breach is one of the biggest in recent months, let's take a look at some others and see what they can teach us about protecting our online privacy and security.
The attack on Gawker Media exposed the email addresses and passwords of millions of commenters on popular blogs like Lifehacker, Gizmodo, and Jezebel. Beyond the breach itself, the main problem was that Gawker Media stored passwords in a format that was very easy for hackers to understand. Some users used the same passwords for email and Twitter, and it was only a matter of hours before hackers had hijacked their accounts and begun using them to send spam. Using a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox and a password manager like LastPass almost completely mitigates the potential damage of such attacks. 2. T.J. Maxx and Marshalls — 2005 to 2007 Between 2005 and his arrest in 2008, Gonzales stole the details of over 170 million credit and debit card numbers, making him the most successful credit card thief of all time. 3. Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs — November 2007 Fortunately, it's thought that the discs were simply lost in the mail — but even so, it's proof that highly technical online hacking isn't required to obtain large amounts of sensitive data. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs made a similar gaffe in 2006, when a laptop containing the Social Security numbers of 26.5 million U.S. veterans was stolen.
It's not known exactly what data was stolen from the American companies, but Google admitted that some of its intellectual property had been stolen and that it would soon cease operations in China. The Chinese hackers exploited a weakness in an old version of Internet Explorer to gain access to Google's internal network — and if you haven't recently updated your web browser, you really should update it right now. 5. RSA Security — March 2011 RSA's breach was significant because its technology is used to secure thousands of other systems, which hackers might now be able to access. Theft and fraud: Facts of life [Image credit: dermiller, Patrick Hoesly] More from Tecca:
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| Visa backs mobile payment startup Square (Yahoo! News) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 02:29 PM PDT Square, a mobile payment technology company founded in 2009 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has received an undisclosed investment by credit giant Visa. According to Square CEO Keith Rabois, Visa will take a "strategic adviser" role in Square's development, which could include assisting with a broad expansion into international markets. Square's claim to fame is its mobile credit reading hardware that can be plugged into iPhone and Android devices, and used to initiate debit and credit card transactions on the go. The card reader works in tandem with the official Square app to make mobile payments a quick process, with no need for a traditional, bulky card-reading system. You can obtain a reader for free on also available. Visa's investment in Square should be mutually beneficial for both companies. Square will get the guidance that a startup needs from a company that has made its name in the payment world, and Visa will take a large stake in a promising new platform, as well as the growing "pay anywhere" trend being pioneered with technologies like near-field communication. (Source) More from Tecca: |
| Get Daily Dates Instead of Daily Deals With InboxCupid (Mashable) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 04:02 PM PDT The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: InboxCupid [More from Mashable: Dating Site Lets You Virtually Court Your Fantasy Mate [INVITES]] Quick Pitch: A new date in your city everyday. Genius Idea: Flipping the daily deals model to daily dates. [More from Mashable: Introducing An App Store for Microsoft Outlook]
Most online dating sites are all variations of the same basic idea: Dater A fills out a profile, Dater B likes what he sees and sends a wink or nudge to start the courtship. Some sites throw in matching algorithms or even friend vetting, but they're all essentially different shades of gray. InboxCupid is anything but gray. The fresh-faced dating site offers a quirky twist on the daily deals model -- instead of offering email subscribers a daily deal per city, InboxCupid serves up a featured dater per city. Co-founder Kareem Ahmed likens the InboxCupid to an online speed dating network. "You can get exposed to a lot of people with doing a minimal amount of work," he says. Here's how it works: Would-be online daters subscribe to InboxCupid in their city and specify who they're interested in dating -- a man interested in women, for instance. Users can then simply sit back and wait for InboxCupid to fill their inboxes with daily featured dates. If users like what they see, they can hit the "Inbox Me" button to message the featured date and see if there's a match. To make the connection, InboxCupid charges the interested dater $1. For those who want to be the featured daily date -- and 15% of all subscribers do, Ahmed says -- all that's required is creating a profile and selecting and answering five questions. Wannabe featured dates can choose to answer innocent and innocuous questions such as "What is the worst date you have ever been on?" or the more provocative ones like, "Is sexual compatibility important to you?"
When the profile is complete, the user is added to a first-come-first-serve city queue and will receive a notification prior to being featured. Should the dater get featured, an email blast will go out to the city's subscriber pool and interested dates are then required to answer the same five questions and pony up the $1 connection fee. Right now, the just-launched startup is currently only live in Minneapolis, but it's accepting sign-ups in cities across the U.S. and will open up as soon as supply meets demand, which Ahmed defines as 1,000 subscribers per city. InboxCupid went from idea to actual site in about one month's time. Ever the idea man, Ahmed would often think around unique applications of the daily deals trend until the daily date idea struck him as something that's never been done before. "We thought it would be crazy to put actual people up as potential dating candidates," says Ahmed of the two-man team that includes his developer co-founder David Dellanave. The pair still have day jobs but believe that InboxCupid has a novelty quality that will spark courtesy. "We live in a voyeuristic culture where everyone is so interested with everyone else is doing," Ahmed says. Whether InboxCupid can graduate from being just another novel idea to a viable business is for you, the online daters of the world, to decide. Image courtesy of Flickr, Vanessa Pike-Russell
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| N.Korea demands U.S. security guarantee for nuclear talks:Carter (Reuters) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:58 PM PDT SEOUL (Reuters) – Reclusive North Korea has refused to make major concessions in talks with ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter, insisting Washington provide some kind of security guarantee in return for giving up its nuclear weapons programme, the former leader said in a blog. Carter and three other former state leaders -- known as The Elders -- were due to leave Pyongyang on Thursday after a "private" visit aimed at defusing tensions on the peninsula, as well as discussing the impoverished North's pleas for food aid. The North has said it wants to rejoin international aid-for-disarmament talks, which it walked out of over two years ago in anger over a new round of U.N. sanctions for its second nuclear test and a long-range missile test. "We are hearing consistently throughout our busy schedule here in Pyongyang that the North wants to improve relations with America and is prepared to talk without preconditions to both the U.S. and South Korea on any subject," Carter wrote in a blog on Wednesday on the Elders website (www.theelders.org) "The sticking point -- and it's a big one -- is that they won't give up their nuclear programme without some kind of security guarantee from the U.S." The North has repeatedly stated it wants an assurance the United States will not attack it, as well as a peace treaty. Some 30,000 American troops are based in South Korea, which is technically at war with its neighbor, having only signed a truce to end the 1950-53 Korean War . "It is to my mind a tragedy that, more than 60 years after the Armistice that ended the Korean War, North and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty," Carter wrote. "My country, the United States, is South Korea's guarantor, which creates enormous anxiety among the North Korean people and drains their political energy and resources." ELDER STATESMEN MAY STILL MEET KIM JONG-IL Carter and his team -- comprising former Irish President Mary Robinson, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and ex-Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland -- have met the North's ceremonial head of state and foreign minister. Experts say there is a possibility they will also meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his son and heir apparent Kim Jong-un before departing for Seoul on Thursday. Carter's visit comes as momentum builds toward a resumption of aid-for-disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. South Korea, with Washington's backing, has demanded the North "show a responsible attitude" for last year's two deadly attacks on the peninsula for the talks to restart. The North denies responsibility for the torpedoing of a South Korean warship last year, and said it shelled Yongpyeong island after South Korea test-fired artillery into its waters. Shuttle diplomacy between the six-party envoys has increased in recent weeks, and China's nuclear envoy and his South Korean counterpart agreed in Seoul this week on a stage-by-stage process for restarting the talks. However, both Seoul and Washington are skeptical about the North's sincerity about denuclearizing, citing its revelations last year of major advances in a uranium enrichment programme which could open a second route to make an atomic bomb. Experts say the North already has enough fissile material from its plutonium programme to make about eight nuclear bombs. Few people believe the secretive North will ever give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, saying they serve as a deterrent against attack as well as being the ultimate bargaining chip. (Editing by Ron Popeski) |
| Verizon's New 4G Mobile Hotspots: Which One Works Best? (PC World) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:20 PM PDT Mobile hotspots like Novatel's popular MiFi 2200 have been greeted warmly by tech users and have sold well. They simplify things by providing our various devices with Internet connectivity under one data service bill. And they're small and superportable. But mobile hotspots have often connected devices to the Internet at relatively slow speeds, until now. A pair of new mobile hotspots that run on Verizon's fast new 4G LTE network--Samsung's 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot and Novatel's MiFi 4510L--have become available, and they truly do live up to being ten times faster than their 3G predecessors. The two devices and their accompanying data plans are priced the same. The hotspots each sell for $100 with a two-year contract at the Verizon Wireless site. For data service, you can buy a 5GB plan for $50 per month or a 10GB plan for $80 per month. Both plans charge $10 for every gigabyte of data you use over your monthly limit. So which device is the better buy? I break them down feature by feature and pick a winner at the end (feel free to skip down). In a nutshell, I found a number of small differences--and one big one--that might make all the difference when choosing between the two. Battery Life Advantage: Samsung Let's get right to that "big difference". By far the biggest complaint about these 4G hotspots (4G phones, too) is battery life. It seems that when connected to fast 4G service, hotspots simply need more juice than when in 3G mode. To test the longevity of the batteries in these two devices, we streamed a movie continuously to a hotspot-connected device until the battery in the hotspot failed. Here the Samsung outperformed the MiFi. Samsung says its hotspot battery will last for “up to 226 minutes†Meanwhile, Novatel says the battery in its LTE hotspot will last "up to 5 hours." In our tests the MiFi came nowhere near that estimate, running out of gas after just 3 hours and 6 minutes. But regardless of the manufacturers' projections, the battery life of these devices is clearly lacking. The companies that make the 4G radios inside these devices must begin to use components that require far less power, or the battery makers need to learn how to make batteries that last longer. A hotspot capable of a full day of work would seem to be a reasonable expectation, and until that expectation is met, consumer adoption of hotspots will have a real ceiling. Despite battery conservation being so important to using these devices, neither Samsung nor Novatel offers a very accurate way to monitor your battery use. The tiny LED light on the Samsung hotspot stays green until the battery gets down to 20 percent, then turns yellow. But the two colors look so much alike, and the LED lights are so small, that I never noticed when they changed color. The battery indicator on the MiFi uses the same four-bar icon as some phones. So it at least changes every time another 25 percent of battery life has been used, making it easier to know how much of that big 3 hours and 6 minutes of battery life you have already consumed. The MiFi thankfully gives you about 2.5 minutes of grace time after the last bar disappears before shutting down. Well aware of the limited battery times, both Novatel and Samsung built into their devices an auto-shutoff feature that powers down the device after 30 minutes of idle time. Many people actually complained about this in the product reviews at the Verizon site, apparently unaware that you can shut it off in the configuration settings. Size Draw Both LTE devices take up just a few millimeters more table space than a credit card. The MiFi is more than half an inch thick, while the Samsung is a little less than half an inch. The MiFi weighs 3 ounces, and the Samsung weighs 2.7 ounces. Ease of Setup Draw Both hotspots are pretty much plug-and-play. No software installation is required (the drivers are installed in connected devices automatically), and neither is any configuration (although, of course, you can adjust the settings). The set-up process for the Samsung and the MiFi is almost identical. After you power up the devices, they automatically connect to the Internet via an LTE cellular connection (provided you have an active SIM card inserted correctly underneath the battery). Once connected to the Verizon network, the hotspots then send out a Wi-Fi signal to connect your devices to the Web. When that signal is detected by your laptop or smartphone, you'll see the name of the hotspot listed in the "available networks" list. After you select the hotspot from the list, you'll be asked to type in the network password, which is supplied in the literature and printed on a sticker underneath the back panel. And that's it--you're connected. You can repeat this process with up to four other devices, but remember that the devices are sharing the same pool of bandwidth that the hotspot is pulling down from the network. Thankfully, with LTE service that pool is pretty big. To monitor your data usage you can log in at www.verizon.com/myverizon. Interface and Ease of Use Advantage: MiFi On the front of the Samsung you'll find three small status lights, one for 4G network connection status, one for 3G network connection status, and one for the status of the Wi-Fi signal that the hotspot is sending out to connect other devices. The 4G light is green if the signal is strong, yellow if the signal is weak, and red if there's no signal. If the light is rotating through the colors, that means you're roaming. The 3G light uses the same colors for the same meanings. The Wi-Fi light is blue for connected, blinking blue when transmitting data, green for standby, and blinking green if the device is in setup mode. The power button on the front is also filled with meaning. It's solid green if the battery is more than 20 percent, solid yellow if the battery is 6 to 20 percent, and solid red if the battery is down to 1 to 5 percent of capacity. You press and hold the power button for 2 seconds to turn the hotspot on, and for three seconds to turn it off. Novatel's MiFi has somewhat simpler status indicators. The top screen has a four-bar signal strength indicator, a triangle-shaped roaming indicator, a four-bar battery indicator, and a five-dot indicator to show how many devices are connected. The LED light on the front side of the device offers more device status information. Amber means the hotspot is in standby mode and may be charging. Green means 4G service is on, and violet means 3G service is on; in both cases, if the light is blinking it means data is being transmitted. A red light means a SIM card error has occurred. Speeds and Latency Advantage: Samsung As I mentioned up top, these two devices are different and better than any other mobile hotspot on the market because of their connection speeds. Verizon says users should expect download speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second (the average home broadband connection speed is 6 mbps), and upload speeds of 2 to 5 mbps. To test this, I connected my PC to each hotspot, and then ran the speed and latency test at speedtest.net, operated by Ookla. I found that both devices regularly met or exceeded Verizon's speed projections, even in a difficult cellular environment (well inside a structure with several physical barriers between the radio and the outside). From my desk at home, several of the 3G hotspots I've tried couldn't establish a connection because it's a very difficult cellular environment. I have to use an amplifier even to get wireless voice service. Of the two 4G hotspots in my home tests, the Samsung connected at slightly higher speeds than the MiFi, although the difference is so small that it might not be significant. The Samsung clocked an average download speed of 12.1 mbps and an average upload speed of 4.1 mbps. However, I saw download speeds of up to 20 mbps during my tests, and upload speeds as high as 15 mpbs. The average latency or (network delay time) was impressively brief, at only 54 milliseconds on average. The MiFi clocked an average download speed of 9.4 mbps and an average upload speed of 4.5 mbps. But with the MiFi, too, I saw some very high peak speeds, meaning downloads of up to 17 mbps and uploads as high as 7 mbps. Latency speeds were even better on the MiFi, averaging a mere 50 milliseconds. I also tested connecting to the hotspots from long range, by moving my PC to a position 30 feet away in an adjacent room. I first selected the Samsung hotspot from the list of available networks on my PC. The Samsung paused for perhaps 30 seconds before it could begin transferring data. Once a connection was established, the Samsung connected the PC at just 0.80 mbps for downloads and 1.1 mbps for uploads, on average. The MiFi performed somewhat better than the Samsung at long range. In my test, the MiFi began transferring data almost immediately, and connected at higher speeds: an average download speed of 2.5 mbps and an average upload speed of 1.5 mbps. This may suggest that the Wi-Fi signal emitted by the MiFi is a bit stronger than that emitted by the Samsung. But since most people won't need to stray so far away from their hotspot, and because the Samsung did get the best speeds overall, Samsung wins the speed category. Dual-Mode (3G and 4G) Draw Both devices are backwards compatible with Verizon's 3G service (CDMA 1xEV–DO Rev.A), meaning they downshift to a slower (in this case, much slower) 3G connection when the 4G LTE signal is not available. I noticed no interruption in connection when either device moved back and forth between 3G and 4G, although the devices were connected to 4G service most of the time during testing. Bottom Line The good news about both of Verizon's new LTE hotspots is that they are fast—truly 10 times faster than 3G hotspots--and deliver a much bigger pool of bandwidth to the devices that will connect them. That's huge. In our speed tests, we found that both devices delivered impressive speeds, with the Samsung hotspot testing marginally faster overall. The apparent cost of the fast 4G service is battery life. The LTE technology inside both the Samsung and the MiFi drained battery life in a hurry. But our tests show that the Novatel MiFi simply doesn't operate as long as the Samsung on one charge of the battery. So while the Samsung definitely has its defects, its slight superiority in throughput speeds and its clear superiority in battery usage earn it the nod as the better of the two Verizon LTE hotspots available now. |
| Sony shares fall 5 percent as Playstation woes threaten (Reuters) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 09:16 PM PDT TOKYO (Reuters) – Shares in Sony Corp fell 5 percent on Thursday as a massive leak of data on its Playstation games console users sparked global legal scrutiny and threatened to crimp its business. In the United States, several members of Congress seized on the breach, in which hackers stole names, addresses and possibly credit card details from users of Sony's PlayStation Network, in one of the largest Internet security break-ins ever. There is concern that loyal PlayStation gamers could ditch Sony in the wake of the data theft and analysts said the hacking could steer people looking to buy a video game console toward Microsoft Corp's Xbox, which has its own popular online network. "I am outraged that my personal information may have been accessed by hackers," said Rich Chiang, a Playstation and Xbox user based in Shanghai. "It is shocking that Sony has been so aggressive in going after people who have hacked their products and services, yet was this unprepared for the consequences of angering that community," said Chiang, an executive with a Chinese gaming firm. "It is also disturbing that Sony took a full week after the breach to fully announce the details of the incident." Sony's PlayStation Network, a service that produces an estimated $500 million in annual revenues, provides access to online games, movies and TV show. By 0320 GMT (11:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday), Sony shares were down 4.8 percent in a broader market up 1.3 percent. The shares fell the most since mid-March. Security experts said Sony needs to account for the loss of that business -- as well as damage to its brand -- when it tallies up the cost of dealing with the breach. Other costs include notifying customers of the attack and bringing in experts to cleanse its network. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute said the theft could cost Sony more than $1.5 billion, or an average of $20 for each of the 77 million customers whose data was potentially compromised. Poneman's firm specializes in securing information on computer networks. Sony pulled the plug on the network on April 19 after finding out about the breach, but it did not tell the public about the hackers' attack until a week later. The delay, which Sony said was needed to conduct a forensic investigation, may remind its overseas customers of the foot dragging by Toyota that earned the Japan's leading automaker the distain of consumers. Sony shares have fallen more than 8 percent this week, with investors nervous about the fall out of the data leak episode. (Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in SHANGHAI; Writing by Anshuman Daga; Editing by Lincoln Feast) |
| Google Docs app released for Android (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:48 PM PDT
The post says that the new app allows you to easily "filter and search for your content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows you to easily share items with contacts on your phone, right from within the app." The app works with the mobile version of Google Docs, but with an app feel – you can, for example, swipe your way through menus. A neat feature involves your phone's camera – if you take a photo of some text, Google's powerful optical character recognition (OCR) software, the same that's utilized by Google Goggles, will cleverly convert it into editable text. To create a document from a photo, you simply select the camera icon from the app's widget, take the photo and within a short space of time you'll have a text document staring you in the face, waiting to be chopped and changed. This feature is an advantage the app has over simply accessing the mobile version of Google Docs through your browser. In the blog post, Google points out that "OCR does a pretty good job capturing unformatted text in English but won't recognize handwriting or some fonts – stay tuned, it will get better over time!" It doesn't appear to be possible to delete documents through the app, though we assume such an option will be added later. Editing documents on a little smartphone screen can be fiddly at the best of times (though of course the app also works on larger-screen Android tablets), but in an emergency situation where you have no access to a bigger device, it could prove to be an invaluable addition to the app collection of those already using Google Docs. At the moment, the free app is only available in English and works on Android 2.1+ devices. |
| Apple Plans Update To Resolve iPhone Tracking Issue (NewsFactor) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 04:16 PM PDT The story about iPhone tracking just won't die -- and may not for some time. In fact, it may just spark a whole new wave of privacy suits and could even cause consumers to rethink location-based services like Foursquare and GPS. Apple is under fire from consumers and lawmakers alike over the way its iPhone collects data. However, Apple continues to deny that its device is tracking a user's actual location. Nevertheless, the company is moving to slash the amount of data the device stores. The company also issued an Apple Q&A on Location Data. "Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so," the company said. "Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a sound bite." Apple Drills the Message Apple very meticulously took the time to explain that the iPhone is not logging a user's location. Rather, it's maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers around a user's current location, some of which may be more than 100 miles away from the iPhone, to help the device quickly and accurately calculate its location when requested. The company explained that calculating a phone's location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. The iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data when GPS is not available, such as indoors or in basements. "These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hot-spot and cell-tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geotagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hot spots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple," the company said. Apple plans to issue a free software update to reduce the amount of data the iPhone stores, and once location services are turned off, the phone will delete hot-spot and cell-tower information. Will Google, Microsoft Follow? While Apple is being proactive about this issue, it's not just Apple devices that store this type of information. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, said all smartphones on the market are doing the same thing -- and so are wireless carriers. That's not a new issue, he said. The issue is how long the information is being kept. Apple is now fixing that issue. "This does highlight the issue of location and privacy and what types of information phones are sending back. It's not just phones, it's also applications within phones and whether this is going to cause some type of consumer backlash against some types of location-based services," Gartenberg said. "A lot of location-based services are transmitting a lot of information about you that many consumers may not realize, such as where you live, where you work, where you play, who you associate with, and where you spend money," he added. "That can be a huge value to marketers, but can certainly become a privacy nightmare for consumers." |
| Sony to Restart Blu-ray Disc Production in Late May (PC World) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 06:40 PM PDT Sony plans to resume production of Blu-ray and other optical discs at a tsunami-hit factory in northern Japan in late May, it said Thursday. The company's Sendai Technology Center in the city of Tagajo is the only Sony plant still offline after a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit eastern Japan on March 11. Numerous factories of major electronics makers were halted after the quake but few were directly hit by the tsunami like the Sony plant was. It was inundated with about 1.5 meters of water, mud and debris that caused heavy damage to the first floor of the building. A visit to the factory in late March found workers clearing out mud and crushed cars from the facility. That work has continued and now Sony is anticipating the restart of some operations. The factory is Sony's principle production base for professional video tapes, blank Blu-ray Discs and other media products, and the halt in production caused a pinch on supply of some professional media products like HDCAM video tapes for portable TV cameras. While the optical disc production will start in late May, production of magnetic tapes, such as those for TV cameras, isn't likely to resume until late July. Sony said it plans to move production of other products and components previously manufactured in Tagajo to other factories to speed resumption of their production. Sony also said it plans to help regional recovery efforts, and will consider offering vacant office space to local businesses and assign staff to help with local support work. Martyn Williams covers Japan and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com |
| Experience hyper space flight with Hyperlight game (Appolicious) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 05:00 PM PDT |
| Verizon Finds Cause of LTE Outage (PC World) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 05:50 PM PDT Verizon Wireless has determined the cause of an outage that crippled its LTE mobile data network starting late Tuesday and it is working to solve the problem, but the carrier has not estimated when the system will be restored. Users of LTE (long-term evolution) smartphones can still make phone calls and use slower data connections on Verizon's CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) network, according to a Verizon statement released at 4:15 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday. However, subscribers can't use the LTE network, Verizon's fastest, nor activate any LTE devices, the company said. "We have determined the cause of our issue and are working with our major vendors to restore connections," the statement said. "We expect to see the network restore on a market-by-market basis. Timing and additional details will be provided as they become available." Verizon first acknowledged the problem earlier on Wednesday after published reports that the network had gone down nationwide. The outage was the first major blemish on the LTE network, which was launched commercially late last year. Verizon's is the first national network using LTE and has delivered average speeds of 6.5M bps (bits per second) downstream and 5M bps upstream in tests by PC World. Rival AT&T plans to launch an LTE network later this year. Some subscribers reported having to use EV-DO, Verizon's 3G technology, for data connections on Wednesday. In its statement, Verizon warned that some users might only be able to use CDMA 1x-RTT, the carrier's slowest mobile data network, during the outage. Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com |
| Delicious has a new home: YouTube founders scoop up the forsaken site (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 03:23 PM PDT
But Delicious' sale saga has come to an end. YouTube founders and early PayPal staffers Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have acquired the site (the price was not disclosed) and the transition will be complete by July. Hurley and Chen are currently running AVOS, which only describes itself as "a new Internet company," and according to both the new owners and Delicious, the bookmarking application has ended up in the right hands. "As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling mission so users to share their experiences with the world. They are committed to running and improving Delicious going forward." According to the WSJ, Delicious' blog post previously read "We wanted to find a home for the product where it can receive more love and attention," but the Yahoo slight has since been removed. So how exactly will the move affect users? According to AVOS, it will remain a bookmarking site and after you agree to the new owners' terms of service, confirm your e-mail and password, you're all set. It will apparently get better: AVOS will work to improve the site to make it "even easier and more fun to save, share, and discover the web's 'tastiest' content." It's a happy ending for the fiercely loved site, but it might be coming a bit too late. Since December, when it was first announced Delicious and Yahoo would be parting ways, many users have jumped ship and found other bookmaking sites, motivated largely by fear of losing all their web placeholders. So it's possible there may be more than an ownership transition for Delicious – we wouldn't be surprised to see it turn into, or feature some sort of news aggregation service. The quip "take on the challenge of building the best information discovery service on the web" from Hurley and Chen's press release definitely makes it sound like it could in that direction. As for other changes, AVOS wants user to know a Firefox 4 plug-in is in Delicious' near future. |
| T-Mobile bets $1,000 the Galaxy S 4G is faster than your iPhone (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 05:25 PM PDT
Unless they know something we don't, odds are not in the iPhone users' favor. Verizon and Apple iPhones both run on 3G networks. The side-by-side comparison will show the phones downloading files, and the Galaxy S 4G will be the likely victor: The new Android phone is capable of downloads of 21 Mb/s. The iPhone 4 maxes out at downloads of 7.2 Mb/s. It doesn't take much to see through the extremely thin veil of T-Mobile's plan–get them in the store, show off the phone, talk up the 4G service. What's more amusing about the publicity stunt than anything else is that T-Mobile is directly challenging what could be its future home, seeing as AT&T is in the midst of acquiring the network…or at least attempting to. To enter, all you need to do is show up at one of the 10 participating stores, be 18 years of age, bring your iPhone, and be sure to turn off your Wi-Fi. If you're iPhone bests the Galaxy S 4G on two out of three tests, the $1,000 is yours. Here's a list of the participating T-Mobile retailers:
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| Nokia Trims Workforce In Anticipation of Phone 7 Shift (NewsFactor) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 04:16 PM PDT As it prepares to load its phones with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia is ditching control of its Symbian platform and cutting 7,000 jobs in a major restructuring. Accenture, a global technology consulting and outsourcing firm, will take over development of the Symbian platform, which hasn't gained traction in the important U.S. market as Apple's iOS and Google's Android have captured consumers. While no employees will lose their jobs this year, the job cuts will affect workers next year in Finland, Denmark and Britain. Losing Ground The 12 percent reduction in its phone-division workforce is part of an effort to trim nearly $1.5 billion by the end of the year. The company's new CEO, former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, recently signed a deal with his former bosses reputed to be worth $1 billion to put the struggling Windows Phone 7 on Nokia devices. Though still the world's top cell-phone maker, Nokia's smartphones have lost ground to Apple's iPhone in the global market. Market-research firm Strategy Analytics said Nokia sold 24 million smartphones in the first quarter, up 13 percent from the same period in 2010, but global market share fell from 39 to 24 percent. Symbian is still alive. Two weeks ago, Nokia announced an update for the operating system as well as two new Symbian-based phones. The update is designed for the N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 phones, with improvements to icons, scrolling, touchscreen keyboards. and browsing. The upcoming X7 and E6 handsets will ship with the new version, code-named Anna. Elop has said new Nokia devices running Phone 7 may arrive within the year. That can't be soon enough for Microsoft, which has been struggling to gain market share after the OS launched late last year. Phone 7 saw a small boost to seven percent of new smartphone buyers during March, up from five percent in the previous quarter, according to Nielsen. Windows Phone 7 currently powers a handful of phones made by HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell. Move Was Expected Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-IT, said the changes at Nokia are "unsurprising. It's fairly normal for a new CEO to make some sort of sweeping change six months or so after he/she was hired." He said the hiring of Elop was a clear indication that Symbian's days are numbered. "Shifting 3,000 workers to Accenture should take away a bit of the sting, but cutting loose 4,000 others is still painful," he said. "The question remains whether aligning itself with Microsoft can be a winning strategy for Nokia, especially against formidable competitors like Apple and vendors leveraging Android. I expect that's a question we'll be asking ourselves for the next year or so." |
| Feds to remotely delete Coreflood from infected PCs (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Apr 2011 10:01 AM PDT In an unusual move, federal authorities will be contacting computer users with systems infected by the Coreflood botnet Trojan and asking them to agree to allow them to send commands to the malware so it will delete itself. The move comes in the in the wake of a coordinated takedown earlier this month by the FBI and other authorities, in which the U.S. government essentially substituted its own command-and-control servers in place of those used by Coreflood and issued commands telling the program to shut down on infected PCs. The move reduced activity from the Coreflood botnet by about 90 percent in the United States and by nearly 75 percent worldwide. However, infected PCs still have dormant Coreflood software on them, and the feds would like to get rid of it. A U.S. District Judge approved the Department of Justice's request for a preliminary injunction that authorizes the action, giving authorities until May 25 to contact owners of systems infected by Coreflood and obtain consent to remotely remove it from their machines. However, the DOJ actually argued it didn't need a judge's permission to move on its deletion campaign, since it will be seeking written consent from owners of infected systems before going through with the deletion. “Based upon technical evaluation and testing, the Government assesses that the command sent to the Coreflood software to stop running will not cause any damage to the victim computers on which the Coreflood software is present, nor will it allow the Government to examine or copy the contents of the victim computers in any fashion,†Federal authorities have not specified how many machines it has identified as candidates for a remote wipe of Coreflood. Industry estimates of the size of the Coreflood botnet at the time of its takedown were between 2 million and 2.5 million systems. The DOJ argues that removing Coreflood quickly from infected systems is important, as new variants of Coreflood are already appearing, increasing the probability that new malware will be able to evade detection, removal tools, or re-capture now-dormant machines. The FBI says in many cases it has already identified infected computers by IP address and identified possible owners based on that information. |
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