Hi Tech Hive

Nokia Asha 501 to illuminate UK in next few weeks

2013-06-24T22:48:00.000+07:00

Already tempted by the Asha 501, Nokia's featurephone disguised as a smartphone? Well the phone is about to roll out globally, meaning it won't be long until you can pocket Nokia's vibrant little number.

The Finnish phone maker confirmed that the Lumia-like handset will be launching in Thailand and Pakistan this week and then roll out to Europe and other countries in "subsequent weeks". This one won't be hitting the US and Canada for now.

Don't get too excited about the specs though - with only 2G connectivity on offer, the 501 is the budget buyer's choice. It also packs a 2-inch QVGA display, 3.2MP camera, along with a 4GB memory card in the box.

The phone runs on Nokia's overhauled Asha software, which brings in the big Windows Phone icons and simple swiping. Meanwhile there are two main screens, the 'Home' and the 'Fastlane'. The former has the traditional grid of apps while the latter is a feed of messages and updates, as well as recently-used applications.
Phoenix from the Ashas

Still, set at a recommended retail price of €75 (about £65), it promises to be perfect for those bridging the gap to a full smartphone, or for festival-goers looking for a decent backup handset that won't break the bank.

Not only will it be coming in at a budget price, it'll also be presenting itself in six colours: yellow, cyan, bright red, bright green, black and white.

Nokia claims that the phone will also offer 47 days of battery life on standby, and 17 hours of talk time. Not bad if you ask us.

Twitter expands notifications to include re-retweeted retweets and more

2013-06-23T21:12:00.000+07:00

Prepare yourself to receive more Twitter notifications. The social network is delivering more updates to give users greater insight into what's going on around their Twitterverse.

The Next Web reports that users will now receive a notification when a tweet they're mentioned in are favourited by another user.

Previously, users would only receive a notification if one of their own tweets was granted the distinction of a 'favourite' from another user.

Beyond that, and bear with us here, notifications will also occur when another user retweets a tweet that you retweeted!

That kind of makes sense as it'll be interesting to see which of your followers also found the retweeted post funny or interesting.
Too much?

The report suggests Twitter began rolling the new updates over the last few days (or June 17 to be precise).

Have you been receiving extra notifications yet? Has it expanded your Twitterverse or is it just straight-up annoying?

Let us know in the comments section below.

I.R.I.S. IRIScan Book Executive 3 WiFi Scanner

2013-05-19T16:52:00.000+07:00

Reduced sized scanners have come a long way of late and for this I am thankful. I love scanning and converting scanned in images of copy into an editable document via OCR. We took a look at a the LG’s competent mouse scanner a while back. It proved effective in most situations and was even capable of scanning larger A5 blueprint sheets. But when it came to book page scanning, the device fell a bit flat. Where the page meets the binding was often un-scannable or just to difficult to reach without ripping the binding.

Today we take a look at the IRIScan Book Executive 3 WiFi scanner. It functions with or without a computer and can send scanned images in PDF, Excel or Word documents. It’s a versatile device that has learned to play nice with Windows PCs, Mac, Android and iOS devices. Those latter two work via apps obtained from their respective marketplaces. It’s a cool trick where you can scan a document, store the image on the BE3′s included 1gb microSD card for later use. When ready you can wireless beam the image to your paired WiFi phone, tablet or Wifi-enabled PC/laptop. It’s actually pretty slick, but not without its own hurdles.

The unit is also packaged with a USB cable for tethered transfer of scanned documents. Also included in the package is a set of 4 AAA batteries (alkaline are ceommended for longer use), software install CD, the microSD card and SD card adapter, plenty of literature about IRIS’s other products, coupon for 20% off your next IRIS purchase, voucher for a free year of Evernote, registration card and two card for free IRISCompressor for Mac or PC. It’s a meaty package of mostly with only a mild waste of paper.
Yet for all the card stock and paper stock used, there is no sign of a physical user guide or instruction manual. It took me quite a few minutes just to divine how to open the battery compartment. Luckily there is a very detailed instruction guide on software installation CD. It’s a definitely needed as the device proper only features 3 physical buttons and a single slider with 3 modes. Most users will be at a loss with the guide.

But with it, setup is pretty simple. Insert the MicroSD card. Then press the scan button for 2-seconds to power on the IRIScan BE3. The display will light up. You can use the top Color/Mono button to select if you want JPG or PDF in black or white. Use the bottom resolution button to select from 3 resolutions – low = 300dpi, Mi = 600dpi and Hi = 900dpi. You have to look very carefully. The font size is near-microscopic on the display and barely legible. But once the unit is prepped and set, tap the Scan/power button to place it in Scan mode. Then slowly slide the BE3 down your document. Press the scan button again when you reach the bottom to complete your scan. The image is now stored on your the microSD card and ready for transfer to your computer or mobile device via the USB cable or over WiFi.

The IRIScan Book Executive 3 is not bad at all. I did have a some minor issues getting the Android IRIScanBook app to function properly. You have to move the slider to the middle position. WiFi will light up with a blue illumination. Then you can navigate to your tablet or phone’s available WiFi devices to to select the IRIScan Book unit. Of course this kills your access to the internet. The HTC One found the device no problem but I had to back out of the app a couple times and restart before it registered to show me the saved scans on the scanner. But from there you simply select which ones you would like to download. The process takes mere seconds and you’re ready to edit, crop and or save them as needed. The app could use some sprucing up with a series of 1st time dialog bubbles telling you what each button does. The interface is rather bland as well. But once the scanner is paired it works well enough.

Despite some hard to read display text and a wonky app, the IRIScan Book Executive 3 is a winner. It should be noted a steady hand is necessary for straight even scans. But you probably guessed that. I suggest lining your document up against a straight surface and use that to prevent slippage and uneven scans. Also noteworthy, batteries are not needed on Windows PC. It can sup power via the USB cable. Yet that can further hamper your steady scan if you’re not careful.
Bottom Line: The IRIScan Book Executive 3 is a nice little product. With some of the minor issues in tow, I think a sub-$100 price tag would seal the deal for most. Without that it’s a bit expensive. But it’s a great option to have for quickly scanning book pages, documents and more to be later downloaded to your device of choice.

Razer Atrox Moddable Arcade Stick System

2013-05-18T16:48:00.000+07:00

Here’s Razer homage to button mashers and Street Fighter tournament goers and those who yearn to walk in their Houduken-laden shoes. The Razer Atrox is an arcade stick for Xbox 360. Razer says the product is the result of intense testing and evaluation with some the world’s best pro-gamers in and out of the Fighting Game Community.
The arcade stick system is made from “premium quality” Sanwa components. There are 10 buttons and a 8-way precision joystick. The inside of the arcade stick can be easily accessed with a single button press. You can change out various design choices for a more customized look and feel with access to the to the screws and such. There is even a compartment to house a spare bat top joystick. It comes with detachable screwdriver and 13 foot (4 meters) USB cable to help with modding. There is also a headset jack for Xbox Live.
Product features:
• 10 tournament-grade Sanwa buttons
• Authentic Sanwa joystick with ball top and additional bat top
• Interchangeable top plate allows for custom artwork finishes
• Fully accessible internals and storage compartments for easy modding
• Honeycomb structure on the inside for easy screw mounting
• Storage room for alternative bat top joystick and more
• 13 ft / 4 m detachable USB cable
• Screwdriver included for modding
• 2.5 mm audio jack for headset use on Xbox LIVE

Source: Razer Atrox

PS4 release date, news and features

2013-03-21T06:30:00.000+07:00

The PS4 is now an official thing. It officially exists, and from what we've been told so far it looks pretty awesome. The PS4 release date is unknown, but we do at least know a lot about the console itself - other than what it actually looks like.

With TechRadar in attendance at the event on the 20th Feb, Sony revealed some tantalising details about the PlayStation 4 hardware specs, along with some amazing software features that the new console will have.

Here's everything we know about the PlayStation 4 so far...

PS4 release date

The PS4 release date is "Holiday 2013" for the USA. That's the only official detail Sony revealed at the launch in February and it's unclear which other territories it applies to, if any.

However, in an interview with editor of Outside Xbox and TechRadar contributor, Mike Channell, Assassin's Creed 4 boss Gene Guesdon hinted in March that his game would launch on all platforms simultaneously... at the end of October this year.

Now, obviously for a game to launch on a next-gen console, that next-gen console is going to have to be on sale. So the natural assumption is that the PS4 release date will be October.

When discussing the PS4 and the next Xbox, Guesdon said: "We have a strong engine and we are always pushing the limits so this year again we are ready to support such new capacities, new abilities so the game will be ready for that but also you know we make it for current gen obviously from a starting point," said Guesdon.

At that, Channell asked, "Is there going to be any delay in the versions or are they all going to release at the same time?"

"Same ship" was the definitive response.

After the internet melted at the news, Ubisoft rushed out a clarification saying that Guesdon was not talking about PS4 or Xbox 720, but was instead referring to Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

We asked Mike what his view of it was and he had this to say for TechRadar: "If you look at the answer in context, from 5:05 onwards, it's part of a discussion that's specifically about PS4 and equivalent next generation consoles. I don't think there's any misunderstanding there. He's saying both current and next gen versions will ship at the same time, which implies the consoles will launch before the game's publicly announced release date."

Officially, Sony has said it wants the PS4 release date in Europe to be as soon as possible but makes no promises on whether the UK and other European countries will get a release date in time for Christmas this year or whether it'll be an uncomfortable wait until sometime in 2014.
Stock issues might be the reason for this, and that's exactly what happened back in 2006/2007 when the PS3 launched. It went on sale in the US and Japan in time for Christmas and Europe and the rest of the world had to wait for March the next year.
Zavvi has actually listed a UK PS4 release date of 31st December which seems extremely unlikely - launching a few days after Christmas? Surely that's retail suicide.
Until Sony gives more details then, it's all just speculation. Even the retailers don't seem to know when the PS4 will release - so maybe Sony doesn't either. It could depend on how quickly they can get manufacture going on retail models, what yield rates are and the capacity of the factories.
Until we know more, we'll quietly pray to the gods of silicon that the PS4 release date will be Christmas 2013 worldwide. Or better yet, tomorrow!

PS4: Hardware specs

AMD, as we guessed all along, is coursing through this new system's veins.

Post-event, Sony revealed the system runs on a single-chip custom processor and utilizes eight x86-64 AMD Jaguar CPU cores, with a next-gen AMD Radeon based graphics engine powering the way.

So it's very much a PC-based system then, which is great news for developers who will find it much easier to code games for the next gen consoles and for PCs. However, that CPU is hardly next-gen - it may have been modified for this system but the AMD Jaguar platform is by no means the fastest of its kind - indeed it's slower than Intel's fastest by orders of magnitude.

You can pre-order the PS4 from these stores: ShopTo | GAME

However, with fewer redundancies than a PC has, the PS4 will certainly be able to make use of every single Watt of power it draws.

The "highly enhanced PC GPU" is another story. It's another AMD part - something along the lines of a Radeon 7850 card - and packs 18 GCN units. That may sound a like a lot of techy mumbo jumbo but what it essentially means is that the GPU packs 18 processing clusters, each packing up to 64 cores. That provides a lot of parallel processing power, and will thus handle the majority of the PS4's grunt work. It hits 1.84 TFLOPS of processing mojo. This is a far more powerful component than the Jaguar CPU and is rumoured to have the edge on the GPU inside the Xbox 720.

Sony announced at the NYC event that the console will even use GPU compute features to take advantage of the GPU's raw power - it'll be used for general computation tasks as well as making games shiny.

Memory

The PS4 will ship packing 8GB of GDDR5 memory. That's some super-fast stuff right there and should enable lightning fast performance.

Indeed, Sony has revealed that you will be able to power down the PS4 mid-game and then switch it on again in seconds and pick up right where you left off. That's the sort of loading power that this memory enables.

Other specs

We're also looking at Blu-ray disk support plus good ol' DVD, plus HDMI output support as well as Analog-AV out and an optical digital output.

PlayStation 4 Eye

What's really grabbing though is the development of the PlayStation 4 Eye, a newly developed camera system that utilizes two high-sensitivity camera equipped with wide-angle lenses and 85-degree diagonal angle views.

Sony said the cameras (amounting to 1280 x 800 pixels) can cut out the image of a player from the background or differentiate between players in the background and foreground, enhancing game play handily. There's also mention of logging in using facial recognition and using voice and body movements to play games "more intuitively."

If you want to know how these specs stack up against what we know so far about the Xbox 720 (clue: PS4 is more powerful) - check out our comparison of PS4 and Xbox 720 specs.

PS4 controller: DualShock 4

The PS4 controller comes in the form of the DualShock 4 pad. Very much a classic design, the DualShock 4 nevertheless offers upgraded vibrations, enhanced motion sensors and a Vita-like touchpad on the front.

PS4 user interface

The XrossMediaBar (XMB) interface of PlayStations past has been completely ditched in the PS4, with Sony instead choosing to design a new OS that looks a lot more like that of the Xbox 360 than the PS3.

Will the PS4 be 4K capable?

In a chat with Kotaku, Sony has revealed that the PlayStation 4 will be able to playback 4K/Ultra HD video. However, it will not upscale to 4K or play games at 4K resolution.

Sony has also confirmed that it will definitely launch a 4K movie service on the PS4 and is looking at ways it can get around the 100GB downloads required.

Backwards compatibility

The PS4 will definitely not offer native support for PS3 games. However, there will at some point be a service on the Sony Entertainment Network that offers server-side emulation and streaming of games from PS One classics right through to PS3 Platinum Editions.

PlayStation Move

Sony has confirmed that PlayStation Move will play a big part in the PS4 ecosystem. However, it has not yet been revealed whether the PS4 will launch alongside a new PS Eye camera and new Move controllers or whether the peripherals are staying the same with all the enhancements made console-side.

Synergy with PlayStation Vita

Sony has revealed that the PS4 will launch with the ability to stream games directly to your PS Vita. In exactly the same way as the Wii U allows you to switch off your TV and continue playing on the tablet controller, the PS4 will wirelessly send your games to the Vita.

There will be similar synergy between "all Sony devices" which means Xperia handsets and tablets, Bravia TVs and BD players.

Sony hinted that there will be more announcements in this area, too. We think the obvious next reveal in this area is the ability to play PS4 games on your Vita from any location using a wireless connection.

PS4 Instant On

The PS4 will be one nippy device if Sony is to be believed. It will have an instant on/off feature allowing your to shut down during a game and then boot up from scratch in seconds and resume where you left off. The days of waiting 60 seconds as your console loads up are about to end.

PS4 price: how much will it cost?

We really don't know what price the PS4 will fetch. Some rumours suggest a figure of around $450/£399. But it's pure speculation at the moment.

The sake Zavvi page which lists the UK release date as 31st December 2013 has a pre-order available for £399. Again, we'd take that with a pinch of salt, but if it's their best guess, there might be a grain of something in it.

PS4 launch titles

A number of games have been revealed for the PS4. They Are: Deep Down (Capcom), Destiny (Bungie), Diablo III (Blizzard), Driveclub (Evolution Studios), Final Fantasy (Square Enix), Infamous: Second Son (Sucker Punch), Killzone: Shadow Fall (Guerilla Games), Knack (Sony), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt RED), Watch Dogs (Ubisoft).

Second-hand games on the way out?

Sony has yet to discuss this area of the PS4, but you'd think it would dispel the rumours if they're not true.

The rumours suggest that Sony is going in the same direction as Microsoft in that it wants to kill off the second-hand games market. Current industry wisdom suggests that future PS4 games might be tied to your Sony Entertainment Network account and will thus have no resale value. That's a similar approach as used by PC developers using Steam so we reckon this is a likely development. Doesn't mean we're happy about it, though.

What will the PS4 actually be called?

It's the PS4, of course!

Galaxy S4: what it means for Apple's iPhone 6

2013-03-20T19:16:00.000+07:00

The Samsung Galaxy S4 launch was much more interesting than the Galaxy S4 itself. The tone was way off - CNet called it "shockingly sexist" - and like recent Apple launches, the device was evolutionary, not revolutionary. The Daily Mash nailed it with its report of "state-of-the-art pointlessness" that means "if you are watching a video you can pause it while being attacked by a wolf."

Many of the new features are old features, such as the tilt scrolling Instapaper offered in 2008 or the infra-red transmitters Nokia churned out by the truckload in the early 2000s. Other features have appeared on earlier Samsungs, or are available in apps such as Google Translate. Add-on games controllers are hardly a new idea either.

That's not to say that any of these things are bad - the wheel's been around for a while now, and that's still pretty handy - but of course if this was the iPhone 5S we'd have the entire internet telling us that Apple is doomed.

Samsung largely escaped that, although it was funny to see the odd bit of rumour-fuelled disappointment when the S4 didn't turn out to include a giant robot horse. Apple launches have had rumour-fuelled disappointment for years!

Cheap gags aside, can Apple learn anything from the S4?

I think it can.

It's all about the experience - and the apps

Samsung knows that it can't really stand out with hardware alone - let's be honest, bar the odd gimmick there's not a huge difference between the S4 and the S3, any more than there's a huge difference between an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 4 - and it can't really stand out with stock Android, because everybody's got that.

In fact, the word "Android" was conspicuous by its absence last night, and you got the distinct impression that if Tizen was ready, the S4 would be running that.

There's only so much you can do with the hardware. Sure, Apple can give us a bigger screen, a finish that doesn't scratch itself to death if you look at it funny, and it can boost the processor and the battery life and the megapixelszzzzz

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Sorry, where was I?

What's interesting now isn't the hardware, but the overall experience. The ecosystem. The apps.

That's where Apple could do so much better.

Take Siri, for example. It's a superb technology that doesn't do very much. Let me control my phone with it, activate Airplane Mode or find a particular video clip and send it to my Apple TV.

Give developers an API so they can expand it into the areas Apple doesn't do or hasn't got round to. Siri should be an oracle and a Babel Fish translator, a taxi booker and a cheap flight finder and a Netflix controller and a song identifier and anything else developers can come up with.

It'd be nice to see Passbook actually do something too. My wallet's full of paper and plastic cards - gym memberships, petrol vouchers, loyalty cards, gig tickets - and Passbook could easily replace the lot of them, but right now it's a dead app.

Get the big names on board, get Siri to find the voucher or card I'm looking for.

Better sharing between apps.

A lock screen more like Google Now.

*cough* Maps *cough*.

You get the idea, and I'm sure you have your own suggestions (please, share them in the comments, we're all ears).

That's my wish list for the next iPhone. What's yours?

Trade panel delays decision on Apple, Samsung patent fight

2013-03-19T20:05:00.000+07:00

Google has agreed to pay a $7 million fine after a three year investigation by a coalition of state attorneys general found the search giant's Street View vehicles had collected private data from home and business networks.

Between 2008 and 2010, the Street View vehicles, which were equipped with antennae and open-source software, collected names, passwords, addresses, emails and other personal information from millions of unencrypted home and business Wi-Fi networks, said Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, who spearheaded the investigation.

Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia are included in the settlement.

Slideshow: Crazy Images Caught on Google Street View

Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, said the fine sends a mixed message.

"Most of us would be enormously unhappy if, as in the old days, we had to wait three minutes while our GPS searched for satellites," he said. Google took information it should not have, he said, "but the big picture here is we all seem to be really happy making this tradeoff."

The $7 million-dollar fine is pocket change to Google, say analysts -- based on projected revenues this year of $61 billion, the company will bring in $7 million per hour. But its reputation has taken a hit; its informal slogan in its early years was "Don't be evil."

Google has agreed to start a nationwide educational campaign to teach people how best to protect themselves on wireless networks. The search giant said it would also educate its employees on user privacy. And it promised to destroy the data it had collected, unless a lawsuit requires that it be preserved. Several class-action suits are still being appealed.

When the intrusion first came to light, Google blamed it on a rogue engineer who set up a data-collection program in equipment that was only meant to detect basic information about the locations of local Wi-Fi networks. The FCC investigated and said last year that some Google managers knew about the data-mining, but didn't stop it.

"We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn't, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to ABCNews.com.

"The project leaders never wanted this data, and didn't use it or even look at it. We're pleased to have worked with Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen and the other state attorneys general to reach this agreement."

Jepsen, whose state will get $520,823 from the settlement, said he is pleased with the result.

"Consumers have a reasonable expectation of privacy," he said. "This agreement recognizes those rights and ensures that Google will not use similar tactics in the future to collect personal information without permission from unsuspecting consumers."

Trade panel delays decision on Apple, Samsung patent fight

2013-03-18T20:03:00.000+07:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. International Trade Commission said on Wednesday that it would delay a decision on allegations that Apple infringed upon patents owned by Samsung Electronics in making the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad.

An administrative law judge at the ITC had said in a preliminary ruling in September that Apple did not infringe the patents. The full ITC said it would review the matter. If the full ITC reversed its internal judge and found Apple guilty of infringement, the ITC could order its products banned from the U.S. market.

The ITC said it would now issue a decision on May 31. It requested filings on questions related to the effect of banning the Apple products on the public interest and whether there were acceptable substitutes for the Apple products if they were to be banned.

Apple has a parallel complaint filed against Samsung at the ITC, accusing Samsung, a major Apple chip provider as well as a global rival, of copying its iPhones and iPads. An ITC judge said in that case that Samsung infringed on four Apple patents.

Apple and Samsung have taken their bruising patent disputes to some 10 countries and four continents as they vie for market share in the booming mobile industry.

Samsung is the world's largest smartphone maker, while Apple is in second place, according to Gartner Inc, a technology research company.

The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-794.

THX sues Apple over iPhone, iPad and iMac speaker technology

2013-03-17T00:01:00.001+07:00

Apple has been accused of stealing patented speaker technology from THX for its line of iOS devices and iMac computers.

The audio company, founded by Star Wars mastermind George Lucas, has filed suit in California claiming Apple has infringed upon a patent granted to THX in 2008.

The patent in question is called "narrow profile speaker configurations and systems" and relates to how speaker units can be connected to flatscreen televisions and desktop computers to boost output.

THX is seeking compensation or royalties from Apple, in its filing to the San Jose federal court, saying the infringement has caused "monetary damage and irreparable harm."

Resemblance

Examining the patent and the suit, AppleInsider commented that speaker configurations within iOS devices did resemble those outlined in the THX patent, but were more obvious within iMac computers.

"Looking at the patent claims, there appears to be some correlation with the configurations used in Apple's products," the report claimed.

"Perhaps most compelling is the latest iMac's speakers, which features an extremely thin profile with channeled acoustics exiting down-facing apertures that are more narrow than the speaker faces hidden within the machine. It is unknown if the speaker housings actually employ '483 patent's designs, though the structure looks to be similar to those described."

Neither Apple, nor THX have commented further on the matter, while Apple has until May 14 to reach a settlement before court proceedings commence in June.

Google to enter digital newspaper business with Google Play News?

2013-03-16T23:59:00.001+07:00

Google looks like its planning to launch a digital newspaper store for Android devices through the Google Play Store.

A Google Play News service has been discovered within the JavaScript of the web-based iteration of the shop.

The find by the Android Police site suggests that users will soon be able to access digital newspapers through "Issues" and "Subscriptions" bought through the Play Store.

It's likely that upon launch, the News section will sit alongside Apps, Games, Books, Magazines, Music and Movies as content categories within Android app store.
Google Reader replacement?

Some of the wording unearthed within the JavaScript hints at Google Play News being a replacement, of sorts, for the Google Reeder RSS service, which was controversially axed during the week.

However, it's probably more likely to take a similar form of Apple's Newsstand app, which sells and delivers digital newspaper issues and subscriptions to users. The language gleaned from the complex code includes:

To read Google Play News, you must have a supported Android phone or tablet.
Please sign in to get this News edition.
Please sign in to purchase this News Issue.
Please sign in to purchase this News Edition Subscription.
Subscribing you to this news edition.
You have subscribed to this news edition. It is now available on your device.

Perhaps we'll see this rolled new feature out at Google I/O on May 15, where the company usually unearths its new Android additions.

Security appliances are riddled with serious vulnerabilities

2013-03-15T19:03:00.001+07:00

The majority of email and Web gateways, firewalls, remote access servers, UTM (united threat management) systems and other security appliances have serious vulnerabilities, according to a security researcher who analyzed products from multiple vendors.

Most security appliances are poorly maintained Linux systems with insecure Web applications installed on them, according to Ben Williams, a penetration tester at NCC Group, who presented his findings Thursday at the Black Hat Europe 2013 security conference in Amsterdam. His talk was entitled, “Ironic Exploitation of Security Products.”

Williams investigated products from some of the leading security vendors, including Symantec, Sophos, Trend Micro, Cisco, Barracuda, McAfee and Citrix. Some were analyzed as part of penetration tests, some as part of product evaluations for customers, and others in his spare time.

More than 80 percent of the tested products had serious vulnerabilities that were relatively easy to find, at least for an experienced researcher, Williams said. Many of these vulnerabilities were in the Web-based user interfaces of the products, he said.

The interfaces of almost all tested security appliances had no protection against brute-force password cracking and had cross-site scripting flaws that allowed session hijacking. Most of them also exposed information about the product model and version to unauthenticated users, which would have made it easier for attackers to discover appliances that are known to be vulnerable.

Another common type of vulnerability found in such interfaces was cross-site request forgery. Such flaws allow attackers to access administration functions by tricking authenticated administrators into visiting malicious websites. Many interfaces also had vulnerabilities that allowed command injection and privilege escalation.

Flaws that Williams found less frequently included direct-authentication bypasses, out-of-band cross-site scripting, on-site request forgery, denial of service and SSH misconfiguration. There were a lot of other, more obscure issues as well, he said.

During his presentation, Williams presented several examples of flaws he found last year in appliances from Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro that could be used to gain full control over the products. A white paper with more details about his findings and recommendations for vendors and users was published on the NCC Group website.

Often at trade shows, vendors claim that their products run on “hardened” Linux, according to Williams. “I disagree,” he said.

Most tested appliances were actually poorly maintained Linux systems with outdated kernel versions, old and unnecessary packages installed, and other poor configurations, Williams said. Their file systems were not “hardened” either, as there was no integrity checking, no SELinux or AppArmour kernel security features, and it was rare to find non-writeable or non-executable file systems.

A big problem is that companies often believe that because these appliances are security products created by security vendors, they are inherently secure, which is definitely a mistake, Williams said.

For example, an attacker who gains root access on an email security appliance can do more than the actual administrator can, he said. The administrator works through the interface and can only read emails flagged as spam, but with a root shell an attacker can capture all the email traffic passing through the appliance, he said. Once compromised, security appliances can also serve as a base for network scans and attacks against other vulnerable systems on the network.

The way in which appliances can be attacked depends on how they are deployed inside the network. In more than 50 percent of the tested products, the Web interface ran on the external network interface, Williams said.

However, even if the interface is not directly accessible from the Internet, many of the identified flaws allow for reflective attacks, where the attacker tricks the administrator or a user on the local network to visit a malicious page or to click on a specifically crafted link that launches an attack against the appliance through their browser.

In the case of some email gateways, the attacker can craft and send an email with exploit code for a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the subject line. If the email is blocked as spam and the administrator inspects it in the appliance interface, the code will execute automatically.

The fact that such vulnerabilities exist in security products is ironic, Williams said. However, the situation with non-security products is probably worse, he said.

It’s unlikely that such vulnerabilities will be exploited in mass attacks, but they could be used in targeted attacks against specific companies that use the vulnerable products, for example by state-sponsored attackers with industrial espionage goals, the researcher said.

There have been some voices that said Chinese networking vendor Huawei might be installing hidden backdoors in its products at the request of the Chinese government, Williams said. However, with vulnerabilities like these already existing in most products, a government probably wouldn’t even need to add more, he said.

In order to protect themselves, companies should not expose the Web interfaces or the SSH service running on these products to the Internet, the researcher said. Access to the interface should also be restricted to the internal network because of the reflective nature of some of the attacks.

Administrators should use one browser for general browsing and a different one for managing the appliances via the Web interface, he said. They should use a browser such as Firefox with the No Script security extension installed, he said.

Williams said he reported the vulnerabilities he discovered to the affected vendors. Their responses varied, but in general the big vendors did the best job of handling the reports, fixing the flaws and sharing the information with their customers, he said.

For China Mobile, 4G and next iPhone key to unlocking Apple demand

2013-03-14T20:00:00.004+07:00

HONGKONG (Reuters) - China Mobile Ltd said it plans to spend 41.7 billion yuan ($6.7 billion) developing 4G technology this year, hoping to tap pent-up demand for Apple Inc smartphones as it gets an iPhone model that will finally run on its network.

The world's largest mobile carrier - with more than twice as many subscribers as there are people in the United States - already has more than 10 million of its customers owning an iPhone even though the gadget doesn't properly work with the Chinese firm's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G technology, which is not compatible with global technologies.

That inferior technology, and the failure to offer customers an iPhone contract - which its main rivals do - has been a key reason for China Mobile's slowing profit growth.

The company, valued at $220 billion or half an Apple, said on Thursday net profit rose 2.7 percent last year to 129.3 billion yuan ($21 billion). That was slightly better than expectations of 127.4 billion yuan, according to a Reuters poll of 13 analysts, which would have been the slowest growth since profits fell in 1999.

While many of China Mobile's iPhone users have found clever ways around some of the carrier's limitations, the company wants to close the gap with its two smaller rivals - China Unicom and China Telecom - which already offer iPhone-compatible technology.

Industry experts expect Apple's next iPhone will support China Mobile's TD-LTE 4G technology, even though this will be less widely used than the FDD-LTE standard.

"Apple's iPhones will be like a killer app for China Mobile once its gets its 4G up and running," said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura International in Hong Kong. "That will definitely boost user numbers, though it will weigh on the bottom-line in the first year or so as China Mobile will most probably have to provide heavy handset subsidies for the iPhone."

China Mobile said on Thursday it will spend 27 billion yuan on handset subsidies this year, up 13 percent from in 2012.

China Telecom, which signed up to sell the iPhone last year, increased its spending on handset subsidies by 50 percent in the first half of last year, and has seen its profits fall in the last three quarters on higher marketing and subsidy costs.

NO-FRILLS

Most of China Mobile's 715 million subscribers are no-frills users attracted to its wide network coverage across the vast country. Only a small number are premium, tech-savvy consumers.

Just 13 percent of its users are on 3G, compared with one third at China Unicom and 44 percent at China Telecom, which use other variants of CDMA 3G technologies developed by global players such as Japan's NTT Docomo and Qualcomm Inc.

Using the iPhone on China Mobile's homegrown 3G network can be as sluggish as being hooked up to a 2G network, but many users take advantage of the carrier's many wi-fi hot-spots for heavier data-crunching applications such as playing games and downloading software.

Demand for the iPhone has spawned a cottage industry, with some local phone vendors selling SIM card cutters that act like a hole-punch to trim bigger cards to fit the smaller iPhone slots. Some China Mobile sales outlets offer on-the-spot SIM-trimming services as well as wi-fi cards that iPhone users can use in most hot-spots.

China Mobile is aggressively pushing for 4G to improve the user experience in a market where chatting on Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat and checking microblogs on Sina Corp's Weibo are the norm among smartphone users.

China Mobile plans to spend 190.2 billion yuan on its networks this year, out of which 41.7 billion yuan will be invested in 4G, executives said on Thursday. Last year, total spending was 127.4 billion yuan.

Chairman Xi Guohua said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year that the carrier planned to build a TD-LTE 4G network with 200,000 base stations to cover more than 100 Chinese cities, home to 500 million potential users.

China Mobile said on Thursday that it expects 4G licenses to be issued around the end of this year, echoing comments by a senior Chinese official last week that lifted mainland telecom-related stocks in Hong Kong.

Google Now for the web spotted again in Chrome code

2013-03-13T06:16:00.004+07:00

Upgrade: Google Now may be spreading its wings to iOS too, if a now-yanked YouTube film is to be accepted.

The vid looks to be a level-res promotional spot for Google Now on the iPhone and iPad, however it may be a deceitful flick or a never-was venture.

Energizing times are clearly happening...now.

New article...

The prominent Google Now emphasize incorporated with Android Jelly Bean is looking perpetually prone to make its presence felt on the Chrome net browser after the quality was again spotted by a Chromium artist.

The helpful private partner, which serves up caution Cards dependent upon the informative content for the most part applicable to the client at any given time, has been a disclosure since it was reported at I/O keep going summer.

Notwithstanding it appears Google is getting ready a launch for its net programs on Windows and the Chrome OS, in light of a revelation inside the Chromium (the open source form of Chrome) code by Francois Beau ford.

The post inside Chromium lets clients empower and test the Google Now headline provided that they know the private Google URL. In any case, the quality hasn't yet been made open for the purpose that URL remains protected.

Increasingly prove

The post on Chromium is headed "empowering trying Google Now part augmentation," and updates testers that the "Google Now segment augmentation now might be turned on by means of chrome://flags."

On the other hand, this isn't the first occasion when that Google Now for the Chrome program has been foreshadowed by Beau ford.

Back in December designers inside the Chromium activity were shown up for have acknowledged a compliance for "Creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome usage" by means of Chrome notices.

Moreover, in late January in the not so distant future, the capability for Chromium planners to "Enable Rich Notifications" was moreover perceived as a mark that the incorporation Google Now Cards isn't far away.

Google Maps refreshes 'thousands of miles' of UK Street View images

2013-03-12T17:48:00.000+07:00

Google Maps has improved Street View imagery in several major UK cities, while adding places without a doubt unchartered from its cameras.

The globe's pre-eminent mapping service says its Street watch cameras have retraced thousands of quilo meters in London, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow in a very bid to improve the overhaul.

Alongside the major metropolises, those distinct camera-wielding cars have inside addition been documenting the ground-level landscape in parts of East Anglia, South Wales along with the Scottish Coastline for the first time.

Beyond the UK improvements Google has into addition expanded its Street observe presence across the continent, coming to Bulgaria to the first time, while 200 new towns and cities in Russia are furthermore available.
Bulgaria tours for the smartphone

In a post on the Google blog, the company wrote: "Today we're announcing a major expansion of Street View to make our maps of Europe more comprehensive and usable.

"For the first time, individuals all over the world can see Street watch imagery of Bulgaria. They'll also have access to panoramas of almost 200 new towns and cities in Russia."

The upgrades, which are viewable on the web and the company's iOS and Android apps, follow the addition of 250,000 km of fresh Street observe imagery last October.

Windows Phone 7.8 update paused by Microsoft

2013-03-11T15:03:00.000+07:00

Microsoft has stopped Windows Phone 7.8 updates for an aged Windows Phone smartphones like a Nokia Lumia 800, Lumia 900 and Lumia 610. The association is operative to repair a program glitch in a release, though it\'s misleading how long a suspension will last.

The folks during CNET explain to have received an acknowledgment for a halt of an update from Nokia as well. According to a deputy of a Finnish company, a glitch seems to be a teenager issue in a Windows Phone 7.8 program and a roll out will resume shortly.

The latest Windows Phone 7.8 refurbish comes with a rested home-screen and resizable live tiles. Unfortunately, this seems to be a last major refurbish for a Windows Phone 7.x smartphones as Microsoft has already reliable that these smartphones will not be removing to ambience Windows Phone 8.x.

Mozilla again rejects porting Firefox to iOS

2013-03-10T01:27:00.000+07:00

Mozilla won’t be building Firefox for iOS unless Apple changes its rules, a corporation government same over the weekend.

Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice chairman of product at Mozilla, told Associate in nursing audience at South by Southwest Interactive (SxSW) that the corporate isn't building Associate in nursing iOS browser, and has no plans to.

CNET according Sullivan’s no-iOS-here on weekday, once a CNET newsman qualified a panel at SXSW that additionally enclosed representatives from Opera code and MoboTap, an urban center developer of Dolphin, a Web Kit-powered browser for android and iOS.

Sullivan’s comment was the strongest signal however that Mozilla has no interest in drafting Associate in nursing iOS Firefox. However it wasn’t the primary.

Last Sept, Mozilla force the plug on Firefox Home, a product of the desktop browser’s bookmarker and tab synchronization technology that was the firm’s solely iOS app.

“We have set to get rid of Firefox Home from the Apple App Store and focus our resources on different comes,” same microphone Conner, director of services engineering, at the time.

Mozilla’s enmity toward iOS goes back even more, to 2011, once it reiterated it might not build Firefox for Apple’s software system, and to 2009, once then-CEO John Lilly same it might be most unlikely to supply Firefox on iOS.

While Mozilla once left the door receptive porting Firefox to iOS, it ne'er created the move. Instead, the ASCII text file developer committed resources to Firefox OS, a browser-based mobile software system. Handsets power-driven by Firefox OS are to launch later this year from Alcatel One bit, Huawei Technologies, LG physical science and ZTE.

The point for Mozilla is that Apple demands alternate browsers use Safari’s engines to render pages and take apart JavaScript. “Apps that browse the online should use the iOS Web Kit framework and Web Kit JavaScript,” Apple’s App Store pointers state.

Other browser manufacturers have bent to Apple’s rules: Google has discharged Associate in nursing iOS version of Chrome, and Opera, that recently proclaimed it might switch to a Web Kit, can have the choice of doing constant.

For many of constant reasons, Mozilla has declined to develop a browser for Windows RT and its “Modern”—still known as “Metro” by most—tile-based programmer (UI). Microsoft needs that different browsers utilize Windows RT arthropod genus (application programming interfaces) that will lead to a Firefox “so halt in terms of power and speed that it’s most likely not worthwhile to even trouble,” Mozilla’s director of Firefox same last might.

Mozilla Associate in nursing different browser manufacturers are at a major disadvantage in mobile minus an iOS application. per internet metrics company internet Applications, nearly one in each eight folks that browsed the online last month did thus from a mobile device — smartphone or tablet—and iOS accounted for 54.9 p.c of the worldwide mobile software system usage.

Safari is that the overwhelming leader in mobile as a result of it’s the default browser on iOS: 55.4 p.c of the mobile browsers utilized in Feb were a version of expedition.

Last month, Chrome control a two p.c share, totally on android, whereas Firefox accounted for simply 0.02 percent, additionally on android.

Mozilla wasn't straight off offered to verify Sullivan’s comments.

EA making progress fixing SimCity problems

2013-03-09T14:25:00.000+07:00

Electronic Arts is not ready to say Game On quite nonetheless to any or all SimCity fans, however it says it's created "huge progress” fixing issues that sullied the March five unharness.

Its server’s square measure currently responding forty times quicker than at launch whereas the franchise is seeing reduced downtimes. Whereas the server upgrades square measure excellent news, the enhancements square measure late coming back.

For days, players have complained of issues connecting with SimCity’s servers, whereas some players UN agency did get on-line lost progress within the game, were kicked out of their games or were forced to suffer long downtimes once every failing association.

Problems with the online-only game were therefore gross that at one purpose Amazon even stopped merchandising the city-building game.

In spite of launch problems for SimCity and alternative high-demand games like Diablo III, it’s unlikely that enormous publishers can recede from server-based vice. the net demand not solely permits for distinctive options, it conjointly provides a potent sort of digital rights management, during which all players will be verified in the slightest degree times.

Gamers have spent years protesting regarding always-online DRM schemes that need a persistent net association lest you be shod from your single-player game. Its associate degree burdensome idea—you will chuck taking part in ought to your net association go down, or if you decide on to bring a portable computer on an extended plane flight.

In fact, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights advocate, took the launch debacle as a chance to rail against DRM during an extended journal post during which it same, “…SimCity is simply the newest massive flop for DRM, that hurts customers, undermines innovation and competition, and unnecessarily preempts users' use rights — all while not having a true impact on ‘piracy.’”

The love pointed to Diablo III, that last year conjointly suffered issues associated with the net theme, further as Ubisoft, that used continuously on-line DRM for its high titles for years, before realizing it had been harming people that were buying games, whereas people that were splitting them off really had higher vice experiences as a result of they didn’t need to stay perpetually connected with authentication servers.

“Publishers could disagree regarding the answer to issues exhibit by unauthorized repetition and also the challenges of ‘competing with free,’ however for certain the primary step in this competition isn't creating the legitimate product worse than the free one,” the love opined.

EA, for its half, tried to cut back demand on servers by disabling some game options, then offered players UN agency had activated their game a free laptop transfer game, redeemable on March eighteen.

“I recognize that’s to a small degree contrived – reasonably like shopping for a gift for a lover once you probably did one thing tinny. However we have a tendency to feel unhealthy regarding what happened. We’re hoping you won’t keep mad which we’ll be friends once more once SimCity is running at 100%,” wrote Lucy Bradshaw, general manager of the Maxis label, a division of Semitic deity, during a journal post.

The property problems haven’t been restricted to people that wish to play on-line with friends. Within the new SimCity, all players square measure needed to remain connected to Electronic Arts’ servers, notwithstanding they need to play alone, in single-player mode.

Apple vs. Samsung, Round 2 to proceed in California court

2013-03-08T01:42:00.000+07:00

A judge in California has ruled that a patent infringement lawsuit between Apple and Samsung Electronics will continue, after indicating earlier that she would like to put the case on hold pending resolution of an appeal in another patent dispute between the two companies before the same court.
samsung, apple

The two sides will, however, be required "to limit their asserted patent claims and accused products to twenty-five per side," Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division, wrote in her order. The judge also plans to put a limit on the number of experts produced by each side. Unlike in the other case, the court "will not permit the parties to involve over fifty experts in this litigation," she wrote.

A judge in New york has ruled that a patent infringement lawsuit between Apple and Samsung Electronics will continue, after indicating earlier that they would like to put the case on hold pending resolution of an appeal in another patent dispute between the companies before the same court.
The sides will, however, be necessary "to limit their asserted patent claims and accused products to twenty-five per side," Judge Lucy H. Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New york, San Jose division, wrote in her order. The judge also designs to put a limit on the number of specialists produced by each side. Unlike in the other case, the court "will not permit the parties to involve over fifty specialists in this litigation," they wrote.

Samsung filed in November to adjust its infringement contentions to include the iPad mini and latest versions of the iPod touch and iPad, among other changes, as the products were released by Apple after Samsung submitted its original infringement contentions on June 15, as well as a motion to supplement on October one that added the iPhone five to products that allegedly infringe its patents.
Apple, which brought the cases against Samsung, wishes them to proceed in parallel, while an attorney for Samsung, which has countersued, stressed the overlap between the cases. Both companies have included a number of each other's recent product introductions to the list of infringing products in the lawsuit.

Wishes to cover new products

Apple also filed for leave to adjust its contentions to include Samsung's Galaxy S III walking the Android Jelly Bean operating process, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Tab 8.9 walking Ice Cream Sandwich, Galaxy Tab two ten.1, the Rugby Pro, and the Galaxy S III Mini. It later dropped the Galaxy S III Mini from the infringing products after the South Korean company said it had no immediate designs to release the product in the U.S.

In joint status document before the court last week on the continuation of the litigation, Apple argued that there wasn't an overlap between the suits before the court as there was a difference in the patents alleged to have been infringed by Samsung, infringing products and their accused functionality. Of the 23 accused Samsung products in the case, only are at issue in the other, and the accused features of those products differ, it added.

Most of the products are new and based on recently released versions of the source code of the Android operating process, Apple said. The company said it would be harmed by a stay of the lawsuit as "Samsung will continue to capture first-time smartphone buyers with continued sales of accused infringing products as well as sales of additional newly launched infringing products."

Infringing on Siri?

Apple claims that Samsung infringes in the Fast Search Box of Galaxy Nexus, of the allegedly infringing products, a unified search feature used in the Siri voice assistant, which is disclosed in a patent bearing U.S. patent number 8,086,604. Another patent in the case is five, 666,502, known as the "history list" patent, which describes a way of making text entry simpler on a small device by presenting users with a list of historically in the past typed terms.

In the other lawsuit before the court, a jury decided in August that Samsung must pay Apple US$1.05 billion for infringing several of its patents in Samsung smartphones and tablets. But Apple's gains were whittled down recently when the judge cut about $450 million from the award, and ordered a retrial to choose the correct damages related to about a dozen of the Samsung smartphones and tablets at issue in the trial. Judge Koh said the jury had applied an "impermissible legal theory" when calculating the damages. Earlier the judge had denied Apple a permanent injunction on several Samsung products.

Samsung's position is that a stay of the second suit will, among other things, promote judicial economy, and avoid wasting the time of the court and the jury.

Consumers worry about data security in call centres

2013-03-07T17:42:00.000+07:00

British consumers are worried regarding what happens to their personal data in call centers, according to a survey of more when compared with 2,000 individuals commissioned through communications overhaul provider Avaya and contact center specialist Sabio.

The survey, carried out by Davies Hickman Partners, revealed that more in comparison with 38% of respondents had been reluctant to pay for a product or service over the phone because of worries over call center fraud. This might equate to 18 thousand persons nationwide.

Only 5% feel that a phone payment is completely secure, and 50% imagine organized criminals target call centers. Nevertheless men and women are nevertheless highly reliant on this as a way of buying products and overhaul, and there are several contradictions in their attitudes towards existing security measures.

Some 60% said they are asked pertaining to security details when there may be no require, 71% do not like providing bank account details, and 55% said they disco highly it aggravating to repeat details on one call.

Avaya and Sabio say there exists some tension between companies' attempts to protect individuals’ data and their efforts to put together things easier regarding customers.

However you've received a willingness among consumers to get ready use of technology regarding security: 80% said they are happy to enter passwords on keypads and 51% are receptive to technology as well as voice biometrics.

Simon Culmer, Managing Director UK pertaining to Avaya, said that consumers have a contradictory attitude that makes things difficult regarding organizations, but that there are likely available options.

"Consumer trust in technology is key," he said. "It expects to be used to reassure customers that their security concerns are being addressed while simultaneously improving the customer experience, speeding up the time and driving down the cost of just about hugely and extremely customer service interaction."

Office 365 is a better deal than Office 2013

2013-03-06T01:49:00.000+07:00

This time, there is virtually no decision to make. Comparing Office 2013 to Office 365 is an exercise in semantics; Microsoft has significantly stacked the deck to favor over the other.
Microsoft has given Office 365 a clear advantage over Office 2013.

The new Microsoft Office is here. As with the earlier versions, you can get Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more as a locally installed suite of applications or as Office 365, a cloud-based subscription. However, choosing between Office 2013 desktop program and the new Office 365 is a dramatically different decision than historically.

There is a clear distinction between the options. Office 2013 describes only the desktop applications. By contrast, Office 365 is a Web-based platform that pairs the Office applications with cloud storage. Historically, though, the Office 365 versions of the program had limited features and capabilities compared to the full desktop versions, and in case you didn’t have a Net connection you didn’t have Office.

With the new versions of the productivity suite, though, Office 2013 vs. Office 365 is a smoke-and-mirrors debate. Office 2013 is more costly than Office 365, and the license is only lovely for machine. In case you only need the core applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) you can get Office 2013 Home & Student for $140. Throw in Outlook, and you get Office 2013 Home & Business for $220. Office 2013 Pro adds Access and Publisher, all for $400.

Office 365 comes in flavors: Office 365 Home Premium for $100 per year and Office 365 Small Business Premium for $150 per year. Both come with the full Office 2013 Pro program for your PC, but there's key differences. Up to people can use Office 365 Home Premium on up to devices, with each user getting an Office experience custom-made to their own Microsoft ID.

Office 365 Small Business Premium also comes with licenses, but billed per user per year. Each user can install and use Office on up to PCs, but the licenses can’t be shared with other users. Office 365 Small Business Premium also includes a managed Microsoft Back Office surroundings including Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync.

The only scenario that truly makes sense for Office 2013 is in case you only need the program in Office 2013 Home & Student, and only on a single PC. In that case, you can spend the $140 and be completed. One time you throw in a second PC, though, or in case you need the additional tools like Outlook, Access, or Publisher, the math is heavily skewed in favor of the Office 365 subscription.

Depending on how plenty of computers and devices you need to put in Office 2013 on through Office 365, and which version of Office 2013 you’re comparing to, it will take somewhere between and a half to twenty years ($400 multiplied by to put in Office 2013 Pro on machines comes to $2000 or twenty years of Office 365) for Office 2013 to become the more affordable choice.

But, even for other platforms or mobile devices there's Web-based versions of the Office applications, and as long as you store your files in SkyDrive you can access them seamlessly from virtually any Web-connected device. The world does’t finish if your laptop computer is stolen or destroyed, and you can still edit a vital client presentation even in case you does’t have your PC with you.

The beauty of Office 365 is that you get over Office 2013 for your moneyit also comes with benefits that Office 2013 lacks. It comes with an additional 20GB of SkyDrive storage and 60 minutes per month of international Skype calls. Office 365 also has a brand spanking new feature called Office on Demand that lets you stream virtualized versions of the full desktop program to any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC.

Even in case you only need the applications in Office 2013 Home & Student, it would cost $700 to put that program on machines, and it would take seven years to break even on the cost of the Office 365 subscription. By that time, there will be a brand spanking new version of Office (or, perhaps). In case you buy Office 2013 Home & Student, you’ll still have it in the year 2020. But, in case you subscribe to Office 365 you will always have the most current version of Office available.

Microsoft has set things up so that the decision is already made. You are free to buy Office 2013, but Office 365 has clear advantages, and it makes more sense financially in every scenario.

Beyonce, Britney and Kutcher all affected by hack, and a hacker is one

2013-03-05T18:49:00.000+07:00

Beyonce, Jay-Z, Hillary Clinton, Britney Spears, Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian are among a host of 'slebs who have fallen victim to a starry-eyed hacker.

Private financial details have been posted on a website associated with the Soviet Union including social security numbers and - horror of horrors - unflattering pictures of the famous folk.

None of the celebrities apparently affected have come out and confirmed that any of the details leaked are accurate (although the Associated Press helpfully revealed that some social security numbers matched public records), but the LA Police Department has said that it is investigating.
Put a ring on it

No doubt there will be some tear-stained pillows in Tinseltown as B-listers lament not being famous enough to be involved in the hack or cursing their superior web security costing them column inches.

No one has come out and claimed responsibility for the apparent security breaches but also thought to be targeted are an LA police chief and FBI director Robert Mueller which means this hacker isn't afraid of making some serious enemies.

Not least because they also hit the bear-hunting ex-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and we all know how handy she is with an assault rifle.

How to add Windows 8's best desktop features to Windows 7

2013-03-04T18:11:00.000+07:00

"Windows 8 on a desktop." The very phrase makes some people recoil and instinctively mouse over their Start buttons.

It's too bad that the modern UI has proven so contentious, because aside from the eye candy—or eye cancer, depending on your perspective—an abundance of welcome nuts-and-bolts changes makes Windows 8 the hands-down best version of Windows that Microsoft has ever released.

But don't despair. Although you can tweak and tuck a few things to almost completely banish the interface formerly known as Metro from your Windows 8 life, you can also try another tactic: not upgrading at all. Many of Windows 8's best under-the-hood improvements can be yours in Windows 7 with the help of a few handy-dandy applications.

Having your cake and eating it too has never tasted so sweet.

Improved file copying and moving

Not to brand myself as a geek, but Windows 8’s file-copy dialog box may be its biggest desktop improvement. It brings all copying and moving processes into a single window, tosses in a pause button, deals with file conflicts more intelligently, and is just plain faster than before.

The file copier built into Windows 7 isn’t very good by comparison. In fact, while introducing Windows 8's file-copying tweaks, former Windows president Steven Sinofsky wrote that "most people do not have a great tool for high-volume copy jobs,” as so few users have a third-party file-copying tool installed on their Windows 7 systems. Yes, the Windows 7 file copier is just that meh.

You can improve file copying and moving without upgrading to Windows 8 by installing the utterly superb TeraCopy. This utility not only speeds up some file transfers, but it also allows you to pause transfers, a tremendously convenient improvement over Windows' default functionality.

That's not the only useful trick up TeraCopy's sleeve, though. Rather than halting transfers completely when an error occurs (as Windows 7 so frustratingly does), the program skips over problematic data and instead displays troubled files for your perusal at the end of a mass data migration. Even better, TeraCopy sports Windows shell integration, allowing you to completely replace Windows Explorer’s normal copy, paste, and move functions with TeraCopy's excellent alternatives.

A better Windows Explorer

I get it—five years after its debut in Office 2007, the Ribbon interface is still polarizing. But there’s a lot to like about File Explorer, as the Ribbon-ized version of the traditional Windows Explorer interface has been dubbed in Windows 8.

For one thing, the Ribbon provides easier access to less-used functions, such as toggling the display of hidden files. Windows 8's File Explorer also restores the much-loved Up button that Windows Vista and Windows 7 both lack, giving you an easy, one-click way to go up a directory.

The new File Explorer even allows you to mount ISO disc-image files by double-clicking them, an awesome feature that eliminates the need for third-party ISO-mounting software.

If you want to spiff up Windows 7's Windows Explorer with a Ribbon and an Up button, your best option is Better Explorer. This utility actually packs in more functionality than Windows 8's File Explorer does, thanks to its ability to display multiple open folders in tabs at the top of the window. This makes wrangling files a breeze compared to Windows' usual multiwindow madness.

Interested? Just pin Better Explorer to your taskbar, and then forget that Windows 7's default Windows Explorer even exists. To use TeraCopy with Better Explorer, you’ll need to go into Better Explorer’s options and enable the Allow third-party file operation replacements checkbox on the Shell screen.

Install WinCDEmu if you want to mimic Windows 8's ISO-mounting ways. It’s a dead-simple program that allows you to mount ISO files and other types of disc images easily just by double-clicking them. You'll find no faster, easier way to access digital copies of physical discs.

A More Powerfull Task Manager

No two ways about it: Windows 8’s task manager is awesome. It’s the most powerful task manager ever included with Windows, and it comes stuffed with stellar features and enhancements, such as the ability to restart explorer.exe with a single click, a vastly improved performance-monitoring tab, and a tool to manage your startup programs. (Microsoft should have added that last feature to Windows a decade ago.)

You won't find a program that exactly mirrors Windows 8's myriad task manager tweaks. But if you want an advanced task manager packed with powerful features, try Microsoft’s own Process Explorer. It’s a bit more complicated than Windows 7’s task manager, although it’s also easier to use in many ways. For example, Process Explorer shows your processes in a tree view so that you can see how they’re related to each other. This view comes in handy if you’re trying to determine which Google Chrome process launched the 50 other Chrome processes running on your system.

If you prefer Process Explorer after giving it a whirl, you can make it your default task manager by opening its Options menu and selecting Replace Task Manager. Easy

To manage startup programs, you can turn to the ever-useful CCleaner application—if you read PCWorld how-to articles regularly, you probably already have it installed. You’ll find CCleaner's startup manager under Tools > Startup.

If CCleaner isn’t enough for you, try Microsoft’s own Autoruns tool. It’s the most comprehensive way to view and manage programs that automatically start at boot-up. Autoruns is definitely more complicated to use than the default tool built into Windows 8's task manager, but it also shows many more granular entries that CCleaner and Windows 8’s task manager don’t.

Integrated antivirus protection

Microsoft finally took some responsibility for security in Windows 8 and bundled an antivirus program dubbed Windows Defender with the operating system. Despite the different name, however, Windows Defender is basically the default Windows Firewall paired with Microsoft Security Essentials, which is freely available as a Windows 7 download.

MSE sports the same interface as Windows Defender, but it also delivers the same solid yet unspectacular virus protection. Why not check out the antivirus field and explore your options if you have to download a program anyway?

What about the performance improvements?

Windows 8 boots much, much faster than Windows 7 does. Seriously. It's like greased lightning. Microsoft achieved this by putting Windows 8 in a sort of hybrid state where the base kernel session is actually hibernating, as opposed to undergoing a full shutdown.

So, if you want Windows 7 to boot up faster, just use your computer’s hibernation option rather than turning it off all the way. Better yet, leave it in sleep mode when you’re not using it—sleep mode uses only a small amount of power, and your computer will resume in a second or two when you're ready to use it.

What, that's still not fast enough for you? Buy a solid-state drive. Since upgrade copies of Windows 8 cost $120 for the base version all the way up to $200 for Windows 8 Pro, it's possible to upgrade your computer to a blazing-fast SSD for less than you'd pay for a copy of Windows 8. SSDs offer tremendous performance improvements over platters of spinning rust (aka mechanical hard drives) in transfer times, access times, and operating system startup times alike.

It’s not as if Windows 8 is much faster in real-world use, anyway. You may see some battery-life improvements, and the desktop may feel a tad snappier—when the Start screen isn’t swallowing it whole and getting in the way, that is—but benchmarks have shown that PC games play at about the same speed on Windows 7 and Windows 8 .

Windows 8 may be a bit less RAM-dependent than Windows 7, but if you run into RAM problems, you should just buy some more RAM. Memory is dirt cheap these days, and a heck of a lot cheaper than Windows 8. You can get 8GB of RAM, which is more than enough for the average PC user, for less than $50 online. A standard 4GB kit costs right around $30.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

And with that, your Windows 7 PC now has many of the vaunted nuts-and-bolts improvements introduced in Windows 8, only without all the glittering live tiles. If you're in the mood for continued tinkering, check out PCWorld's How to Get Windows 8 Features Now, which details programs that can mirror some of Windows 8's aesthetic changes, such as improved multimonitor support and the aforementioned live tiles.

HTC to miss target for One roll out, pushes it to April instead

2013-03-03T06:21:00.000+07:00

Mobile retailer Clove revealed now that it won't start selling the HTC a single of the U.K. on March FIFTEEN as by now announced, and in a method opened up a Pandora's Box of revelations regarding the phone's global availability.

Turns out the delay affects all global shipments - all, that is, except O2 in Germany.

"We will start fulfilling pre-orders from end of March in certain markets and will roll out to more markets as we approach April," HTC said in a statement sent to TechRadar.

Clove's announcement pinned the phone's U.K. launch on March 29, though HTC offered no specific shipping date pertaining to pre-orders.

What gives?

HTC's brief statement and Clove's website-posted words gave nothing by way of explanation regarding the April roll out. The simply clue we have to go on comes from Clove, signaling that the root of the issue difficulty stems from the phone maker:

"We apologies regarding this delay, however you'll delight that this is out of our manage," read Clove's post.

March was pegged as the target time towards the single to reach a figure of markets, however a precise U.S. release date was never revealed.

Investment bank KGI Securities claimed to have in pertaining formation that certain elements of the fresh phone, as well as its signature camera module, were in short supply.

Supply difficulty’s for the camera or any other pieces are probable the culprit here, however we'll update this story when and when we obtain official word.

They no press is atrocious press, however with Samsung's imps toping Galaxy S4 launch, HTC could expect to stir up some indisputable fresh’s pertaining to its new phone ASAP.

10 ways Apple changed the world

2013-03-02T23:13:00.000+07:00

Steve Jobs believed in a simple fact: everything around you "was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that people can use."

Jobs definitely practised what he preached. While all the other technology firms were churning out products with all the wow factor of a tumble dryer, Apple set out to change the world with innovative computers and gadgets, again and again and again.

As we'll discover, Apple products have revolutionised the way we work and play and listen to music. It has transformed entire industries, created new kinds of computing and done some truly frightening things to bridges. Read on and be inspired.

1. The Apple-1

It didn't sell a massive number of units, but 1976's Apple-1 was the first modern personal computer as most of us would understand the term. Before the Apple-1 came along, computers were sold in kit form, not as assembled machines, and they used switches and lights instead of keyboards and monitors for their input and output. You still had to bring some of your own bits, such as a power supply, keyboard and display, but as Apple promised, "initial setup is essentially 'hassle-free' and you can be running within minutes." The Apple-1 was expandable - for example, it could be connected to "almost any audio-grade cassette recorder" - and came with a free tape copy of the Apple Basic programming language.
The Apple-1 initially cost $666.66 "including 4K bytes RAM!", but rarity has pushed the price up a bit since the 1970s: in 2012, Sotheby's sold one for $374,500.

2. iMac

The original iMac was significant for three main reasons. It was the first legacy-free PC, with Steve Jobs killing off the floppy disk - to howls of protest - and betting on USB connections instead of expansion cards. It was designed as an internet-focused computer, with Apple describing it as "the ultimate internet appliance" and "the first computer to bring the ease of use long associated with Macintosh computers to the arcane world of the internet". And it looked completely different to any other PC on the market, its bright, translucent plastics and swooping curves, ahem, 'inspiring' not just other computer manufacturers, but makers of grilling machines, games consoles, steam irons and many other consumer products. The 2007-2012 iMac's fusion of aluminium and glass was also widely imitated, and the thinner, even more desirable new iMac should keep the plagiarists busy for a while.

3. iPhone

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, it was so different from other devices that he had to explain what it was. "An iPod. A phone. An internet communicator. This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone."

It turned out to be very popular and hugely influential: before the iPhone, smartphones either looked like BlackBerries or were weird things from Nokia. After the iPhone, they looked and worked like iPhones.

The iPhone transformed the industry too, with BlackBerry and Nokia left behind and Microsoft binning its mobile platform altogether.

It changed the way we go online and it's transformed Apple, too – thanks to its worldwide sales Apple is now the world's richest technology company.

4. iPod + iTunes

The iPod made digital music mainstream. The original 2001 iPod didn't have the impressive tech specs of the Creative Nomad MP3 player – but the Creative Nomad didn't have the iPod's stunning good looks and ease of use, and neither did any other MP3 player. They didn't have Apple's clever marketing either.
iTunes made it easy to transfer music you'd ripped or downloaded to your iPod, but there was a piece of the jigsaw missing. That piece turned up in iTunes 4 in the form of the iTunes Store. iTunes made it easy to get music, and effectively locked you to the iPod – copy protection meant you couldn't take your music with you to rival devices. That protection is gone, but the business model with Apple providing the player, the software and the shop – continues to work well for the company in music, movies and apps.

5. GUI

The graphical user interface, or GUI for short, was a huge leap forward: instead of trying to remember commands and their syntax, you could control your computer by pointing, clicking and moving things around with a mouse. Apple didn't invent the idea - some of its GUI was based on a system by Xerox PARC, who invested in Apple - but it was the first company to ship a commercial GUI-based computer, the 1983 Apple Lisa.
However, Apple's GUI was refined for the Macintosh; the first popular computer with a GUI. Its MacPaint software brought digital art to ordinary computer users, and its GUI enabled the creation of programs such as PageMaker and Photoshop, apps that would go on to transform publishing.

6. iPad

It's impossible to overstate how important the iPad was, and is. Before the iPad, if you wanted to do something on a computer you needed to learn how to use the computer first. With the iPad, you just do what you want to do. Play piano? The iPad's a piano. Write a letter? It's a typewriter. Read a book? It's a book. Fire exploding birds? It's a catapult.

The iPad created a new category of computer, which has been bad news for Intel and Microsoft. Analysts agree that sales of tablets will outnumber sales of laptops within one or two years. Apple could remain the biggest single manufacturer of tablet computers, meaning people are buying devices running ARM/Apple processors and Apple's OS, not Intel chips and Windows. The whole personal computing landscape is gradually changing.

7. Stevenotes

Steve Jobs' keynote speeches were legendary, and they've been widely imitated - with good reason, because Jobs was an extraordinary and disciplined showman. He focused on the details, refining and simplifying and using positive language, real-world scenarios, humour and passion to get the message across - and then he'd rehearse until the whole thing was effortless. Whenever you see a CEO deliver a three-act presentation with numbers at the beginning, a simple, positive message, then a big reveal at the end, you're watching someone who's watched Jobs.

For the launch of the original MacBook Air, other presenters would have stuck a spec sheet on a slide, showing its dimensions. Steve Jobs put the Air in an envelope and showed that instead.

8. The App Store

The iPhone launched without apps, but that decision was quickly reversed. Tim Cook says that "the average customer is now using over 100 apps. It's phenomenal." iOS and its App Store is the same closed-ecosystem model as the iPod and iTunes one, and, like that ecosystem, the App Store has been copied by everyone else.

Apple's approvals process can sometimes seem a bit heavy-handed, but that policy has kept malware and scams away.

The combination of safe apps and low prices encourages people to buy more software, and Apple's helped drive that by pricing its own apps at exceptionally low prices. £2.99 for Garageband is the software bargain of the century, and it's a direct link with the Apple-1's bundling of Apple Basic. As the ads put it back in the 1970s, "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost".

Apple has also now brought the model to OS X.

9. AirPort

One of our favourite Steve Jobs moments was when he showed off the new iBook at MacWorld Expo in 1999. He started web browsing, picked up the computer, took it for a walk and then passed it through a hula hoop.

The audience cheered, yet wondered what kind of witchcraft they were seeing. The internet? Without wires? Apple didn't invent Wi-Fi, but it worked with Lucent to give the nascent IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence WLAN technology a new name. The result was AirPort and the innovative AirPort Wireless Base Station. Before AirPort, wireless networking was too expensive for the home. Now you could do it for $299 - and because it was Apple, it just worked.

10. iOS 6

iOS 6's Maps app changed the world, but not in the way Apple expected: Apple's replacement for Google Maps came with a lovely interface, turn-by-turn navigation - and maps of a strange, not-quite-Earth planet where familiar landmarks morphed into sinister, surreal shapes, long-dead retailers (Our Price) sprang back into existence, half of Cambridge vanished and Leeds was just a confusing mess (which is fair enough, really).

Maps' errors made it a laughing stock. The mess was satirised by Mad Magazine, which revisited an iconic New Yorker cover and claimed to use Apple Maps data: in its version, New York's 9th Avenue joined the Champs-Élysées, just down the road from the Sea of Galilee, Kuala Lumpur and Chad. One wag on the London Underground wrote on a poster: "For the benefit of passengers using Apple iOS 6, local area maps are available from the booking office."

Microsoft gives away three months of Office 365 to college students

2013-03-01T01:17:00.000+07:00

Just in time for term papers, Microsoft is providing three-month trials of Office 365 University.

Office 365 University is meant for school students, faculty, and staff. It includes Word, PowerPoint, stand out and OneNote, and may be put in on up to 2 PCs or Macs. The arrange additionally comes with 20GB of additional SkyDrive storage—in addition to seven B of free storage—and hour of Skype calls per month to any signal.

To sign up, you’ll want a .edu e-mail address, and you’ll need to produce a Microsoft account (which may be tied to any e-mail address) if you don’t have one. When language up for the promotion, users will extend the free trial by another 3 months by sharing the provide on Facebook.

Microsoft’s FAQ page notes that once the trial ends, Office can switch to a read-only mode that prevents documents from being emended or created. SkyDrive documents can stay offered for viewing and sharing, however users won’t be ready to transfer any new files on the far side 7GB while not shopping for a lot of storage or liberating up house.

If you wish to take Office 365 University, it prices $80 for a four-year amount. the sole different choices square measure to buy an everyday Office 365 subscription, beginning at $100 p.a. for access on up to five PCs, or to buy one Office 2013 license, beginning at $100 for the house, Student version. Microsoft doesn't provide a student discount on the standalone, non-subscription version of Office 2013—at least indirectly through its own on-line store.

Users World Health Organization don’t have a legitimate .edu address will try office 365 for only 1 month instead.