Hackers go after Facebook sites 600,000 times every day

Hackers are breaking into hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts every day, the social network has admitted. 

Facebook is ramping up security measures.

 

Out of more than a billion logins to the website every 24 hours, 600,000 are impostors attempting to access users’ messages, photos and other personal information Facebook said.

The figure is the first time that Facebook has revealed how it is bombarded by hackers on a daily basis.

It was revealed as part of a Facebook blog post announcing a couple of new security measures being implemented across the site over the coming weeks to tackle these sorts of breaches.

Security experts have said the figure is a “big concern” and that people need to be more careful when choosing their passwords and responding to offers supposedly from friends on Facebook.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, a computer security organisation, said: “When a Facebook login is compromised, it means that someone else, the hacker, has taken control of that account.

“When a hacker takes over a user’s Facebook account, they can post images, send messages and access all of that person’s private information in one fail swoop. Facebook has had a lot of security issues which it is now trying to address.”
The most common reason for hackers to breach Facebook users’ accounts is so that they can spread scams and send false offers to the member’s friends in an attempt to sell counterfeit goods and benefit financially.
Cluley said it was becoming easier to hack into more users’ Facebook accounts as thirty per cent of people online are using the same passwords across all of their digital accounts – making it simpler for hackers to control a person’s entire web identity.
He also warned that growing numbers of teenagers are hacking into the Facebook accounts of their school rivals in order to post malicious messages and photos on their behalf.
Facebook declined to comment.
Increasingly more people are also duped into sharing their login details on fake sites, a process called phishing, which gives hackers access to passwords and email accounts.
Security experts have advised people to choose complicated passwords in order to avoid any of their personal online accounts being hacked and to have different ones for every single digital service they use.
It is understood that out of the approximate 600,000 ‘compromised Facebook logins’ a day, not all of them are successful as Facebook is able in certain circumstances to block some pre-emptively using location technology.
The social network is rolling out two new features in an attempt to further protect Facebook users’ security. ‘Trusted Friends’ is a tool which will allow users to nominate three to five ‘trusted friends’ to be sent login codes if a person is locked out of their account, having had their password changed by a hacker.
The site is also introducing passwords for apps, meaning members do not have to use the same logins for different third party services they access via Facebook – such as Spotify.
Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 800 million members who spend more than a total of 700 billion minutes on the site per month. Half of the UK now have accounts on the site which was created and still run by Mark Zuckerberg, a 27 year-old technology entrepreneur. The average user has 130 friends on the service.

Apple 'working on prototype television set'

Apple is creating a television set that could be released late next year or early in 2013, it has been claimed. 

The most recent Apple TV was smaller and had more streaming options than its predecessor. Photo: AFP/GETTY

 

Sources within the company said that Jeff Robbin, the Apple engineer who helped create the iPod and iTunes, is leading the effort. However, Apple declined to comment publicly.

According to Bloomberg, an Apple insider said that the company wants to let users seamlessly access television shows by integrating all the available sources, such as satellite TV, online film rental services and iTunes downloads.

Shortly before he died, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, told his biographer that he had "finally cracked" the problem of building a television.

In Walter Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs, which was published yesterday, the Apple founder says: "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Jeff Robbin joined Apple in 2000 to work on iTunes, which at the time was a music playing application. Since then it has expanded to incorporate film, TV shows, apps and more. Apple has also added the iTunes Store, which sells a variety of content.

Apple has been experimenting with television since 2007, when it launched the Apple TV - a box that connected to a television and offered access to content stored on the device's hard drive or downloaded from iTunes. A new version of Apple TV, which did away with the hard drive and added more streaming options, was released last year. 

Apple hits Samsung in court again

Spot the difference: Apple and Samsung remain locked over the iPad and Galaxy devices

Samsung's tablets infringe patents owned by Apple, a US judge has ruled.

However, she warned that Apple needs to prove the validity of those patents if it is to win an injunction preventing the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab.
The decision is the latest in a dispute which spans 20 cases in 10 countries, some of which have led to Samsung products being taken off the shelves.
Apple claims that the Galaxy range "slavishly" copies its massively-selling iPad and iPhone.
The Californian company has sought to ban the sale of the Galaxy S 4G smart phone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the US.

US mobile networks have opposed Apple's request, saying it could affect sales of the products in the run up to Christmas.
California District Judge Lucy Koh ruled that while patents have been infringed, Apple must now show that its claim on those inventions is valid.
The disputed patents include three covering design - including the exterior look of the device - and a 'list scrolling patent' which relates to how users view documents.
Samsung argued that Apple's claims are invalid due to previously registered patents relating to design elements and functionality.
The company's attorney, Kathleen Sullivan, said her client "clearly raised substantial questions" and that the injunction bid should therefore be rejected.

Apple spokeswoman

But Apple argue that its own product's design is far superior to those which came before the iPad and iPhone, and so therefore its patents should not be invalidated.

At one point in the hearing the judge held both Samsung and Apple products up on the air and challenged the defence to whether they could identify which device was which.
Samsung attorney Ms Sullivan, who was roughly 10 feet away, responded: "Not as this distance your honour."
Another lawyer for Samsung correctly distinguished the two.
A spokesman for the South Korean company described Apple's claims as "groundless".
Apple spokeswoman Kristen Huget said: "It's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad.
"This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas."
Both companies have been locked in patent disputes since April, with each accusing the other of infringing various patents.

YouTube now offer film rental service in UK

After Providing film rental service to US and Canada now google landed their service to UK with blockbusters such as classic including the The Birds can be watched.Youtube offer over 1000 movies for english peoples.
YouTube will grant 3.49£ for newly released films and £2.49 for library titles.Users  have 30 days to start watching movie and from them they must finish their screen play after 48hours.
Universal, Lionsgate, Entertainment One as well as independent British film makers such as Metrodome and Revolver Entertainment are the partners engage with this service.
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" is the best rentaling  movie right now in UK.
Extra movies are also added to this service and include interviews with cast and crew, documentaries, behind the-scenes clips as well as parodies and remixes too.
If someone rented movie from Youtube he or she can watch movie from any computer from his or her YouTube account.
Rented movies will also be available at Google TV,Android tablets and Android handsets.A special application has been designed to use above Devices and services.

Now YouTube have to fight with many film rental services like Apple,XBox and Playstation.

Something big is coming

Wow, yesterday was an exciting day for Android phone fans as a flurry of speculation erupted around Samsung's new phone, code-named

.
Let's start at the beginning. Next week at CTIA, Samsung and Google are hosting an event called Samsung Mobile Unpacked 2011. Google has already spilled the beans that they'll be announcing Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich) and Samsung is teasing the event with a video (embedded below) stating "Something BIG is coming." Most pundits expect Samsung will show off its new phone currently code-named Nexus Prime. Of course, most pundits expected Apple to show off the iPhone 5 earlier this week, too.
Anyway, early in the day yesterday, Boy Genius Report leaked the specs of the Nexus Prime, calling it the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and saying that it would be a Verizon exclusive.
As for the technical specs, the highlights were a TI OMAP 4460 dual-core processor running at 1.2 GHZ, a 1280x720 4.65" Super AMOLED HD screen with curved glass, a 5 megapixel back-facing camera, a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, 32 GB of on-board storage, a 1,750 mAh battery and running Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich).
There were a few details that surprised me. 32 GB of storage seemed very generous and the post said both that the phone would be a Verizon exclusive and that it was "LTE/HSPA depending on carrier."
Anyway, the Internet did not take kindly to these leaked specs, with various comments on blogs and social media disputing the them. At this point there's so much confusion that we should probably just sit tight until next Tuesday when all will be revealed, but where's the fun in that?
GSMArena is one of the sites disagreeing with BGR. They claim to have spoken to a tipster from inside Google who said the device will have Samsung's own chipset with a dual-core, 1.5 Ghz processor. This chipset also has a dual-core GPU from Imagination; possibly the same GPU found in the iPad 2. The tipster told GSMArena that the rear-facing camera is 8 megapixel and capable of shooting 1080P video and that it would have a 2,050 mAh battery that should be good for a couple of days between charges.
The one point of agreement is the 1280x720, 4.65" screen, described as "head turning."
Now let's dip into the social networking pool for an example of what's going on there. Over on Google+, a gentleman in my Circles named Lee Johnston claims he has the real specs as well. His specs are basically in line with GSMArena's except he suggests the battery is only 1,850 mAh and that the front facing camera is a 2 megapixel. Johnston says the Nexus Prime is basically a Galaxy S II LTE and offered a link to Samsung's Galaxy S II press release. Johnston says he knows people; maybe he does.
Confused yet? It gets better. Droid-Life defended BGR's leak, saying "these [specs] match up exactly to what our sources have told us" and going on to say the Nexus Prime will have a 5 megapixel camera but that it'll be very fast. I hope that part of the rumor, at least, is right. I'd love a faster camera on my next phone.
So who should we believe? I must confess I'm not sure.
I do think the reveal is going to be more than just a phone. I think they must have at least two products, given that their teaser vid is all about how some things just go better together (though maybe they're just referring to Android 4 and the phone). What do you think?

Apple Co-founder Steven Paul Jobs is Dead-May you attain Nibbana

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died on Wednesday at age 56. Wall Street Journal managing editor Alan Murray and editors discuss Jobs's legacy, early reactions to his death and how his showmanship changed the retail and tech landscape.

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple Inc. chairman and co-founder who pioneered the personal-computer industry and changed the way people think about technology, died Wednesday at the age of 56.
His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family."
The company didn't specify the cause of death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant. In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as chief executive, handing the reins to longtime deputy Tim Cook.

Steve Jobs: Personal Media Pioneer

Photos: Through the Years

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Timeline: Steve Jobs and Apple

The Apple Evolution

Associated Press

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg News

Fans held iPads during a vigil outside an Apple store in Tokyo Thursday.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," Mr. Cook said in a letter to employees. "We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much."
During his more than three-decade career, Mr. Jobs transformed Silicon Valley as he helped turn the once-sleepy expanse of fruit orchards into the technology industry's innovation center. In addition to laying the groundwork for the industry alongside others like Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates Mr. Jobs proved the appeal of well-designed products over the power of technology itself and transformed the way people interact with technology.
"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," Mr. Gates said in a statement Wednesday.
The most productive chapter in Mr. Jobs's career occurred near the end of his life, when a nearly unbroken string of successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad changed the PC, electronics and digital-media industries. The way he marketed and sold those products through savvy advertising campaigns and Apple's retail stores helped turn the company into a pop-culture phenomenon.
At the beginning of that phase, Mr. Jobs described his philosophy as trying to make products that were at "the intersection of art and technology." In doing so, he turned Apple into the world's most valuable company with a market value of $350 billion.
After losing considerable weight in mid-2008, Mr. Jobs took a nearly six-month medical leave of absence in 2009, during which he received a liver transplant. He took another medical leave of absence in mid-January, without explanation, before stepping down as CEO.
Mr. Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, and four children.
Mr. Jobs turned Apple into the largest retailer of music and helped popularize computer-animated films as the financier and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co. He was a key figure in changing the way people used the Internet and how they listened to music, watched TV shows and movies, and read books, disrupting industries in the process.
"Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started," Disney CEO Robert Iger said in a statement Wednesday.
Mr. Jobs pulled off a remarkable business comeback, returning to Apple after an 11-year absence during which he was largely written off as a has-been. He went on to revive the struggling company by introducing products such as the iMac all-in-one computer, iPod music player and iTunes digital-music store.

Beyond PCs

Apple now produces $65.2 billion a year in revenue compared with $7.1 billion in its business year ended September 1997. Apple dropped the "computer" in its name in January 2007 to underscore its expansion beyond PCs.
Although Mr. Jobs officially handed over the reins of the company to Mr. Cook, his death nevertheless raises a question for Apple of how it will sustain its success without his vision and guidance. Other companies, including Walt Disney, Wall Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., experienced some transitional woes before eventually managing to thrive after their charismatic founders passed on.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher discusses the what the impact of Steve Jobs's death will have on Apple and whether the company will remain an innovator and market leader. Photo: Getty Images

Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs died on Wednesday at the age of 56. A look back at the life of an American business icon. (Photo: Getty Images)

Among Steve Jobs's legacy was a gift for presentation and speech-making that changed the way tech companies unveiled new products, Lauren Goode reports on a special edition of the News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.

But few companies of that stature have shown such an acute dependence on their founder, or have lost the founder at the peak of his career. Several years after Mr. Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company began a steady decline that saw it drift to the margins of the computer industry. That slide was reversed only after Mr. Jobs returned in 1997.
Mr. Jobs also leaves behind many tales about his mercurial management style, such as his habit of calling employees or their ideas "dumb" when he didn't like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft,Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe's Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600-word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.
He maintained uncompromising standards for the company's hardware and software, demanding "insanely great" aesthetics and ease of use from the moment a shopper walked into one of Apple's stores. His attention to detail shaped some of the distinctive features of Apple's products.
Mr. Jobs enforced strict secrecy among employees, a strategy that he believed heightened anticipation for new products. News of his death came a day after Apple unveiled its newest device, the iPhone 4S, without him on stage.
Mr. Jobs, the adopted son of a family in California, was born on Feb. 24, 1955. A college dropout, he established his reputation early on as a tech innovator when, at 21 years old, he and friend Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in the Jobs family garage in 1976. Mr. Jobs chose the name, in part, because he was a Beatles fan and admired the group's Apple records label, according to the book "Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders" by Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Carlton.
The pair came out with the Apple II in 1977, a computer that was relatively affordable and designed for the mass market rather than for hobbyists. It went on to become one of the first commercially successful PCs, making the company $117 million in annual sales by the time of Apple's initial public offering in 1980. The IPO instantly made Mr. Jobs a multimillionaire.
Not all of Mr. Jobs's early ideas paid off. The Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops. But the distinctive all-in-one Macintosh—foreshadowed in a TV ad inspired by George Orwell's novel "1984" that famously only aired once—would set the standard for the design of modern computer operating systems.
Even then, Mr. Jobs was a stickler for design details. Bruce Tognazzini, a former user-interface expert at Apple who joined the company in 1978, once said that Mr. Jobs was adamant that the keyboard not include "up," "down," "right," and "left" keys that allow users to move the cursor around their computer screens.

Mr. Jobs's pursuit of aesthetics sometimes bordered on the extreme. George Crow, an Apple engineer in the 1980s and again from 1998 to 2005, recalls how Mr. Jobs wanted to make even the inside of computers attractive. On the original Macintosh PC, Mr. Crow says Mr. Jobs wanted the internal wiring to be in the colors of Apple's early rainbow logo. Mr. Crow says he persuaded Mr. Jobs it was an unnecessary expense.
Even in his appearance, Mr. Jobs seemed to cultivate an image more like that of an artist than a corporate executive. In public, he rarely deviated from an outfit consisting of Levi's jeans, a black mock turtleneck and New Balance running shoes.
As Apple expanded, Mr. Jobs decided to bring in a more experienced manager to lead the company. He recruited John Sculley from PepsiCo Inc. to be Apple CEO in 1983, overcoming Mr. Sculley's initial reluctance by asking the executive if he just wanted to sell "sugar water to kids" or help change the world.
After Apple fell into a subsequent slump, a leadership struggle led to a board decision to back Mr. Sculley and fire Mr. Jobs two years later at the age of 30. "What can I say—I hired the wrong guy," Mr. Jobs brooded in a PBS documentary. "He destroyed everything I had spent 10 years working for."
Mr. Jobs then created NeXT Inc., a start-up that in 1988 introduced a black desktop computer with advanced software. The machine suffered from a high price and some key design decisions. But its operating system would eventually become a foundation for OS X, the software backbone of today's Macs, after Apple purchased NeXT for $400 million in December 1996.
In 1986, using part of his fortune from Apple, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million to acquire the computer-graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. The company Mr. Jobs formed from that purchase, Pixar Animation Studios, went on to create a string of computer-animated film hits, such as "Toy Story." Mr. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in 2006 in a $7.4 billion deal.
In Mr. Jobs's absence, Apple began foundering, and computers using Intel chips and Microsoft software became increasingly dominant. By 1997, Apple had racked up nearly $2 billion in losses in two years, its shares were at record lows and it was on its third CEO—Gil Amelio—in four years.
Eight months after the deal to buy NeXT in December 1996, Mr. Amelio was ousted and Mr. Jobs appointed interim CEO, a title that became permanent in January 2000. One former Apple employee recalls Mr. Jobs joking soon after he returned that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum and we can do anything we want."
Mr. Jobs, who was given a salary of $1 a year along with options to Apple stock, made a series of changes. He killed the struggling Newton handheld computer and trimmed a confusing array of Mac models to a handful of systems focused on the consumer market.
In May 1998, he introduced the iMac, an unusual one-piece computer that sported a colorful translucent case. Apple launched an ad campaign featuring the phrase "Think Different," featuring photographs of creative individuals including Albert Einstein and Muppets creator Jim Henson.
While shareholders cheered the changes, Mr. Jobs flexed his power on Apple's Cupertino, Calif., campus. Within months of taking over, he replaced four of the five top executives with former NeXT underlings. He issued emails forbidding employees to bring pets to the office or to smoke, even in parking lots. He threatened to fire anyone caught leaking company documents.
Apple had stumbles during Mr. Jobs's second stint, including a cube-shaped Macintosh that failed to catch on and was scrapped in 2001. The failure was one reason Apple posted a quarterly loss and warned it would miss estimates several times in 2000 and 2001.
But big hits followed. In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, which transformed digital music players. Apple has more than 70% market share in the market.
A key advantage was the iTunes Music Store, opened in 2003. Mr. Jobs helped persuade major record labels to sell recordings for 99 cents each. The store, which has sold more than 16 billion songs, became an incentive for people to buy iPods because, for much of its history, songs from the iTunes store could be downloaded only to Apple's music player.
At the same time, Mr. Jobs was building his bench of executives. He recruited Mr. Cook, a former Compaq Computer Corp. executive, in the late 1990s to straighten Apple's operations and promoted him over time to chief operating officer.
In 2004, Mr. Jobs had to lean on this bench when he disclosed that he had had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Apple revealed the procedure in early August 2004, but a person familiar with the situation said Mr. Jobs first learned of the tumor during a routine abdominal scan nine months earlier. The board and Mr. Jobs said nothing to Apple shareholders as the Apple executive, during that time, dealt with the tumor through changes to his diet, the person said.
In June 2007, Mr. Jobs made another splash when Apple introduced the iPhone. Mr. Jobs was typically hands-on in the creation of the iPhone. People familiar with the matter say the former CEO was the one who made a decision to change the screen of the iPhone from plastic to glass after he unveiled the product at the Macworld trade show in 2007. The iPhone team scrambled to procure glass that would meet his standards, so the devices could be manufactured in time for the launch.
Despite skepticism about Apple's ability to enter an already competitive market dominated by the likes of Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry devices, Apple became a force in the mobile phone market, selling 92 million iPhones as of December 2010.
Last year, Mr. Jobs also unveiled the iPad tablet computer to great fanfare. Apple has sold more than 29 million iPads as buyers snapped them up. People who work closely with Mr. Jobs said the project was so important to him that he was deeply involved in its planning even while recovering from his 2009 liver transplant.
Those who knew Mr. Jobs say one reason why he was able to keep innovating was because he didn't dwell on past accomplishments and demanded that employees do the same. Hitoshi Hokamura, a former Apple employee, recalls how an old Apple I that was displayed by the company cafeteria quietly disappeared after Mr. Jobs returned in the late 1990s.
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose," Mr. Jobs said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in June 2005, almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer.

Samsung wants iPhone 4S sales banned in France, Italy

Seoul: Samsung Electronics said it will file patent-infringement claims in France and Italy to ban the sale of Apple’s new iPhone less than a day after it was unveiled, intensifying a legal battle between the two top brands.
It will also file legal cases in other countries to stop the sale of the iPhone 4S after further review, the South Korean maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets said in a statement. Samsung has emerged as a credible challenger to Apple’s mobile devices and the two companies are battling over patents in courtrooms around the world. They have sued each other in 10 countries involving more than 20 cases since April.
The latest salvo from Samsung comes hours after Apple’s newest iPhone launch left investors and Apple fans wishing for more than a souped-up version of its previous device introduced more than a year ago. Apple shares fell as much as 5 percent before recovering to close down 0.6 percent on Tuesday.

Samsung Galaxy S2. Reuters.

“Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free-ride on our technology,” the South Korean firm said in a statement. “We will steadfastly protect our intellectual property.”
Samsung said preliminary injunction requests for a ban on iPhone 4S sales will be filed on Wednesday and each case involves two patent infringements related to its wireless technology.
Under French and Italian laws, companies can seek and courts can order a ban on sales of a product even before it hits the market, Samsung spokesman James Chung told Reuters.
Apple and Samsung are vying for the top spot in the global smartphone market.
But the intensifying legal battle with Apple threatens to derail Samsung’s telecoms and component businesses. Apple is Samsung’s biggest customer, buying mainly chips and displays.
On Tuesday, Apple rejected an offer from Samsung to settle a tablet computer dispute in Australia, possibly killing off the commercial viability of the new Galaxy tablet in that market.
Samsung is set to report sharply lower quarterly earnings on Friday on persistent declines in chip prices, while investors look for signs its telecom business can sustain its booming growth.
Legal Battle
Samsung’s intensifying attack comes after a series of setbacks in Europe and Australia.
Apple and Samsung are due to meet again in courtrooms in the United States, the Netherlands and South Korea next week.
Apple says Samsung’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copied its iPhone and iPad.
Samsung, widely expected to overtake Apple as the world’s No.1 smartphone vendor in unit terms in the third quarter, rejects the claims.
Samsung accused Apple of not paying licensing fees for some of its patents before it started selling iPhones in 2007. Apple argues Samsung never demanded a licence fee until 2010 and before that Samsung remained silent because Apple is an important customer.
The iPhone 4S adds to Apple’s iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad 2 products that Samsung claims infringed its wireless-technology patents.
Samsung’s latest Galaxy tablets, powered by Google’s Android operating system, have already been blocked in Germany. So too have some smartphone models in the Netherlands.
Shares in Samsung closed up 1.7 percent on Wednesday after the new iPhone failed to wow fans and investors, leaving Android rivals better placed to grab market share.

India's low-cost tablet is made by Canada's DataWind

India is closer to its much-touted target of a US$35 tablet, with DataWind, a wireless Web access products maker in Montreal, designing and making a device that it will sell to the government for $50.
The country's Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, launched the tablet, called Aakash, on Wednesday. The tablet will likely be distributed at a subsidy to students in higher education in the country.
DataWind has been able to get to a price of $38 for the tablet which has a 7-inch display with 800-by-480 pixel resolution, 256MB of RAM, 2GB flash storage, and a 366MHz processor from Connexant. The tablet runs the Android 2.2 operating system.
Local sales taxes, performance guarantees, and an exacting replacement warranty have taken the price to the government up to $50, said Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of DataWind in an interview.
The target is to get to $35 per unit, inclusive of warranty, once volumes pick up.
The Indian government is expected to buy 8 million to 10 million units of the device by March 31, 2012, the end of the Indian fiscal year, Tuli said. The first order of 100,000 units will be executed from a factory in Hyderabad over the next six weeks, he added.
Tuli said that Sibal's vision and the commitment of business from the government had driven the company to accept the challenge to come up with a device at about $35.
The Aakash tablet has been designed, developed and manufactured by DataWind, in partnership with an educational institution, IIT Rajasthan, DataWind said in a statement.
The design of the product was done by DataWind between its centers in Montreal and India, Tuli said. IIT Rajasthan is coordinating the project, including firming up the specifications, and doing the field testing.
DataWind plans to market the product in a number of emerging markets, and also commercially in India in November where the price will be about $60 with added GPRS (general packet radio service) capability, which will allow it to double as a phone. Higher-end versions of the product will also be launched in less price-sensitive markets like the U.K. and the U.S.
India's low-cost computer had a number of false starts and experimentation with the government at one point talking about a $10 laptop. Officials in the Department of Higher Education, however, clarified that the device would not be a laptop.
In July last year, the country's Ministry of Human Resource Development announced a $35 computing and access device for students of colleges and universities. The price of the device, which was to be designed by Indian academic research and education institutions, was eventually dropped to $10, according to a statement from the ministry.
India did not sign up for the One Laptop Per Child program after officials in the education ministry decided that giving a computer to every child is "pedagogically suspect" and may actually be detrimental to the growth of the creative and analytical abilities of the child.
The configuration of the DataWind tablet is adequate for most applications including HD quality video, reading books, and basic office applications, according to Tuli. The company makes up for the lower speed of the processor by using compression acceleration technologies that shift a part of the processing during Web browsing from the device to the cloud, Tuli said.

DataWind was able to achieve a low price for the device by its vertical integration model which includes designing its boards, integrating some components in-house, developing the middleware, and making the touch panels, he added.

HTC to release urgent privacy fix

The flaw is believed to affect several models, including the EVO 3D released earlier this year

HTC is to release an urgent update for several of its smart phones to fix a vulnerability which could leave personal information at risk.

Then adroid police blog discovered that a user's GPS location and call logs could be easily accessed by net-enabled apps.
After investigating, HTC admitted the flaw could be "exploited by a malicious third-party application".
It said affected users will be notified of the update automatically.
"HTC is working very diligently to quickly release a security update that will resolve the issue on affected devices," a spokesperson said.
Users will be able to download the fix over-the-air.
The company has not yet confirmed exactly which models are at risk, but it is understood that the EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt and potentially the Sensation range are all susceptible to the vulnerability.
Until the patch is released, the company urges users to "use caution when downloading, using, installing and updating applications from untrusted sources".
The flaw relates to a particular file which contains a vast amount of personal information including GPS location history, SMS data, phone logs and e-mail accounts.

Apps can gain access to the file by requesting permission to access the internet - a common occurrence for apps that allow the posting of top scores or messages on social networking sites.

HTC said they have found no evidence that this flaw has been exploited for malicious purposes, but conceded it does pose a threat to the protection of the user's information.
The statement read: "In our ongoing investigation into this recent claim, we have concluded that while this HTC software itself does no harm to customers' data, there is a vulnerability that could potentially be exploited by a malicious third-party application.
"A third party malware app exploiting this or any other vulnerability would potentially be acting in violation of civil and criminal laws.
"So far, we have not learned of any customers being affected in this way and would like to prevent it by making sure all customers are aware of this potential vulnerability."
The company said the patch will be released after a short period of testing, and users are urged to download the update promptly.
Artem Russakovskii, the blogger who made the flaw public, welcomed the quick action by HTC, but said he still had concerns over the manner in which large amounts of personal data are kept in the single file.
He wrote: "While I applaud HTC's desire to fix the situation quickly, I do have to wonder whether the patch will simply apply some sort of an authentication scheme to the service while letting it continue collecting the same kind of sensitive data to be potentially reported back to HTC or carriers.

First Google store opens in London

 

Google has opened it's first ever Chrome Zone, a store within a branch of Currys and PC World on Tottenham Court Road  in London.
The store is a trial by Google to sell it's own range of Chromebook laptops. These use Google's operating system which rely heavily on internet access and were previously only available online.

"We’ve put a great deal of thought into the design of this Chrome Zone," said Arvind Desikan, head of consumer marketing for Google in the UK and Ireland.
Mark Slater, category director at Dixons Retail, said: "Initial customer response to the launch of Samsung’s Chromebook has been excellent and we are expecting a lot of customer interest now it is in-store."

 

 

Toshiba to sell 5TB home media server in Japan

Toshiba announced a new home media server with five terabytes of storage on Monday: It has enough capacity to store 15 days of digital TV broadcasts from six channels.
The company pitched its new Regza Server as the core of a bevy of recently announced products that play back video, including a 55-inch 3D TV that doesn't require glasses, two new ultra-thin tablets, and an ultrabook laptop, as well as its smartphones. Toshiba combined its TV and computing divisions earlier this year in a nod to the eroding boundaries between the two
The server will stream content to devices throughout the home, allowing viewers to pause and switch devices as they move into different rooms, the company said in a presentation at this year's Ceatec electronics show in Japan, where many Japanese manufacturers display their latest electronics.
Connecting tablets and TVs so they can share content is important, but connectivity to regional cloud-based services is also crucial, meaning some products will be limited to certain geographic markets, said Masaaki Osumi, head of Toshiba's digital products division.
The Regza Server shown at Ceatec is intended only for the Japanese market.
"It's a bit hard to imagine this Regza Server as being sold globally. But on a regional basis, there is a natural need for TVs that have server functionality. So in Europe, or some parts of China, we want to create TVs that can act as servers," he said.
The company also officially announced its TV, tablet and ultrabook products for launch in Japan, though it had previously done so for the European and U.S. markets. Ultrabooks are a lightweight, super-thin offspring of laptop computers being pushed by Intel and electronics manufacturers, the model for which is Apple's successful Macbook Air line.

Toshiba's new recorder, called the DBR-M190 in Japan, can achieve the 15 days of storage on a low-quality image mode, and will also be available in lower-capacity models. Toshiba said the projected price is 200,000 yen (US$2,600).

Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra's Twitter account is hacked

The postings criticised Yingluck Shinawatra's handling of the recent floods

The Twitter account of Thailand's new Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been hacked and used to post questions about her competence.

The false tweets accused her of cronyism and various failures.
The final post read: "If she can't even protect her own Twitter account, how can she protect the country?"
Ms Yingluck won a clear victory in July, but is accused by her critics of being a puppet of her brother, former PM Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr Thaksin - whose populist policies won him the support of much of the rural and urban poor - was thrown out of office in a 2006 military coup.
Now living in exile in Dubai, he is still seen as the de facto leader of his sister's Pheu Thai party - although the party insists his role is purely advisory.
Ms Yingluck - Thailand's first female prime minister - has no previous political experience but has won support with her pledge to heal the divisions that have plagued the country since her brother was ousted.
But, in one of the hacked Tweets, her government is accused of failure in its response to floods that have hit large parts of the country.
Another questioned her promise to give tablet computers to school children, suggesting she concentrate on education reform instead.
"This country is a business. We work for our allies, not for the Thai people. We work for those who support us, not those who differ with us," another read.
The government confirmed that the prime minister's account - PouYingluck - had been hacked and the Information and Communication Technology Ministry is investigating.

Samsung hobbles tablet to appease Apple

Samsung and Apple are locked in litigation in many courts around the world

Samsung has offered to remove some features from its Galaxy Tab 10.1 as it seeks to overturn a court-imposed sales ban in Australia.

The ban on sales was sought by Apple which claims the tablet copies many of the iPad's patented features.
Samsung has also reportedly made an offer to settle the dispute between the two firms so it can get on and launch the tablet in Australia.
Apple said it needed time to consider the merit of Samsung's proposals.
By removing and changing features Samsung is trying to end its wrangle with Apple outside the Sydney court overseeing the dispute.
The two sides will return to court on 4 October. However, If Apple accepts the settlement offer the court case could halt and the Tab might be launched soon after.
Apple sought the initial injunction to stop the launch of the Galaxy and then asked the court to rule on whether Samsung has violated its patents.
The initial claim made by Apple mentioned 13 separate patents. However, Samsung has progressively taken out or altered functions to avoid infringing Apple's intellectual property. Now the dispute centres around only three patents.
Samsung originally intended to launch the Galaxy tablet in Australia on 11 August. This was delayed by the injunction and was scheduled for 30 September. However, the ongoing court dispute has delayed it again.
The legal row in Australia is one of many that Apple and Samsung have started around the world. They currently face each other in courts in the US, Germany and the Netherlands.

Facebook works with Websense to add phishing safety net

Users will see this notice if they are about to visit a potentially harmful website, giving them the option to go back to the previous page

Facebook have stepped up their battle against phishing and malware scammers by partnering with security firm Websense.

As of next week, users will be warned if they are about to be taken to a malicious website.
The social network has suffered to date as many of its 700 million users unwittingly click on dangerous links supposedly posted by their friends.
Such attacks usually trick users into sharing passwords or data.
Facebook already tells users if they are about to visit an external site, but the current set up makes no distinction between friendly and dangerous sites.
The new technology will present a warning screen whenever it suspects a page poses a threat to the users, giving details of the risk.
From here, users are encouraged to return to the previous page.
If they wish, users can continue to the intended page, albeit very much at their own risk.
'Profitable target' Both Facebook and Websense will hope the extra measures will be enough to deter potential scammers from focusing their efforts on the network.
Scams regularly catch out hundreds of thousands of users at a time.

Spencer Parker Websense

"There's over 700 million users on Facebook," Websense's Spencer Parker told the BBC.

"As a piece of real estate, it's extremely profitable to be targeted by malware writers."
The protection will be powered by Websense's "Threatseeker Cloud", a system which stores a database of known malicious URLs.
The system can also detect unknown dangerous URLs by assessing threats in real-time.
This means harmful URLs can be blocked even before they are known to the company - cutting off a key tactic used by phishers in which constantly changing URLs fool database-driven protection.
In addition, the system will "follow" links made using popular URL shorteners - such as bit.ly and ow.ly - to verify their safety.
Due to the nature of how we interact with our friends, Mr Parker says phishing attacks on Facebook are much harder to prevent than other commonly used techniques.
"One of the things with Facebook, of course, is that you have that element of trust in a social network. If one of your friends posts something, you automatically trust it more than if it just received as a spam email.
"As more of these 'friend in the middle' attacks happen, you start to trust your friends less."

Apple's iPhone event invites

Despite its usual brevity, Apple's event invites this morning leaves a lot to chew on.
It goes without saying that the tag line "Let's talk iphone" spells out that we'll be seeing the new phone from the company. The question is if there will be two new phones, something Apple's never done.
Also unclear is whether Apple plans to skip an update to its ipod line ahead of the holiday season, and if the "let's talk iPhone" tag line might also be talking about the much-rumored enhancements to Apple's Voice Control technology.
We'll know all there is to know come a week from today, when Apple's even kicks off at 10 a.m. PT sharp. In the meantime, here are some things to glean from the invite.
One phone, two phone?
On the invite, there's a missed call/voice mail icon, but it's just a number one. That would suggest we'll be getting just one new device, as opposed to two--a rumor that's been kicking around for years, but has picked back up in recent months in the lead up to a new device.
A Deutsche Bank analyst in June said that Apple was working on a two-phone configuration that would include a new, high-end model, along with a slightly improved iphone4 model for release this year. Evidence suggesting that might be the case surfaced a few days later, with a screenshot of a white plastic iPhone 4 model on Vietnamese site Tinhte--the same outlet that got ahold of the iPhone 4 ahead of its official unveiling.
More recently, there have been murmurs of two iPhone model offerings as part of deals being worked out with Chinese carriers, which are expected to stock the new iPhone when it's released. Confusing matters, there was also a high-profile report from J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz saying a new iPhone would be joined by a lower cost, souped up iPhone 4 model, and last year's iPhone 4 model, which would be sold alongside one another, giving Apple a three iPhone lineup. And former Vice President Al Gore certainly didn't help things last week, making mention of "new iphones" arriving next month.

Following the invite send-out, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster weighed in on the matter, stating that the firm did not believe Apple would release two devices, and instead would be launching an iPhone 5, while selling older devices at a discount.
"We do not expect a low-end iPhone," Munster wrote in a note to investors. "Rather, we expect Apple to continue with a lead device (iPhone 5) that carriers sell subsidized for $199/$299 along with a previous generation device (iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S) for $99."
That matches up well with Apple's past iPhone sales strategy, which includes selling the 3G and 3GS alongside newer models of the device.
Whither iPod?
Of special note is the complete lack of mention about the iPod. Over the past several years Apple has held an event in September to take the wraps off a new line of devices, though the star of the iPod line continues to be the iPod Touch, which is effectively an iPhone without the phone.

Apple's iPod line.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)

The truth of the matter is that the iPod took a backseat to the iPhone as soon as it was announced, and the downward sales trend as a percentage of Apple's total revenue hasn't shown any signs of turning back up in the other direction.
Nonetheless people are still buying the media players, with the company selling 7.54 million iPods in its third quarter (the most recently reported quarter, Apple finished up its fourth quarter last week), a 20 decline from the same quarter the year before. That's compared to the 20.34 million iPhones it sold during the same quarter, which was a 142 percent gain year over year.
What more can Apple really do with the iPod though? Its models have gotten whittled away each year with slight tweaks and improvements, however in recent years Apple's been stuck designs That includes a return to button form with the iPod Shuffle after it's awkward buttonless design, and a complete overhaul of the Nano to move to a touch-screen design, while cutting features like video recording that were once highly-touted.
Apple's also run up against a wall with the iPod Touch, trickling down features from the iPhone as it gets its updates, but not enough to make the device more appealing than the iPhone itself. There's also the issue of having to time those iPod Touch releases with the iPhone's release, something that could be easier if a Touch update is simply rolled into next week's event.
Voice Control 2.0?
The double entendre du jour, the "Let's talk iPhone" tagline can be read beyond the obvious to suggest Apple plans to take the wraps off its long-rumored reboot of Voice Control. That's the voice recognition software that's shipped on the iPhone since the iPhone 3GS, and made its way into iPods as well.

Apple's current Voice Control can be used to play music or make phone calls.

(Credit: Apple)

The rumor mill's gone into overdrive about this in recent months, with reports from TechCrunch earlier this year that claimed Apple was working on a partnership with Nuance that would build advanced voice technologies into iOS 5, and presumably some extras for the next iPhone. Yet when iOS 5 debuted in June, the voice features were nowhere to be found.
More recently, reports from 9to5Mac have posted screenshots of a microphone icon sitting in the iOS software keyboard, while suggesting that the feature will let users launch apps, and navigate around the phone with their voice.

The rumor was of special interest given in April of last year, a company that mixes natural language processing, semantic Web search and speech recognition to translate voice queries into Web search based tasks. Before being acquired by Apple, the company created an application that could make use of voice commands and do things like book a taxi, or make restaurant reservations.
The move is highly expected given that Apple's been left in the dust by Google when it comes to advancing the voice-recognition technology on its mobile devices. As part of an update to its Android OS last January, Google added voice-recognition technology into Android's keyboard to let users transcribe voice into messages and Web searches, as well as use specific commands to launch applications. By comparison, Apple's Voice Control has remained largely unchanged since its introduction in 2009.
Stay tuned for details of our live coverage of the event next week. We'll be there and will be bringing you the news as it happens.

Chrome to step over Firefox to reach #2 browser share

Internet Explorer remains on top of the browser heap, thanks to being built into Windows. But the fight for number two will be over by the end of the year, and Chrome will stand atop Firefox for the first time.
Such is the news from StatCounter, the Irish company that says Chrome use has risen by 50 percent. Currently, IE holds about 42 percent of the market, compared to Firefox with about 27 percent, with Chrome moving up fast on the outside at almost 24 percent.
Amazingly, about 10 percent of users are still surfing with IE 6, a real security nightmare. Why? One reason is that some large companies programmed internally around IE6, and upgrading to a safer browser breaks too many internal applications. Let's hope something shakes those people into upgrading. Hey, guys, check out Chrome

IBM beats Microsoft

For the first time since 1996 IBM's market value has exceeded Microsoft's.

IBM's closing price on 29 September was $214bn (£137.4bn) while Microsoft's was a shade behind at $213.2bn (£136.8bn).
The values cap a sustained period in which IBM's share price has moved steadily upward as Microsoft's has generally been in decline.
The growth means IBM is now the second largest technology company by market value. Apple still holds the top slot with a value of $362bn (£232bn).
Since the beginning of 2011, IBM's share price has made steady gains and is now 22% higher than at the start of the year, according to Bloomberg figures. By contrast, Microsoft's value has dropped 8.8% over the same time period.
Analysts put the switch in the number two slot down to a decision IBM made in 2005 to sell off its PC business to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo to concentrate on software and services.
"IBM went beyond technology," Ted Schadler, a Forrester Research analyst told Bloomberg. "They were early to recognise that computing was moving way beyond these boxes on our desks."
By contrast much of Microsoft's revenue comes from sales of Windows and Office software used on PCs. Also, Microsoft is between releases of Windows which can mean a fallow period for its revenues.
Windows 7 was released in 2009 and Windows 8 is not expected to be released until late 2012 at the earliest.
Many have also claimed that the rise of the web, mobile computing and tablets spells the end of the PC era. In early August, Dr Mark Dean, one of the designers of the original IBM PC, declared that the centre of the computing world had shifted away from the humble desktop.