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.

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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."

 

 

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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

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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.

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Smart cities get their own operating system

Smart cities with devices chatting to each other may dot the planet in the near future

Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis.

The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly.
The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening.
In the event of a fire the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire trucks can reach the blaze swiftly.
The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area.
The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms.
The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life.
Channelling all the data coming from these sensors and services into a over-arching control system had lots of benefits, said Steve Lewis, head of Living PlanIT- the company behind Urban OS.
Urban OS should mean buildings get managed better and gathering the data from lots of sources gives a broader view of key city services such as traffic flows, energy use and water levels.
"If you were using an anatomy analogy, the city has a network like the nervous system, talking to a whole bunch of sensors gathering the data and causing actions," said Mr Lewis.
"We distribute that nervous system into the parts of the body - the buildings, the streets and other things.
Having one platform managing the entire urban landscape of a city means significant cost savings, implementation consistency, quality and manageability, he added.
"And it's got local computing capacity to allow a building or an automotive platform to interact with people where they are, managing the energy, water, waste, transportation, logistics and human interaction in those areas."

Urban apps

The underlying technology for the Urban OS has been developed by McLaren Electronic Systems - the same company that creates sensors for Formula One cars. The Urban OS was unveiled at the Machine-2-Machine conference in Rotterdam.

To support the myriad of different devices in a city the firm has developed an extensive set of application services that will run Urban OS, dubbed PlaceApps - the urban environment equivalent of apps on a smartphone.
Independent developers will also be able to build their own apps to get at data and provide certain services around a city.
Mr Lewis said that eventually applications on smartphones could hook into the Urban OS to remotely control household appliances and energy systems, or safety equipment to monitor the wellbeing of elderly people.
It could also prove useful in the event of a fire in a building, he said.
Sensors would spot the fire and then the building would use its intelligence to direct people inside to a safe stairwell, perhaps by making lights flicker or alarms get louder in the direction of the exit.
"That's dealt with by the building itself, with the devices very locally talking to each other to figure out what's the best solution for the current dilemma, and then providing directions and orchestrating themselves," said Mr Lewis.

'Magical actions'
Living PlanIT is working with Cisco and Deutsche Telekom on different parts of the system.

Urban OS might help people escape during a fire

Markus Breitbach of the Machine to Machine Competence Center at Deutsche Telekom said that his firm was helping to bring all the parts of the Urban OS together.
"Everybody's talking about 50 billion connected devices, which effectively means huge amounts of data being collected, but nobody is really caring about managing it and bringing it into a context - and Urban OS can do just that," he said.
"If there's a fire alarm on the fifth floor and the elevator is going to the next floor, the light will switch on - but in addition the traffic lights will be switched accordingly to turn the traffic in the right direction so that fire workers can get through.
"And this is what Urban OS is providing, this kind of solution to analyse mass data, enter it in a context and perform magical actions."
A test bed for the Urban OS is currently being built in Portugal. For its work in developing smart cities, Living PlanIT was selected as one of the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers of 2012.

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