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Lenovo Tablet Hits The Market
Lenovo’s business-oriented tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet, is now available for purchase and should start shipping within a week. The 10-inch Android device, which Lenovo officially announced a little more than a month ago, boasts an impressive mix of consumer and business-friendly features that might please both the user and their IT department.
Like other Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets on the market, the ThinkPad Tablet has a 1280 x 800 multitouch display, 1GB of memory, front- and rear-facing cameras and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor. It comes in a 16GB model for $499, a 32GB version for $569 and a 64GB option for $669. Basic specs and price-wise, the ThinkPad Tablet is on par with the competition.
What sets the ThinkPad apart, however, are the enterprise-oriented tools like remote administration in case the tablet gets lost or stolen, support for Cisco VPN, and full device encryption. Free apps included like Documents to Go, PrinterShare, and Computrace underscore the tablets professional target audience.
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Dish Seeks To Add Cellular Services
August 27, 2011 by admin
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Satellite TV provider Dish Network is aiming to build a 4G cellular network, if the U.S. Federal Communications Commission grants its permission, according to a filing the satellite provider made on Monday.
Dish, which earlier this year completed an acquisition of bankrupt satellite mobile operator TerreStar, asked the FCC to transfer TerreStar’s frequency licenses to a Dish subsidiary and to allow Dish to use the spectrum to build a broadband wireless network that it could then use to offer standalone cellular services.
Combined with spectrum Dish acquired in a separate deal to buy DBSD North America, the satellite provider wants to build a network using LTE, the technology of choice for most of the nationwide mobile phone operators, it wrote.
But it needs special permission from the FCC to offer standalone cellular service–as opposed to a service that is integrated with satellite service–and says it is crucial that it be allowed to do so.
“The requirement to make every device dual-mode severely limits a provider’s ability to enter into arrangements with multiple device and equipment manufacturers, thereby limiting consumer choice and severely impairing the business case economics,” Dish wrote.
The company also argued that customers want the choice of a smaller, lighter device with long battery life. Adding satellite capabilities to devices makes them heavier and reduces battery life. “Today, a mobile voice and data provider’s ability to attract customers depends in large measure on its ability to provide its customers with the types of devices that best suit their needs,” it wrote.
RIM To Launch Music Service
August 26, 2011 by admin
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BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is making plans to roll out its own music streaming service that will work across its mobile devices, according to people familiar with the plans.
The new service is likely part of an attempt by RIM to improve its BlackBerry Messenger service as it competes with the mobile media platform strengths of rival Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Android.
RIM is in late-stage negotiations with major labels, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Corp’s Sony Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Group. The new service is expected to be announced by Labor Day in the United States, September 5.
RIM has been enhancing its BlackBerry Messenger offering, popularly known as BBM, since announcing its “social platform” at last September’s DevCon event where it unveiled the PlayBook tablet computer.
A RIM spokeswoman declined comment on the report but said BBM is one of the largest mobile social networks in the world.
RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones have been hit by a sharply declining market share in the United States, even as the company has expanded sales in other parts of the world, partly because of BBM’s popularity.
Analyst Matthew Thornton at Avian Securities said he doubted the music service would attract new users but might help the company keep its existing BlackBerry customers interested.
“I just don’t think trying to replicate Apple is really going to change their situation near term,” he said.
“For RIM it’s going to be the new OS 7 product first and foremost … and then it’s about QNX and making that transition.”
RIM has just launched an updated operating system on three new touchscreen devices intended to catch up with the technical specifications of Android and other rivals. The company plans to launch the first BlackBerrys using the QNX software, used on its PlayBook tablet, early next year.
AES Encryption Cracked
CRYPTOGRAPHY RESEARCHERS have identified a weakness in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) security algorithm that can crack secret keys faster than before.
The crack is the work of a trio of researchers at universities and Microsoft, and involved a lot of cryptanalysis – which is somewhat reassuring – and still does not present much of a real security threat.
Andrey Bogdanov, from K.U.Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Dmitry Khovratovich, who is full time at Microsoft Research, and Christian Rechberger at ENS Paris were the researchers.
Although there have been other attacks on the key based AES security system none have really come close, according to the researchers. But this new attack does and can be used against all versions of AES.
This is not to say that anyone is in immediate danger and, according to Bogdanov, although it is four times easier to carry out it is still something of an involved procedure.
Recovering a key is no five minute job and despite being four times easier than other methods the number of steps required to crack AES-128 is an 8 followed by 37 zeroes.
“To put this into perspective: on a trillion machines, that each could test a billion keys per second, it would take more than two billion years to recover an AES-128 key,” the Leuven University researcher added. “Because of these huge complexities, the attack has no practical implications on the security of user data.” Andrey Bogdanov told The INQUIRER that a “practical” AES crack is still far off but added that the work uncovered more about the standard than was known before.
“Indeed, we are even not close to a practical break of AES at the moment. However, our results do shed some light into the internal structure of AES and indicate where some limits of the AES design are,” he said.
He added that the advance is still significant, and is a notable progression over other work in the area.
“The result is the first theoretical break of the Advanced Encryption Standard – the de facto worldwide encryption standard,” he explained. “Cryptologists have been working hard on this challenge but with only limited progress so far: 7 out of 10 for AES-128 as well as 8 out of 12 for AES-192 and 8 out of 14 rounds for AES-256 were previously attacked. So our attack is the first result on the full AES algorithm.”
Does Linkedin Share User Data?
August 19, 2011 by admin
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Linkedin has upset many of its 100 million users by opting them into a programme that reveals their personal details to advertisers without telling anyone about it.
Linkedin changed its privacy policy to allow it to display the names and pictures of users with ads. The system works by showing friends and colleagues who’ve followed a brand name, effectively making them an unwitting salesperson for that brand, since people are more likely to click such advertisements on the basis that it looks like someone they know is recommending them. In reality, the other person has no idea that their photo and name are being used to sell things.
It’s a clever approach to advertising, but an absolutely abyssmal approach to privacy, as Linkedin has decided to automatically opt-in all of its users without informing them of the change.
Users can opt out if they want, but the option is buried in the Settings page, a ploy similar to that used by Facebook to hide its privacy settings. The big problem here is that if users don’t know that their name and photo are being used in this way, then how can they opt out of it?
Linkedin could face legal trouble for this decision. Digital Trends reports it is likely that Linkedin broke Dutch privacy law, which requires user consent for employing user images with advertisements. It could also be brought up before the European Commission and the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Lightning Took Down Amazon, Microsoft Clouds
August 12, 2011 by admin
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A lightning strike in Dublin on Sunday caused a power outage in data centers belonging to Amazon and Microsoft, causing the companies’ cloud services to go offline.
Lightning hit a transformer, sparking an explosion and fire which caused the power outage at 10:41 AM PDT, according to preliminary information, Amazon wrote on its Service Health Dashboard. Under normal circumstances, backup generators would seamlessly kick in, but the explosion also managed to disable some of those generators.
By 1:56 PM PDT, power to the majority of network devices had been restored, allowing Amazon to focus on bringing EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances and EBS (Elastic Block Storage) volumes back online. But progress was slower than expected, Amazon said a couple of hours later.
“We know many of you are anxiously waiting for your instances and volumes to become available, and we want to give you more detail on why the recovery of the remaining instances and volumes is taking so long,” the company wrote at 11:04 PM PDT. “Due to the scale of the power disruption, a large number of EBS servers lost power and require manual operations before volumes can be restored … While many volumes will be restored over the next several hours, we anticipate that it will take 24-48 hours until the process is completed.”
Poor Get Online With Cloud Phone
August 10, 2011 by admin
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Start up firm Movirtu has made plans to help 3 million or more people in poor countries use mobile services by giving them personal phone numbers, not phones.
Working with a U.N.-affiliated initiative called Business Call to Action (BCtA), Movirtu will offer the numbers, which it calls mobile identities, through commercial carriers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. People in those countries who typically borrow phones from others will be able to log into the carrier’s network and use their own prepaid minutes and bits of data. The service is called Cloud Phone, though it operates within a carrier’s own infrastructure rather than on the Internet as a classic cloud service would.
Having a personal mobile identity can save users money in two ways, according to Ramona Liberoff, executive vice president of marketing, strategy and planning at Movirtu. First, they can use mobile services without buying a phone, which is a luxury even at US$15 or $20 for people making $1 or $2 per day. Second, the cost of prepaid service from a carrier typically is less than what consumers in those countries pay someone to borrow a phone, she said.
Though it’s customary in many of these countries to lend a phone to someone in need, the borrower is also expected to pay the lender for the usage. The average savings from using regular prepaid service instead is estimated at about $60 per year, Liberoff said.
The service will help people to use mobile banking, insurance and farming assistance services as well as make phone calls, Liberoff said.
Some of these services currently can only be delivered to individuals and not to someone sharing a phone. Personal mobile identities could be a boon to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that want to use mobile technology. “In many cases, there are great NGO programs that can’t reach 80 percent of their base,” because those people don’t have their own phones, Liberoff said.
Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?
August 4, 2011 by admin
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Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.
Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.
The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.
Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.
“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”
Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.
But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.
SpyEye Poses Risk To Banking Defenses
Financial institutions are facing more trouble from SpyEye, a piece of malicious software that steals money from customers online bank accounts, according to new research from security vendor Trusteer.
SpyEye is a dastardly piece of malicious software: it can harvest credentials for online accounts and also initiate transactions as a person is logged into their account, literally making it possible to watch their bank balance drop by the second.
In its latest versions, SpyEye has been modified with new code designed to evade advanced systems banks have put in place to try and block fraudulent transactions, said Mickey Boodai, Trusteer’s CEO.
Banks are now analyzing how a person uses their site, looking at parameters such as how many pages a person looks at on the site, the amount of time a person spends on a page and the time it takes a person to execute a transaction. Other indicators include IP address, such as if a person who normally logs in from the Miami area suddenly logs in from St. Petersburg, Russia.
SpyEye works fast, and can automatically and quickly initiate a transaction much faster than an average person manually on the website. That’s a key trigger for banks to block a transaction. So SpyEye’s authors are now trying to mimic — albeit in an automated way — how a real person would navigate a website.
An Apple/Hulu Hookup In The Works?
Apple Inc is in very preliminary talks to join the bidding for Hulu, the online video site that Walt Disney Co, News Corp and its other owners have put up for sale, Bloomberg cited two anonymous sources as saying.
Apple has begun initial discussions that may eventually lead to an acquisition, Bloomberg reported without providing any more details.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the rumor.