Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
HP To Debut 7-Inch Tablet In August
June 30, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
Comments Off on HP To Debut 7-Inch Tablet In August
The 9.7-in. TouchPad debuting on July 1 from Hewlett-Packard (HP) will be quickly followed by a 7-in. tablet from HP in August, according to an anonymous source.
Taiwan Economic News on Friday cited an unnamed subcontractor for Inventec Corp., a PC manufacturing company in Taiwan, for information about the smaller tablet. The story said Inventec has “received big-ticket orders for tablet PCs from HP,” for both the 9.7-in. TouchPad and a 7-in. model launching in August.
The announced TouchPad runs WebOS, but no other details were available on the 7-in. model.
Inventec and HP have so far not commented on this story.
HP has not announced a 7-in. tablet, although that form factor is becoming fairly common alongside tablets with screens close to 10 inches in size.
Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July
June 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
Comments Off on Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July
We are closer to reaching the end of Verizon Wireless’s limited-time offer of unlimited data, says the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD. The website reports that the wireless carrier plans to introduce new tiered pricing plans next month for new smartphone customers — including those buying Apple’s iPhone 4.
If true, the report hardly comes as a surprise. Back in January, when Verizon became the second carrier in the U.S. to offer iPhone service, the company said it would offer subscribers a $30-a-month unlimited data plan for the iPhone’s launch, but highlighted the fact that the offer was for a limited time only.
Pentagon Practices Cyberwar
June 23, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Pentagon Practices Cyberwar
A mock Internet where the Pentagon can practice cyberwar games — complete with software that simulates human behavior under multiple military threat levels — is due to be up and running in a year’s time, according to a published report.
Called the National Cyber Range, the computer network mimics the architecture of the Internet so military planners can study the effects of cyberweapons by acting out attack and defense scenarios, Reuters says.
Planning for the Cyber Range was carried out by Lockheed Martin, which won a $30.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which won $24.7 million.
Cyber Range plans call for the ability to simulate offensive and defensive measures of the caliber that nations might be able to carry out. DARPA wants the range to support multiple tests and scenarios at the same time and to ensure that they don’t interfere with each other. “The Range must be capable of operating from Unclassified to Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information/Special Access Program with multiple simultaneous tests operating at different security levels and compartments,” according to DARPA’s announcement of the project.
More Citigroup Accounts Compromised Than Stated
June 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on More Citigroup Accounts Compromised Than Stated
Citigroup was apparently hit harder by a cyber-attack in May than what was originally reported; which is now 360,000 of its customers. Unfortunately, this number is double the number that Citigroup initially stated.
Citigroup is one of the biggest banks in the US and ranks number 3 overall. The breach occurred on May 10th and was confirmed by Citigroup on June 8thth. That said, around 360,080 North American Citigroup credit card accounts were impacted by the breach, Citigroup stated; which is around 1 per cent of their North American card customer’s base.
Yahoo Creates Search Tools For Smartphones
June 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
Comments Off on Yahoo Creates Search Tools For Smartphones
Yahoo wants to aid in smartphone owners finding mobile applications and information about them.
On Thursday, the company is debuting a feature in its search engine called App Search, as well as application search tools for Android and iPhone devices named AppSpot.
Both the new App search feature and the mobile search tools can be used to seek applications for iPhone and Android devices, although the company expects to expand that scope in the future.
For now, Yahoo has indexed the mobile application catalogue of the Android Market and of the Apple App Store, and is convinced that it can do a better job than the search tools of those two online shops.
Finding information about mobile applications, like descriptions, ratings, reviews and recommendations, is at a rudimentary stage similar to web search in the mid-1990s, Seth said.
The way Yahoo sees it, many people today struggle to find the right mobile application among the hundreds of thousands available for Android and iPhone devices.
Chinese Government Questioned About Cyber-attack
June 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Chinese Government Questioned About Cyber-attack
The U.S. State Department questioned the Chinese government regarding an attack that had temporarily shut down the website Change.org after the site hosted a petition urging Chinese authorities to release artist Ai Weiwei from custody.
U.S. deputy assistant secretary Daniel Baer raised concerns about the attack in April with China’s foreign ministry, according to an official letter sent from the State Department to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). Change.org obtained a copy of the letter and released it Tuesday.
The nature of those talks is still somewhat vague. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it had no current information on the matter and deferred to the State Department. China’s foreign ministry has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Change.org, an online petitioning platform, was the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack originating from China on April 17. The attacks nearly brought down the site for days.
DDoS attacks can do this by using hundreds or thousands of hacked computers to drive traffic to a website. The data will become so overwhelming that the site will become inaccessible to users.
Change.org said the DDoS attacks from China continue to bring down the site intermittently. The FBI is investigating the case, said Benjamin Joffe-Walt, an editor with Change.org.
Acer Is The Latest Victim Of Computer Hacking
Comments Off on Acer Is The Latest Victim Of Computer Hacking
Taiwanese PC manufacturer Acer is investigating a cyber hacker attack that stole customer data from its Packard Bell division in Europe, the company said.
Acer said the security breach was limited to customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and system serial numbers. No credit card data was stolen, it said. Acer provided no other details about the breach, and said the investigation was ongoing.
News of the breach was reported several days ago, after a hacker group called Pakistan Cyber Army claimed to have stolen the personal data of about 40,000 people from an Acer server in Europe. Acer did not comment on the attack at the time.
The Hacker News had published screen shots of the personal data and some of the source code that was stolen in the security breach. It also said that the Pakistan Cyber Army would issue a press release detailing more about their motives. But so far, no new information has surfaced from the hacking group.
Acer Launches Sandy Bridge Notebooks
Acer updated its Timeline notebook series with Intel’s Sandy Bridge family of CPUs. The Timeline X series will come in three sizes, 13.3-inch, 14-inch and 15.6-inch and they are about an inch thick. Furthermore, the notebooks will be equipped with Acer’s PowerSmart Technology that is supposed to provide battery life of up to nine hours on models with integrated graphics and up to eight hours for those models with discrete graphics.
Download Defense Added To Chrome Browser
Comments Off on Download Defense Added To Chrome Browser
Google has updated Chrome to version 12, adding a new feature that warns users when they’ve downloaded files from dangerous Web sites.
New to Chrome 12 is a tool that flags questionable files pulled from the Web. Chrome now shows an alert when users download some file types from sites that are on the Safe Browsing API (application programming interface) blacklist, which Google maintains.
The messages reads: “This file is malicious. Are you sure you want to continue?” If they wish, users can ignore the warning and install the file on their system’s hard drive.
“This warning will be displayed for any download URL that matches the latest list of malicious websites published by the Safe Browsing API,” said Google last April when it debuted the feature in an earlier edition of Chrome.
Safe Browsing already identifies suspicious or unsafe sites, then adds them to a blacklist. Chrome, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari all tap into Safe Browsing to warn users of risky sites before they actually visit them.
10-Inch Tablets For $299?
June 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on 10-Inch Tablets For $299?
Taiwan’s Micro-Star International unveiled two new Android-based tablets at Computex this week that appear much sleeker than the WindPad tablets it has manufactured in the past.
The WindPad Enjoy 10 and Enjoy 7, which are being shown in a location further away from the show floor, will start shipping to retailers at the end of July, priced at $299 for the 10-inch version and $199 for the 7-inch version, said MSI product manager Rory Chen.
The tablets on show here were running the 2.3 Gingerbread version of Android. MSI hopes to start using the 3.0 Honeycomb Android OS on the tablets later this year, but it’s unlikely to be available with the first devices that go on sale.
The Enjoy 10 isn’t as thin and light as the iPad 2, and a spec sheet shows the new tablets have no 3G option — only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It’s also behind the iPad in other areas such as memory and storage. But the Enjoy 10′s $299 price tag makes it considerably cheaper than Apple’s tablet, which starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi-only model.