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August 23, 2011 by admin
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Beetel Teletech, part of India’s Bharti Enterprises that controls top mobile carrier Bharti Airtel (BRTI.NS), unveiled a tablet computer priced at 9,999 rupees ($220) on Wednesday.
The 7-inch tablet, branded Beetel Magiq, uses Google’s (GOOG.O) Android operating system and supports both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, Beetel said in a statement.
Beetel is one of the largest makers of fixed-line phones in India. A company spokesman said China’s Huawei HWT.UL was their manufacturing partner for the tablet.
India is the world’s second-biggest and the fastest-growing market for mobile phones, although computer penetration is still low.
Apple Inc (AAPL.O) began iPad sales in India in January this year, while Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) launched its Galaxy Tab in India in November last year.
Get Ready For Email-Malware Spree
A sizeable uptick in malicious email attachments is just subsiding, but if history is any indicator,several smaller spikes are about to follow that use even more deceptive tactics than their predecessors.
The recent surge, fueled in large part by a flood of fake messages from UPS, is similar to one observed at the end of March in that the messages urge recipients to open an attachment that releases the malware on victims’ machines, according to Internet security firm Commtouch.
The earlier wave used a wide range of package-delivery services as senders, including FedEx and DHL, but the latest outbreak employs a wider variety of messages such as, “Dear client, recipient’s address is wrong”, “Dear User, Delivery Confirmation: FAILED”, and “Dear Client, We are not able to delivery [sic] the postal package”, according to the Commtouch blog.
All the messages then instruct the recipient to open the attachment that contains the malware, claiming it is an invoice or a form that needs to be filled out. “This time we see differences in the style of the emails – there is far more variation in the automatically-generated subjects, body and attachment names. Last time all the attachments were “UPS.exe” – this time there are many variations,” says Avi Turiel, director of product marketing at Commtouch in an email.
The attackers will evaluate the success of the attack by finding out how many recipients activated the malware, “Based on the infections vs. malware sent out they will probably try and figure out what they could improve in the next attack,” he says.
Does Linkedin Share User Data?
August 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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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).
China Debuts Apple iPhone Knock-Off
August 17, 2011 by admin
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The latest version of Apple Inc’s popular iPhone has already hit the Chinese market — the counterfeit market that is.
The ‘hiPhone 5′ is selling for as little as 200 yuan ($31) on China’s top e-commerce platform Taobao, which is owned by Alibaba Group.
But one has to pay around 800 yuan for a more “genuine” one, according to some store representatives at a mobile phone market in Shanghai.
“Look at this. It’s not the same as the 300-400 yuan ones,” Shanghai-based daily Metro Express quoted a clerk as saying, pointing to one originally priced at 850 yuan.
The ‘hiPhone 5′ is based on leaked images of the yet-to-be-launched iPhone 5 and is thinner and with less rounded edges than the existing iPhone 4, according to the newspaper. However, it is extremely light, almost like a plastic toy, like most pirated mobile phones, it said.
AMD Not Chasing Smartphone Market
August 15, 2011 by admin
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Advanced Micro Devices is not immediately pursuing opportunities within the smartphone markets as it does not align with the company’s strength in technologies like graphics, an executive said on Monday.
Smartphones are constrained on battery, pixels and screen space, and AMD has other areas it can focus on in order to grow, said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager for AMD’s product group during the Pacific Crest Securities Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado. The company sees an opportunity to apply its graphics and chip technologies to tablets, where customers are demanding better video and battery life.
“We haven’t announced any plans to go in that handheld space. We’ve got plenty of opportunities… in server, notebook and now tablets, that’s our immediate focus. But if the right circumstances come up and we can see a way to impact the market, we’ll obviously continue to look,” Bergman said.
AMD has faced criticism for not aggressively pursuing the booming smartphone or tablet markets. The company in June rushed to release its first dedicated tablet chip, called the Z-series. The chip is a low-power variant of PC chips based on the Fusion microarchitecture, which includes a graphics processor and CPU on a single chip. Based on the x86 architecture, the chip can help tablets deliver a full PC and graphics experience, the company has said.
Apple Tech Support Satisfaction Plummets
August 11, 2011 by admin
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Apple customers are increasingly unhappy with the company’s technical support, which could affect the firm’s bottom line in the future, a researcher said today.
Although Apple continues to outperform rival computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell in overall customer satisfaction with technical support, in several areas Apple’s slippage over the last year is alarming, said Peter Leppik, CEO of Vocalabs, a Minneapolis-based company that surveys consumers after they’ve contacted customer or technical support.
“Apple is still definitely ahead of its competition, but what we are highlighting are deeper metrics that are showing negative trends,” said Leppik. “Customers are upset with the automated part of support calls to Apple, and that might be trickling into higher metrics.”
Those higher metrics Leppik referenced include the likelihood customers will return for another purchase in the future, or continue to recommend Apple products to friends and family.
In the past 12 months, consumers who said they were “very satisfied” with Apple’s technical support dropped 15 percentage points, from 73% at the mid-point of 2010 to 58% halfway through 2011, said Leppik.
The primary cause of the tumble was a turnabout in customers’ opinion of the automated section of their calls to Apple. In the last year, the percentage of those who said they were very satisfied with the quality of Apple’s automation fell 13 points to 24%. That’s a new low for Apple in Vocalabs surveys, and a whopping 28 points off the peak of 52% a year-and-a-half ago.
HP Exec Claims Evidence Was Falsified
HP has been accused of producing “false and fabricated” evidence against a former sales executive who the firm claims stole confidential information.
Adrian Jones, who was a sales executive at HP, left the firm to join Oracle in February 2011. HP claims that Jones nabbed a load of confidential information between 10 and 11 February using a removable hard drive. Jones told the court that the hard drive was used by HP for backup and was never in his possession, saying that HP and its outside counsel have confirmed these facts.
Jones’ current employer Oracle said that the accusations leveled at its employee are simply not true, with Deborah Hellinger, a spokeswoman for Oracle telling Bloomberg, “The central allegation in HP’s employment lawsuit against Adrian Jones has turned out to be complete fiction…. If they did it knowingly then HP and their lawyers should be sanctioned. If they did it mistakenly then they simply owe Mr Jones an apology.”
HP is said to have probed Jones’ relationship with a female subordinate, for whom Jones allegedly arranged a 94 per cent pay rise and expensed travel that had no business purpose.
Jones’ case mirrors that of former HP CEO Mark Hurd who left the company after similar expense discrepances were brought to light. Hurd, a close friend of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, then joined Oracle as co-president within weeks of leaving his post at HP.
HP and Oracle have been going at it hammer and tongs in a largely public row over Oracle’s decision to dump support for Intel’s Itanium architecture. The two companies are in various other legal battles as well, with HP claiming that Oracle had gone from being a partner to a “bitter antagonist”. We assume the next lawsuit will claim that Oracle stole HP’s lunch money and beat it up behind the bike shed, or perhaps the other way around.
AMD Ships One Million Llano Processors
It appears that AMD has successfully managed to ship one million Llano chips in the second quarter, which is weeks ahead of the official launch.
AMD released the news during its earnings conference call. Where interim CEO Thomas Seifert said demand for Llano was strong. “We expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp,” he noted.
If you look back at AMD’s Brazos launch, they managed to ship around one million units ahead of its scheduled launch, in the fourth quarter of 2010. Conversely, introducing Llano will be a bit more challenging, because AMD is planning to offer many varieties of mobile and desktop SKUs; including affordable dual- and triple-core processors. Therefore, Llano is expected to outpace Brazos very soon. AMD also made mention in their earnings call that total APU shipments for the quarter hit seven million. That said, so 6 million of them were Brazos processors.
It is believed that AMD Llano chip will take 50 percent of their total CPU shipments by the end of the year. In the first quarter of 2012, the Llano is expected to garner over 60 percent of their shipments.
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.
Defense Dept. IT Is ‘Stone Age’
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a stinging critique of the Defense Department’s IT systems and said he sees much room for improvement.
Cartwright, who was speaking at the FOSE information technology conference in Washington,DC, said the DOD is sending increasing amounts of data, such as video, to soldiers on the battlefield, and it’s beginning to build an architecture “that starts to take us where we need to be.” But Cartwright quickly tempered that.
“Quite frankly, my feeling is — at least being a never-satisfied person — the department is pretty much in the Stone Age as far as IT is concerned,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright cited problems with proprietary systems that aren’t connected to anything else and are unable to quickly adapt to changing needs. “We have huge numbers of data links that move data between proprietary platforms — one point to another point,” he said.
The most striking example of an IT failure came during the second Gulf War, where the Marines and the Army were dispatched in southern Iraq.