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Blackberry Delays Update
October 31, 2011 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Last week at its BlackBerry DevCon conference, Research in Motion tried to get developers excited about the upcoming PlayBook OS 2.0 mobile operating system, to spur developers to create applications for RIM’s BlackbBerry PlayBook tablet, released last spring to poor reviews and low sales. But yesterday, RIM wrote in a blog post that it was delaying the release of the PlayBook 2.0 OS “until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers, and users.”
PlayBook OS 2.0 was originally promised for October 2011, but RIM has now set a target of February 2012. To meet the new February 2012 release date, RIM said it was dropping a key feature originally promised for PlayBook OS 2.0: its popular BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service.
Developers were looking forward to the promised October PlayBook 2.0 OS release in hopes it might spur sales of the poorly selling tablet, especially as the original timing would have taken advantage of the holiday sales season that will also see the release of the unified tablet/smartphone Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system and a bevy of new smartphones using Microsoft’s recently released Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” operating system, in addition to Apple’s strong-selling iPad and new iPhone 4S, both featuring the recently released iOS 5 operating system.
The PlayBook OS is based on the QNX operating system that RIM bought in spring 2010 to be the basis for its tablets and, sometime in the 2012-13 timeframe, be the basis for a new operating system for its BlackBerry smartphones. Last week, RIM said that it will provide a unified tablet/smartphone operating system called BBX, based on the QNX/PlayBook platform. It said that applications developed for the PlayBook OS would be compatible with BBX, but did not make the same promise for BlackBerry OS apps.
Apple Admits To Security Issues
Apple has finally acknowledge and has promised an update for Mac OS X that will find and remove the MacDefender fake security software, and warn uninfected users when they download the infectious program.
The announcement — part of a new support document that the company posted late Tuesday — was the company’s first public recognition of the threat posed by what security experts call “scareware” or “rogueware.”
Apple has taken criticism for not publicly responding to the MacDefender threat.
“In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants,” Apple said in the document. “The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.”
Apple also outlined steps that users with infected Macs can take to remove the scareware.
Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle Security, was surprised that Apple said it would embed a malware cleaning tool in Mac OS X.
Microsoft Resumes WP7 Update
March 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Microsoft has begun updating Samsung’s Windows Phone 7-based smartphones again, after earlier technical problems forced a stop to the process, it said in a blog post Wednesday.
The update was initially announced Feb. 21, and doesn’t provide any new functionality, but rather improves the software update process itself, according to Microsoft.
However, after some users of Samsung phones began experiencing problems, Microsoft decided to temporarily suspend the update program.
The problems have been pinpointed and fixed, the blog post said, but it didn’t provide any details on what the issues were. At the same time, Microsoft has continued to update Windows Phone 7-based smartphones from other vendors. Read More…
Goo.gl Link Spreading Malware via Twitter
February 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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As if we don’t have enough to worry about when it comes to potential attacks of all kinds. First there were reports about the social media site Facebook and its highly infected news feeds now there appears to be yet another mischief seeking internet fiend sending out infected Goo.gl links via Twitter. Users are being warned not to click these suspicious links as they might direct you to malicious sites.