Tim Conneally

Sega is the latest video game company to fall prey to hackers, as the Sega Pass network of gaming sites, forums, and customer offers has been taken down and the information connected to 1.3 million accounts stolen.

User names, birthdates, e-mail addresses and passwords were all exposed in the security compromise. Fortunately for users, it did not include any financial information.

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This week, Mozilla's whirlwind release cycle yielded the first release candidate of Firefox 5 in the beta channel, just a matter of a week before the final version is expected to be released.

Changes in this version include: Support for CSS animations; a more prominent Do-Not-Track header preference; improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance; Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas, improved desktop environment integration for Linux users; and more.

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Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) Engineering has concluded that WebGL, the royalty free cross-platform API for browser-based 3D graphics, is "overly permissive," insecure, and potentially harmful to machines using it. Development of the technology was spearheaded by Mozilla, Google, Opera, AMD, and Nvidia, and was endorsed by the Khronos Group.

Based upon an MSRC Engineering review, and using two Context Information Security reports as supportive evidence, Microsoft on Thursday said it cannot endorse the use of WebGL in its current form.

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Forensic computer security company ATC-NY on Thursday released a new, free tool called Dropbox Reader which helps investigators read "evidence files" associated with Dropbox cloud storage accounts.

Dropbox Reader is actually a series of six command line Python scripts which parse the configuration and cache files of a Dropbox account, including the user's registered e-mail address, dropbox identifier, software version info and list of recently changed files stored in config.db, the information about shared directories and files marked for sync stored in filecache.db.

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Fulfilling its promises from earlier this year, Microsoft on Thursday released the Kinect SDK Beta for Windows, giving creative interface designers legitimate access to the famous 3D motion controller without the need for a hacked third-party driver.

Along with the software development kit, Microsoft has published a series of "quickstarts" to help aspiring developers get a jump on installing and using the Kinect Sensor, setting up a Kinect development environment in Visual Studio, as well as setting up and working with code samples. These samples require Microsoft's DirectX SDK (June 2010 or later) and the current runtime for DirectX 9, as well as Microsoft Speech Platform Runitme 10.2 and SDK 10.2.

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More than 100 different Android device designs have been released over the last three years, but there have only been a handful of "ruggedized" smartphones (Motorola i1, Defy, Casio G'Zone Commando) and no rugged tablets. Thursday, Panasonic announced it will be releasing the first enterprise-grade rugged Android tablet under its Toughbook line in the fourth quarter of 2011.

"The vast majority of tablet devices--regardless of the OS--are engineered for consumers and don't offer appropriate levels of security and durability or the functionality needed for business use," Rance Poehler, president, Panasonic Solutions Company said in a statement on Thursday. "Like all Toughbook products, our Toughbook tablet will be designed and constructed with the mission-critical mobile user in mind."

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I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

When Duke Nukem 3D came out, I thought it was stupid.

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One day after opening a hotline to take requests for its next hacking target, black hat security group LulzSec appears to have taken down the website belonging to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.)

The image above is from the group's Twitter feed just about half an hour ago, CIA.gov remains unreachable (Error 7 (net::ERR_TIMED_OUT): The operation timed out.) from our location in Maryland (others claim to see no change to the site.)

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With Android 2.3.4, Google equipped its Google Talk app with video and voice chat support, which became a banner feature for the Nexus S on T-Mobile. Unfortunately, in May, T-Mobile began to block users from connecting to video chat over their 3G/4G connections, and only allowed users to connect while on Wi-Fi.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile's Video Chat by Qik, which lets users video chat over 3G, remains exclusive to the myTouch 4G, GalaxyTab, Dell Streak 7, Vibrant 4G, Sidekick 4G, and G2x.

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Mobile advertising company Millennial Media on Wednesday released a report that says MP3 players and gaming devices are still better vehicles for delivering in-app mobile ads than tablets such as the iPad, even though tablets have exploded in popularity over the last year.

It's Millennial's first Mobile Mix Report that counts mobile ad impressions on non-phone devices, and it appears that non-smartphone app consumption is still completely dominated by the iPod touch. 70% of impressions in the "connected devices" category (which itself makes up 16% of the total impressions) came from Mobile Gaming Devices/MP3 Players, which includes the iPod touch and Sony PSP, among other things.

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Network hardware company Black Box announced on Wednesday a new line of 802.11n wireless access points for enterprise which utilize a cloud-based management system, eliminating the need for physical WLAN controllers and opening up IT to remote administration.

The service is called SmartPath, and when a new access point is connected, it hooks up with the SmartPath Enterprise Management System (EMS), Black Box's $99 per year cloud-based subscription management service, and automatically discovers nearby access points that it will be working with. By doing this, each access point does not need to be connected to a central wireless network controller.

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Last year, Google debuted Google Instant, a feature that took search suggestions a step further, and instantly returned search results as the user typed.

Today, Google announced it has taken it yet another step further and it can now pre-render the pages it pulls up in search results, so when users click away, the page has no load time.

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Google on Tuesday launched a newly designed search page for mobile devices that incorporates features of Google's search apps directly into the the Web interface and adds easy-to-touch quick search buttons for commonly used mobile/location-based searches.

The new Google.com for mobile devices looks just about the same as it did before, but adds touchable icons across the bottom of the page for "restaurants," "coffee," "bars," and "more." When "coffee" is clicked, for example, all the nearby coffee shops show up under Google Places. When users click "more," a page with nine icons appears, which adds: fast food, what's nearby, shops, ATMs, gas stations, and attractions.

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Chromium-based "social" Web browser RockMelt on Tuesday received an update to Beta 3, which adds about 30 new features and a tighter integration with Facebook which comes as a result of working directly with the popular social network.

"Our goal is to build a browser that makes surfing the web better, easier, and more fun. We couldn't be more excited to work with Facebook to make social a core browser component and to continue the browser revolution," the RockMelt blog said today.

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But that's OK, there's no carrier contract to break.

An unlocked iPhone 4 is now available to any American who might want one, but the real demand more likely will be overseas. It is mostly pointless to use an unlocked iPhone within the United States, since the only supported GSM carrier is AT&T -- at least for fast data. But in international markets, there are many more supported networks -- and iPhone already is a hot export item because of the high markup.

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