Samsung smartphones vulnerable to remote wipe exploit, researcher shows
Telecommunications Security researcher Ravi Borgaonkar from the Berlin Technical University has revealed just how easy it might be to perform a malicious factory reset on Samsung Android smartphones running the TouchWiz interface.
Claiming to have used codes for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a session-based GSM protocol typically used to send messages between a mobile device and an application server, Borgaonkar remotely wiped a Samsung Galaxy S III on stage at the Ekoparty Security Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Panasonic knocks down price on second-gen lightweight Toughbook 53
Panasonic on Tuesday debuted the second generation upgrade of its lightweight Toughbook 53 notebook computer, which features a faster processor, a larger storage capacity, and improved battery life.
For almost fifteen years, Panasonic's Toughbook has been one of the most recognized brands in ruggedized mobile PCs, and it has included a number of different enterprise-class form factors. Last year, however, the company took the Toughbook brand into two new directions that mirrored the state of the consumer PC industry at large, and the impact it has been having on enterprise devices: Android-powered mobile tablets and lighter-weight touchscreen notebooks.
Afraid of getting hit by lightning? WeatherBug Elite for Android might help
Weather apps consistently rank behind games as the second most popular class of mobile applications (Source: Nielsen) but does your weather app tell you where you're most likely to be hit by a bolt of lightning?
WeatherBug Elite for Android, which received a major version update today, includes that very feature, called "Lightning Alerts."
A short, wonderful tale of iPhone 5 lines across North America [slideshow]
This morning, the huddled masses waited in lines outside of their local Apple stores, electronics retail shops, and affiliate carrier shops in hopes of purchasing the new iPhone 5.
Pulling images that passersby were snapping and sharing on Twitter, we happened across a quaint narrative.
How to scan photo negatives with your smartphone
With each new smartphone and tablet, consumers are given yet another portable photographic and imaging device that can be used not only for casual photography, but also for serious purposes such as archival and preservation. Recently, I began experimenting with my smartphone to see if I could convert photo negatives into workable digital positives without having to buy a single-purpose device like the ION Pics 2 Go smartphone negative scanner.
There are quite a few smartphone applications and accessories to help people use their phone's camera to scan photographs and documents. The $15 Kickstarter project called Scanbox places smartphones an ideal distance from photos for scanning purposes, and mobile apps such as Shoebox by 1000 Memories uses edge detection and perspective correction to clean up digital shots of printed photos.
Dell's new Windows 8 tablet and ultrabook: general purpose, but not for consumers
The traditional personal computer is returning to the niche from whence it sprang at the dawn of the Internet age, but general purpose computing isn't dead yet.
With consumer desktop and notebook computer sales in decline, and lower-powered, general purpose devices such as the iPad encroaching on resource-light communications and data management tasks in the workplace, the PC business is gearing down. Former consumer PC market leader Dell has all but exited the consumer hardware business and has been on an enterprise software and services buying spree.
Major takeaways from the first days of Salesforce's Dreamforce '12
Maybe it wasn't drool-worthy enough for heaps of fanboys to liveblog, but Leading Cloud CRM provider Salesforce has already rolled out a host of big news at its week-long Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Some of the news has been in the form of new product unveilings and new partnerships that focus primarily upon expanding Salesforce's social CRM functionality, and growing its business into newer, less-trodden territory.
Some of the news has taken the form of progress updates on Salesforce as a company, and on the state of enterprise cloud business as a whole. Those who are acutely aware of bubble-like investment opportunities where growth is fast but returns on investment are uncertain will want to take note.
HTC's new Windows Phone 8 smartphones mimic Microsoft's tile interface
Wednesday, longtime Windows smartphone maker HTC debuted two new flagship Windows Phone devices which were designed to showcase Microsoft's latest mobile OS Windows Phone 8. The new smartphones, called the Windows Phone 8X and 8S, carry the same bright external colors of Nokia's Lumia series Windows Phones, but use HTC's technology and design prowess to make the devices stand out on their own.
Similar to the HTC One X in the speed and power department (dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, 8 megapixel camera), the Windows Phone 8X has a 4.3-inch Super LCD 2 display with Corning's Gorilla Glass 2, 16 GB of internal storage, and an improved 2.1 megapixel forward-facing camera with 1080p video capture and an 88 degree wide-angle lens.
SkyDrive files get redundant protection from your stupid self
Microsoft on Tuesday announced it has added recycle bin functionality to its SkyDrive cloud storage and collaboration suite, adding yet another layer of redundancy to the service to make sure the unthinkable doesn't happen and you actually delete a document.
I've "accidentally installed" plenty of things that have made me want to punch my own teeth out, and plenty of my work files have become corrupted, or have crashed before I could save changes…but I can say with some degree of confidence that I've never accidentally deleted a file. Maybe I'm some kind of keystroke wizard or something, because Microsoft likes to make extra sure people don't mistakenly delete something they need.
Internet Explorer zero-day exploit threatens huge chunk of IE users
Security researchers this week uncovered a bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer that is actively being exploited in targeted attacks and remote code execution. Microsoft responded by launching its own investigation of the vulnerability, but has no solution yet.
The vulnerability has been observed in Internet Explorer 6 through Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7, and users can be infected simply by visiting a malicious website.
Incumbent mentality drives the wireless communications industry to the crisis point
It's been almost three years since the Federal Communications Commission began warning us that we are consuming more wireless bandwidth than the airwaves can support, and in those three years, relatively little has changed to fix the situation. Lightsquared attempted to cleverly utilize satellite-band spectrum to build a ground-based 4G network, but those attempts were squashed by the GPS lobby, and could take another five years to come back.
The FCC is still on its quest to free up a total of 300 MHz of wireless spectrum by 2015 for mobile broadband data services, but time is rapidly running out on that promise. Last Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the commission would be updating its wireless spectrum policies by the end of the year to help free up about 100MHz worth of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band.
HP's next attempt at a smartphone could target the developing world
After acquiring Palm, releasing a scant few smartphones, then terminating the business and open sourcing webOS, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman now says the company isn't done with the smartphone business yet. In a television interview this week, Whitman said her company "took a detour into smartphones" and that it has no other option but to release a smartphone because in many developing markets, that is the primary computing device.
This is something we've heard from all kinds of technology companies and international development groups for the last few years, following more than a decade of attempts at bringing better computing capabilities to emerging markets. In many of these places, the notebook computer simply did not exhibit the same impact that mobile communications devices did.
Verizon and Sprint iPhone 5 still doesn't have simultaneous voice and data
Bad news for anyone who finds themselves needing to look up something on Wikipedia when talking on the phone to their mom, the CDMA/LTE version of Apple's iPhone 5 will not support simultaneous voice and data (SVD). The pure GSM versions of the iPhone 5 will, however allow this feature, so the new buyer must beware.
For this feature to exist on Verizon and Sprint's networks, Apple would have had to install another wireless radio antenna in the iPhone 5. Of course, Apple only began offering CDMA iPhones last year, and those versions did not support simultaneous voice and data, either, so upgrading customers should already be well familiar with this missing feature.
The people are bored because no one is challenging them
When a new piece of technology is released, we must watch out for the "bored response." It tells us so much.
Following yesterday's introduction of the iPhone 5, there has been a collective shrugging of shoulders. The iPhone 5 is boring.
Sarcastic liveblogging of Apple's iPhone event - Get it here
Today, gadget tastemaker Apple is expected to unveil a host of new products, including a new iPhone, new iPods, and perhaps even an update to the bête noire that is iTunes. In all likelihood, the "iPhone 5" will be the scene-stealer of this event, which will add some small, incremental changes to the obnoxiously popular device. The changes documented herein are sure to be labeled as life-changing and essential by the bike-riding gentrification brigade, and be labeled as Android copies by the cloak-wearing dungeon masters. Since we've sat through six different iPhone unveilings, we've decided to call this one as we see it...
Today's event begins at 10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm Eastern), and all updates appear in reverse chronological order (i.e. newest posts first), and yes, you do actually have to refresh the page.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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