The problem with cloud security is...
Sharing details of the hack that “wiped his life” has earned Mat Honan a place in the annals of information system security; the specific interdependence of flawed authentication systems that cost him so dearly -- encompassing Apple, iCloud, Amazon.com, Gmail and more -- would probably still exist if Honan had not gone public. Wired has the full story for those who have not been watching it unfold on Twitter.
As news spread last weekend about how much of Honan’s data the hackers had wiped out -- by social engineering Apple Support into wiping his iPhone, iPad and MacBook -- the company quickly moved to suspend over-the-phone resetting of Apple ID passwords. Amazon also reacted and, according to a follow-up report in Wired: “handed down to its customer service department a policy change that no longer allows people to call in and change account settings, such as credit cards or email addresses associated with its user accounts”.
Google Android app translates photos
Google Translate for Android, today available as v2.5, packs some smoking new features: voice-to-text and text-to-voice translation in more than 64 languages and -- get this -- photos.
New features to this version include live/instant language translation results as you type. Allowing you to get the translated text sooner. For people who use the speech-to-translation option, you can now choose your dialect preference for your speech/voice input. For Japanese language users there is now support for handwriting multiple characters at once, allowing for words to quickly be written in for both travelers and native Japanese people.
Lenovo debuts ThinkPad X1 Carbon, I start selling my stuff to get it
The news has already broken. Three days ago in Beijing, Lenovo unveiled the latest ThinkPad ultrabook, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Last night, the company repeated its performance in a ceremony in New York city to simultaneously celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad line of notebook computers, and officially unveil to the U.S. some new products. Chief among the new devices was the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.
The X1 Carbon is a 14-inch Ultrabook that weighs less than three pounds thanks to its carbon fiber chassis. It offers an eight hour battery, optional 3G mobile broadband, 720p face-tracking camera, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard, and a glass multi-touch touchpad. The base specs of the device include a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 CPU with 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD for $1,299. While modest specs for a baseline, they can be upgraded to an Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.
Instagram is used by 40 percent of big brands, but only Audi uses it correctly
Social media analytics company Simply Measured released a study this week that illustrates the importance of brand presence on Facebook's photo-sharing social network Instagram. According to the survey, the nearly two- year old social network, with its 80 million users, has managed to attract the attention of 40 percent of the top 100 global brands.
Instagram’s adoption accounts for 40 percent of the Interbrand 100, which is actually the lowest in the study, but it has the most impressive adoption rate, when considering the background of the company. Instagram is currently owned by Facebook, through a $1 billion deal announced 4 months ago. The reason why a billion dollars was significant was because Instagram only had a dozen or so employees, and hadn’t generated any revenue.
Mars Rover Curiosity camera isn't as good as your cell phone's
NASA's Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars on Sunday night, and almost immediately began transferring back to Earth the first images of the Martian surface. But for its reported $2.5 billion price tag, the images have a little less clarity than you might expect.
Curiosity's cameras have a maximum resolution of two megapixels. For perspective's sake, modern smartphones typically are 8MP or more. The result will be images that are sharper than those of Martian rovers past, yet lack the clarity that would be expected of a modern research craft.
Microsoft and NYPD make new Precrime tool, hopes you won't get a red ball
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly unvield a new partnership with the Microsoft Corporation. Working together, New York Police Department and Microsoft developed a crime prevention and counterterrorism information analysis platform they call Domain Awareness System. When fully deployed, the new system will provide NYPD investigators and analysts a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity. DAS will help aggregate and analyze public safety data in real time.
DAS takes tips, emergency response calls, and other live incident and safety reports and automatically ties them to richer amounts of information. A network of smart CCTV cameras, license plate readers, speed cameras, and pre-existing cross-agency database information is filtered to relate to those incidents and tips that match. Law enforcement can then develop live real-time incident reports that can be transmitted to police in the field.
Your Windows programs can PlayOnMac
So, you’ve made your choice between Mac and PC and decided that OS X is the operating system for you. But whatever personal choice you may have made, there are various reasons why you might need to turn to Windows software from time to time. While it is less common with big-name applicaions these days, there are still numerous titles that are not available for OS X. If your work requires you to use such a program, PlayOnMac could be just what you have been looking for.
Working much like the likes of Wine -- in fact the software is based on Wine -- this is an emulation tool that enables you to run Windows software on your Mac. This is not a unique piece of software by any means, but PlayOnMac is designed to be easier to use than Wine, and it does not have a price tag like the comparable Parallels does.
Google pays record $22.5 million for Safari cookies
The rumors were true. Today, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for putting its hand in the Safari cookie jar. Technically, the amount is a settlement, but effectively a fine. The search and information giant circumvented Apple browser privacy controls to mine personal data.
Google isn't the only company accused of bypassing Safari privacy controls, but it is most answerable to regulators. The search company already is under 20-year oversight for violating the FTC Act. In October 2011, Google agreed not to misinterpret its consumer privacy practices.
If the manufacturers can't do it, modders can: Jelly Bean for your smartphone
Android smartphones aren’t known for timely updates, even if they bear the Nexus name, but when the very first Android smartphone gets Jelly Bean, you know something interesting is happening.
Thanks to Android modder jcarrz1 from XDA forums, even the 3 year old HTC Dream (or T-Mobile G1 as it’s known in the United States) can now get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The modding community is bringing Jelly Bean to older devices faster than HTC can offer it on their own flagship smartphones available now. But it’s not just the three-year old devices, as the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X also receive a dose of Jelly Bean, before manufacturers release the updates.
State-sponsored 'Gauss' cyber-weapon targeted Lebanon, says Kaspersky
Security company Kaspersky Lab on Thursday announced it had discovered a malware called Gauss which ran from September 2011 to July 2012, and was similar in design to the notorious Flame worm. The company believes Gauss to have been another state-sponsored cyberweapon.
Kaspersky said Gauss was discovered because of the increased efforts to identify and halt international cyber-weapons in the wake of Flame, Stuxnet, Duqu, and other military-grade security threats.
Heat up August with one of these software bargains
The Downloadcrew Software Store is a great place if you’re looking for a software bargain, but with so much to choose from, it can be difficult to know just where to begin. Security and tweaking is a very good place to begin, and you can save 77 percent off the MSRP when you buy AVG Premium Security Complete Bundle for just $29.95. This exclusive deal gives you everything you need to keep yourself safe online and include four great AVG products.
Everyone wants to get the best possible performance from their computer and this is something that AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [1-PC, 1-Year] could help with. For just $8.95 -- saving your 78 percent off the MSRP -- you cn tweak and optimize your system in next to no time, and there’s an even better deal availbale if you want to take care of multiple computers. AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [3-PC, 1-Year] gives you the same great tuneup options, but it can be installed on up to three computers. This could be yours for just $10.95, saving you 78 percent. AVG Internet Security 2012 Plus Bundle is another great selection of four AVG products that could be your for just $29,95 -- saving you a massive 80 percen off the usual MSRP of $149.
Net Guard keeps an eye on your Internet connection
Whether you’re worried about security, hoping to optimize download speeds, or just trying to save money, keeping an eye on how your Internet connection is being used can be very helpful. Windows doesn’t provide many tools to help in this area, unfortunately, but there are plenty of third-party alternatives available -- and Net Guard is a great example.
The program opens with a tiny toolbar that just displays the upload and download speeds for any currently open connections. And so you’ll have an immediate indicator that lets you know that a process has gone online.
Samsung brings VoLTE to the Galaxy S III, but they’re not the first as they claim
The Galaxy S III is currently Samsung’s flagship smartphone and one of the best Android devices on the market today. To top it off, the Korean manufacturer has announced that the Galaxy S III will get VoLTE (Voice over LTE) starting August 2012 in Korea, which will be followed by "availability in global LTE markets" according to an announcement from the company on Thursday.
If the buyers of the Samsung Galaxy S III LTE model haven’t got the same quad-core processor or video card to play with (unless they’re in Korea), they now have VoLTE to play with which is exclusive to the LTE model.
New Google trial includes Gmail in search results
Google is always trying out new ideas, and its latest experiment will allow users to locate personal Gmail messages through Google Search. Once enabled you just type what you’re looking for into the search box, and if there are any matching emails stored in your Gmail account they’ll be pulled out and displayed in a sidebar on the right of the results page. You can also search for contacts at the same time and, as a bonus, get updated information and statuses for any flights mentioned in Gmail messages.
At first glance this latest innovation might not seem a particularly useful feature, but it will allow you to find important messages without having to go into Gmail, simply by typing what you’re looking for into your browser’s search field. Obviously the results will only be visible to you and not to other users.
Steve Wozniak is right -- users are going to eventually be burned if they rely solely on cloud backup
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak this week warned of the perils of depending too much on cloud storage and the general press reacted like this was: A) news, and; B) evidence of some inherent failure in cloud architecture. In fact it is not news (Woz never claimed it was) and mainly represents something we used to call “common sense”.
However secure you think your cloud storage is, why solely rely on it when keeping an extra backup can cost from very little to nothing at all?
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