CERT suggests one-click Conficker check
Does the machine you're using have a case of the Mondays Conficker worm? CERT on Sunday issued a bulletin updating the infection situation and suggesting that if users are unable to load two particular URLS -- one at Symantec, one at McAfee -- it might indicate that the machine is infected, since Conficker interferes with access to those sites. Windows users may want to take a second to click for themselves.
Microsoft v. TomTom: Both parties emerge mostly unscathed
Microsoft will be settling with Dutch navigation device maker TomTom in the intellectual property battle in which both parties sued one another for patent infringement.
In Microsoft's suit, TomTom was accused of violating eight patents involved with memory management and file system architecture used in its Linux-based devices. TomTom shot back with a countersuit that accused Microsoft of infringing upon three of its patents, and then promptly became a licensee in the Open Invention Network, a group specializing in the protection and defense of Linux patent holders.
Netflix raises Blu-ray surcharge by 300% to $4 per month
Although it's been over a year since Blu-ray won the format war against HD DVD and almost all new movies are simultaneously released in the high-definition format, prices have not fallen, with Blu-ray discs still costing up to 3 times more than DVDs. In turn, Netflix has begun informing subscribers that it is raising the cost of those who receive movies on Blu-ray from $1 to $4 per month.
Netflix is attributing the 400% fee increase to the cost of the company having to stock more films in Blu-ray. "As we buy more, you are able to choose from a rapidly expanding selection of Blu-ray titles. And as you've probably heard, Blu-ray discs are substantially more expensive than standard definition DVDs," the company said in an e-mail to subscribers.
Motorola's first US touchphone announced
Motorola hasn't exactly had the strongest presence in mobile phone hardware lately, and was slow to officially hop on the 3G touchphone bandwagon, but now it has debuted its second device in the familiar form factor.
Today, just two days ahead of the CTIA Wireless convention, Motorola announced the Evoke QA4, an CDMA/EV-DO (Rev. A) device with a 2.8" touchscreen. The Evoke is equipped with 256MB of on-board memory and is expandable up to 8 GB via MicroSD, a 2 megapixel 5x digital zoom camera, stereo Bluetooth and full HTML browsing.
Skype for iPhone launches tomorrow with Wi-Fi calling functionality
Skype, the popular voice, video, and instant messaging chat software parented by eBay is reportedly coming to the iPhone App Store tomorrow as a free download.
When a user's iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, they will be able to use their Skype account to make free Skype-to-Skype voice calls, send instant messages, and make outbound calls to other mobile devices or landlines for a fee.
Chasing the dragon of online popularity with social-networking sites
We see from new comScore numbers that MySpace is making like Friendster and earlier stars in the social-networking space -- losing numbers to the newer, more hyped Facebook. (In February, MySpace traffic was down 2% to 124 million unique users, while Facebook's traffic was up 16.6% to 276 million unique visitors.) Meanwhile, Facebook has been Facelifted to look more like Twitter, which many believe to be the next next big thing. May we offer a suggestion?
Skip Twitter, fretful Facebook keepers, and move right along to Hulu. A second comScore survey indicates that Hulu's 33% traffic jump after the Super Bowl was no fluke, as the video service gained 42% over the entire month of February. That was enough to catapult Hulu to fourth place on comScore's online-video charts, behind Google/YouTube, Fox Interactive Media, and Yahoo. And just think, Mark Zuckerberg: Ape Hulu and the next time anyone pitches a fit about a clunky redesign or a nasty privacy breach, you can air a deliciously weird commercial with Alec Baldwin and everybody will like you again.
IBM deal with Sun could leave Fujitsu servers up in the air
With the industry at large collectively having verified that IBM and Sun Microsystems are in talks toward a possible merger deal, the question of the fate of Sun's long-standing SPARC system architecture becomes a topic of intense conversation. Today, a Fujitsu America executive probably did the opposite of what he'd intended, first by telling Reuters he wouldn't comment, and then commenting in a way he might not have planned on.
"We continue to sell server-based products, we want to assure all our customers ... that product we sell in the SPARC line of products we will continue selling and maintaining them," Farhat Ali told Reuters, effectively saying that anyone who's already purchased SPARC-architecture servers from Fujitsu need not worry about long-term customer support. That isn't exactly saying the company will go forth with plans that seemed very ambitious just months ago, including beefing up its midrange SPARC server line.
Behold the Open Cloud Manifesto: Insert your ideas here
A spectre is haunting New York City, though at the moment, it's not a very well defined one as spectres go these days. The leading participants in a major conference on cloud computing standards are being asked to sign a document, whose basic contents actually advertise themselves as not being defined. What's most important about the document for now, at least from the perspective of its backers, is that it gets signed.
"This document does not intend to define a final taxonomy of cloud computing or to charter a new standards effort," reads the preamble to the Open Cloud Manifesto, published this morning (PDF available here). "Nor does it try to be an exhaustive thesis on cloud architecture and design. Rather, this document is intended for CIOs, governments, IT users and business leaders who intend to use cloud computing and to establish a set of core principles for cloud providers. Cloud computing is still in its early stages, with much to learn and more experimentation to come. However, the time is right for the members of the emerging cloud computing community to come together around the notion of an open cloud."
Report: Sony to introduce $99 PlayStation 2
Nine years and more than 140 million consoles later, Sony's PlayStation 2 may finally be dropping to the sub-$100 price point.
A $99 PlayStation SKU has been captured on what appears to be a point of sale scanner showing two dates: 4/5/09 and 4/11/09. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of data outside of this photograph. It does not give the origin of the photo, and it does not say if those dates simply represent a brief window when the consoles will be sold at $99.
Samsung Mondi, first WiMAX MID in US...maybe?
This week, Samsung confirmed to Phone Scoop that the SWD-M100 Mondi device demoed at Mobile World Congress '09 is coming to the Clear WiMAX network in the US.
The tablet runs Windows Mobile 6.1, so the 4.3" touchscreen is therefore resistive (i.e., it requires a stylus). It slides up to reveal a QWERTY keypad and 8-direction control pad, there is a 3 megapixel autofocus camera facing outward and a VGA webcam facing the user. It has a microSD slot for memory expansion, but there is not yet a spec telling what kind of onboard memory and processing power it will provide.
Fortinet releases monthly threat report
Seven high-severity exploit attempts and one that rates as critical -- that would be Conficker, of course -- made the March Threatscape Report from Fortinet, the Top of the Pops for the rightfully unpopular, released Friday. No new malware variants made the list, compiled between February 21 and March 20. Malware infection attempts made up the lion's share of threatening traffic, with spyware and phishing attempts together making up less than a third of attempts.
Despite the looming threat posed by the Conficker exploit (which accounted for 2% of all exploit attempts reported by Fortinet during the month), the most active malware around is actually Virut.A, a squirrelly two-year-old that's held down spots in the Top 5 for a full year now and ascends to #1 this month, with a huge burst of speed in early March and just before St. Patrick's Day. Virut.a infects .exe and .scr files, attaching its encrypted code to the files and attempting to sneak out via port 65520 to connect to a bot-involved IRC server in Poland.
Going back in time with Google Earth
Google Earth has added a Wayback Machine of satellite images over the years. In the application, click the clock icon at the upper left. If there are multiple images available in that region, you'll get a sliding timeline that'll let you check them out. depending on where you're looking you may find images dating back as far as 1945, which you can step through shot by shot.
It's a nifty way of seeing how often your location of choice has been snapped by the birds and at what resolution. (Wow, remember when satellite images were black and white? Neither did we.) It's definitely a work in progress; in particular, areas with 3D views available don't seem to display correctly. And it's not half as cool as Superman flying backwards to spin the world the other way and turn back time -- if that could be done on behalf of our friends in, say, Jakarta or North Dakota, we have no doubt Google would. For now, though, enjoy the free time travel.
Enter the Jaunty Jackalope: Ubuntu 9.04 begins in beta
Download Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" beta from Fileforum now.
Canonical today released the public beta version of Ubuntu 9.04, signifying to those on the "every-six-months-give-or-take-a-week" Ubuntu update schedule that a new, stable OS will be available in just about one month (April 23 to be exact.)
'Earth Hour' looks for public show of support for Kyoto Protocol U-turn
In December 1997, 37 industrialized nations entered into an agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan, to begin reducing carbon emissions into the Earth's atmosphere by five-percent increments beginning in 2005. Since that time, 181 nations and the European Union have ratified the Kyoto Accord. But the United States -- at the beginning, one of its driving forces, and still believed to be the world's principal emitter of carbon pollution -- never ratified or endorsed the treaty.
It was a fact cited frequently during the campaign of then-US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, now Vice President: After the US turned its back on Kyoto, in a manner that could not be construed as anything other than intentional and a vote against climate change measures, much of the rest of the world perceived the US' move as an implied endorsement of coal-burning plants. As described by Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria in his 2008 book The Post-American World:
Survey: Open source will be 'most disruptive' to databases and OS
At a time when corporate IT budgets are shrinking, 96 percent of participants in the latest Future of Open Source 2009 Survey said they think the economy's turbulence is "good" for open source, a number up substantially over last year's figure of 81 percent.
Open source software will be "most disruptive" over the next five years to IT sectors that include databases and operating systems, but "least disruptive" to areas such as office productivity and security tools. When asked to identify the sector most susceptible to disruption, 52% of respondents pointed to databases, 36% to OS, 28% to business intelligence, and 22% to Web content management.
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