January phish buffet: Now with IRS
As regular as tax season itself, phishers pretending to offer information on an IRS "stimulus payment" are targeting thrifty (or is that greedy?) taxpayers.
The latest version of the scam, which is making the e-mail rounds as of Monday morning, travels under the subject line "Stimulus Payment form it's ready for you to submit." The message claims that "After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a Stimulus Payment," and includes a file that looks like a PDF...until you notice the extra ".htm" at the end of the file name.
Samsung announces HDTVs with Yahoo Widgets
The broadband-connected television market will be in full bloom at CES 2009, with Samsung announcing that its newest lineup of HDTVs will sport "Internet@TV", a Yahoo-powered widget interface.
The availability of TV-based widgets traces back to last year's CES, when Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off the "Canmore" system-on-a-chip in televisions and set top boxes. Later on in the year, at the Intel Developers' Forum in San Francisco, Yahoo expounded a bit on the concept, adding its JavaScript widget engine to the Canmore architecture. Along with service provider Comcast, the companies discussed the Widget Channel distribution mechanism, and the various web-style applications that users would be able to load onto their televisions.
RIAA: MediaSentry relationship had already ended
In the second "deflation" of a Wall Street Journal story in as many months, an RIAA spokesperson confirmed to BetaNews this morning that the termination of its use of the MediaSentry service had already happened.
Among some of the more controversial aspects of MediaSentry -- a full-service protection system for media formerly used by members of the Recording Industry Association of America -- was its use of spoofing to fool unsuspecting users into visiting Web sites and downloading MP3s without authorization. Last year, a multitude of states reportedly revoked the licenses of MediaSentry to operate in their state, with some law enforcement agencies providing RIAA members with cease and desist notices. As it turns out, for the service to investigate unsuspecting users' computers as it does, it requires a private investigator's license in these states, reportedly including Massachusetts and Michigan.
Netflix and Amazon On Demand come to even more
Amazon today announced that owners of the formerly Netflix-exclusive Roku set-top box will be able to access Amazon Video On Demand, and LG announced it's building Netflix instant streaming directly into some of its upcoming HDTVs.
Video rental company Netflix is proving to be a genuine gateway to streaming video content. Today, Amazon announced that its Video On Demand service will be hitting Roku players early this year, adding nearly 40,000 more titles to the around 30,000 Netflix delivers to the diminutive box. Titles are pure H.264 streams (no downloading, since the Roku device has no storage) and will play back at 300, 600, 900, or 1200 kbps. Amazon says movies and TV shows will be rentable or buyable.
Apple's FileMaker launches revamped Mac and Windows database
At MacWorld today, Apple's FileMaker, Inc. subsidiary will launch a major overhaul of its flagship database for Mac and Windows desktops and servers, a product used by 70 of the world's Fortune 100 corporations.
"This is the biggest change to FileMaker in a decade," said Ryan Rosenberg, vp of marketing and service about FileMaker 10, a largely revamped database for Mac and Windows slated for rollout at Macworld today.
So it was a health problem after all, admits Steve Jobs
Addressing the recent announcement that he will not deliver the Macworld keynote this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs released a statement this morning about his mysterious health condition.
Jobs' health has been an issue of considerable interest to the Apple community, and indeed to the tech community at large. Jobs' now gaunt frame causes some level of discourse at each of the CEO's public appearances, and the intensity of the rumors is only aggravated by Apple's secretive nature.
Twitter twormented by phishers
A phisher or phishers operating over the holiday weekend deluged Twitter users with direct messages luring the unwary to a page designed to steal their sign-in information.
Twitter's official status blog announced the problem Saturday afternoon, but regular users were reporting a welter of suspicious messages throughout the weekend.
CES Countdown #4: Who's securing the CE device's end user?
Computer security fuels many excellent conferences. CES is not typically one of them, but the current state of the economy is compelling conference goers to refocus on their core priorities...and security is one of them.
Some readers will argue that if we're talking about the best possible security for end users, we're at the wrong show -- Macworld's a little to the west. But as security researchers proved when they spanked OS X at last spring's CanSecWest conference, the world is moving on from the impenetrable-Apple era.
CES Countdown #5: Are the world's digital plans killing mobile DTV?
Here's a very familiar theme for us every year: Despite not only manufacturers' own best efforts but also certain governments' own regulatory bodies to drive and even enforce industry standards, there's no one way to do digital mobile TV.
Despite the push from manufacturers, mobile carriers and government regulatory agencies, mobile digital television has failed to make an impact on the world like it did in South Korea.
CES Countdown #6: Can the PC adapt to the commodity business model?
With the consumer economy changing radically and rapidly, Microsoft and others are experimenting once again with applying the pay-as-you-go model to computing, since it seems to work well enough for other industries.
In an industry where everything old is new again, only sooner, the information technology community took notice of an Ars Technica story last Monday revealing that Microsoft had, yet again, made an effort to obtain an US patent on the concept of doling out metered computing services from a centralized server complex.
CES Countdown #7: Will someone please do something about battery life?
Vendors at CES 2009 will be displaying some interesting new workarounds to the persistent issue of short battery life, ranging from an "ECO On Mode" in MSI's Wind U115 netbook to a solar battery charging gadget from Energizer.
Battery life -- or more precisely, the lack thereof -- continues to be problematic for mobile users. The designs of laptops and other mobile devices are diversifying in individualistic directions, but long battery life is all too rarely one of those distinctive characteristics, even though individuals everywhere continue to request it.
Web rates UK Web ratings proposal an 'F'
Every so often, the Web provides a form of entertainment that almost everyone can enjoy -- a punching bag. Enter Andy Burnham, the UK Culture Minister, and his recent musings on a movie-style ratings system for the Internet.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, Burnham said that "new standards of decency" need to be applied to Web content, and that he means to approach the Obama administration to create rules for English-language sites.
Top 20 BetaNews stories of 2008
What were the stories that gathered BetaNews readers' attention, got them talking, made them think more about the meaning behind the technology? Our space-age statistics generator has provided us with the final tally.
Betanews CES 2009 Contest: Win Vista Ultimate and Office 2007
Before CES 2008, Betanews debuted our "Better Questions" contest, where we asked you, the reader, what questions you wanted answered from the CES floor. This year, we're asking you again.
Our correspondents will be out in force all next week, meeting with the companies, executives, and business leaders whose decisions directly impact the consumer electronics industry -- which is experiencing as much volatility now than at any time in its history. We're already asking some of the big questions, in our ongoing CES 13 Countdown series. But we've heard from some of you that you might have better questions of your own.
'Y2K9' bug hits 30 GB Zunes
In the early morning hours of the final day of the year, many Zune users found their devices frozen on the logo screen, totally unresponsive.
The 30 GB Zune experienced a Y2K-like mass failure at around 6:00 am this morning, where the portable media player goes to the loading screen and freezes permanently. Zune.net's service status today warns: "Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We're aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience."
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