First Trojan for iPhone discovered in the wild
F-Secure said that it had uncovered the first Trojan horse for the iPhone, which seems to erase user's files in their /bin directory.
Standard iPhone users have nothing to worry about. However, those who have opened up their phones (both locked and unlocked) to install third-party applications are at risk for the exploit.
Apple settles its case with the EC, will equalize iTunes pricing
With Macworld just around the corner, Apple today settled a dispute around iTunes pricing involving the European Commmission (EC), a British consumer group, and four major music companies.
With the agreement now having been reached, Apple has announced plans to lower the prices for music at its UK iTunes Store to match already standardized pricing for iTunes in other countries in Europe.
Yahoo revises its browser-based MP3 player
The search company updated its application which plays MP3 files directly within the browser, this time allowing third party developers to use the functionality.
Previously, it had been intended for use with 30-second samples of music tracks from its Yahoo Music site. However, now Yahoo is opening up the code to allow anyone to use the application for his own purposes.
Panasonic announces new full-HD camcorders
Featuring Leica lenses, image stabilization and 1920x1080 progressive recording, Panasonic unveiled two HD cameras on Tuesday poised to take the throne from Canon in the portable camcorder market.
Apart from storage options, both cameras are identical. The higher-end model, the HDC-HS9, can record to an SD memory card or its built-in 60 GB hard drive, giving it a total capacity of 29 hours of HD-quality video. Its brother, the HDC-SD9, is limited to SD only.
Panasonic links cellular handsets to home cordless phones
On Tuesday, Panasonic announced "Link to Cell", an accessory that connects a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to cordless home handsets. Link to Cell is useful for homes without a landline connection to both compensate for dead spots in the home, and increase accessibility to up to six handsets. At the same time, battery life of the cell phone is preserved.
The device maintains all of Panasonic's advanced cordless phone features such as Night Mode, Call Blocking, and Talking Caller ID. Handsets have LCD displays with multi-color LED incoming call indicators and multiple ringtones.
Ericsson: 'The jury is still out on WiMAX'
In a meeting with BetaNews Tuesday, Ericsson said that HSPA is a more compelling wireless broadband solution than WiMAX, which it believes has yet to be proven in the marketplace.
Ericsson launched its embedded module business last year to compete with Qualcomm, which had dominated the industry for wireless broadband chips. The Swedish company, part of the GSMA, is backing High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, which rivals both existing EV-DO services and WiMAX.
MSN Direct will come to more GPS devices this year
The latest update to Microsoft's MSN Direct service will take effect on numerous personal navigation devices.
The update will allow users to integrate their personal navigation device with Microsoft Live Search Maps and all corresponding location data. Microsoft will be working with Alpine, Pioneer, Garmin, dmedia, and Streetdeck.
Nokia's 3G N95 to bring HSDPA to the US
Nokia announced yesterday that it will optimize its popular N95 for 850/1900 MHz high speed data packet access (HSDPA) in the Americas. The N95's European counterpart already had 3G functions, but with the added HSDPA support, Western Hemisphere users will be granted high-speed connectivity.
The daunting package also comes with a 5 megapixel camera, Carl Zeiss optics with autofocus, and one-click access to Flickr and Vox. The N95 includes 8 GB of internal memory, a 3D graphics processor with compatibility with the soon to be re-available N-Gage games, A-GPS, and a 3-inch QVGA screen.
Analysis: Ten reasons why discs won't die
Scott Fulton, BetaNews: Well, all the cards are pretty much on the table now at CES 2008, and it's time to start looking at what it all means. For that we've brought along our former Gartner analyst and BetaNews' own Senior CES Analyst, Sharon Fisher.
And Sharon, I'm thinking the place to start this week is with the notion that the high-def format war may be drawing down, if not to a complete close, and the real excitement has shifted over to streaming video.
Sprint prepares for April WiMAX US rollout
Despite early adoption woes, manufacturers are still confident the WiMAX standard will take hold of the high-speed wireless industry as early as April.
Sprint, one of the major players involved with WiMAX, recently rolled out its Xohm mobile Internet service for Sprint employees located in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. The wireless company said Tuesday it plans to have two WiMAX modems released in April, when the network is slated to become available to the public in select cities.
Up Close: Lenovo's new consumer IdeaPads
BetaNews met up with Lenovo at CES for some hands-on time with the new consumer-oriented IdeaPad notebooks. The new models come in three models, but share Lenovo's focus on quality construction and top-notch keyboards that ThinkPads have long been known for.
Lenovo's 11-inch IdeaPad has an aluminum casing, while the 15-inch model is built with ABS plastic. The 15-inch IdeaPad includes a 1.3-megapixel camera that does facial scanning for authenticating users.
Microsoft says controversial Office SP3 was never in Automatic Updates
The controversial Service Pack 3 was never distributed to Microsoft Office end users through Automatic Updates, Microsoft told BetaNews. So if you're a Lotus Notes or Corel Quattro user who wants to undo its impact, you can.
Microsoft representatives responded to BetaNews -- in fact, they made the effort of responding at length -- in putting forth the company's case that it never had any intention of arbitrarily declaring older, non-Microsoft Office formats a security risk.
Microsoft issues out-of-cycle fix for critical Windows RPC fault
If the Vista kernel can't be spoofed, it appears some of its key Internet Protocol kernel drivers can be. An IBM security division discovered the problem, and this morning, Microsoft issued what it hopes will be a fix.
A division of IBM involved with security research is being credited for having discovered a seriously exploitable vulnerability in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. The subject this time around deals with two critical components used by the TCP/IP stack: Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) and Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6, the latter applying only to Vista.
Mobile TV broadcasting: The second coming of GSM?
In a panel discussion today concerning the future of technology policy in the European Union, Japan, and the United States, it became apparent that the EU's and the US's opinions on mobile TV are diametrically opposed.
The panel was moderated by Financial Times West Coast editor Richard Waters, and included these panelists: David A. Gross, Ambassador and US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy; The Honorable Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and the Media, European Commission, European Union; and The Honorable Tsutomu Sato, Senior Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan.
Blu-ray: Early adopters knew what they were getting into
Blu-ray may have taken a commanding lead in the next-generation format war, but the group has a big problem looming: early supporters of the format will be left out in the cold when the Blu-ray Disc Association introduces BD Profile 2.0
Unlike HD DVD, which mandated features such as local storage, a second video and audio decoder for picture-in-picture, and a network connection from the very beginning, the companies behind Blu-ray took a different approach. Initial hardware players lacked these capabilities in order to keep costs down.
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