Google Glass, Samsung Galaxy Gear, and the rumored Apple iWatch have turned up the hype-o-meter on to deafening levels. You'd think they were the only players in the game. But such powerful gadgetry isn't the future of wearables, only a part of it. At least that's the thinking from Christian DeFeo, e-supplier manager at Newark element14, an electronic design community for engineers and a component retailer. Instead of wearing $1500 Google Glasses that delivers a sci-fi experience, he says, you're more likely to slip on an affordable ring equipped with near-field communications (NFC) technology that unlocks your car door. "Google Glass is kind of an elite product that's only for a select few," because of the expected sky-high retail price, DeFeo says. "We see wearable technology being much more democratized than that." Unlike the Green Lantern's glowing superpower ring, the like Google Glass and smart watches.
Gartner projects downloads of mobile apps will exceed 102 billion this year, but most of them are free, not paid.
Symantec believes it has connected the dots to link a single Chinese hacking group dubbed "Hidden Lynx" to a series of high-profile APT-driven cyberattacks on U.S. interests, including the infamous Aurora hacks of 2009 as well as this year's compromise of security firm Bit9. The firm's that has become the media face of Chinese state-sponsored hacking. According to Symantec, since 2009 Hidden Lynx has targeted hundreds of organizations around the world, focusing more than half its effort on the U.S., with smaller campaigns against targets in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and even mainland China itself. This is a group that seems to do a bit of everything, picking off organizations in every sector with a particular interest in corporate espionage against finance, government, ICT, education, and healthcare.
Businesses with certain Microsoft memberships and service agreements can now download the near-final version of to test with an eye toward deployment, the company says. members as well as businesses with volume licensing and Software Assurance agreements can download the software. The to hardware vendors. "Testing your operating system for compatibility with existing applications and better understanding what needs to be done to migrate your business especially for those organizations still on Windows XP is paramount," says Erwin Visser, the general manager of Windows commercial marketing in the . He also encourages businesses with Windows 7 deployments to start testing, even though support for Windows 7 is not being ended as it is for XP.
A working group for Internet regulators is under severe criticism for a proposal that would put an end to the openness of the current WHOIS system for domain name registration records. The expert working group of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of a legitimate need for the data. Currently, registrants store registration records, and anyone can go to a number of sites that use the and response protocol to retrieve all the public information. The working group agrees with critics that the system in use today provides too much inaccurate information, and fails to protect the privacy of individuals and entities with a legitimate right to keep the information out of the public domain. The question of balancing privacy and access has been raised before, as the issue.
That was good advice, and most people could easily remember the two or three passwords that they needed. and rather predictable passwords in order to be able to recall them. address this problem, but come with their own problems. What if malware breaks in and steals all the passwords? And what do you do—practically speaking—when you have a new or borrowed device? First of all, we should revisit the advice from the 1990s. Today, the typical adversary is not a colleague looking over your shoulder, but a faceless hacker thousands of miles away. Writing passwords down on pieces of paper may not be such a bad idea—although we still don’t recommend sticking them to your screen. This makes particular sense as the number of passwords grows.
A that impacts all versions of the browser is being actively exploited in the wild, Microsoft reports. Exploits seem to have focused on IE versions 8 and 9, according to Microsoft. But researchers at Websense have discovered that nearly 70 percent of Windows business users are susceptible to this IE zero-day exploit. "We reviewed third-party telemetry feeds from real-time global internet requests to determine the initial scope. While the exploit appears to affect all versions of IE, at the moment attacks only seem to be targeting users of IE8 and IE9 who are running Windows 7 and XP operating systems," Websense's director of security research, Alex Watson, said in a statement. According to the advisory, Microsoft said that IE installations running on Server 2003, 2008, and 2012 will mitigate the vulnerability due to its installation parameters. Experts have suggested that the scope of the problem is bad enough that Microsoft will likely release a fix outside of its usual patch schedule.
Google gives all comers 15 gigabytes' worth of free storage across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Plus Photos. Not a bad chunk of space just for having a heartbeat. Of course, more is always better, especially when you don't have to pay for it. And Google is now offering exactly that, though there are a couple small catches. From now through Sept. 26, you have the opportunity to score an extra 10GB of Google Drive space, no extra charge. --which, incidentally, is also now free. Then sign into your Google account via that app. Presto! You get another 10GB of gratis storage.
Enterprise tech companies including Oracle this week started reporting financial results that cover at least part of the third calendar quarter, and so far, the trends look mildly promising compared to last quarter. For its fiscal quarter ending Aug. 31, Oracle reported revenue of $8.4 billion, up 2 percent year over year, and net income of $2.2 billion, up 8 percent. Sales of new software licenses and “engineered systems,” preconfigured hardware and software bundles like the company’s Exadata offering, helped boost results. One big question for Oracle is whether its cloud-based software will compete successfully against similar offerings from younger rivals such as Workday and Salesforce.com. Another issue is whether Oracle’s move into hardware, essentially a bet it made when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010, will pan out or continue to be a drag on profit. Overall hardware system revenue decreased 7 percent to $1.23 billion in the quarter, Oracle said. However, engineered systems did well, officials said.
Although originally built to develop enterprise Java apps, the NetBeans IDE (integrated development environment) is increasingly being rigged to help developers use the lighter weight HTML5 and JavaScript Web languages as well. , version 7.4, Oracle has outfitted the IDE with new tools to help build iOS and Android Web applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript, in addition to updating its core feature set for Java Enterprise Edition development as well. NetBeans IDE is Oracle's no-cost open source IDE for primarily designed for Java, though it includes robust support for the PHP and C/C++ languages as well. It is available for the Windows, Apple Macintosh, Oracle Solaris and Linux platforms.
Very bad news for BlackBerry. The Canadian smartphone maker posted a $995 million operating loss for the second quarter and will cut 4500 jobs—over a third of its staff—in a bid to cut costs. The news comes moments after the company halted trading on its stock, which has been on a steady downward decline in the past several months. Recent BlackBerry phones, like the Z10 and Q10, failed to catch on with consumers, and BlackBerry has been fighting a losing battle against Microsoft for the number three spot in the mobile market. In light of the results, the company said it plans to restructure and lay off around 4500 staff and cut the number of phones it sells from six to four handsets. Those phones will be targeted at the enterprise and prosumer markets.
It’s been two months since Steve Ballmer unfurled his plan to restructure Microsoft’s operations, and inquiring minds would like to know what stage the process is at. In fact, he was asked just that on Thursday during the company’s meeting with Wall Street analysts, but Ballmer’s answer wasn’t entirely clear or specific. The analyst who brought up the subject asked whether the process was completed and, if it’s not, whether it would take several more quarters for all the pieces of the different teams to be in place and for everyone to know whom they report to. Ballmer answered that there are three layers to the implementation of the plan, although he didn’t explain what each layer involves.
The humorist-turned-politician sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook with a dozen questions on the privacy implications of Touch ID.
Valve launched a new webpage Friday which hints of an announcement for its Steam Box home console early next week.
Here's how to reset your crashed Android smartphone and restore it to factory default settings.
Here are 10 movies that got shafted but are well worth watching.
Microsoft is pursuing the ideal of OS platforms: a unified code base that runs from smartphones to servers, giving users a consistent experience across devices at home and at work, and developers a common tool set for building applications. “We really should have one silicon interface for all of our devices. We should have one set of developer APIs on all of our devices,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Operating Systems Engineering Group, during the company’s meeting with financial analysts on Thursday. “And all of the apps we bring to end users should be available on all of our devices,” he added. This is the ambitious goal Myerson’s team has been chasing since the Operating Systems Engineering Group was formed two months ago as part of a broad reorganization of the company.
It's like Chromecast, only more potent and five times the cost.
Dude, where's my processor for collecting background sensor data?
Sprint announced a new annual upgrade plan just in time for the new iPhones, and it's one of the best deals around.
Word-of-mouth has long been a driver of small business success (and failure), and these days it takes the form of online customer reviews. But the relative anonymity provided by the Web has added a new wrinkle: review fraud. using phony profiles. is trying to attack the fake review issue in a different way, allowing only people with names, faces, and legitimate social media profiles to post reviews. Doing so is free and merely involves signing in with a Facebook or LinkedIn login, then inviting friends and connections within those social networks and your address book to review a business. .
Spend your free time bending time with these fun, free, time-altering games.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer insinuated that the company is working on a version of Office for the iPad and for Android tablets when he addressed Wall Street analysts on Thursday. Speaking about “upside opportunities” that exist for Microsoft, Ballmer talked about porting products to non-Windows platforms. “We don’t have our heads in the sand,” he said during the company’s meeting with financial analysts, which was held in a Bellevue, Wash., convention center and webcast live. In this context Microsoft is “working on everything that you think we should be working on,” Ballmer said.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer may have several months before he actually steps down, but his candid assessment of the future of the PC and of Microsoft felt like the first words of a long goodbye. Ballmer concluded as a shareholder, not as a chief executive, promising to root for the company in the years ahead. Ballmer owns about 4 percent of Microsoft, by his own admission. ”I am very long in Microsoft,” Ballmer said. “I believe in the company as an investment. I believe in what the company can do. I believe in the people and talent that are here and at least this one shareholder will absolutely be cheering every day from the day I’m not working here on, I’m ‘MSFT,’ if you will, all over. It’s in my blood, in my heart and I’ll have been glad to have served.” At one point, he urged all of the Wall Street investors in the audience to stand up and cheer for Microsoft’s stock. “You all own Microsoft stock. Cheer for it. We all want it to go the same direction, up.” None of the analysts appeared to take Ballmer up on his offer, however.
Despite being just 0.7 inch thick, Acer’s Aspire M5 (model M5-583P-6428) weighs a hefty 4.9 pounds. So it’s fortunate for Acer that Intel’s Ultrabook definition includes only a height limit: 0.9 inch. More important, the Aspire M delivers a big display, great battery life, and good performance for a moderate $700. Outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4200U (one of the lower-end entries in Intel’s current Haswell lineup of mobile CPUs), a generous 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, Intel’s integrated HD4400 graphics, and a 500GB hard disk that spins its platters at 5400 rpm, the Aspire M scored a respectable Notebook Worldbench 8.1 score of 143. That’s almost 50 percent better than our reference unit, the , but we’ve seen a few laptops in this price range perform even higher. It’s easy to see where the Aspire M falls behind in performance: With any tasks involving storage retrieval, its slow hard drive can’t compete against solid-state drives (or SSD caches), which are becoming increasingly common. But its Haswell architecture clearly helped Acer's machine hold its own in tasks involving number crunching (image editing, for example), and contributed to its impressive battery life of more than 7 hours. That’s one of the best running times we’ve seen from any laptop this year. The Aspire M's design makes a good first impression, with its pewter-colored brushed metal lid and black soft-touch underbelly. The plastic interior matches the color of the lid, contrasting nicely with the black island-style keyboard—a standard-size backlit model that includes a numeric keypad. But good luck landing on the correct key if you’re a touch typist: They’re flat and slippery, and it can be difficult to find keys that are normally on or near the right edge (backspace and delete, for example). A little sculpting on the keys and perhaps some extra spacing between the standard keyboard and the keypad would have helped.
There are many faces of Android: There’s the stock version offered by Google that’s stylized in Google’s own vision, and there’s the version that your manufacturer would rather have you use. When it comes to interfaces we wish we could change, the latter version is usually the one causing headaches. It’a a matter of taste, but the interface that your Android phone comes saddled with may not always be the most appealing, and that’s why there are myriad launcher apps available in the Google Play store. These apps customize the way the interface looks and operates, and even streamline animations as you pan between screens. Once you install an application launcher, you’ll have to remember to make it the default home screen. When you go to your home screen, Android will prompt you about which launcher you wish to use, so be sure to select the new launcher you’ve installed and tap , unless you want to be prompted every time you go to the home screen. If you get sick of your new interface, you can always reset your defaults in the settings menu. is a longtime favorite of Android users, and for good reason: It’s extremely customizable and it doesn’t veer too far from the Android experience you’ve grown accustomed to.
Don’t count Windows RT out yet: Microsoft executives said Thursday that customers should expect “many more Windows RT tablets” in the future. As part of its . And although Windows RT and the Windows RT-powered Surface (like the one shown above)—RT-powered tablets will apparently remain in the conversation for some time to come. Terry Myerson, executive vice president in charge of all of Microsoft’s operating systems, said that his job was to exploit commonalities in design, silicon, and interfaces to enable consistent experiences across different platforms.
For all of its recent emphasis on its Surface tablet and the Xbox, Microsoft remains focused on the enterprise, and especially on the cloud—but its consumer offerings are a gateway, Microsoft executives said. Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner opened Microsoft’s 2013 financial analyst meeting by disclosing that more than 55 percent of Microsoft’s revenue comes from the enterprise, a number that he said Microsoft rarely discloses. Other key executives, such as chief executive Steve Ballmer, are expected later in the meeting's day, which runs until 5 PM PDT. Wall Street may have hoped that that flattened the corporate structure and placed the company’s key technologies in the spotlight, rather than making the individual products the focus. In August, however, : including Stephen Elop of Nokia, among others.
Countries that have pledged to support Internet freedom should allow technology vendors to report the number of electronic surveillance requests they receive, a tech advocacy group said Thursday. The Global Network Initiative, whose members include Facebook, Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has to the 21 governments in the Freedom Online Coalition. The governments include those of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Ireland. As part of the coalition, they have committed to work together to advance Internet freedom. The GNI helps tech companies navigate government pressure that may conflict with privacy and free speech. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft and the Center for Democracy and Technology. The GNI did not release the text of the letters it sent to the governments.
