Die meisten Besitzer eines Smart-TVs machen einer Studie der Beratungsfirma Pricewaterhousecooper (PwC) zufolge wegen der komplizierten Bedienung keinen Gebrauch von den Online-Funktionen ihrer Geräte. Zumindest in Deutschland. Sechs von zehn Konsumenten nutzten die Internet-Fähigkeit demnach nicht aus, da es aus ihrer Sicht leichter ist, mit dem Tablet oder Laptop ins Netz zu gehen.
Im deutschen Ebay-Markt fällt kurioserweise ein beliebtes Produkt besonders auf: Alle zehn Minuten verkauft ein Internetanwender eine komplette Schrankwand via Ebay.
Softwaregigant Microsoft will laut einem Bericht von "Bloomberg" bis Ende des Jahres einen Nachfolger für den scheidenden Konzernchef Steve Ballmer gefunden haben. Zunächst wolle der Verwaltungsrat bei einem Treffen an diesem Montag die Kandidaten-Liste auf drei bis fünf Personen trimmen, schrieb die Finanznachrichtenagentur am Wochenende.
Die deutsche Gewerkschaft Verdi hat erneut Streiks beim US-Versandhändler Amazon angekündigt. „Hundertprozentig legen wir über Advent die Arbeit nieder“, so ein Verdi-Vertreter gegenüber dem Magazin „Focus“. Neben dem Standort Bad Hersfeld (Bundesland Hessen) gelte das auch für die Niederlassung in Leipzig (Bundesland Sachsen).
Der britische Geheimdienst GCHQ überwacht nach einem Bericht des deutschen Magazins „Spiegel“ gezielt die Reservierungssysteme von weltweit mehr als 350 Hotels, die häufig von Diplomaten und Regierungsdelegationen gebucht werden.
Ein wesentlicher Teil des weltweiten Datenverkehrs wird von Sharing-Plattformen und Spielen verursacht. Youtube beispielsweise ist für 10 Prozent des globalen Internet-Datenverkehrs verantwortlich.
Hacker der Internetgruppe Anonymous haben nach Darstellung des FBI über Monate Computer der US-Regierung angezapft und sensible Daten abgegriffen. Die Computerspezialisten hätten einen Fehler in der Software des US-Konzerns Adobe genutzt, um in die Systeme einzudringen, so die US-Bundespolizei FBI in einem Memorandum. Die Manipulation habe im Dezember 2012 begonnen und teilweise bis Oktober angedauert.
Die Zermatt Bergbahnen wurde von der Aargauer Firma Richnerstutz sowie der Stuttgarter Netvico mit digitalen Medien ausgestattet. Die Informationssysteme präsentieren aktuelle Pistenpläne, Lawinenwarnungen, Webcam-Impressionen und vieles mehr. An mehreren zentralen Stellen werden die Wintersporttouristen jetzt digital über verschiedenen Medien auf dem Laufenden gehalten.
Die US-Hightech-Konzerne Netapp und Cisco haben ihr gemeinsames Flexpod-Portfolio um Funktionen mit dem Schwerpunkt auf Cloud-Infrastrukturen erweitert. Die Unified-Datacenter-Lösung Flexpod bündelt Storage, Netzwerke, Server, Applikationen und Analyse-Tools zu einem automatisierten Gesamtsystem.
Ein US-Hacker mit Verbindungen zur Internetgruppe Anonymous ist in den USA zu zehn Jahren Haft verurteilt worden. Das Strafmass gegen den 28-jährigen Jeremy Hammond wurde gestern von einem Gericht in New York verkündet. Er hatte sich im Mai schuldig bekannt, in die Systeme von zahlreichen Regierungsstellen, etwa der Bundespolizei FBI, und Unternehmen eingedrungen zu sein.
Companies battling tireless may be up against well-organized attackers that are fed a steady stream of malware from a talented developer of cyber-arms. Security vendor FireEye analyzed 11 advanced persistent threat (APT) campaigns that seemed unrelated on the surface, but later were found to share the same The centralized logistics point to a level of organization that's indicative of a trend towards industrialization in the malware business. To increase the likelihood of a successful attack, malware development is being separated from that of the hacker, so the latter can focus on and stealing data, Ned Moran, senior malware researcher at FireEye, said last week. "Much like a capitalist economy, by specializing in certain roles and responsibilities everybody is more efficient as a result," Moran said. "We think this report shows that there are specialists who build these tools, these builders, as we documented, and so we think this is evidence of moving towards an industrialized capability in producing malware."
Apple appears to be amending at least one of its English dictionaries, after a 15-year-old student found one definitions of the word "gay" was offensive.
If you've got kids, then you know exactly how scary a place the Internet can be. Managing where they go and whom they meet online is an unending struggle. Keeping your progeny from wasting their brains on addictive games and/or silly videos is a full-time occupation. It can be a privacy, security, and parenting nightmare. I should know; I have two digitally savvy teenagers and the gray hair to prove it. So when I heard about —a low-cost Android computer whose motto is “Power to the Parents”—I was keenly interested. For $129 to $149 you get a CPU smaller than a Chinese takeout box running Android 4.2.2 in 2GB or 4GB of RAM. You'll have to add your own keyboard, mouse, and display. The key selling point, though, is that allows you to remotely monitor what your kids do on the big bad InterWebs, as well as the amount of time they spend doing it. It's a nice concept, and so universally appealing that ZeroDesktop CEO Young Song managed to raise $175,000 on Kickstarter—or more than three times the initial goal—to fund it. The first MiiPCs to roll off the assembly line began shipping to Kickstarter supporters earlier this fall.
Several European wireless operators have begun testing LTE-Advanced, which will offer speeds greater tahn 200Mbps.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) last week released videos of tests of plastic guns made with 3D printers that show some exploding on the first shot. The explosions could injure users, the testing found. The ATF has been testing guns made with 3D printers using two commonly used thermoplastic materials over the past year to determine Guns made using one of the two thermoplastics tested, a polymer from , never lasted more than one shot before exploding. The other material, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), could produce a gun that fired eight times without incident. The agents stopped shooting after eight bullets, an ATF spokesperson said.
Edward Snowden's disclosures about the National Security Agency's (NSA) collection of massive amounts of personal data. could cost cloud computing companies $22 million to $35 million by 2016, according to an August estimate by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. Forrester predicted the losses could be much higher at $180 billion, or a 25 percent hit to overall revenues. CIO.com talked to Alex Lakatos, partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Mayer Brown's litigation and financial services regulatory and enforcement practice, about the reactions of European governments to NSA surveillance, the likely inaction of the U.S. government, and what is all means for cloud providers—stateside and abroad—and their clients around the world.
Short-distance wireless groups supporting NFC and Bluetooth have agreed to jointly create greater interoperability between the complementary technologies. The Forum and the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) Tuesday announced that they had agreed to a "formal liaison relationship" by signing a memorandum of understanding to work more closely together. The groups had already worked together last year to create ","a guide for developers. The groups have agreed to update and maintain that document to recognize with its low energy specification. Both groups may also sponsor joint interoperability testing events that incorporate NFC technology testing with Bluetooth technology.
Mobile botnets are on the rise and cybercriminals are using the Google Cloud Messaging service to distribute malware, a new report says.
Rolls-Royce is considering using 3D printing technology to create lighter components for its jet engines, the company's head of technology strategy has said. Henner Wapenhans said the additive manufacturing technology could also enable the the British manufacturer to create aircraft engine parts more quickly, the reported. "3D printing opens up new possibilities, new design space," Wapenhans said. "Through the 3D printing process, you're not constrained [by] having to get a tool in to create a shape. You can create any shape you like." The Rolls-Royce executive said the technology could be used to reduce the weight of parts such as brackets.
last week announced that it is considering four contributions for development of an open, operating system-agnostic data center switch it announced six months ago. to spec out an open source switch to complement its vendor-agnostic data center software, server, and storage designs. to those from traditional manufacturers, such as Cisco, Arista Networks, Brocade, Dell, Extreme Networks, Hewlett-Packard, and Juniper. Such an alternative would foster faster hardware innovation, facilitate software-defined networks (SDN), and offer more choice to consumers. .
Google plans to build solar power plants in California and Arizona that are expected to be operational by early 2014 and will generate enough clean electricity to power more than 17,000 U.S. homes.
Jeremy Hammond, the man responsible for the 2011 attack on Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, pled guilty to his role in the attack and was sentenced on Friday to serve ten years in federal prison. However, Hammond's supporters maintain that his sentencing, indeed the case itself, was unbalanced and rife with problems from the beginning. In 2011, the AntiSec movement was resurrected in name. Those supporting AntiSec used its name to target governments, law enforcement, and the private businesses that associated with them. One such business was Strategic Forecasting Inc., better known as Stratfor, a firm in Austin, Texas that provides "geopolitical intelligence" to individuals and organizations across the globe. Earlier this past May, Jeremy Hammond for the Stratfor incident as part of a plea agreement reached with the U.S. attorney's office. In December of 2011, Hammond—encouraged by fellow-AntiSec supporter Hector Xavier Monsegur (a.k.a. Sabu), who was for the FBI at the time—breached Stratfor's servers, by exploiting a vulnerability in the Plesk management system used to support the company's website. Once access was granted, Hammond downloaded various archives containing poorly protected email addresses and passwords, and a backup copy of Stratfor's corporate email. Prior to Hammond's involvement, another person compromised Stratfor's credit card processing, and stole some 60,000 records. The by AntiSec on December 24, 2011.
Several advocacy groups are calling for an investigation into Internet companies Yahoo and Google whose networks were secretly accessed by the National Security Agency (NSA). In a without the knowledge of Google and Yahoo. "The Commission should pursue this investigation because it routinely holds itself out as the defender of consumer privacy in the United States," the authors said. "It is inconceivable that when faced with the most significant breach of consumer data in U.S. history, the Commission could ignore the consequences for consumer privacy." The letter, signed by officials from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Center for Digital Democracy, and other organizations, follows recent reports that the NSA gained access to millions of consumer records by secretly tapping directly into data streams from major Internet companies.
Devices running Google's Android operating system accounted for 81 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide in the third quarter of 2013, IDG reports.
Phil Schiller tried to convince a jury that Samsung's infringement of Apple patents cost the company phone and tablet sales.
People using the transportation apps Lyft and Sidecar in California will no longer be able to skimp on their fares, now that both apps have ditched their donation model. Sidecar Friday it was doing away with donations and instead introducing minimum fares. The changes apply only in California and take effect Friday on iOS and Android devices. Sidecar rival Lyft said. Sidecar made the change to better support its drivers, CEO Sunil Paul said in a blog post. The company has seen a 50 percent increase in driver applications since September, he said, but it has also learned from drivers that they would drive more frequently and provide longer rides if they could depend on a fair payment, Paul said.
Google has acknowledged that the best time to be on your computer might not be while you’re driving. The company updated its terms of service this week and the new guidelines add a note of caution about road safety. “Some of our services are available on mobile devices,” the say. “Do not use such services in a way that distracts you and prevents you from obeying traffic or safety laws.” Questions about the legality of driving with Google Glass were raised last month when for driving while wearing the head-mounted computer system.
Dell has started selling a thin and light touchscreen laptop called the XPS 13 Developer Edition, which will have Ubuntu Linux OS and Intel’s fourth-generation Core processors, code-named Haswell. The laptop, code-named Sputnik, has a 13.3-inch touchscreen and will run on Ubuntu 12.04 OS. It is priced starting at $1,250 and is available in the U.S. With the Linux OS, the laptop is different from other Haswell-based laptops that largely come with the Windows OS. Dell introduced its first Sputnik laptop a year ago as part of an experiment to bring Linux to ultrabook-style laptops. While the price may be high for a Linux laptop, it has a full high-definition touchscreen and components typically found in high-priced laptops. The cheapest configuration has a Core i5 dual-core processor and 128GB of solid-state drive storage, while a $1,549.99 configuration has 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. Other features include the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0.
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that he was encouraged to hustle his transformation plan into motion, but ended up being pushed out the door. that the board “didn’t push Steve to step down,” he said. “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster.” within the next twelve months, as the board set out to find a replacement. website.
Now that the extent of the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance programs by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it’s beholden on the public to fight back or else find themselves “complicit” in the activities, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguistics professor and philosopher Noam Chomsky. The freedoms U.S. citizens have “weren’t granted by gifts from above,” Chomsky said during a panel discussion Friday at MIT. “They were won by popular struggle.” While U.S. officials have long cited for domestic surveillance programs, that same argument has been used by the “most monstrous systems” in history, such as the Stasi secret police in the former East Germany, Chomsky said. “The difference with the totalitarian states is the citizens couldn’t do a lot about it,” in contrast to the U.S., he added. “If we do not expose the plea of security and separate the parts that are valid from the parts that are not valid, then we are complicit.”
A fresh round of quarterly results and market research this week show some shadows over the networking and component markets while smartphones, as usual, were the stars of the tech arena. The biggest disappointment of the week came from Cisco Systems, which Wednesday reported a year-over-year decline in profit and sales and offered a . For the three-month period ending in October, Cisco reported net income of $2 billion, down 4.6 percent from a year earlier, while sales edged up by 1.8 percent to $12.1 billion. Company executives said they expect revenue this quarter to decline between 8 percent and 10 percent from a year earlier. Several problems hit Cisco during the quarter, executives said. In emerging markets, sales declined. Concerns about surveillance in the wake of revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency may have had some impact on sales, particularly in China, company officials said. Economic uncertainty as Europe still struggles with recession also played a part in the weak results, officials said. Part of the disappointing quarter, however, was due to Cisco’s transition to a new line of carrier network equipment, which has put a damper on orders, company executives acknowledged.
The technology team working on the troubled HealthCare.gov has made significant progress in recent days, with error rates on the U.S. government’s health insurance shopping site down to less than 1 percent from 6 percent just after its launch, officials said Friday. The tech team has fixed more than 200 bugs at the website in the past month, but it still has 50 high-priority bugs to work on in the next week, said Jeffrey Zients, a former acting director at the White House Office of Management and Budget overseeing fixes to the site. The tech team completed more than 60 priority improvements and bug fixes during the past week, including new visual guides to help users compare insurance plans, he said. “The changes and improvements we’ve made over the past few weeks are having a positive impact on system performance and user experience,” Zients said during a press briefing. “For most users, speed and response times were generally good, and error rates were low.”
A member of the hacker group Anonymous was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a geopolitical analysis firm. Jeremy Hammond, 28, in May pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska during a hearing at the federal district court for the Southern District of New York in New York. Hammond, of Chicago, was arrested in March 2012 and charged with hacking into the computer system of analyst company Strategic Forecasting, also called Stratfor, and obtaining subscriber and credit-card information and emails, among other data. Ultimately, credit-card details, emails and cryptographic representation of passwords were leaked. The credit cards were used to make US$700,000 in purchases. The sentencing was attended by supporters who view Hammond as a whistleblower revealing government secrets for the public good, much in the vein of WikiLeaks and former U.S. government contractor Edward Snowden. Hammond’s lawyers argued that his acts were a form of civil disobedience against a government subcontractor, an argument Preska rejected.
For anyone who has participated on a well-attended conference call, it’s a familiar problem: the tap-Tap-TAP of some anonymous participant, typing notes. Fortunately, a future version of Skype may silence the offending fingers. that Microsoft held a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, this week, where Microsoft executives suggested that they might adapt a similar typing-quashing technology from the company’s Lync software. The technology apparently “listens” for the sound of typing, then filters it out automatically, at least within Lync. As The Next Web notes, Google has implemented a similar, but heavy-handed solution: its Hangouts automatically detect the typing sound, mute the offender, then quietly send a private note to him or her asking them to mute their microphone. Microsoft declined to comment. "Microsoft has been hard at work to make the experiences for Lync and Skype customers seamless, an example being Lync-Skype voice connectivity that we announced earlier in the year," a spokeswoman said via email. "As part of this work, our teams have been learning from each other and collaborating to provide the best communications experiences for users. However, we have nothing further to share on key tab suppression for Skype at this time."
all suggest they like it so much that they're willing to behave in very dangerous ways to use it. The 451 survey tells us that CIOs worry about security. The Forrester one suggests that despite these worries, more and more of these companies are taking part in risky cloud behavior. And the SIM one reveals that executives controlling the IT purse strings just don't care. The problem with the cloud, or at least the problem with the public version of the cloud, is that it's not secure. Hackers, be they criminals or government agents in the NSA, would have to physically steal a hard drive to get locally stored data. They have no such problems accessing cloud services. , "Put simply, the increased agility of cloud computing trumps its many drawbacks, including security."
being bug fixes and plugged security holes.Gone are some improperly initialized memory and overflows in select Javascript functions, other sundry memory issues, and the same spoofing of an address bar that affected Firefox. Also fixed were too-light signatures and problems with CC'ing a message reply if the CC was the same as the sending address.
On Friday, Microsoft released its 3D Builder app, which allows Windows 8.1 users to print 3D objects, but not much else. The simple, simplistic, free app from Microsoft provides a basic way to print common 3D objects, as well as to import other files from SkyDrive or elsewhere. But the degree of customization that the app allows is small, so 3D Builder basically serves as an introduction to the world of 3D printing. In fact, that’s Microsoft’s intention, with demonstrations of the , both online as well as in the brick-and-mortar stores themselves. One of the selling points of Windows 8.1 , and MakerBot latched onto an endorsement of the technology from President Obama during his State of the Union address, recently encouraging U.S. citizens to crowd-fund an effort to 3D printers in every high school in America. (MakerBot also announced a Windows 8.1 software driver on Thursday.)
and been played 151 billion times. It’s a combination of intelligent strategy, clever design, pretty colors, and the necessity for 500 million people to be regularly distracted from their lives that has led to the booming success of the game. The explosion of Android and Windows phones and tablets as well as the introduction of steadily more affordable mobile devices have all most likely aided the growth of those numbers. But why does Candy Crush Saga achieve so much, when it seems so similar to any other time-consuming, commute-numbing, brain-dulling game? on why Candy Crush Saga has become such a phenomenon. Among other things, he cites our unanimous affinity for candy, color, and interesting shapes. Yes, even tablet-toting adults appreciate the simpler things. keep our gadgets in our hands longer and later than ever, fanning the flames of our gaming addictions.
It doesn't get more newsy here than a full-point release of a Web browser—in this case, Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. Already available for Windows 8, the W7 release is still big news, as many users have yet to move to the Redmond giant's latest operating system. Of course there are a ton of bug fixes and upgraded compatibility, otherwise you wouldn't be reading about it here. The new version promises faster rendering. It also offers improved support for existing standards as well as relatively new ones, such as WebGL (for online gaming). It should be in your Windows automatic updates. If not, .
AT&T has a good deal on Nokia’s Lumia 2520 tablet (shown above), but only if you’re willing and able to buy a Nokia Windows Phone at the same time. The Lumia 2520, a 10.1-inch tablet running . Without the Nokia phone bundle, the price gets a lot worse. AT&T is charging $400 for the Lumia 2520 with a two-year agreement, and $500 without a contract. It might be worth just using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot instead of tacking on a tablet data plan, as you’d save $140 over two years that way. Nokia’s Power Keyboard accessory, which turns the tablet into a small laptop and provides another five hours of battery, is sold separately. AT&T doesn’t mention a price, but Nokia previously said it will cost $150.