A rural Alabama town and a suburban area of Florida may be on the cutting edge of a historic shift away from traditional circuit-switched phone service, if AT&T wins approval to run trials in those areas. The carrier plans to test a transition from its circuit-switched TDM (time-division multiplexing) phone network to wireless and Internet Protocol services in Carbon Hill, Alabama, and West Delray Beach, Florida. It will need FCC approval to begin the trials. AT&T and other incumbent wireline carriers are still required to provide traditional TDM phone service even though many U.S. residents no longer use it. They want to move to alternative services over the IP-based wired and wireless networks they are building now and eliminate the cost of maintaining the old networks. AT&T wants to complete its transition by 2020.
Low operating costs combined with a differentiated operating system and close communication with users will help Jolla survive in the cutthroat smartphone market, according to CEO The last two weeks have been busy for Finnish company Jolla, which last week announced that it had shipped a commercial version of its Sailfish OS and then headed for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Being a small company trying to compete with giants like Apple and Samsung has both its ups and downs, according to Pienimäki. One advantage is that low operating costs mean it doesn’t have to sell many phones to survive.
Intel is expecting its next Atom tablet chip, code-named Cherry Trail, to be in devices by the end of this year, the company said this week. A detailed update on Cherry Trail may be provided around the middle of this year, likely around the Computex trade show time frame, said Julie Coppernoll, marketing director in Intel’s mobile and communications group. Cherry Trail will go into tablets and low-end PCs, and succeed the current chip code-named Bay Trail, which was announced last year and is being used largely in tablets, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. The Cherry Trail chip, which will be made using the 14-nanometer process, will be even faster and more power-efficient than Bay Trail, which is made using the 22-nm process. Users can expect better battery life and performance in tablets with Cherry Trail compared to the current Bay Trail chips. The new 14-nm manufacturing process will allow Intel to make denser chips that are more power-efficient.
A new variant of the Gameover malware that steals online banking credentials comes with a kernel-level rootkit that makes it significantly harder to remove, according to security researchers from Sophos. Gameover is a computer Trojan based on the infamous Zeus banking malware whose source code was leaked on the Internet in 2011. Gameover stands apart from other Zeus-based Trojan programs because it uses peer-to-peer technology for command and control instead of traditional servers, making it more resilient to takedown attempts. At the beginning of February, researchers from security firm Malcovery Security, reported that a new variant of Gameover
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange and its owner Mark Karpeles, seeking damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the return of bitcoins to users whose accounts were frozen on the site. The lawsuit lays out a number of claims against Mt. Gox, chief among them that the exchange did not keep users’ bitcoins securely stored or adequately detect a theft of those coins. When the online exchange figured out what was going on, it clouded the truth by telling customers there was a computer glitch, the lawsuit claims. The situation is akin to a bank being robbed and then closing up shop and simply saying “sorry,” said Jay Edelson, managing partner at Edelson PC and the plaintiffs’ attorney.
Razer is giving PC gamers another way to sync save files across devices, for all those times when the game won't do it automatically. Saved game syncing is a new “beta” feature in Setting it up is simple enough. Once you've installed Game Booster and created a Razer login, the software scans for any games on your PC. I have about 80 games on my desktop, and Game Booster found them all in less than a minute. (The fact that I'm using
Andrew Hoog, the CEO and co-founder of mobile security firm Perhaps that’s why at this week’s RSA conference in San Francisco, there was a lot of interest among attendees in tools you can use to secure mobile devices. That includes tools like viaForensics’s Via Protect, a new app that detects and analyzes where the data from your mobile phone is being transmitted. The free app runs on iOS and Android. In this video report on mobile security offerings, we’ll also look at
Our intrepid team of reporters spent the week in Barcelona at the world's biggest mobile trade show, looking at a slew of mobile devices and services. But what topics were on everyone's mind at Mobile World Congress 2014?
The appeals court went by a strict interpretation of the statute under which the driver was charged
The bidding has stopped in a US$1.56 billion auction of wireless spectrum licenses across the U.S., and satellite operator Dish Network appears to be the winner. Dish pledged in advance to pay the $1.56 billion reserve price for the so-called H Block, and in the end the auction hit exactly that level. The participants were anonymous, but the final price and the fact that one bidder dominated the proceedings from the beginning show that Dish was the winner, analyst Tim Farrar of TMF Associates said. The auction rules call for the FCC to release the names of the winner or winners shortly after bidding closes. The H Block is small by the standards of today’s high-powered LTE networks in the U.S., consisting of just 5MHz for sending data downstream to mobile devices and 5MHz for users to send their own content and requests up to the network. Most service providers like to have at least twice that. However, the auctioned licenses are intended to reach effectively the entire U.S. population.
Microsoft has a new version of SkyDrive Pro’s iOS app that has the cloud storage product’s new identity—OneDrive for Business—and broadens its scope of users. The main OneDrive for Business cloud service was designed as a personal library for users of Office 365 and SharePoint Server to store personal work documents and files. Office 365 is a public cloud email and collaboration suite that includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.
Europe’s app providers were warned by authorities Thursday that many of them are violating consumer protection laws. Following complaints in Denmark, France, the U.K., Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and Lithuania, E.U. Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding and national enforcement authorities from across Europe are meeting Thursday and Friday with industry representatives, including Apple and Google, to outline the rules they must follow. The biggest problem is the issue of so-called “in-app” purchases, by which consumers access special content or features for a fee, on products labeled as “free.” Currently more than 50 percent of the E.U. online games’ market consists of games advertised as free, despite often incorporating costly, in-app purchases. Misleading consumers in this way could be in breach of E.U. law, the Commission said.
Kabinett des Schreckens: «Rambo: The Videogame» ist nicht nur das übelste Rambo-Spiel aller Zeiten, sondern auch eines der schlechtesten Games je. Ein Grund, es sich anzuschauen.
Seit der WhatsApp-Übernahme durch Facebook erlebt der Schweizer Messenger Threema einen Boom. 20 Minuten hat sich mit einem der drei Threema-Entwickler unterhalten.
Programmier, Systemadministratoren und Co. sind gefragt wie nie. Eine neue Kampagne soll Jugendliche für ein Informatikstudium motivieren. Dafür entstand sogar ein Rap.
Ab dem 20. Mai können Game-Klassiker wie «Mario Kart» oder «Pokémon» nicht mehr online auf den Konsolen Wii oder Nintendo DS gespielt werden. Wenige Funktionen bleiben erhalten.
Ohne Verdacht haben Mitarbeiter des britischen Geheimdiensts GCHQ Video-Daten von Millionen von Yahoo-Nutzern abgezapft. Mittels automatischer Gesichtserkennung sollten die Personen identifiziert werden.
Hacker nutzen bereits kleinste Schwachstellen aus. Der jährliche Schaden: 900 Milliarden Franken. Experten geben Tipps für mehr Sicherheit im Netz.
Ein neues Messinstrument soll exakte Informationen über den Gesundheitszustand des Herzens liefern. Der neue Sensor wurde mithilfe von 3-D-Drucktechnik erstellt.
In «Lords of Shadow 2» schnipselt sich Dracula elegant durch seine Feinde. An den Bossgegnern beisst er sich aber die Zähne aus.
Am 4. April erscheint das Online-Rollenspiel des (Früh-)Jahres. 20 Minuten schickt Neugierige schon jetzt ins Königreich Tamriel.
Nach der Übernahme von WhatsApp durch Facebook hat die Stiftung Warentest fünf Messenger nach Datenschutzkriterien analysiert: Die Schweizer App Threema ist am sichersten.
Die Suchmaschine hat die weltweiten Anfragen der vergangenen 90 Tage ausgewertet und die Spitzenreiter der Google-Nutzer veröffentlicht.
Flugzeugbauer Boeing hat ein Smartphone vorgestellt, das äusserst sicher und mit einer Selbstzerstörungsfunktion ausgestattet ist.
Surfen, Telefonieren, Texten - und zwar abhörsicher: Das verspricht das Blackphone. Mit dem Krypto-Handy will die Firma aus Zürich US-Spione austricksen.
Auch wenn das neue Smartphone-Flaggschiff von Samsung keine Revolution darstellt: Die Neuerungen bekommen dem Galaxy S5 ganz gut, wie ein Test zeigt.