The Latest Tech News

LG joins with Mozilla to release Boot2Gecko Mobile Phone

2012-02-24T17:50:00.000Z

According to the latest rumour-rounds LG are going to unveil the first Mozilla Boot To Gecko (B2G) powered smartphone at this years Mobile World Congress(MWC) that starts in three days.

The idea that Mozilla would launch a mobile operating system the way they are saying they will is more than just exciting, it is revolutionary: not only would Boot2Gecko be open like no operating system has ever been before, but it would be able to run inside any web browser. Under the Boot2Gecko face of the project is a set of Web APIs which allow both JavaScript and HTML5 to speak with your smartphone or computer’s hardware.

Unlike the competition, Boot2Gecko is supposedly a truly open source project, which means this is indeed great news for manufacturers, carriers and end-users who want to have absolute and total control over their devices. The Boot2Gecko OS apart from being completely open, will also offer an open framework and browser and an app store of its own.

According to reports however, Boot2Gecko is still in a supposedly rather primitive state at the moment, but the rumors are saying Mozilla and LG have several carriers lined up as partners who will be willing to offer the software and hardware to their customers in the future.

Altough most of this facts are still rumors it is thought that the main reason for LG B2G smartphone production is to sell to developers who are keen to start making applications for the new operating system. We assume it'll also be on sale to the general public, but that should not be the main reason behind its production.

As MWC approaches the wait wont be long untill we find out if these rumours are true.

Angry Birds Space to be unleashed on March 22

2012-02-18T15:16:00.000Z

Game maker Rovio announced on Friday a new spinoff game, called Angry Birds Space, which is expected to drop on March 22.

"We are VERY excited to announce our next game: Angry Birds Space! It’s going to be the biggest game launch since the original Angry Birds!" Rovio said in a blog post.

"Angry Birds Space is a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love -- plus some surprises!"

Rovio plans to reveal more details next month. The March 22 unveiling will include simultaneous launches of Angry Bird products in animation, mobile gaming, retail, and publishing, the company says.

Rovio announced in November that "Angry Birds" had surpassed 500 million downloads, an impressive accomplishment for what was already the world's most popular mobile game.

Although there's not much to be gleaned from the teaser trailer, the presence of Space in the title suggests that you'll be flinging with some new physics models. According to Yahoo's Plugged In blog, "you'll be lobbing birds on entirely new planets while contending with zero gravity, leading to new gameplay elements like slow-motion puzzles and 'lightspeed' destruction.".

Official blog statement.

Twitter gets Satellite support

2012-02-13T16:00:00.003Z

Twitter has announced a new partnership with major satellite providers to give their subscribers access to Twitter SMS, the original text-based Twitter service.

According to a statement released Thursday in their blog, the company has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s two largest satellite providers, to increase the number of people that can use Twitter SMS worldwide. The company said the new partnership will help guarantee greater global access to the microblogging network.

“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter”

The partnership keeps the company close to its original roots in SMS, which is the standardized text messaging feature found in cellphones and other mobile devices. When Twitter began in 2006, it was designed to utilize SMS to easily send a short message to a group of people. As the service grew, it launched its own platform aside from SMS.

Although Twitter has worked with a lot of carriers in the world, there are still some who dont support Twitter SMS. So if you carrier doesnt support it at the moment you can use "long codes" that Twitter made available.

After setting up a Twitter account for long code use, a user can put such a code in the “recipient” field of a text, and Twitter will automatically pick up their text and tweet it from their account.

So far, Twitter has set up long codes for users in the UK, Germany and Finland. Long codes are limited to outgoing tweets only.

Original Twitter statement

iPhone capitalizes 75 percent of all the mobile phone profits

2012-02-06T15:36:00.000Z

Although Apple is not the world's leading mobile phone maker, its cut of both profits and sales puts it unchalenged at the top.

Holding only around 9 percent of the global mobile phone market, Apple took home 75 percent of all profits across the industry last quarter, according to Asymco analyst Horace Dediu.

This left rival Samsung with 16 percent of the profit pie, RIM with 3.7 percent, HTC with 3 percent, and Nokia rounding out the list of 1.8 percent. All together that pie represents around $15 billion in profits for the final quarter of 2011 with Apple taking three quarters of it.

With heavy demand for the iPhone 4S, Apple also regained the top spot in mobile phone sales, capturing almost 40 percent of the industry's overall revenue. Samsung took second place with 25 percent of all sales, followed by Nokia with 12.6 percent and RIM with 8 percent, according to graphic below.. On the bottom down, HTC accounted for 5.5 percent of all mobile phone sales, Motorola 4.4 percent, and Sony Ericsson 2.7 percent.

In terms of market share Apple has also been on the rise. Boosted by the strong demand for the iPhone 4S, Apple recently jumped two spots to take third place as the world's biggest mobile phone maker behind Nokia and Samsung, said research firm IDC. The iPhone maker more than doubled its market share from 4 percent in 2010's final quarter to 8.7 percent, according to IDC.

On the last quarter Apple sold a record 37 million iPhones, a chunk more than the 30 million anticipated by the average analyst.

The reports from Asymco and IDC take into account not just smartphones but all mobile phones. Smartphones have consistently been biting off a greater chunk of the overall market, but they still account for only between 30 and 40 percent of all phones sold across the world, according to most data.

Source of the data and some aditional statistics @asymco.com

Swedish Supreme Court rejects Pirate Bay founders final appeal

2012-02-01T16:06:00.001Z

The Swedish Supreme Court will not hear an appeal from the founders of The Pirate Bay against prison sentences and fines imposed by the Swedish Court of Appeals, the court said on Wednesday.

Over a year ago, the Court of Appeals sentenced Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström to 10 months, eight months, and four months of jail time, respectively. The court also said they must collectively pay a 46 million kronor (US$6.7 million) fine.

The Supreme Court hears cases that are considered important for the direction of Swedish law enforcement, or when there are special circumstances. The court has reviewed the material in the Pirate Bay case and found that neither reason to hear the case exists, it said.

Separately, Gottfrid Swartholm Warg has been sentenced to one year in prison. Due to illness, Warg never showed up at the appeals trial, and recently had his verdict in the district court confirmed.

The Pirate Bay case has been contentious from day one, and not everyone thinks Wednesday's decision was the right choice."The Pirate Bay case is fundamentally important and it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court chooses not to hear the case," said Anna Troberg, leader of the Pirate Party in Sweden, in a statement.

The case has been handled inadequately since the raid back in May 2006, and it would have been desirable that the Supreme Court heard the case, she said

Despite the fact that sentences are now final, The Pirate Bay website remains online as it was not part of the legal proceedings. However, a few hours after the Supreme Court decision was made public, The Pirate Bay website started redirecting to a .se domain, fearing a possible seizure from the US authorities.

Steam reaches mobile through Android and iOS app

2012-01-27T16:50:00.000Z

Valve’s popular cloud-based PC gaming platform Steam will now be accessible from your iOS and Android-based mobile phone, according to a press release sent out today by Valve.

You won´t be able to play out your favorite PC games on your phone but thats not the purpose. The ideia is for you to be able to track Steam sales anywhere from your phone and check out the latest Steam bargains that apear once in a while. It will also allow you to chat with friends, view profiles, screenshots and user generated content.

From the press release:
“The Steam app comes from many direct requests from our customers,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale – these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam to make it richer and more accessible for everyone.”

To be considered for inclusion in the beta, users should log into their steam account from the app, which is available for free via the iTunes App Store and the Android Market. Valve says that more and more users will be signed up for the beta as time passes.

With a marketplace brimming with great games to browse on the go, the introduction of the app is a wise move by Steam who must be salivating at the prospect of all those smartphone-owning impulse buyers.

Mozilla releases programming language Rust 0.1

2012-01-24T21:45:00.000Z

After more than five years in the pipeline, Mozilla Labs and the Rust community have released the first alpha — version 0.1 — of the Rust programming language compiler.

The Rust language emphasizes concurrency and memory safety, and — if everything goes to plan — is ultimately being groomed to replace C++ as Mozilla’s compiled language of choice. Browser prototypes programmed in Rust will eventually emerge, and then one day Firefox — or parts of Firefox — might be re-written in Rust.

Rust is a strongly-typed systems programming language with a focus on memory safety and concurrency. The compiler is supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Feature-wise, Rust intentionally doesn´t bring any new ideas, and instead builds upon existing, known features that are present in other languages.

Inevitably we have to compare Rust to Go, Google’s new language. The Rust community explicitly says that it was not inspired by Go — development of Rust began before Go — but by other languages made by Rob Pike such as Newsqueak, Alef and Limbo. Feature-wise, the languages are quite similar, but Rust seems to be more security- and safety-oriented. Where Go has global garbage collection, null pointers, and shared mutable states, Rust GC is optional and per-task, null pointers are not allowed, and objects are immutable by default.

Performance wise its target is to be as fast as C++. So far most of this new language's features do work but are incomplete and the library APIs are still subject to change which means you can already try it out and play with it but future versions of the compiler may render your code useless.

Take a look at the Rust 0.1 release notes.

YouTube Reaches 4 Billion Daily Views

2012-01-23T19:33:00.001Z

YouTube, Google Inc's video website, is streaming 4 billion online videos every day, a 25 percent increase in the past eight months, according to the company.

The jump in video views comes as Google pushes YouTube beyond the personal computer, with versions of the site that work on smartphones and televisions, and as the company steps up efforts to offer more professional-grade content on the site.

Robert Kyncl, vice president of content at Google and a former architect of the Netflix streaming business, said that YouTube serves 3 billion hours per video every month and tops 800 million unique visitors per month.

YouTube also said today that users are now uploading an hour of video every second equaling 60 hours of video every minute.

Aquired by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, YouTube represents one of Google's key opportunities to generate new sources of revenue outside its traditional Internet search advertising business.

Reuters notes however that most of the 4 billion videos viewed on YouTube today don’t make money. Only 3 billion YouTube videos a week are being monetized.

Google Q4 earnings disappoint, shares down 10 per cent

2012-01-19T23:15:00.001Z

Google has suffered the rare indignity of falling below Wall Street expectations after announcing its earnings for Q4 2011.

Company stock dropped a whopping ten per cent in after-hours trading after reporting net revenue of $8.13 billion (£5.25bn) and $9.50 (£6.13) in earnings per share.

While those figures still put the company in a position to be envied by almost every other publicly traded entity in the world, Wall Street was expecting more. Experts had predicted $8.40 billion in net revenue and $10.49 in earnings per share.

Not everything is bad, although it's rare that Google misses the mark, the company is heralding it's first $10 billion+ quarter, before "traffic acquisition costs." and a 25 per cent gain on the corresponding quarter in 2010.

The company also announced that there are now 90 million registered Google+ users on planet earth, which is up from the 30 million it reported during the last earnings cool. However, how many of those 90 million are actively using Google+ is a different matter altogether.

Google’s headcount grew from 31,353 last quarter to 32,467 — an increase of 1,114.

There will be an earnings conference call with Google execs beginning at 4:30 PM EST; stay tuned for more posts with our coverage of any further details revealed by Larry Page and company.

Source: http://www.techradar.com

Apple Starts a Recycling Program for Electronic Equipment such as iPhone and iPad

2012-01-15T16:22:00.000Z

Apple has launched a recycling scheme that could help you make money from your old iPhone, iPad, Mac or even Windows PC.

The Reuse and Recycling Programme will be operated by Dataserv GmbH and will allow you to dispose of old or unused electronic equipment.

We can read from the official site:
"Apple’s commitment to the environment includes finding the most efficient ways to reuse or recycle electronic equipment at the end of its useful life, including iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC computers, and displays from any manufacturer. You may even get some money for your old equipment."

"Whether it's an iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC computer, working or not, we'll take it and determine if it qualifies for reuse and has a monetary value. If it does, the amount will be credited directly into your bank account. If it doesn't, you can recycle it responsibly through one of our free recycling programmes."

All you have to do is go to their website, and fill in some data about the equipment you want to recycle as they only accept iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC desktops, and notebook computers. You will have to fill some questions about the device's condition.

After this you will get a fair market value estimate made by Dataserv who will send you a pre-paid shipping label. Now you can send them your equipment and upon arrival and verification they will pay you directly to your bank account.

This recycling program started in the US in August 2011 but only allowed their customers to change their old equipment for Apple Gift Cards. Now it reaches UK, France and Germany offering cash deposited directly transfered to your bank account.

IBM Brains Turn 12 Atoms Into World's Smallest Storage Bit

2012-01-13T15:32:00.000Z

“We’re trying to answer a simple question,” said IBM Research physicist Andreas Heinrich in an interview. “How small can you make a magnetic structure and still make it useful for data storage?”

The answer the IBM scientists came upon was 12. This grouping of atoms, while dramatically reduced, still behaves in the same ways our memory drives do to grab and store information. They were able to accomplish this by using antiferromagnets. These magnets are much different that your traditional magnet. A ferromagnetized atom acts the same as the magnets you put on your refrigerator. If one atom in this magnet is polarized north, all its neighboring magnets will also be polarized north. Having this kind of polarization gives off a magnetic field, or that resistance you feel when you try to put two magnets together.

Antiferromagnetic atoms, however, do not act the same. If one neighbor is polarized north, its direct neighbor would be polarized south. This allows these magnets to sit much closer together, as it does not give off the same field. The downside to these magnets is that they are very difficult to deal with.

Because scientists need special tools to handle these atoms, you’re not going to see them in a store near you anytime soon. In fact, in order to use the tool at all, you must be in low temperatures, not suited for data centers. To operate at room temperature would mean upping the amount of atoms from 12 to 150. But this isn’t the goal for Heinrich. For him, it’s about showing the world what is possible.

“Here at IBM, most of all people are working on making products that are slightly better than the last one,” said Heinrich. “The work that I’m working on is not in that realm. We’re doing exploratory research.”

The research gives a glimpse of what the future may look like with more development and more research. It seems that other than our televisions, we are constantly trying to shrink down our products, make them smaller, more efficient. This includes data centers, with companies like Fusion-io bent on taking data centers from racks that could fill a room, to just one. But these innovations will take time, and Heinrich stresses that we should be focusing less on days, but rather on decades.

“We currently in our society are too focused on whats going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “We want to have a strong focus on what’s going to happen in 10 years.”

Source: http://venturebeat.com/

Sudoku puzzles must have at least 17 clues to have a valid solution

2012-01-09T02:28:00.000Z

An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku, the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9X9 grid of squares with the numbers 1–9 according to certain rules.

Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online on 1 January that the minimum number of clues — or starting digits — needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. Most newspaper puzzles have around 25 clues, with the difficulty of the puzzle decreasing as more clues are given.

The rules of Sudoku require puzzlers to fill out a 9X9 grid with the numbers 1–9 so that no digit is repeated within the same column, row, or 3X3 subgrid. The clues are the numbers that are filled in to begin with, and enthusiasts have long observed that although there are some puzzles with 17 clues, no one has been able to come up with a valid 16-clue puzzle. That led to the conjecture that 16-clue puzzles with unique solutions simply do not exist.

A potential way to demonstrate that could be to check all possible completed grids for every 16-clue puzzle, but that would take too much computing time. So McGuire simplified the problem by designing a 'hitting-set algorithm'. The idea behind this was to search for what he calls unavoidable sets, or arrangements of numbers within the completed puzzle that are interchangeable and so could result in multiple solutions. To prevent the unavoidable sets from causing multiple solutions, the clues must overlap, or 'hit', the unavoidable sets. Once the unavoidable sets are found, it is a much smaller—although still non-trivial—computing task to show that no 16-clue puzzle can hit them all.

Having spent two years testing the algorithm, McGuire and his team used about 7 million CPU hours at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing in Dublin, searching through possible grids with the hitting-set algorithm. “The only realistic way to do it was the brute force approach,” says Gordon Royle, a mathematician at the University of Western Australian in Perth who had been working on the problem of counting 17 clue puzzles using different algorithms. “It’s a challenging problem that inspires people to push computing and mathematical techniques to the limit. It’s like climbing the highest mountain.”

A consequence of the approach taken is that it will take some time for others to get enough computing time to check the proof, says Laura Taalman, a mathematician also at James Madison University, who co-authored the book Taking Sudoku Seriously: The Math Behind the World’s Most Popular Pencil Puzzle with Rosenhouse. Taalman notes that the book, which came out last week, is already outdated: it says that the problem remains open and that whoever solves it will be a “rock star.”

Here is the official paper[PDF].

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/

Linux Kernel 3.2 Officially Released

2012-01-05T14:23:00.000Z

After seven release candidates, Linus Torvalds announced a few hours ago, January 4th, the immediate availability for download of Linux kernel 3.2.

Among the new features incorporated in Linux kernel 3.2 we can mention better support for large files by supporting block sizes bigger than 4KB and up to 1MB in EXT4, upper limits of CPU time can now be set in the process scheduler, lots of Btrfs improvements, and much more.

"So 3.2 is out, and the merge window for 3.3 is thus officially open. I delayed 3.2 first a few days to wait for the final linux-next ("final" in the sense that that's what I'll fetch to decide whether something has been in linux-next for 3.3 or not), and then some more as people were coming back from holidays and sorting out some regressions. So we do have a few last-minute reverts and small fixes."

"Still, there's not a whole lot of changes since -rc7 (shortlog appended), and almost all of them are *tiny*. So despite the few annoying last-minute reverts, I'm feeling pretty happy about it." - said Linus Torvlads in the official announcement.

Highlights of Linux Kernel 3.2:

-Faster scrubbing, detailed corruption messages, automatic backup of tree roots, and manual inspection of metadata in Btrfs;
-Process bandwith controller;

-Support for the Hexagon architecture;

-Thin provisioning and recursive snapshots in the Device Mapper;

-I/O-less dirty throttling, reduce filesystem writeback from page reclaim;

-TCP Proportional Rate Reduction;

-Improved live profiling tool "perf top";

-Cross memory attach.

Linux kernel 3.2 also brings lots of improvements for various supported filesystems, such as EXT3, CIFS, JFFS2, EXOFS, NFS, GFS2, and SQUASHFS.

These are just a few of the new features available in Linux kernel 3.2, for a complete list check out the full changelog.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com

Android Market Tops 400,000 Apps

2012-01-04T15:55:00.001Z

Google's Android Market now hosts more than 400,000 active applications from about 100,000 publishers, with the majority of apps available for free, according to an independent study.

The Market's app store catalog crossed the 400,000 benchmark over the New Year’s weekend, four months after the Market topped 300,000 apps. Earlier in 2011, the Market also took four months to make the jump from 200,000 to 300,000 apps, according to Distimo, a metrics firm specializing in mobile application stores.

Distimo's 400,000 app count includes only active applications and does not include any apps that may have been recently removed from the Market because of claims of copyright infringement or the recent Android malware scare.

While the Android Market jumped by 200,000 apps over the last eight months, Distimo's report suggests Apple's App Store is currently growing at a slower rate than its Android rival. Apple's App Store for iPhone, according to Distimo, required seven months to make the jump from 300,000 to 400,000 in June. There was also an eight-month growth period before that when the iPhone app catalog grew from 200,000 to 300,000 apps. Overall, however, iPhone apps reached 400,000 in 37 months while it took the Android Market 39 months to hit the benchmark, Distimo said.

Distimo separates iPad and iPhone apps as two different application stores. Distimo does not appear to distinguish between tablet and smartphone apps in the Android Market. Taken together, the iPhone and iPad sections of the App Store make up nearly 500,000 apps, according to Distimo's year-end report released in late December.

Two-thirds free

More than two-thirds of apps in the Android Market are free and that trend appears to be increasing. Distimo says free apps now account for 68 percent of the Android Market, up from 60 percent in April.

The analytics firm credits the freemium model -- where developers offer an app for free but then sell in-app purchases for better features or more content -- as the main driver of the Market's trend toward free apps.

Despite what may be the Android Market’s faster growing app store with a wider variety of free apps, Apple's iOS platform is still where the money is for developers. The App Store for iPhone and iPad, counted separately, both beat the Android Market in terms of revenue. Apps for the iPhone alone brought in about four times the revenue of the Android Market, according to Distimo's year-end report.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com

Intel Ivy Bridge Chips Launching Early April 2012

2011-12-29T22:33:00.000Z

Intel may unveil its next generation of processors--nicknamed "Ivy Bridge"--in April, according to the latest reports. The Ivy Bridge chips for desktops and laptops promise a 37 percent performance increase over the current generation of Sandy Bridge processors.

The new Ivy Bridge CPUs use a 22-nanometer architecture, which makes them almost 30 percents smaller than the current chips, which use a 32nm architecture. Smaller chips mean lower power consumption (which is great for battery life) and more room for the integrated graphics chip. Ivy Bridge will support DirectX 11, Thunderbolt, and USB 3.0.

Taiwan-based trade publication DigiTimes reports that the first Ivy Bridge processors to launch will be quad-core desktop processors: the Core i7-3370 series and the Core i5-3570, 3550, and 3450. Because Ivy Bridge is backward-compatible with existing Sandy Bridge motherboards, desktop users should have an upgrade path available.

The first Ivy Bridge notebook chips to launch, according to DigiTimes, will be the Core i7 chips as well: The Core i7-3920QM, 3820QM, and 3720QM. Core i5 processors will pop up later.

They are all quad core, except one economy Core i5 processor. The rest of the Core i5s reportedly have a 6MB cache and speeds ranging from 2.7GHz to 3.4GHz. The Core i7 lineup has 8MB cache, and clock speeds from 2.5GHz to 3.5GHz.

Ivy Bridge will be smaller, more powerful, and more energy-efficient, and should be here in just a few months.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com

Google to Pay Mozilla $300M Annually in Search Deal

2011-12-23T14:22:00.001Z

What's Firefox worth to Google? A cool $300 million a year, according to a Thursday report by AllThingsD.

Two days ago, Google and Mozilla announced that they had reached an agreement to keep Google as the default search engine in the Firefox browser. The pact was crucial to keeping the lights on at Mozilla, which in 2010 earned 84 percent of its $123 million in annual revenue from its Google search contract.

According to AllThingsD, Google will pay Mozilla nearly $300 million annually for another three years. Not surprisingly, Google's main competitor in the bid was Microsoft's money-losing Bing search engine, which currently has 15 percent of the U.S. search market, according to the latest comScore estimates.

Google almost certainly paid more than it would have liked for the default search slot in Firefox, which holds a significant share--around 25 percent--of the global browser market, according to StatCounter. Ironically, Firefox continues to bleed users, most of whom appear to be migrating to Google's own Chrome browser.

Despite Firefox's lagging fortunes, Bing would have earned a major victory by becoming the default search engine in Mozilla's browser.

Microsoft's market-share gains in the search business have come largely at the expense of its business partner Yahoo. Bing powers Yahoo Search, while Yahoo provides search-advertising services for both companies.

But Bing has failed to chip away at Google's dominant market share, which has remained steady at around 65 percent. Yahoo Search, meanwhile, is currently tied for a distant second with Bing: Both have about 15 percent of the market according to comScore.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com

New Camera Captures Light in Motion

2011-12-18T16:13:00.002Z

Hollywood has to resort to trickery to show moviegoers laser beams traveling through the air. That's because the beams move too fast to be captured on film. Now a camera that records frames at a rate of 0.6 trillion every second can truly capture the bouncing path of a laser pulse.

The system was developed by researchers led by Ramesh Raskar at MIT's Media Lab. Currently limited to a tabletop inside the group's lab, the camera can record what happens when very short pulses of laser light—lasting just 50 femtoseconds (50,000 trillionths of a second) long—hit objects in front of them. The camera captures the pulses bouncing between and reflecting off objects.

Raskar says the new camera could be used for novel kinds of medical imaging, tracking light inside body tissue. It could also enable novel kinds of photographic manipulation. In experiments, the camera has captured frames roughly 500 by 600 pixels in size.

The fastest scientific cameras on the market typically capture images at rates in the low millions of frames per second. They work similar to the way a consumer digital camera works, with a light sensor that converts light from the lens into a digital signal that's saved to disk.

The Media Lab researchers had to take a different approach, says Andreas Velten, a member of the research team. An electronic system's reaction time is inherently limited to roughly 500 picoseconds, he says, because it takes too long for electronic signals to travel along the wires and through the chips in such designs. "[Our shutter speed is] just under two picoseconds because we detect light with a streak camera, which gets around the electrical problem."

Heres a video of a laser pulse moving through a Coke bottle.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com

AdBlock Plus defends decision to allow some ads

2011-12-13T19:31:00.001Z

The developers of AdBlock Plus, an extension for Firefox that blocks advertising on websites, are trying to contain a brewing controversy over their decision to allow some non-flashy ads to be displayed by default.

On Tuesday, the Germany company Eyeo will release the 2.0 version of AdBlock Plus, which has a feature enabled by default that will not block ads that are, as company co-founder Till Faida puts it, not annoying. The feature, called "Allow non-intrusive advertising," can be turned off.

"The feedback we've been getting over the years from users is 'We don't mind ads but they are too annoying," said Faida, who works with Wladimir Palant, the project lead for AdBlock Plus since 2006.

"The feedback we get from webmasters is 'You're destroying our only revenue stream. We can't create content for free if our ads are blocked'," said Faida.

The new feature will allow ads to be shown that are static with no animation or sound; those that are text-only without attention-grabbing images, and those that use at most one script that delays the loading of a page.

"We are looking for some middle ground here," Faida said. "The only option we have is to make very clear what are acceptable ads and which are too annoying to be shown to the user."

A survey of AdBlock Plus users found that while 21 percent said they never want to see any ads, the other 79 percent said advertising is acceptable as long as it's not too disruptive, Faida said.

AdBlock Plus's power to block advertising revenue to webmasters has grown in the last two to three years, Faida said. At least 12 million people use AdBlock Plus each day, according to Eyeo, which obtains the data when the extension polls its servers for updates. Faida estimated the number of worldwide users at about 30 million.

Some websites attribute the use of AdBlock Plus to a 50 percent to 60 percent drop in advertising revenue, Faida said.

The changes to the extension were announced last week on the AdBlock Plus blog. Since then, AdBlock Plus has come under fire. Faida said they've been wrongly accused of being in some sort of agreement with advertising networks.

"They are concerned that we have sold out and are collaborating with Google," Faida said. "We don't want to support large advertising networks like Google."

It isn't possible for AdBlock Plus to automatically identify obnoxious ads. Instead, Faida said they've made agreement with a few mostly German websites to show ads that meet the specifications, and those ads are not blocked. If advertising networks decide to participate, AdBlock Plus will turn off blocking when companies begin serving ads that comply.

One of those sites is netzwelt.de, a tech website. On that site, if "Allow non-intrusive advertising" is not turned off, it will display sponsored Google text ads that appear after a search, Faida said. On another partnering website, t3n.de, AdBlock Plus with the feature enabled allows the static images of sponsors shown on the right-hand side.

Faida said Eyeo doesn't have a financial interest in the latest change. The small company is dedicated to only developing AdBlock Plus, which is free, and has been funded by a private donor who is interested in issues such as privacy and the tracking by companies of Internet users, he said.

"There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there," Faida said. The new feature "was a request from a large majority."

Heres the original announcement from AdBlock Plus.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com

MythBusters Test Launches Cannonball Into California Neighborhood

2011-12-08T23:08:00.001Z

If there were an urban myth that suburban homes are impervious to becoming cannon fodder, it just got busted.

Two homes, a sidewalk and a van all took fire after a test for the show MythBusters went awry Tuesday and sent a cannonball out of a bomb range and into a nearby residential neighborhood in Dublin, California.

The cannonball, which took an unexpected bounce off a safety berm during the test, traveled 700 yards outside of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb range where it was fired, hit a sidewalk, crashed through the front door of a home, traveled upstairs and went through the bedroom of a sleeping couple.

“They didn’t actually hear the cannonball come through the house, what woke them up was the settling of the sheetrock,” Alameda County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. J.D. Nelson told reporters after the incident.

MythBusters, the Discovery Channel show where hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman prove the validity (or lack thereof) of various commonly held beliefs, was running the test to determine if other materials could be fired from a cannon and have the same effect as a regular cannonball, Nelson said.

The cannonball didn’t stop in the sleeping couple’s bedroom. After leaving a 10-inch hole in their wall, it crossed four lanes of traffic and bounced off the roof of Ming Jiang, whose mother was watching his 10-month-old son inside his house.

“She had no idea what was going on — it was a very loud boom,” Jiang told reporters. “She thought a tree fell, or maybe a meteor, but it was not clear it was some cannonball that landed on a roof.”

The projectile finally crashed through the window of a minivan and landed in the vehicle. Surprisingly, no one was injured in the incident. Nelson told the San Francisco Chronicle that MythBusters had used the San Francisco Bay Area bomb range without incident for more than 50 episodes.

According to a statement released by the Discovery Channel to Wired.com, Nelson is an explosives expert for the show and was on site for the test. “All proper safety protocol was observed,” the statement said, adding that the show’s producer, Beyond Productions, “is currently assessing the situation and working with those whose property was affected.”

Prior to the incident, show co-hosts Tory Belleci and Kari Byron had apparently tweeted images of themselves with various cannons, but those images have since been taken down. However, the photos have been posted online.

Heres a video with more details.

Source: http://www.wired.com

“Napster” No More

2011-12-02T21:12:00.001Z

After being bought out in October by eternal archrival Rhapsody, music subscription service “Napster” has shut down. Heading to Napster.com now gets you an explanation of what happened and a Rhapsody sales pitch.I put “Napster” in quotation marks–a practice I’ve followed, albeit inconsistently, for years–because the “Napster” that just died wasn’t really Napster. Napster was the peer-to-peer music sharing service founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in 1999. It changed the world, and was sued out of business.

“Napster,” on the other hand, was a commercial enterprise–formerly known as Pressplay–that acquired the Napster name. The folks who did the rebranding presumably thought they were pretty smart, but I always thought it was a mistake. If you loved the original Napster, you probably didn’t want to pay a monthly fee for music. If you did want to pay for music, the “Napster” name sounded slightly disreputable. Either way, it smacked of false advertising and congitive dissonance.

The fact that “Napster” petered out wasn’t shocking. Between Rhapsody, “Napster,” eMusic, Spotify, Rdio, Slacker, MOG, and Zune Pass–am I forgetting any?–there are a lot of subscription music services out there. Given that music with a monthly fee has never become a breakout hit, there may not be enough subscribers to go around. And for several years, “Napster” had felt like it was winding down rather than ramping up. (It was a latecomer to the iPhone, for instance.)

I like subscription music–I happily pay for Rdio–and would like to see it catch on. The fact that the major services are on a bevy of devices–computers, phones, tablets, TVs, and devices like Sonos–certainly makes them more appealing. Are you paying for subscription music, and if so, from which service?

Source: http://technologizer.com

Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' to Come with a Customized Gnome 3 Desktop

2011-11-27T15:48:00.001Z

Linux Mint 12 'Lisa' will come with its own customized desktop and it will be based on Gnome 3. The core desktop will be based on a series of Gnome Shell extensions called “MGSE” (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions) that will provide a layer on top of Gnome 3.

The main features of MGSE are:

The bottom panel
The application menu
The window list
A task-centric desktop (i.e. you switch between windows, not applications)
Visible system tray icons

MGSE also includes additional extensions such as a media player indicator, and multiple enhancements to Gnome 3. Thus Linux Mint 12 will be more like a hybrid desktop balancing traditional desktop and new modern technologies.

Also Gnome 2 fork MATE can also make it to the live Linux Mint DVD if all the remaining integration issues are ironed out in time, thus providing users a side by side experience of both Gnome 2 and Gnome 3.

Read it all here.

Source: http://www.ubuntuvibes.com

123456: The Worst Passwords of 2011

2011-11-21T19:16:00.001Z

Internet users never learn. No matter how many times we hear about obvious, hackable passwords, people keep using them. And the situation doesn't seem to be getting better.Below is a list of the 25 worst passwords of 2011, compiled by SplashData. The security software developer generated the list from millions of actual stolen passwords, posted online by hackers. Not surprisingly, the most common passwords are also the worst, including "password," "123456" and "qwerty." Even passwords that seem kind of unique, like "trustno1" and "shadow" are actually quite common. And why does "monkey" always show up on these lists?

Anyway, here's the full list:

1. password
2. 123456
3. 12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

SplashData has a few recommendations for keeping your data safe:

First, create a strong password consisting of letters, numbers and symbols. If you're worried about remembering long passwords, try using phrases of short words separated by underscores, such as "shiny_phones_rule_1." A phrase is easier to recall than a long, abstract mish-mash of characters.

Second, try not to spread the same password all over the Internet. At the very least, use separate passwords for important uses like online banking and e-mail. The last thing you want is for some poorly protected web forum to hold the same password as your bank account.To make things super-simple, you can also use password management software, such as LastPass, Roboform, eWallet, SplashID or the free KeePass. These programs remember your passwords, allowing you to create long, complex strings of letters and numbers that you otherwise wouldn't be able to remember.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com

New Version of Stoned Bootkit Said to Bypass Windows 8 Secure Boot

2011-11-17T22:53:00.001Z

A security researcher who has in the past has created low-level rootkits capable of staying resident on an infected machine after reboots, said he has now accomplished the same feat on Windows 8, which hasn't even hit the shelves yet. Peter Kleissner said he has created a new version of his Stoned bootkit that defeats the pre-boot security checks included in the forthcoming OS and survives reboots.

Kleissner is known in the security community for his creation of the Stoned bootkit, a sophisticated form of rootkit that is designed to load from the master boot record and stay resident in memory throughout the boot process. The previous version of the bootkit was designed to work on Windows XP through Windows 7, but the new one that Kleissner has written also works on Windows 8. He said in a message on Twitter Thursday that Stoned Lite is a small footprint bootkit that can be loaded from either a USB stick or a CD.

He said he may also add some other functionality to the software in the near future.

"Might add in-memory patching of msv1_0!MsvpPasswordValidate, so it allows to log on with any password.. nothing new but nice and fancy," Kleissner said in a later Twitter message.

The pre-boot security mechanisms in Windows 8 have drawn a lot of scrutiny in recent months, particularly the fact that Microsoft is implementing a version of UEFI instead of the traditional BIOS. UEFI includes some functionality that allows Microsoft to require that any software loaded during the boot sequence of a Windows PC be signed by one of the keys loaded into the firmware. Open-source advocates have argued that the technology could allow the company to prevent users from loading alternate operating systems, but Microsoft and officials from the Linux Foundation have said that isn't necessarily the case.

Kleissner said that he notified Microsoft of his work and has given the company the source code of the bootkit and the paper he's written for a conference presentation.

Microsoft has not confirmed the details of Kleissner's claims.

Source: https://threatpost.com

Steam’s 35 Million Users Compromised in Hack

2011-11-12T15:58:00.001Z

Gamers who use the digital distribution network Steam were warned that their account information may have been exposed to hackers following a compromise of the company's Web page and back end databases. The incident yielded a slew of sensitive customer information, including user’s passwords and encrypted credit card numbers, Steam said.

The warning came after an investigation of a Web site defacement that affected Steam's forums on November 6th. Hackers were able to bypass the message boards and access the site’s database, according to a message sent to the site’s users last night by Steam co-founder Gabe Newell.

The database contained customer’s user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers, according to the note.

Newell urged users to keep tabs on their credit card activity and their account statements, but said that there’s no proof attackers took any sensitive information, as a precaution.

As a result of the hack, all forum users will be required to change their passwords upon logging in, while regular users of Steam are being encouraged to do the same, especially if they use the same password on both accounts.

While it remains to be seen how much personal information was actually swiped from Steam’s database and how well certain passwords and credit card numbers were encrypted, it of course recalls Playstation Network’s mammoth breach from earlier this year.

When hackers made off with the information of more than 77 million members of the video gaming platform worldwide in April, it left the network reeling to cover its tracks and make good on security after a series of embarrassing missteps.

Source: https://threatpost.com

Mozilla Developers Testing Mobile OS

2011-11-07T15:09:00.000Z

Mozilla has been experimenting with an interesting idea called Boot 2 Gecko. Essentially, B2G (as it’s called) is a mobile operating system based on the Web, as opposed to what the project’s wiki calls “proprietary, single-vendor stacks”. Mozilla has something there--open Web technologies indeed increasingly provide an intriguing platform for lots of things, mobile and otherwise.

The developers on the B2G project are looking at the following areas:

New web APIs: build prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content (Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.)
Privilege model: making sure that these new capabilities are safely exposed to pages and applications
Booting: prototype a low-level substrate for an Android-compatible device
Applications: choose and port or build apps to prove out and prioritize the power of the system

The B2G project is still pretty new, but according to the project roadmap, testing has already begun and will continue through the rest of 2011. Messaging, telephony, and battery aspects of the OS are underway, and contacts, screen/power management, and settings are either on track or scheduled. Testing for more features is in the offing.

As the end of 2011 quickly approaches (Thanksgiving is in two and half weeks away, people!), a more exciting milestone for the B2G project looms: a product demo, scheduled for sometime in the first quarter of 2012. We may see an actual product as early as the second quarter of 2012.

Mark your calendars, friends; we may be seeing a viable new player in the mobile OS market soon.

Source: http://hothardware.com

Angry Birds downloads pass half-billion mark

2011-11-02T22:24:00.000Z

It started as a somewhat stupid, if entertaining, game (seriously, launching cartoon birds at thieving green pigs?).

But soon Angry Birds became an incredibly successful stupid, if entertaining, game. How successful? According to Finnish developer Rovio Mobile, Angry Birds has just surpassed the 500,000 download mark, making it one of the most successful games in the history of, um, gaming.

And that’s all in less than two years. Angry Birds first surfaced in December 2009 on Apple’s iOS. It proved such a runaway hit (with more than 12 million sales from Apple’s App Store) that Rovio rolled out versions for other platforms, including Google’s Android OS, Symbian, Windows, Mac OS X and PlayStation.

Not only that, the Angry Birds franchise has flown far beyond gaming platforms. Rovio says it has shipped more than 10 million Angry Birds toys worldwide and published numerous Angry Birds books.

Rovio also is set to open the first official Angry Birds retail shop in Helsinki. (Can Angry Birds restaurants and theme parks be far behind?)

Here’s Rovio chief executive Mikael Hed gushing about his company’s incredible fortune:

” This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we’re extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games. We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere.”

Beyond the half-million downloads, Rovio trotted out some other amazing Angry Birds metrics:

Angry Birds Fans around the world have so far played a total of 200,000 years of Angry Birds, with 300 million minutes of playing time daily. Moreover, more than 266 billion levels of Angry Birds have been played, with 400 billion birds launched into action, and over 44 billion Stars collected in the process.

Sounds like great fun. But think about all the potential productivity wasted on Angry Birds! If you look at the numbers above through the prism of the “10,000 hour Rule” -– which posits that the key to mastery of any discipline is to practice, practice, practice for roughly 10,000 hours –- well, let’s just say there’s a lot of “mastery” being left on the table (or mobile device, as it were) by people engrossed in Angry Birds.

On the other hand, if the hundreds of thousands of people addicted to Angry Birds had spent those countless hours improving their skills and lives -- perhaps achieving that elusive state of true self-actualization and maybe making a valuable, lasting contribution to society -- instead of lobbing cartoon digital birds at green pigs, I guess those 44 billion Stars wouldn't have been collected.

Source: http://www.itworld.com/

Google Launches Indoor 'Street View' Shots

2011-10-30T15:50:00.000Z

Google is taking its Street View mapping service indoors. No, it won't capture you vegging out on your couch, but the feature will be exploring the interiors of certain businesses.A pilot program started in April 2010 and back in May, Google announced plans for 360-degree Business Photos, a program that would send Google photographers to various businesses to snap professional photos for their Places Page. A spokeswoman said today that "we're seeing renewed interest in the past few days because as promised, as more of the imagery becomes available, we're getting more of it online."

"This experience, using Street View technology, includes 360-degree imagery of the business interior and storefront," Google said back in May. "With this immersive imagery, potential customers can easily imagine themselves at the business and decide if they want to visit in person."

Photographs are taken by "trusted" photographers, Google said, though businesses can also upload their own images via Google Places. The company is currently setting up shoots in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, and the UK. In the U.S., that includes Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Austin, D.C., Boston, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Google said it is starting with businesses "that we know are searched for most regularly," like restaurants, hotels, retail shops, gyms, salons, and repair shops.

If you want your business photographed, you can apply online. Google will own the photos it takes, but businesses can request to have shots they don't like removed.Naturally, taking internal photos and posting them online brings up some security questions. But Google said its photographs will "capture nothing different to what a customer would see by visiting the business in real life." The search giant asked that stores notify customers about the photo shoot by putting up signs so they don't inadvertently end up in the background of a shot.

If someone does end up in the photograph, "we'll either run the 360-degree imagery through our state-of-the-art blurring technology to blur out faces of any employees and customers who appear in the imagery, or we won't publish the still photos if people are in view," Google said. "Remember, only people with the authority to make agreements on behalf of the business can submit an application for photography, and by submitting the application you're confirming that you have that authority and that you will follow the steps set out here."

The main Street View feature, meanwhile, has made headlines recently for privacy concerns abroad. In May, Google voluntarily opted out of enlarging its Street View program within Germany. Last year, Italian officials required Google to provide adequate warnings about when its Street View vehicles would be passing through. A month before, Google was banned from expanding Street View in the Czech Republic due to security concerns. Not everyone is hesitant, though. In August, Google said Street View will expand to Israel.

Heres an example.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/

Firefox's built-in PDF reader

2011-10-29T18:57:00.000+01:00

Not long ago, Mozilla coders announced that they were starting to build PDF.js, a way to display Acrobat documents in the browser using pure web code. No longer will you have to fight with an external PDF plug-in in Firefox. Huzzah!

Mozilla’s PDF reader for Firefox is quite different from the one Google ships in Chrome. The Chrome PDF plug-in makes use of code written by the folks at Foxit. It’s not, therefore, part of the open-source Chromium code. Firefox, on the other hand, is developed completely in the open — and that’s the case with all its components as well. Pdf.js source code is available for download from GitHub if you’d like to check out its inner workings or integrate the code into your own projects.

As far as functionality goes, the built-in PDF reader in Firefox offers pretty well the same experience to users as the one in Chrome. Documents load quickly, font rendering is good (though not razor sharp in all cases), and printing works flawlessly.

Not all of Adobe’s advanced features are supported — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when you look at the number of security incidents related to PDFs in 2010 and 2011. You’ll still be able to read the majority of the PDFs on the web, anyway, and all through the magic or pure, open web code!

Development is still on the way but you can already try it out.

The restart-free add-on is available from the GitHub repository — just download the .XPI in Firefox and click to install.

Source: http://www.geek.com

Biggest Hack in Swedish History Affects Politicians, Journalists Among Others

2011-10-26T21:28:00.000+01:00

Login credentials for nearly 200,000 individuals, most Swedish citizens, have been exposed in what experts are calling the largest data breach in that country's history.

According to a report from The Local, a Sweden-based, English language news publication, a popular Swedish blogging platform, Bloggtoppen, was hacked with login information for around 60 Web sites hosted on that platform - an estimated 90,000 account passwords - made public via the twitter account of a 23 year-old Swedish Parliamentarian, William Petzail.

Petzail, who is currently hospitalized, involuntarily, on account of his struggle with alcohol and prescription drugs is not believed to be responsible for the breach.

Petzail’s lawyer contends his client’s Twitter account was hijacked and that he is not responsible for publishing the information.
Blogtoppen’s operator, Jimmy Holmund, told the another Swedish publication, TT news agency that the hack was the result of “a weakness in the code that lies behind the service". Blogtoppen has since been shut down and will remain offline “until further notice”, according to a notice posted on the site.

Local reports note that prominent journalists and members of Sweden’s Liberal Party were exposed in the leak. Though news of the breach broke this week, local reports note that much of the exposed information was made public in August by a Twitter user operating under the handle, “sc3a5j.” The hacker responsible for that account claims he published the information to make users aware that their information was not being handled properly. However, the breach went largely unnoticed until the information was posted to Petzail’s account.

Source: https://threatpost.com

Galaxy Nexus vs iPhone 4S vs Droid RAZR

2011-10-21T21:09:00.000+01:00

Google’s Galaxy Nexusis the latest addition to this year’s hot smartphone line-up, alongside the iPhone 4S and the Droid RAZR. Unveiled last night, the Galaxy Nexus, manufactured by Samsung, embodies Google’s idea of the perfect smartphone, together with the brand-new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich mobile OS.
But does the Galaxy Nexus stand a chance against Apple’s iPhone 4S, which is currently selling like hot cakes, or the skinny Droid RAZR, also unveiled this week?

The first thing you’ll notice on the Galaxy Nexus is the huge, curved 4.65-inch display, which is larger than the 4.3-inch one found on the Droid RAZR, and considerably bigger than the 3.5-inch display on the iPhone 4S. The Galaxy Nexus display doesn’t skimp on pixel density either; it has a 1280- by-720 pixel resolution, the highest in the comparison. The iPhone display however, still retains the highest pixel density at 330 ppi, a slight lead over the 316 ppi screen of the Galaxy Nexus.

The Galaxy Nexus is also very thin, but not thinner than the Droid RAZR (8.84 mm on the Nexus compared to 7.1 mm on the RAZR), which makes the iPhone 4S look a bit bulky at 9.3 mm. The Droid RAZR is also the lightest smartphone out of the bunch at 127 grams, while the iPhone 4S is the most compact given its smaller screen size.

Inside, the Galaxy Nexus, the Droid RAZR and the iPhone 4S run on the latest dual-core processors, namely 1.2GHz dual-core on the Android side, and 1GHz dual-core on the iPhone 4S. The Android phones also run on 1GB of RAM, while the iPhone 4S features half that amount. As for storage, all three phones come with 16GB of built-in memory, so you have plenty of space for your apps and media. The Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4S come in 32GB flavors, too, or even up to 64GB at the high end for the 4S, which doesn’t have a MicroSD card slot for expandable storage. The Droid RAZR also comes with a 16GB MicroSD card included, so the total of bundled storage is bumped to 32GB.

In the multimedia department, you won’t run out of options with either of these phones. The Droid RAZR and the iPhone 4S have 8-megapixel cameras at the back that can record full HD 1080p video. The Galaxy Nexus can also record 1080p video, but, surprisingly, Samsung put only a 5-megapixel shooter on Google’s phone, which is less than what we have seen on other phones from the manufacturer, such as the Galaxy SII. All three phones also have video chat cameras on the front.

If you’re looking for extra tricks from your phone, the Galaxy Nexus might be what you’re looking for. Out of the three phones, the Nexus is the only device with Near Field Communication support, which allows you to make wireless payments (at a small, but growing list of retailers), as well as to beam contacts, websites, apps or maps to other NFC-enabled devices by just bringing the phones together and making them touch.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com

Pi Computed To 10 Trillion Digits

2011-10-17T16:23:00.000+01:00

A Japanese programmer that goes by the handle JA0HXV announced that he has computed Pi to 10 Trillion Digits. This breaks the previous world record of 5 trillion digits. Computation began in October of 2010 and finished yesterday after multiple hard disk problems, he said.

Details in English are not fully available yet, but heres the link to the Japanese page.

JA0HXV has held computation records for Pi in the past.

English page

Source:http://science.slashdot.org

Ubuntu 11.10 is here

2011-10-13T18:48:00.003+01:00

Ubuntu received a major update today. The developers behind the popular Linux distribution released version 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot. The update brings a wide range of improvements, including some much-needed enhancements to Ubuntu's Unity Shell.

New Ubuntu releases are issued every six months in conformance with the distribution's time-based development cycle. The agenda for version 11.10 was announced back in March, shortly before the release of version 11.04. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth chose the codename Oneiric Ocelot to reflect the 11.10 cycle's dual emphasis on daydreams and discipline.

The 11.04 release was a major milestone because it introduced some radical changes to the Ubuntu desktop experience. Like you should know, Unity exhibited enormous potential but fell short of expectations due to some weak areas. During the past six months, the developers have been working hard to close key gaps in the shell implementation.

As a result of their efforts, the Unity environment feels more robust in Ubuntu 11.10. The solid support for a work-alike 2D fallback for the shell is a particularly big step forward, ensuring that users can still get the Unity experience even if their graphics hardware doesn't support compositing.

The Unity dash is a bit cleaner in 11.10 and gained a new panel for music search and playback that is designed to integrate with the Banshee audio player. The menus in the top right-hand corner of the screen have been streamlined and reorganized so that they are easier to navigate.

Although Unity has come a long way, there are still some areas where mediocre design compromises Unity's intended usability advantages. The eccentric application launcher, for example, is still a sore spot in an otherwise elegant desktop.

Source:http://arstechnica.com

Apple iPhone 4S Preoders Top One Million in 24 Hours

2011-10-10T14:47:00.000+01:00

While the iPhone 5 was a no-show, consumers still seem just as interested in pre-ordering the latest Apple handset.

Apple announced pre-orders of its iPhone 4S have topped one million in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4.The iPhone 4S is the company’s latest smartphone and comes with new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip an all new camera with advanced optics full 1080p HD resolution video recording and Siri, an intelligent assistant application that helps users get things done by asking it questions “We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.”

The iPhone 4S will be available at all 245 Apple retail stores in the U.S. starting Friday, October 14. Every customer who buys an iPhone 4S at an Apple retail store will also be offered free Personal Setup service, helping them customize their iPhone 4S by setting up email, showing them new apps from the App Store and more.

The smartphone also includes iOS 5, Apple’s latest edition of its mobile operating system with over 200 new features, and iCloud, a set of free cloud services that work with a user’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store content in iCloud and push it to all user devices.

The iPhone 4S comes in either black or white and will be available—with a two-year rate plan-- in the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for the new 64GB model. The handset will be available from the Apple Online Store, Apple’s retail stores and through AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and select Best Buy, Target and Walmart stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. The last version of the device, the iPhone 4, is available for just $99 and the iPhone 3GS is available for free with a two-year contract, the company noted.

Although Apple’s press event to launch the next iPhone disappointed some Apple fans who were expecting the release of the mythical “iPhone 5”, most analysts were sufficiently satisfied with the latest iteration of the popular smartphone. "While the form factor does not have a bigger screen or thinner body, the processor improvements, HSPA+ [Evolved High-Speed Packet Access] speeds [particularly beneficial for AT&T and European subscribers] should drive a large number of upgrades, especially as outside the U.S. LTE [Long-Term Evolution] deployments are not being rushed," said Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek.

Source: http://www.eweek.com

Microsoft updates on the way.

2011-10-07T18:59:00.000+01:00

So, is this really news?

Microsoft is set to release eight bulletins in the October edition of Patch Tuesday. Two of the bulletins are rated as critical while the remaining six were given important ratings.
The critically affected software includes Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Windows, and Internet Explorer. Windows also has vulnerabilities rated as important, as does Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway and Microsoft Host Integration Server.
Unpatched machines will be susceptible to remote code execution, elevation of privileges, and denial of service attacks.
Check out their website on October 11 for the full Patch Tuesday release. Microsoft will also hold a webcast Tuesday at two PM Eastern Time (11 AM Pacific Time) to address customer questions regarding the patches.

From http://threatpost.com

Are You disappointed by yesterdays Apple event?

2011-10-05T12:38:00.000+01:00

Well while most people were waiting for the new Iphone 5 they didnt showed it to us yet. Instead they showed us an updated version of the Iphone4. Iphone 4S.
This new upgrade will have an A5 dual core chip (also used in Ipad2).
It will support both GSM and CDMA, the camera has now 8 megapixels (60% more than the previous one).

The biggest new however is Siri.
Voice control is by no means a new concept, but interpreting what has been said and working out the context is something that has not been fully explored on a mobile device before.
Google is doing great work with its own voice software, but Siri appears to have taken things to a new level.

For a great comparation between the smarphone elite check out this

Amazon's Cloud Gives Its New Browser an Unfair Edge

2011-10-04T17:21:00.000+01:00

Among the features announced with Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet is an unexpected and innovative new piece of software: a Web browser called Amazon Silk that taps into Amazon's enormous cloud infrastructure to speed up the delivery of content to a mobile device.

See the whole article here:

The Silk browser—developed for Amazon's Kindle Fire—could make for the fastest mobile browsing experience yet

New Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 holder comes with bike attached

2011-10-03T17:55:00.000+01:00

For a tablet that prides itself in being thin and lightweight, the latest Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessory sure adds considerable heft to the device. The Korean manufacturer's UK branch has teamed up with 14 Bike Co to bring the world the Samsung Galaxy bicycle -- a mild-mannered bike with a custom paint job and a detachable holder for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 made from carbon fiber. So, why carry a tablet on a bicycle? For checking things like mileage planners and route trackers on the go, apparently. No word on pricing yet, but we're guessing that this'll be among the more expensive tablet accessories out there.

First Post

2011-10-03T17:33:00.000+01:00

Hi.
In this blog I will be posting some tech related news as a part time.
Tomorrow is the new Iphone 5 release date so stay tuned.