FreedomPop plans to let wireless users trade data usage

The still somewhat mysterious FreedomPop wireless broadband service is slowly revealing more of its plans. The company had previously said it planned to offer free access to its service and now GigaOM has received more information from FreedomPop's marketing head, Tony Miller.

According to Miller, users will be able to access up to 1GB of data free of charge each month at 4G speeds, thanks to its new partnership with Clearwire's WiMAX network. Each additional megabyte will cost one cent. However, the interesting thing is that users will be able actually trade data usage with each other.

FreedomPop will allow users who are not close to using their free monthly data allowance to give part of their bandwidth to other users who are approaching their cap, thus helping heavy bandwidth users to save some extra charges. Users will also get larger free data caps if they refer more people to their service.

FreedomPop also plans to sell a WiMAX shell for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that would allow those 3G-based smartphones to get 4G access. The shell would also serve as a mobile hotspot for up to eight other devices.

So how in the world will FreedomPop make money? Miller says that the company plans to offer additional services that would require a fee but there's no word on what these services might be like. It is hoped that FreedomPop will launch later in 2012.

Source : neowin

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Ice Cream Sandwich updates for Xperia phones

If you own a Android-based Xperia smartphone from Sony and have been wondering when or even if your phone would get a free Android 4.0 upgrade, wonder no more. Sony posted up a note on its official Xperia blog this week that gives a timeline for when Xperia phones will be receiving the Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade.

The first Xperia phones to gain access to the Android 4.0 update will be the Arc S, the Neo V and the Ray. Owners of those devices can expect to see ICS start its update cycle sometime in mid-April and continue for the next four to six weeks. As usual, the timing of these updates will be up to your local country and wireless carrier.

Other Xperia phones such as the Arc, the PLAY, the Neo, the Mini, the Mini Pro, Pro, and the Active will get the Android 4.0 update in late May or early June. That also goes for the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman device.

Sony points out that all of these smartphones will not be getting over-the-air ICS updates via 3G/4G or WiFi. Instead, users will have to download and install them via the Windows-based via PC Companion or Bridge for the Mac users.

Sony's recently launched Xperia S smartphone, which we reviewed just a few days ago, is also scheduled to get an Android 4.0 update sometime in the second quarter of 2012.

Source : neowin

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Mac OS Beats Windows 8

Most consumers don't download and install a pre-release version of an OS on their PCs for a variety of reasons. However, a new study claims that among the few people who do take the plunge, Mac users seem to be more willing to try out a preview version of the next OS than those that use Windows PCs.

Computerworld.com reports that according to the study, which was organized by the Chitika online ad network, only 0.06 percent of Mac users which accessed the company's network of sites used the beta version of Mountain Lion. The data was taken about one week after Apple first announced its plans for Mountain Lion in February and released the preview version.

By contrast, Chitika said just 0.021 percent of Windows PC users that connected to websites on its network were running the Windows 8 Developer Preview version one week after Microsoft released it in September 2011.

Of course, Microsoft let anyone download the Developer Preview build of Windows 8. Apple only allowed registered Mac OS developers to access the preview build of Mountain Lion. Indeed, Chitika said in a statement that these low percentage numbers may not mean that much in the long run, saying:

Low levels of use for unreleased versions of software are typical ... given that in the early stages of a product, the heaviest users tend to be developers who are focusing on testing and preparation of the release.

Source : neowin

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Some Windows 8 laptops to get quad-core Qualcomm CPU

Microsoft is working to bring its ARM port of Windows 8 out at the same time as the x86 processor version. When the ARM version is released, it will likely be inside some thin and light laptops that will have a quad-core processor made by Qualcomm.

PCWorld.com reports that the company hopes to have the quad-core version of its Snapdragon S4 processor in Windows 8 laptops that will be both thinner and lighter than notebooks based on Intel's Ultrabook design. The article didn't state which PC laptop makers would offer notebooks with Qualcomm's upcoming processor inside.

Qualcomm is also reportedly working on adding 64-bit support to a future version of the Snapdragon processor but the company's senior vice president Rob Chandhok would not comment on a timeframe for that chip to be released.

In related news, PCWorld.com also interviewed Intel product manager Anand Kajshmanan about the future of Ultrabook-based laptops. He stated that Intel is pushing for hardware makers to embrace touch screens for future Ultrabooks and for Windows 8 support, saying:

We fundamentally believe in the concept of touch, and touch on a clamshell. We believe it's going to take off in 2012 or at least 2013, especially with Windows 8. It really feels like now is the right time, now that the hardware and software are working really well together. We're strongly encouraging our partners to incorporate touch on the Ultrabooks.

Source : neowin

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HTC One X first test

Earlier on Friday we told you about all of the preparations that went into the shoot for the first series of commercials for the HTC One series. Shot 12,000 feet in the air, the idea behind the video was to show how easy is it to operate the camera on the units. As we mentioned before, the cameras on the HTC One series smartphones from the One series need only 0.7 seconds to boot and 0.2 seconds to lock the focus in place.

Sure, the HTC One X is a beast of a handset, but can it take a licking? To test how strong the device is, the flagship model was put into a dryer for one hour. According to HTC, the polycarbonate unibody is so strong and tough that a case is not required. And thanks to the use of Gorilla Glass, the screen also can take some pretty tough punishment.

Put the videos together and you see the HTC One X go from on extreme to another without any problems. What's next, shooting the device out of a cannon?

Source : phonearena

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Visa, MasterCard affected by ‘massive’ data breach; NYC gangs being blamed?

Atlanta, Georgia-based credit card processor Global Payments Inc. has revealed that is has suffered a “massive” security breach, affecting US banks as well as the likes of Visa and MasterCard. The breach may involve more than 10 million credit card numbers.

Late last week, Visa and MasterCard began alerting banks that certain credit cards had been compromised, though the compromised credit card processor hadn’t been named yet. Enough data had been taken to counterfeit new credit cards. Though its not exactly clear how many accounts have been compromised, at least 482 credit unions have been alerted and early on there was a total of 56,455 VISA and MasterCard accounts compromised.

The credit card data had been compromised in the time between January 21 and February 25 of 2012. Much of the fraudulent activity seems to come from credit and debit cards issued to businesses. Analysis of the transactions seem to point to New York City parking garages. The Krebs on Security blog, which broke the story, reported that the breach could be connected to Dominican street gangs based in and around New York City.

Visa released a statement that the Visa systems, including VisaNet has not been breached. The company made it very clear that the third party was responsible, and reassured customers that Visa has many security measures in place including encryption, tokenization and authentication using EMV chip technology.

Global Payments released a statement on Friday copping to the security beach, which it became aware of in early March of 2012. The idea of a data breach affecting major corporations like Visa is certain to cause cringing, especially with the bevy of massive and bold breaches in 2011. NY-based Dominican gangs are tentatively being named the scapegoats by some sources, but the companies are still investigating.

Global Payments stock reportedly dropped by 9 percent today. CEO Paul Garcia said, “It is reassuring that our security process detected an intrusion. It is crucial to understand that this incident does not involve our merchants or their relationships with their customers.

Source :  digitaltrends

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Microsoft may be set to combat piracy with special chinese edition of windows 8

This is quite interesting. In a potential bid to combat piracy, Microsoft is said to be building a specific Windows 8 SKU, or build, for the Chinese market. This edition of Windows 8 will likely, if built, be cheaper than other versions of the operating system, making it more generally affordable.

That affordability is Microsoft’s tool to attack rampant piracy in the country. Precautions will be taken to ensure that the special build is only used in China, NeoWin reports: “The SKU can apparently be installed only with a Chinese ISO. The article adds that if you try to do so with an English ISO, a Blue Screen of Death alert appears with the error message ‘Bad MUI’.”

This idea, building a lightweight and cheap version of its flagship software, is not new for Microsoft. The company is preparing Tango, an update to Windows Phone that will allow for lower priced handsets, as the software is being stripped down to support them. Microsoft hopes that low price will entice new customers. In both cases, Microsoft is targeting developing markets with specially designed, and priced products; one size fits all this is not.

Putting aside what piracy is (a service problem), Microsoft appears to understand that if it can find the right price point, it can change the way the Chinese computing market functions. Generally, SKUs annoy me, when it comes to Windows; do we really need Home Basic, and Home Premium? However, in this case, if Microsoft does release the build, it will be to make the product simply more accessible. It’s hard to get mad about that.

Source : thenextweb

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Control Your iTunes Or Spotify Music Library Using Kinect Like Gestures On Your Mac With Flutter

It would seem that controlling things using gestures is fast becoming the new thing to do. Microsoft have enjoyed great success with their Kinect motion detecting hardware that allows users to use their bodies as the controller for certain games as well as navigating through menus with gestures. An increasing number of iOS apps are starting to include gesture-based user interfaces that allow users to navigate through the various app screens using a number of different gestures including flicks and swipes.


The guys over at Bot Square Inc. have recognized the popularity of controlling things with the flick of the hand or finger, which has led them to create their Flutter app, available as an alpha download from their website for Mac OS X users. Flutter exists purely to allow a Mac user to be able to play and pause their music libraries either on iTunes or Spotify, depends on whichever you’re using.

At first glance, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary with that, after all, Mac users can already pause their tunes through the app’s buttons or by using the built-in hot keys on the keyboard.


Flutter works by taking things one step further and using the Mac’s built-in iSight camera, it allows users to play or pause music using a simple waving hand gesture. When the Flutter app is invoked, the camera springs into life and instead of displaying your rather confused face on the screen, it waits patiently in the background looking out for recognizable gestures which tells it to play or stop the music. The gesture is extremely simple and means that the user simply needs to hold his/her hand up to the camera with their palm facing forward to kick Flutter into action.

The app is extremely simple, but also rather powerful at the same time. By opting for a gesture-based control rather than a physical button press or a mouse click, a user can start or stop music or even movies up to six feet away from their Mac, ideal for those extremely lazy movies buffs amongst us.

You kind of get the feeling that apps such as Flutter are going to be the stepping stone to software that is a lot more functional, bringing a larger array of more complicated gestures that allow almost total control over our technology lives. Bringing the same style of application to my iPad would also make me extremely excited.

Source : redmondpie

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Apple Hit With Another Lawsuit Citing False Siri Advertising

A couple of weeks back, Apple was dealt a lawsuit from a disgruntled New Yorker who claimed that the Siri voice-recognition software did not work as smoothly in reality as it appeared to on the advertisements.

In a week in which the fruit company has been in hot water regarding the misrepresentation of its products, iPhone 4S owner David Jones filed a suit on Tuesday, according to the LA Times. Apple’s new iPad – although 4G LTE compliant from a hardware point of view – has come under fire in countries such as Australia, where it is marketed as an "iPad 4G", despite none of the major carriers Down Under actually supporting 4G.


Similarly to the first class-action suit, Jones accuses Tim Cook’s company of falsely representing Siri’s capabilities:

Through its nationwide multimedia marketing campaign, Apple disseminates false and deceptive representations regarding the functionality of the Siri feature

Like the New York suit, lodged by Brooklyn resident Frank M Fazio, Jones’ complaint states grievances with the end product:

In many of Apple’s television commercials. . Apple depicts tasks as easily accomplished "just by asking" Siri. Apple’s deceptive commercials diverge greatly from the actual functionality and operation of the Siri feature.

In Jones’ case, "Siri would either not understand what Plaintiff asked, or, after a long wait, provided the wrong answer." He is currently seeking "relief and damages" for not only himself, but other iPhone 4S buyers.

As well as the uprising of iPad-related issues, this second suit comes just a day after Apple began paying compensation to iPhone 4 users affected by the Antennagate scandal of 2010. If you were among the early adopters of the landmark Retina device, then check out this link for more information on how you can retrieve either a $15 settlement, or a free bumper.


Most iPhone 4S adverts currently doing the rounds use Siri as the clinching feature, and although almost nine in every ten iPhone 4S owners consult Siri on a regular basis, reviews have certainly been mixed.

Lawsuits like this certainly won’t do the company’s PR any good, and although most of us can take Siri for what it is – a beta-stage implementation – such heavy marketing should maybe warrant a more finished article.

Thoughts?

Source : redmondpie

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Another Kelihos based botnet shut down

In September, Microsoft announced it was part of an operation designed to shut down a criminal botnet that was based on the Kelihos malware program. Today another company, the software security firm CrowdStrike, announced it has also worked with other companies to shut down a Kelihos-based botnet that was even larger than the one closed by Microsoft.

CrowdStrike stated in their blog post that they worked with Dell SecureWorks, the Honeynet Project and Kaspersky to shut down the botnet. The network used Kelihos.B, which is a a successor of the original Kelihos program. While Microsoft's shut down involved 41,000 PCs, CrowdStrike claims that the botnet it closed down involved over 110,000 infected PCs. 84 percent of those PCs were running Windows XP.

CrowdStrike also released an infographic, shown below, which shows how the company and its partners closed down this latest botnet. Basically, the team reversed engineered the malware and then sent it out to the infected PCs in the botnet. The PCs in turn connect to a "sinkhole" that is controlled by CrowdStrike, thus eliminating their connection to the outside Internet.

News.com reports that this particular botnet was used to send out spam for some Canadian-based pharmaceutical companies. However, it also stole bitcoins, the controversial virtual currency, from a number of PCs.

Source : neowin

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Apple offers refunds for new iPad owners ?

A controversy over the definition of 4G has proven to be a bit costly for Apple. A few days ago, the new iPad went on sale in Australia with the claim that it had 4G speeds. The problem? The current version of the new iPad cannot actually connect to the only 4G wireless network in that country because the network operates on a frequency of 1800MHz. The new iPad's LTE 4G hardware works on frequencies of 700MHz and 2100MHz.

Now PCMag.com reports that Apple has offered in the country's Federal Court to email all of the Australian new iPad owners and offer them a refund if they felt they were in any way misled by the claims of the 4G support. The company has also told the court they plan to change their advertising to state that while the new iPad does indeed have 4G hardware, it is currently unable to connect to Australia's 4G networks.

This issue came to light a few days ago when the regulatory body the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filed a complaint in the country's court that Apple's claims of 4G connectivity for the new iPad were incorrect. Apple still insists that there was no intention to mislead new iPad owners over the 4G claims, according to the BBC.

Source :  thenextweb

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Apple hits $613.40 for the First Time

If you are in the States, by this time in the you are probably still working on your coffee and newspaper. Apple, on the other hand, is up, about, and setting records.

Apple this morning reached a new, all time stock price high of $613.40 per share. The company’s market cap now exceeds $570,000,000,000. Since hitting the record, Apple has eased slightly to the $612 level. The company is up around 0.8% today.

While we won’t be covering every Apple record, we will occasionally highlight something like this to keep the firm’s market capitalization in perspective. Let’s have some fun, it’s early, after all. At a rounded valuation of $570 billion, Apple is worth:

    2.01 Microsofts
    2.7 Googles
    5.044 Ciscos

In other words, among the giants, Apple is Achilles, but without the heel. It’s important to note that while Apple is worth a full twice what Microsoft is, that ratio has softened lately by a rally in the Redmond-based software company’s valuation; Apple was worth more than two Microsofts quite recently.

While it would be easy to look at Apple, and the stunning growth of its market capitalization, and shout ‘irrational exuberance,’ what is true about the company is that its fundamentals are comically strong. A dividend is planned, along with share buy backs, on top of a PE ratio that is sub-20. Apple is healthy, and has revenues, profits, and cash to match its market cap. That’s damn impressive.

What’s next for the company? Provided it can keep the great wheels of its cash machine spinning, who can even guess.

Source :  thenextweb

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The Final Gnome 3.4 Arrive Soon !!

Yesterday we got Gnome Shell 3.4, GTK 3.4 and some other parts of this new desktop. Today, the team have announced the availability of the full Gnome 3.4 package. After developing for 6 months, the final release comes with some noticeable improvements, new features, changes and also with some new apps…

According to Gnome, the top changes are :

    A new virtual machine and remote access application (A replacement for Virtualbox? The interface seems to be cool but I never used it)
    Completely revamped web browsing user experience (A clean minimal browser)
    Integrated document search
    First-class web applications
    Better graphics tablet support
    Application menus

There are a lot more changes. Read the release notes to learn whats new. Now it will take some time for Gnome 3.4 to arrive on Linux distributions. Sadly, Ubuntu 12.04 might not get this update. But lets see… If I find a way to install it in Ubuntu, I’ll put it on TechStoreLk

Source : cybergnome

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Anonymous is Planning to Take down the Internet on the 31st of March

Supposed members from the hacker group Anonymous are threatening to shut down the internet on March 31st, calling it 'Operation Blackout.' The decentralized group issued a press release on Pastebin announcing the their most ambitious plans yet: to take down the thirteen servers that form the DNS directory.

According to the statement, the attack is meant to send a very strong message in protest of "SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun." Even though such an attack would no doubt affect everyone, the statement says that is not the purpose.

    By cutting these off the Internet, nobody will be able to perform a domain name lookup, thus, disabling the HTTP Internet, which is, after all, the most widely used function of the Web. Anybody entering "http://www.google.com" or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is, close enough. Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to 'kill' the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most.

How, exactly, would someone go about shutting down the Internet if they wanted to? Would it even be possible? The attack plan follows the usual Anonymous method, a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, but targeted at the DNS directory.

So, what is the DNS directory? In layman's terms, it converts the web address you enter into an IP (Internet Protocol) address, which tells the servers where to send you. If the DNS system were to fail, you wouldn't be able to enter a website unless you knew the IP address, which very few people would know.

So, will it happen? Who knows; thanks to Anonymous' decentralized nature, it's hard to figure out if a message is even coming from the real 'group', and it's even harder to know if they actually have the ability to carry out such an attack. We'll just have to wait and see, but if the Internet does go down, we probably won't be here to let you know.

Source : Neowin

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Angry Birds Space HD Is Finally Available In The Play Store For $2.99, But Honestly, Rovio, Why?

Maybe you weren't waiting up til 4am EST, eagerly anticipating the release of Angry Birds Space. That is what you have us for, after all. If you were, though, you might remember that only one version of the app made it to the Play Store that night: the free version. Later, though, Rovio released "Angry Birds Space Premium," which is the ad-free version of the app. Now, Rovio has released Angry Birds Space HD. Sure. Why not?

This breaks Rovio's tradition of only having one version of its app on the Play Store. As you can see below, all the other versions of Angry Birds have one app on the Play Store. It's just the free version, but still only one. Now, though, there are an equal number of Angry Birds Space apps as there are all other Angry Birds versions combined.

Now, in Rovio's defense, this does seem to make a certain amount of sense. Rovio has never released a paid version of its app on Android, despite making most of its initial cash on the paid game in the iOS app store. Rovio, understandably, wants to experiment with paid apps on the Play Store. However, the HD version of the app makes no sense at all.

For starters, the free version of the app looks just fine on my Xoom. While Android tablets with even HD-er screens are on their way (hello, Infinity), 1280x800 is still pretty much the standard for Android tablets that are on the market right now. In fact, Rovio initially released Angry Birds Space HD on the Amazon Appstore, pitching it as a Kindle Fire version, despite the Fire only having a resolution of 1024x600.

I downloaded Angry Birds Space HD to my Xoom and, with the exception of fixing the improperly sized intro graphic, the game looks nearly identical. The free version looks just as good on my display. Which leaves me to wonder what I just spent $3 on. Maybe the differences would be more noticeable on the Transformer Pad Infinity, or the new iPad, but here on an Android tablet that actually exists, that $3 seems to buy you absolutely nothing.

I don't have a problem with paid versions of games. In fact, I'd prefer it to the alternatives. However, Android, as a platform, is built so that you don't need to have multiple versions to support different device types. From the ground up, Android has been designed so that things like screen resolution or aspect ratio won't break an app. So, when a game developer deliberately breaks off an "HD" version, it's annoying. When that "HD" version doesn't actually offer any improvements over the original, though, it feels like theft.

Oh, and not to add injury to insult or anything, but if you're considering buying this app now anyways, take a look at some of the reviews first. It seems that some users are experiencing crashes and difficulty loading the HD app. If you're feeling gutsy, though, here's a widget just for you.

Source : androidpolice

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Intel to release Ivy Bridge processors at the end of April

Intel is expected to officially announce its latest Ivy Bridge processors at the end of April. First-tier notebook brand vendors have been aggressively competing for available capacity from Intel, according to sources from notebook players.

Mass shipments of Ivy Bridge processors were originally reported to be delayed by eight weeks, but Intel has recently responded that the company will only postpone the launch by a few weeks and production is on schedule according to its existing plans.

However, the sources noted that Intel has adjusted its Ivy Bridge processor capacity deployment and has increased the proportion for ultrabook and smartphone platforms. As for the traditional desktop and notebook segments, Intel will mainly supply high-end processors initially.

With vendors aggressively placing orders for Ivy Bridge-based ultrabook processors, some vendors are expected to be able to release their second-generation ultrabooks as soon as May with prices to also drop to around US$799-899.

By the end of 2012, ultrabooks are expected to account for 15-20% of total consumer notebook shipments with the proportion to rise to 40% in 2013 and surpass 50% by the end of 2013, the sources noted.

Intel's new Ivy Bridge-based ultrabook processors that will launch at the end of April will include dual-core i7-2677M at 1.8GHz (US$317), Core i7-2637M at 1.7GHz (US$289), Core i5-2557M at 1.7GHz (US$250), Core i7-2657M at 1.6GHz (US$317), Core i7-2617M at 1.5GHz (US$289) and Core i5-2537M at 1.8GHz (US$259).

Source: digitimes 

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