Brancheninsidern zufolge könnte das iPhone 6 sowie die neue Generation der Apple-Tablets aus Liquidmetal hergestellt werden. Darauf deuten auch eine Reihe kürzlich angemeldeter Patente des kalifornischen Unternehmens Liquidmetal Technologies hin.
Die Schweizer Staatsanwälte wollen mehr auf die Fahndung im Internet setzen. Sie haben dahingehende Empfehlungen zur Öffentlichkeitsfahndung bei Ausschreitungen und Krawallen verabschiedet. Vorgesehen ist ein dreistufiges Modell, das in der Veröffentlichung von Bildern im Internet gipfelt.
Das Zürcher Obergericht hat am Montag einen ehemaligen Zürcher Gymnasiasten wegen "Schreckung der Bevölkerung" verurteilt. Weil ihm niemand seiner rund 290 Facebook-Freunde zum Geburtstag gratuliert hatte, drohte er ihnen mit der Vernichtung.
Der notleidende Smartphonespezialist Blackberry pflügt seine Chefetage um. Rund zwei Wochen nach Konzernchef Thorsten Heins gehen jetzt auch die Zuständigen für Marketing und das operative Geschäft sowie der Finanzvorstand, wie das kanadische Unternehmen heute mitteilte.
Mit dem 54-jährigen Manager Bruno Morandi hat die Ruf Informatik einen neuen Verkaufsleiter unter Vertrag genommen. Morandi, der direkt von In4U kommt, nimmt bei der auf öffentliche Verwaltungen fokussierten Ruf Informatik auch Einsitz in die Geschäftsleitung.
Nachdem bereits die Aktionäre dem Verkauf der Nokia-Mobilfunksparte an Microsoft zugestimmt haben, scheint der Windows-Hersteller bald einen weiteren Schritt näher, die geplante Übernahme abzuschliessen. Wie die Nachrichtenagentur Reuters berichtet, steht Microsoft unmittelbar davor, grünes Licht von den EU-Regulierungsbehörden zu erhalten.
Die in Lindau am Bodensee domizilierte Actinium Consulting hat gemeinsam mit dem Beratungshaus All Consulting und der Wirtschaftstreuhändergesellschaft OBT ein BI-Joint-Venture gegründet. Das auf BI (Business Intelligence) ausgerichtete Gemeinschaftsunternehmen soll Anfang 2014 unter der Firmierung All Actinium mit Sitz in Luzern operativ an den Start gehen.
Wer auffallen will, nimmt sich ein Smartphone in Gold. Apple und Samsung haben den Trend mit iPhone 5S und Galaxy S4 ins Rollen gebracht. Anfang Dezember kommt auch das HTC One in der Dachregion (Deutschland, Österreich und Schweiz) mit einem Gehäuse aus goldfarbenem Aluminium auf den Markt.
Im Rahmen der Aktion "Mobile Aid" sammeln Swisscom, das SOS-Kinderdorf und Valora erneut Handys für einen guten Zweck. Alte und nicht mehr gebrauchte Mobilfunktelefone können vom 25. November bis 15. Dezember in allen Swisscom Shops sowie an sämtlichen K Kiosk-Verkaufsstellen abgegeben werden.
Ende der Vorwoche hatte Intel im Rahmen einer Investorenkonferenz seine Roadmap-Pläne für 2014 präzisiert. So will Intel im nächsten Jahr neue Atom-Chips für Smartphones und Tablets auf den Markt bringen. Die Grafik-Performance bei mobilen Endgeräten soll dadurch um das 15-fache klettern, wobei die Rechnerleistung für Mobile-Geräte um das fünffache bis 2016 zulegen soll.
We've been hearing a lot about technical problems with the Federal government's . But slow downloads and 404 errors aren’t the worst of what could plague the Obamacare site. According to white-hat hacker David Kennedy, the site can be easily hacked, allowing criminals to compromise computers and steal people's private information. White-hat hackers examine systems, searching for security flaws. But instead of criminally exploiting whatever flaws they find, they report them so that the systems can become more secure. Kennedy is chief executive of , a security company. On a , Kennedy offered some harsh words about the Obamacare Web site. After noting the well-publicized performance problems, "we basically started poking and prodding and looking at the security, and we found that it was pretty bad all around… Putting your information on there is definitely a risk." What could happen to people who use the site should it be compromised? Kennedy warns of "everything from hacking someone's computer so when you visit the website it actually tries to hack your computer back, all the way to being able to extract email addresses, users names—first name, last name—[and] locations."
BlackBerry’s chief operating, marketing and financial officers are leaving as recently appointed CEO John Chen makes his mark on the struggling mobile vendor. Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear, Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben and Chief Financial Officer Brian Bidulka all are leaving BlackBerry, the company announced on Monday. James Yersh, the former controller and head of compliance, will take over the top financial spot. No replacements were named for Tear or Boulben, who both were hired by ousted CEO Thorsten Heins in May 2012 as BlackBerry geared up for the and a renewed consumer marketing effort. BlackBerry 10 didn’t launch until the following January, and the company has since moved away from the consumer business. “I look forward to working more directly with the talented teams of engineers, and the sales and marketing teams around the world to facilitate the BlackBerry turn-around and to drive innovation,” Chen said in a press release. Departing CFO Bidulka, who worked at BlackBerry for eight years, will remain as a special adviser to assist with the transition for the rest of the company’s fiscal year.
Parts of HealthCare.gov, the two-month-old insurance-shopping website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, crashed for about an hour Monday, just days before agency officials say the site will be running smoothly for the “vast majority” of users. The site, a key part of 2010’s Affordable Care Act insurance reform legislation, also experienced “periods of latency and slowness” Sunday, said Julie Bataille, communications director for the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Government officials, including HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Barack Obama, have promised that the site, which allows uninsured U.S. residents to shop for and compare health coverage, would be working well for the majority of people by the end of this month. The outage in the insurance application and enrollment tools on the website Monday was due to “parts of the system not communicating effectively on the back end,” Bataille said during a press briefing. The federal data-services hub portion of the website, where health insurers are linked to federal agencies to determine an applicant’s eligibility for insurance, remained in operation during the outage of the other parts of the site, she said.
The holiday week has officially begun and retailers aren't wasting any time rolling out hot deals. In a true pre-Black Friday offer, Dell has dropped the price of their popular discounted a massive a $119. Scroll down to get these and the rest of today's hottest deals. ). with free shipping (normally $129.99).
Controversial quantum device maker D-Wave is hoping to find a home for its cutting-edge technology in the high-performance computing (HPC) market. Colin Williams, the business development director for D-Wave, made a direct appeal to system administrators at the SC13 supercomputing conference, held last week in Denver. “One of the reasons we’re coming here to talk with you is that we are actively looking for partners in the high-performance computing space,” said Williams (pictured above). “We see quantum computing not as competition with HPC, but the potential with a lot of synergy with HPC people.” Administrators should think of “quantum computing being a new tool in your arsenal,” Williams said.
A Chinese regulator is investigating mobile chip maker Qualcomm in connection with the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law, Qualcomm said on Monday. In a statement, the company said it would cooperate with the investigation by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Qualcomm said it wasn’t aware of any charge by the NDRC that it had violated the antimonopoly law. The NDRC told Qualcomm that the substance of the probe was confidential. The NDRC has investigated or punished both foreign and domestic companies in the past on antitrust and other issues. In January, it announced totalling about $56 million against LG, Samsung and four Taiwanese companies for price-fixing on LCD panels. Qualcomm supplies chips for many smartphones and other mobile devices and also licenses much of the patented technology behind 3G and LTE technologies. In 2009, the Korean Fair Trade Commission complaints that Qualcomm had charged them too much to use its patents on 3G and emerging 4G mobile technologies.
worldwide. That's double the user base it said it had in April, a mere seven months ago. , is to let users do an end-run around the wireless carriers (and expensive voice and text plans) through its own proprietary communications system. As the number of users grows in size, it becomes increasingly more valuable and useful. The most talked-about component of Line, however, is its integration of an overwhelming amount of cuteness into the app. Users can slap stickers and emoji (animated and sometimes elaborate emoticons) into their messages, often in the form of playful, cartoon baby animals. A matching game which can be played with other Line users involving candy and animal heads is also built into the service. , the numbers may be misleading. That's because Line reports only registered users, not active monthly users, which is generally considered a more reliable metric for measuring the popularity of an app. For example, that registered user figure includes people who installed the app and never used it again, as well as counting the same user more than once if they have the app installed on multiple devices.
Steve Ballmer's audacious vision of "," delivering a single, seamless user experience across a wide range of devices, from PCs to tablets to video-game consoles, will not be achieved without digital bloodshed. Windows will die, a Microsoft exec suggested last week.. Or at least, form of Windows will die. Speaking at the UBS Global Technology Summit last week, Microsoft device and services chief Julie Larson-Green strongly hinted that further unification is a-coming. "We have the Windows Phone OS," she said, as first reported by . "We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We are not going to have three." While the straightforwardness of Larson-Green's words is somewhat shocking, the meaning at their core is not. Microsoft has been moving toward a unified user experience for a long, long time now, as evidenced by the cross-platform nature of Windows 8 itself, along with the proliferation of Live Tiles platforms, and Myerson hasn't been shy about his plans for the overarching Microsoft universe.
A manufacturer of glass coverings for Apple is drawing accusations of worker exploitation from Hong Kong labor groups concerned with several employee suicides at its factory in China. from Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM). Employing about 40,000 workers, the factory produces glass coverings mainly for Apple, but also counts Samsung as a client. To be hired, employees at the factory are allegedly required to sign an application asking for voluntary overtime. As a result, workers tend to log 11-hour work days, including over the weekend, SACOM said. The factory also allegedly denies injured workers proper compensation, and has set up a strict punitive system to keep employees in line, according to SACOM. Employees are fined for not reaching production targets, falling asleep at work or breaking the glass used in the manufacturing.
Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and Korean operator SK Telecom have demonstrated the potential for virtualizing the core of a mobile network, which will make it easier for operators to roll out new services. Virtualization and cloud-based services have changed enterprise systems' architecture and management. Mobile operators' desire for the same advantages in their networks has given rise to the concept of NFV (network functions virtualization). The goal is to move away from the proprietary and expensive equipment operators use today and instead adopt a more cloud-based infrastructure that allows them to be more flexible and use commodity hardware. That could, in turn, allow operators to cut costs and roll out services faster, according to Nokia, and that should be a boon for users, as well. Moving to a whole new way of building the networks operators rely on to offer telephony and mobile broadband isn't going to happen overnight. But even if it's still early days, vendors have to show they are current with this idea, according to Sylvain Fabre, research director at Gartner.
Think of all the places where your old email address resides, outside of your immediate control, waiting to give people plenty of false information. There are other people's address books, old messages in people's inboxes, Web sites that use your address as your logon name, and your business cards. Changing your email address can be quite a chore.
Thinking of giving your iPhone the old heave-ho and defecting to the Android Army this holiday season? Google chairman Eric Schmidt wants to help—and no, I'm not talking about the jaw-droppingly low $350" on Google+. More than just another marketing missive (though there plenty of talk along the lines of, "80% of the world, in the latest surveys, agrees on Android"), Eric's Guide is a detailed, 900-plus word step-by-step guide on the nuts-and-bolts of transitioning from Apple's handset to a fresh new Android. Seriously: Schmidt talks about syncing photos with iTunes, shuffling contacts around, and even gets into details about swapping around SIM cards. If you're jumping ship, Schmidt's post really is a great tutorial, painful self-promotional bits and all. Why would anybody consider dumping their .
The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly hacked into over 50,000 computer networks around the world as part of its global intelligence gathering efforts, and also taps into large fiber optic cables that transport Internet traffic between continents at 20 different major points. Saturday based on documents it said were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The information is reportedly taken from a 2012 top secret presentation about the NSA's worldwide signals intelligence gathering capabilities that was shared with the intelligence services of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand that form the Five Eyes partnership. .
When it comes to storage, many of us struggle with the decision of whether to buy speed or capacity. An SSD delivers speed aplenty, but you need a mechanical hard drive for capacity. Buy the SSD and rely on the cloud, or opt for the hard disk and just turtle along? Western Digital's Black2 combo SSD/HDD promises to deliver speed capacity. Marrying a 120GB solid-state drive and a 1TB mechanical drive in a single 2.5-inch, 9.5mm package, the Black2 fits in laptops. Owners of thin-and-lights, on the other hand, won't benefit because that form factor typically accommodates only thinner, 7mm drives. The Black2's SSD and HDD are treated as separate drives, with the idea that you install the operating system, applications, and frequently used data on the SSD and everything else (large files, movies, music, etc.) on the hard drive. This is basically what desktop and two-bay laptop users have been doing with separate drives since the advent of the SSD. It works far better than the hybrid concept (a hard-disk drive with a large NAND cache), which has never delivered on performance promises in . There are a few Black2 caveats: WD highly recommends a fresh OS install; the drive doesn't support Nvidia or ASMedia storage controllers, or the Mac; and the unit can't be used in RAID arrays due to the software component required to access the hard drive—only the SSD is visible without the driver. Mac users get a driver down the road, but don't hold your breath on the other controllers; their relatively insignificant share of the mobile market doesn't warrant the effort. The driver isn't shipped in the rather stylish retail box; WD instead provides a USB flash drive that takes you online to download the software.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em—or at least, customize them. Stardock's latest product, Launch8, adds a static row of icons at the bottom or top of the Windows 8 Start Screen. As you scroll the dynamic start screen left and right (and up and down, in Windows 8.1), the dock stays put, so you always know right where your favorite apps are. Start8 costs $5—as does Launch8. Stardock tries to tie the two together in various ways: By default, the installer makes you install Start8, forcing you to opt out explicitly; then, too, every app on the dock features an item that says "Pin to Start Menu," even if you don't have Launch8 installed. The dock is an add-on, but it is only accessible when you're in the start screen. When you're in the Windows desktop or inside a Modern app, you can't see it. , then find them in the dialog that appears.
You no longer need to be a C-level executive to have your own personal assistant. Thanks to Siri and Google Now, we’ve embraced the idea of the smartphone as an aide, and there’s a virtual secretarial pool of apps that can do everything from schedule meetings and pay bills to give you the day’s box scores. Here are five apps that put the “do” in your to-do lists. Often the challenge is not executing your to-do list, it’s creating the list in the first place. service, 24me integrates with hundreds of U.S. banks and thousands of utility and service providers such as Comcast and AT&T. By accessing your accounts, it will determine when your bills are due and populate your calendar with reminders. Similarly, 24me can link with your social networks to remind you of friends’ birthdays or anniversaries, suggest gifts, and even direct you to an online store for purchase. 24me works with Apple maps, Google maps or Waze to provide navigation assistance. Include an address in a calendar event and it will give you a street view of the location, travel time to the destination and step-by-step navigation.
back up. Thankfully, backing up your most important data is a cinch. It’s the getting off your rear to actually do it that stymies most people, myself included. before your inevitable data disaster occurs. . Choose the one that supports all (or the largest percentage) of your devices, and use the downloadable app that the service provides to maintain a mirror of your files on your local PC.
Printers haven’t changed much, but the tech world around them sure has. People print less frequently, and they’re just as likely to send a job from a smartphone or a tablet as they are from a traditional computer. Today’s printers are keeping up as best they can, with mobile printing options and wireless connectivity, and a few models offer new technologies such as NFC (near-field communication). Before you shop for a printer, sort out who will be using it and for what purposes—and of course, how much you can spend—so you can find the best model for your needs. Printer users generally fall into one of three categories. can be individuals, families, or students. They may not print much, but what they do print could be anything from a homework assignment to photos to an art project. Typically they’re looking for the versatility and lower purchase price of a color inkjet printer.
Apple has acquired PrimeSense, a developer of 3-D sensors that allow devices to respond to the environment in three dimensions. It is not known for which applications Apple aims to use the PrimeSense technology or the price it has paid for the Tel Aviv, Israel, company. Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet emailed the company’s standard statement after an acquisition. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” she wrote. PrimeSense technology was used to power the Kinect motion sensing input device in the original Xbox from Microsoft.
Two computer scientists in Israel say a bitcoin transaction now worth more than $1 million suggests a possible link between a creator of the virtual currency and Ross William Ulbricht, the 29-year-old accused of running the Silk Road underground online marketplace. The 1,000-bitcoin transfer was found during an analysis of the movement of the Silk Road’s bitcoins, according to a forthcoming written by Adi Shamir and Dorit Ron of the Weizmann Institute of Science. The finding suggests a partnership or investment in the Silk Road on the part of someone involved very early on in Bitcoin “but this is pure speculation,” the researchers wrote. The amount was transferred on March 20 from an account established just a week after the bitcoin network launched in January 2009. Early bitcoin accounts are believed to be controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for the person or group of people who created Bitcoin.
in Atlanta now hands out about 550 Apple iPads each year to students for classroom teaching and homework purposes. And while students love them, some parents are now pressing the IT department to restrict use of apps on the devices because they think there's too much game-playing. "We don't block the apps the students are using, and a lot of students are playing Angry Birds, something we don't want," says Brian Meeks, network engineer at Paideia School. Teachers there have embraced iPads as an academic tool for classroom learning, and the school's philosophy is to encourage students to adhere to using iPads only for schoolwork. But kids will be kids, and their parents are noticing their children see the iPads as great toys as well. on the student iPads for purposes that include managing inventory, configuring and installing apps, and checking to make sure iPads aren't "jailbroken." In the future, Sophos Mobile Control may be used to restrict the apps that students use, too, Meeks says. Differentiating between apps for work and play is Businesses and government have similar concerns about work and personal apps. Most of the MDM software can use whitelisting to restrict apps, points out Andrew Braunberg, research director at NSS Labs, which does analysis and testing of network gear.
About one in five people around the globe use a social networking site and that number is expected to grow significantly over the next several years. About 1.61 billion people will use a social networking site, such as Facebook, Google+, , a market research company. That's a 14.2 percent increase from 2012, and double-digit growth is expected to continue through next year. By 2017, 2.33 billion people will use social networks, the company said. The World Bank has reported that there were 7.046 billion people last year. That means this year 22.8 percent of the world's population is using social networks at least every month.
The cyber-gang running the is sharing a big cut of any payments they squeeze out of their victims with criminal botnet owners working closely with them, says Symantec, which has been monitoring this underworld activity online. The CryptoLocker gang, believed to be mainly Russian-speaking, created the malware that makes use of strong encryption to lock up the victim's electronic files until the victim pays a ransom, which typically starts at least $150 to get the key to unlock their scrambled files. The gang itself is paying criminal botnet owners operating vast command-and-control systems of compromised computers to distribute CryptoLocker as a dangerous attachment in spam, says Liam O'Murchu, manager of security response operations at Symantec. In addition to spam distribution, which relies on the victim opening the malware-laden attachment to spread CryptoLocker, the gang is willing to pay a botnet owner as much as 75 percent of any extortion money they can get from victims if the botnet owner directly drops CryptoLocker onto a compromised machine it already controls. Doing that basically scores a direct hit for CryptoLocker but can be counted as a loss of a compromised computer for botnet owners, hence the willingness to share such a high percentage of the monetary gain netted from any victim, O'Murchu says. "They're making a lot of money," and victims are expected to pay in Bitcoin or MoneyPak.
Activist group Privacy International has launched an ambitious project to track the spread of commercial surveillance, spying and tracking technology and the often secretive firms selling into the booming sector. Compiled from a variety of sources over the last four years, the includes 1203 documents covering 338 firms, 97 surveillance systems, and 36 countries, including some from the U.S. and U.K. "This research was conducted as part of our , an investigation into the international surveillance trade that focuses on the sale of technologies by Western companies to repressive regimes intent on using them as tools of political control," said Matt Rice of Privacy International in his introduction to the database. "What we found, and what we are publishing, is downright scary." The notion of "legitimate" surveillance has always been contentious, but the activities of a number of firms have recently raised the concern level a notch.
While major memory vendors have started producing next-generation DDR4 memory, don't expect to see it in servers until late next year, and it won't appear in PCs and tablets for about 18 months. Until Intel and AMD begin supporting DDR4 in their processor boards, users won't be able to enjoy of the technology, which offer twice the performance, twice the base capacity (16GB) and 20 percent to 40 percent less power consumption than today's technology, according to industry analysts. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are memory boards. Both Intel and AMD have confirmed to Computerworld that each expects to begin supporting DDR4 memory on processor boards next year.
The idea that the world stands on the edge of an is barely out of the hype cycle and already Verizon has announced a cloud system designed to authenticate the billions of devices that might one day populate it. Verizon's new flag in the sand is called that will be generated by smart energy meters, automobile systems, and home monitoring technology. If consumers ever do start buying the that can tell them they are running out of milk, the data will probably pass through authentication systems such as MCS. Importantly, this seductive omni-embedded world can't come into being without such technology existing first. MCS is on sale now in the U.S. and Europe, with Asia-Pacific due to be added next month.
Stuxnet's creators recognized they had built the world's first true cyber-weapon and were more interested in pushing the envelope of this new type of digital warfare than causing large-scale destruction within a study shows. In an analysis released last week, Ralph Langner, head of The Langner Group and a renowned expert in industrial control systems (ICS), also refuted arguments that only a nation-state had the resources to launch a Stuxnet-like attack. Assailants with less ambition could take the lessons learned and apply them to civilian critical infrastructure, he said. "While Stuxnet was clearly the work of a nation-state requiring vast resources and considerable intelligence future attacks on industrial control and other so-called 'cyber-physical' systems may not be," Langner said in an article he wrote about his study for Foreign Policy magazine. Langner's analysis was based on reverse engineering the attack code in Stuxnet and combining the data with the design of the targeted nuclear facility and background information on the uranium-enrichment process.
"Privacy is dead—get over it," has been a mantra of private investigators for years. But continuing revelations about how many different ways personal privacy is still disappearing are still enough to unnerve people. It is not just about from the websites they visit, or from security cameras in public places. It is also about smart cars. It is about the cellular towers that serve their smartphones. And it is now also about their friendly brick-and-mortar retailer. One example of many is clothing retailer Nordstrom, which began tracking shoppers in its stores about a year ago . At least the company was somewhat transparent about it—it posted a sign telling customers what it was doing. But that generated enough complaints for it to end the program in May.