Apple To Unveil iPhone 5 On September 7?

Apple’s fall event for unveiling new iPods usually takes place in the beginning of September, but there are reports that this year’s event could pull the curtains back on the iPhone 5 instead. According to MacRumors, Japanese website Kodawarisan claims that an insider source has confirmed that this year’s event will take place on September 8 Japanese time, which means September 7 in the US.

Apple has historically presented new iPod products in its September media event, which typically falls on a Tuesday or Wednesday. The past three events took place on September 1, 2010, September 9, 2009, and September 9, 2008. Hence, a September 7 guess seems safe since the following Tuesday or Wednesday would follow the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack, something Apple surely wouldn’t want to compete with for media attention.

Previous reports have said that the iPhone 5 may not appear until October, but it’s unclear if Apple may announce the iPhone 5 first without actually releasing the product until October similar to what it did with OS X Lion and iOS 5 that were both announced at this year’s WWDC event.

Source : macrumor

Windows Security wrap-up: praise for Vista and a historic first

It’s not often that you hear the words “Windows Vista” and “world-leading” in the same sentence.

So security expert Chris Paget’s ringing testimonial for Windows at last week’s Black Hat conference is newsworthy. CNET’s Seth Rosenblatt covered the talk.

Paget and her team are among the few outsiders allowed to look at Microsoft’s code. She and her team contracted for Microsoft to review the security of Windows Vista before it shipped—“beating up Vista,” she called it. The work was covered by a five-year non-disclosure agreement that just expired, allowing her to finally break her silence.

“Vista was a giant leap in the right direction,” Paget said. And she lavished praise on Microsoft’s security processes:

“‘World-leading’ is entirely appropriate” when discussing Microsoft’s security procedures, she said at the start of her talk. “Microsoft’s security process is spectacular.”

That opinion is buttressed by a new list of top vulnerabilities that represents a historic first for Microsoft.

As usual, the latest quarterly report on malware from Kaspersky Lab contains a top 10 list of vulnerabilities. But the new list doesn’t include a single Microsoft product:

For the very first time in its history, the top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (Java), with seven of those 10 vulnerabilities being found in Adobe Flash Player alone.

Kaspersky says the change is directly attributable to improvements in recent versions of Windows, especially Windows 7.

Microsoft products have disappeared from this ranking due to improvements in the automatic Windows update mechanism and the growing proportion of users who have Windows 7 installed on their PCs.

Paget’s talk supplies one explanation for the improvements in Windows 7: her group was only allowed to look at new code for Vista. “Recursion looked at code kernel and the user space but was told not to look at legacy code. Microsoft didn’t add legacy code vetting until Windows 7.”

This week also included the second Tuesday of August. The Patch Tuesday bounty delivered included a Critical update for Internet Explorer that fixes seven vulnerabilities. Microsoft said it “expects to see reliable exploits developed within the next 30 days,” so you probably want to visit Windows Update and make sure this one has been applied.

Source : zdnet

Facebook hits back over Google+ Games

Facebook has revealed that it has bolstered its gaming service, after Google announced it has also begun offering games through its social network, Google+.

Facebook has had massive success with the gaming part of the site. Companies such as Zynga has used Facebook to make their billions.

At one point, Zynga's FarmVillewas said to have more people on it than use Twitter.

Google has also dabbled in in-browser gaming but it only announced the first lot of games to hit Google+ this week. These include Angry Birds and Zynga Poker.

Let the games begin

In a blog, which coincided with the Google+ Games launch, Facebook said: "When you're playing games, you'll now see a separate stream of your friends' game activity, scores and achievements in a ticker.

"The best way to find new games is through friends, and now you'll have more opportunities to see what they're playing.

"Maybe your best friend has started playing Sims; your roommate has a new high score on PacMan; or your mom and sister have taken up Words With Friends. Simply click on a story and you can start playing the game yourself."

It also noted that it had added a bigger screen and you can now bookmark your favourite games to play later.

These additions are more tweaks than major overhauls but the timing of them is significant.

Facebook sees Google+ as a rival and it seems that with the search engine's games announcement one of the people.

Source : techradar

Mad Man Builds Ridiculously Cool 40-inch iPhone

Benjamin Bachmeier turned a 40-inch LCD Full HD display into a perfect giant iPhone replica. It doesn't run iOS but Mac OS X, but it's gigantic buttons are fully functional. It's computer, a display, a table and completely ridiculous.

He calls it the iTableous. It's not even a Mac, but a Hackintosh running Mac OS X and Windows 7. Funnily enough, I think this is the only time that I've actually liked the white iPhone 4. [Benjamin BachmeierInsanely Mac]

Samsung to launch 7-inch Galaxy Tab with AMOLED screen?

Samsung could be set to launch a new variant to its Galaxy Tabrange, rebooting the original device and adding in some next-gen screen tech too.

The new device would have a 7-inch screen, but use the same style of AMOLED displays as seen in the Galaxy S, according to sources quoted by OLED-Display.

We're very much talking about a rumoured device here, and the rumour seems based on the fact Samsung showed off 7-inch OLED display prototypes back in March, which seems a little speedy to have made it into a device already.

Shut up, fools

Samsung has moved to distance itself from rumours it will be launching a glut of new devices imminently, which could preclude the new Galaxy Tab:

"Some media have been reporting that Samsung is preparing to launch nine new smartphones and two new tablet devices. While Samsung is continuously working on new devices for our customers, the details being cited are not accurate in this case.

"We appreciate the interest in our upcoming mobile devices and will share more information once it's available."

There's a spec sheet for the rumoured Galaxy Tab P62000 and everything - so let's indulge in a little rumour mongering before dubbing this Not Very Likely.

Apparently we're looking at a Honeycomb device with a 7-inch Super AMOLED screen, with a resolution of 1024x600, including a 3MP camera (rear) and 2MP camer (front).

It will have full 3G connectivity and the same 1.2GHz dual-core engine as the Galaxy S2, plus a similar 1GB of RAM... if only it were real.

Source : techradar

Twitter offers up new @reply feature

Now you can reply to someone on their profile page

Twitter has made a small but significant change to the way you reply to people on the service, making this feature available straight from their profile page.

It's always been a bit strange that you couldn't interact with someone when you visit their profile, but Twitter haven't actually made a song and a dance about adding it – there's been not official statement as of yet on the new feature.

The feature means you can speak to someone that you don't follow in public, but you still can't direct message them unless they follow you back.

New features

Interestingly, it seems that this feature isn't available to companies' accounts. So, you can @reply straight to a member of TechRadar for instance, but not the @TechRadar account.

The @reply change is one of a number of minor tweaks to the site. Earlier this week an image uploader button was introduced.

With Facebook and Google+ integrating many Twitter-like features into their services by the day, it's likely that we will see this slow but steady evolution of Twitter continue.

Google’s Panda Update Launches Internationally in Most Languages

Google has just announced that their “Panda” rankings changes, first launched in the United States in late February and rolled out to English language indices internationally in April, have now launched internationally in all languages other than Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Their post notes that for non-English indices,  this change impacts 6-9% of queries (vs. the 12% the original US English launch). This launch also includes a few minor changes to the English version of Panda, but shouldn’t have a substantial impact.

In their post, they say:

For many months, we’ve been focused on trying to return high-quality sites to users. Earlier this year, we rolled out our “Panda” change for searches in English around the world. Today we’re continuing that effort by rolling out our algorithmic search improvements in different languages. Our scientific evaluation data show that this change improves our search quality across the board, and the response to Panda from users has been very positive.

I talked to Google about the change and they reiterated that searchers overwhelmingly have found the Panda-based changes to improve their search results and that those impacted should evaluate their sites objectively for quality and unique value.

This year, Google has focused on identifying sites with a large number of low quality pages as part of their overall goal of providing the best possible search experience. The Panda updates have been evolutions of algorithms that increasingly detect this and lower those sites in search rankings. I often describe it as somewhat like the Adwords quality score, which uses a number of factors to assign an overall score to a site. Since we’re talking about algorithms with many inputs, there’s no one thing that can cause a site to lose rankings due to Panda. Rather it’s an accumulation of factors.

Imagine you’re eating an ice cream sundae. The ice cream is delicious and creamy. It’s covered in the best hot fudge sauce you’ve ever eaten. The whipped cream is freshly made from scratch. On top is an OK-tasting cherry. How do you feel about the sundae overall? Pretty good? Excellent even?

Now, imagine another ice cream sundae. It’s made with that blech tasting cardboard-and-ice style ice cream. The hot fudge is missing entirely. And the whipped cream is that scary fake stuff from a can. The cherry, however, is quite good. How do you feel about this sundae?

The maker of the second sundae might ask why it is you’ve put down your spoon and are edging back to the sundae #1. But the cherry is better! He might say. A Rainier cherry from Washington state! How can you like the other sundae better when it has such a sub-par cherry? Mine has all of the same  parts as that sundae! Well, except the hot fudge!

Google is taste-testing ice cream sundaes and offering searchers the ones that are the best holistically. I mean, they’re not literally eating ice cream. (Actually, they are, but not as part of this metaphor.) I’m just saying you can’t look for one specific thing to fix and you can’t compare one specific thing on your site to that same thing on another site. There are too many moving parts.

The History of Panda

This post covers all of the Panda updates leading up to this one. That post also recaps the articles we’ve published here with advice and impact. The last update was about three weeks ago and was fairly minor.

Advice If Your Site Has Lost Ranking

Panda seems to be focused primarily on unique value and user experience. I gave a long interview to Eric Enge about this not too long ago. If your site has lost search traffic due to Panda, take an objective look (or better yet, have someone else take an objective look) and ask:

• How does the content quality compare to other pages on the web about the same topic? Is the page the most valuable and useful content about the topic?
• Do multiple pages on the site answer the same problem/focus on the same basic task? It’s one thing to have separate pages on “best chocolate cake recipe” and “best pumpkin pie recipe” and quote another to have separate pages on “best chocolate cake recipe” and “ideal chocolate cake recipe”.
• Is the content primarily syndicated or aggregated from other sources? If most of the content isn’t original, Google’s algorithms might give the site a lower “quality score” (in quotes because I totally made that up that way of looking at Panda — I’m not saying Google internally is using the concept of a quality score) to better ensure that the original version ranks.
• If the content is unique, does it completely cover the topic in a credible, useful way or is it shallow and barely scratch the surface?
• Does the user interface design and navigation make engagement easy or are things cluttered and make it difficult for visitors to find what they’re looking for?
• Are the site design and goals user-focused or revenue-focused? It’s absolutely fine (and generally necessary if you’re running a business!) to ensure that your site makes money. But if the goals you keep in mind when designing the pages don’t take into account how well the visitor can get what they need (an answer to their question, ability to accomplish their task easily) and 0nly are based on getting what you want from users (ad views or clicks, for instance), the user experience of your pages might not be ideal.

Since Panda is based on an overall ice cream sundae score, you likely won’t see rankings improvements right away once you make changes. Google periodically recalculates these scores (just like they periodically launch a new version of Panda with improved signals), so after you make changes, you’ ll have to wait for Google to recrawl the site so they can take note of the changes (you can check the cache dates of your indexed pages to see if Google has recrawled them) and then you’ ll have to wait for one of Google’s periodic scoring recalculations (which so far seem to coincide with Panda algorithm updates).

Some site owners who have made substantial changes based on the bullets above have seen positive results (I’ve worked with some of them and seen the analytics myself), but a recovery isn’t likely overnight.

Source : searchengineland

Samsung plops out waterproof smartphone

In preparation for a wet autumn, or perhaps to cater for those escaping the Blighty weather for sandy shores, Samsung has unveiled a waterproof smartphone with touchscreen capabilities.

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with an 800MHz processor. It packs a 3.6in reinforced touchscreen display made from tempered anti-scratch glass. There's also a 2GB MicroSD card included which can be expanded up to 32GB as well as a 3Mp camera with LED flash.

The talking point here though, is the protection from the elements. The Xcover is waterproof up to a depth of one metre - for 30 minutes at least - while its IP67-compliant airtight form factor means it'll also be protected from dust and grit.

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover will be available later this year. Prices have yet to be announced. ®

Elements 2 For iPad. Markdown Gets Prettier

You may remember Elements from last August, a time when new Dropbox-enabled text editors were popping up like mushrooms after a fall rain. Elements, from Second Gear software, distinguished itself by including a handy, popover scratchpad for taking notes, and with its Markdown-powered text editor. Now, Elements has been updated to version 2.

The new Elements, a universal app for iPad and iPhone, has a much-polished UI, but the main difference is getting things out of the app. It still syncs with an “Elements” folder in your Dropbox, but now there is a huge list of export options.

First, you can export you files as HTML or PDF to any Dropbox folder, not just the default “Elements” folder. You can also export to iTunes file sharing, to Evernote, to Facebook and to Tumblr.

The word, line and character counts remain, as does TextExpander Touch support and full-text search. There have been a few cosmetic tweaks, too. The icon is new, the whole app looks sleeker and more modern (there’s even a new default font — Museo Sans), and the Markdown preview has been cleaned up.

Markdown, if you’re not familiar with it, is a human-readable way to write HTML. You surround your words with symbols instead of ugly tags and when you run the text through the Markdown converter, these tags are added for you. Thus it shows up in the final document as bold. (You don’t want to see the mess of code I had to write to make all those examples look right in the browser). It makes writing formatted text in a plain text editor very easy indeed.

And of course, you can always use Elements to write plain text, too.

Elements 2 is a free update for owners of v1.x, and costs a very reasonable $5 for new buyers.

Elements – Dropbox And Markdown Powered Text Editor [iTunes]

Will Sony’s Android Tablets Land In Australia Next Month?

Looks like Sony will have plenty to talk about at Berlin’s big IFA electronics show in a couple of weeks. I’ve been invited to spend some quality hands-on time with a range of gear in Sydney, including: new Sony Readers and “digital imaging equipment” — could that mean new video cameras, or those leaked Alpha cameras? But what’s really got me curious is Sony’s self-described “highlight” of a “whole new product category.” Take this with a liberal helping of salt (because Sony certainly wouldn’t confirm it), but I smell tablets.

So I’m just taking a wild guess here. But fingers crossed it could be the 9.4-inch S1 and dual 5.5-inch screen S2. We’ve seen them fondled on video, and Gizmodo US has spent some time with them, too.

Both tablets run Android Honeycomb with a custom Sony UI, and have a Tegra 2 processor, Wi-Fi, 3G support, and included Sony Qriocity and PlayStation suite pre-loaded. Sony has said it wants to be the number 2 tablet maker by 2012 — do you think these bad boys will give them a shot?

Meanwhile, that leaked spring camera line up from Sony possibly includes the big A77, NEX-7, A65 and a whole supporting cast. Again, not even close to being confirmed to arrive here, but we can hope. I’ll let you know on the first of September.

DDoS Attack Knocks Out Hong Kong Stock Exchange News Web Site

Trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange for a handful of stocks remained suspended as a result of a distributed denial-of-service attack on its news Website, the Financial Times reported.

The "coordinated and sustained" DDoS attacks continued for a second day on one of the exchange's Websites which is used to disseminate price-sensitive information, FT said Aug. 11.

The hkexnews.hk site, where Hong Kong-listed companies such as HSBC bank, China Power International and Cathay Pacific airline posted their announcements in order to comply with disclosure requirements, went offline Aug. 10 and remained under sustained attack, Charles Li, CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing told FT.

The identity and intention of the attackers remained unknown, Li said. The denial of service attacks were coming from a large botnet made up of personal computers from around the world, the majority of which were based outside of Hong Kong, according to HKEx.

"Our current assessment that this is a result of a malicious attack by outside hacking," said Li.
While some DDoS attacks are out to just knock Websites offline, many attacks are a diversion for other malicious activity, Neal Quin, vice-president of operations at cloud-based DDoS mitigation provider Prolexic, told eWEEK. While he didn't have specific knowledge on the details of the attack on the Hong Kong exchange, Quinn said many attackers often breach networks while the security team is busy dealing with the "present" DDoS threat.

"Mission-critical" systems actually used for trading, clearing and distributing market data were unaffected because they were not accessible from the public Internet. "HKEx’s other systems are not affected and trading in its securities and derivatives markets continues to operate normally," according to an HKEx statement.

HKEx said it had been “working closely with local and overseas security experts” to investigate the cause of the attack and restore normal service. The exchange successfully implemented a mechanism to filter out the malicious packets late Aug. 10, which allowed the news site to come back online even while under attack.

Attackers were using multiple attack vectors, which made it harder for the exchange to defend against the DDoS, HKEx said. There are several ways to launch a DDoS attack, including flooding the network with SYN or ICMP packets, attacking the application layer by sending so many database or Web requests to the site that it can't process them all, and sending malformed packets, among others, Quinn said. Most DDoS attacks are a combination of techniques in a "blended attack," Quinn said.

Seven stocks were suspended from trading after the news Website crashed the first time, shortly before the companies were to post "sensitive results" from the morning trading session. The exchange defended the suspension because to continue trading would be unfair to investors who could not access the companies' results while the news site was down.

The Hong Kong exchange would abandon the practice of publishing company news on a centralized Website to prepare for future attacks, Li said. It will rely on media and commercial information vendors such as Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg to distribute company announcements and instruct investors to get the information directly from the company Websites, according to Li. The exchange plans to buy advertisements in eight local newspapers with a list of companies expected to post news that day so investors will know they have to check the company Websites for details.

"It was refreshing to see Mr. Li not blame the attacks on uber-sophisticated, foreign, advanced ninja hackers, but rather state the facts and explain what the exchange is doing to ensure the integrity of the market," Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, wrote on the Naked Security blog.

Researchers have long warned that attackers can potentially disrupt financial systems by attacking stock exchanges. The Zimbabwe stock exchange was attacked in early August. The United States Nasdaq revealed in February that cyber-criminals had embedded malicious code on the "Directors Desk" Web application. James Arlen, an independent security researcher, discussed how attacks on high frequency trading systems would occur too quickly for exchanges to defend against at the recent Black Hat conference.

Apple and Android rule the smartphone roost

LOS ANGELES - Apple and Android are taking over.

Pushing aside once-dominant players Nokia Corp. and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android devices now account for 62 percent of smartphones sold worldwide, nearly doubling the 32 percent share the two had at this time last year, according to a report Thursday from research firm Gartner Inc.

The recent quarter also marked the first time that smartphones outsold older-generation "feature phones" in North America, said Hugues De La Vergne, the Gartner analyst who prepared the report.

In North America alone, the Apple-Android combination accounted for 83.5 percent of smartphone sales.

Android devices alone now account for 43.4 percent of the smartphones sold globally each quarter, showing the Google-powered operating system has gone from a minor player to a market force in a relatively short time. That is partly because of a growing number of phone manufacturers who are offering lower-cost Android phones, often in the $100 range.

As of the first quarter of last year, Android smartphones still made up less than 10 percent of smartphone sales, increasing to 17 percent the next quarter. A year later -- the end of the second quarter of 2011 -- Android phones accounted for 43.4 percent of unit sales.

As for Apple, nearly one in five smartphones (18.2 percent) sold around the world is now an iPhone. Unlike Google, which is responsible for the basic architecture of its Android operating system but does not itself manufacture phones, Apple builds its own phones and profits directly every time an iPhone is sold. Indeed, with more than 20 million sold last quarter, iPhone sales have propelled Apple to record profits. The company is now neck and neck with Exxon Mobil Corp. as the world's largest firm by market value.

Although Finnish phone-maker Nokia still remains in second place, the company's share of the smartphone market has dropped steeply, to 22 percent in the recent quarter from 41 percent a year earlier.

Research in Motion also dropped further behind, falling from 18.7 percent of phones sold to 11.7 percent. And despite several attempts to promote its line of smartphones, Microsoft Corp. has had trouble getting traction, slipping to 1.6 percent of smartphones sold from 4.9 percent a year earlier.

source : startribune

T-Mobile Completes G2x Gingerbread OTA Rollout, Manual Update Still Available

T-Mobile has announced via their support forums that the T-Mobile G2x OTA Gingerbread update has officially ended as of August 10th. Anyone still looking for the update will be able to perform a manual upgrade using the LG updater found on the LG website.
The G2x update upgraded the device to Android 2.3, improved battery life and helped address a number of bug fixes including unexpected reboots. If you haven’t received the update head on over to the LG website link provided below and get yourself some Gingerbread love!

Tags: Android 2.3, G2X, Gingerbread, software update, T-Mobile G2X

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