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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