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Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Part of the company’s high-end N series of multimedia computers, the Nokia N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen. For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls “social location,” which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users’ social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.
The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia’s Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform–though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States. The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card. The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T’s 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however. The Nokia N97 is expected to ship in Europe during the first half of 2009, with an estimated price of 550 euros ($695).
Source: Cnet – RLSLOG
No one is safe from satire on The Simpsons. The animated series, which just began its 20th season, has lampooned just about every large company, celebrity and pretty much every aspect of pop culture. Last night’s episode featured a six minute segment that parodied Apple Inc. at the start of the show. In Episode 7 the Simpsons travel to the Springfield Mall to discover that a giant “Mapple” Store has been erected inside. The massive glass cube structure looks like a spitting image of the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York. Lisa Simpson walks inside and notes that “it’s so sterile!” and the one-liners go from there.
The mock store is loaded with MyPods, MyPhones, a Brainiac Bar and the MyCube, a machine “fueled by dreams and powered by imagination.” The cube glows to confirm that it’s off. Its a very good natured jab at Cupertino and there’s something funny in it for just about everyone. You can watch the complete episode at Fox on Demand (with commercials), it starts at about 02:00.
Source: ZDnet – RLSLOG
Verizon Wireless placed a handful of employees on paid administrative leave last week, on suspicion of improperly peeking at President-Elect Barack Obama’s cell phone records. “This week we learned that a number of Verizon Wireless employees have, without authorization, accessed and viewed President-Elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account,” Verizon Wireless CEO and president Lowell McAdam told reporters in a statement. The phone in question – a personal, voice-only flip phone – has been inactive for several months, says the future president’s transition team. Because the phone didn’t have e-mail or data capabilities, Obama’s correspondences were not in danger of being read.
Reports indicate that the suspended Verizon employees had access to a relatively limited amount of data, including a record of phone numbers, call length, and timestamps. When pressed for further details on what was accessed, however, Verizon Jeffrey Nelson declined additional comment. Concerns such as this incident are fueling questions about whether Obama, a reputedly avid user of technology, should be allowed to use a cell phone and e-mail during his term as President.
Computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks. The electronic attack was so serious that Adm Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, briefed President George W Bush and Robert Gates, the defence secretary. Defence officials told the Los Angeles Times that the attack struck computers within the US Central Command, which oversees Iraq and Afghanistan, and involved malicious software – known as “malware” – that permeates a network. “This one was significant, this one got our attention,” said an official, speaking anonymously.
Officials did not disclose the extent of the damage and would not elaborate on the reasons for believing the assault originated in Russia. The Pentagon and other US government departments face repeated cyber attacks, especially from Russia and China, either from individuals or indirectly from those countries’ governments. Within the past 18 months Russia has been accused of orchestrating major electronic attacks on neighbours Estonia and Georgia.
Source: Telegraph – RLSLOG
Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday introduced its first consumer-oriented multi-touch tablet PC. The TouchSmart tx2 tightly integrates hardware and software to offer an interface that lets people use their fingers or a stylus for on-screen manipulation of digital entertainment. The software foundation of the tx2’s multi-touch capabilities is HP’s MediaSmart 2.0, which makes it possible to use a variety of gestures, including swipes, pinches, double-taps, and finger rotations, to manipulate content in a way that’s similar to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch. In addition, HP has entered into a partnership with MTV Networks to bring video in from MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. The content is organized and automatically updated in MediaSmart.
The tx2 has a standard keyboard and a 12.1-inch screen that can be placed upright for use like a typical notebook. In addition, the screen, which has a resolution of 1,200 by 800 pixels, swivels and can be laid flat. Besides the multi-touch capabilities, the system’s stylus can be used to write or draw on the screen. The PC weighs 4.5 pounds and is available with either an Athlon X2 or Turion X2 dual-core processor from Advanced Micro Devices. The system is also available with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics processor, up to 8 GB of memory and a 500 GB hard drive. Other features include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless technology, an integrated camera and a DVD burner. The tx2 is available for pre-order from HP and is scheduled to start shipping at the end of the month. Pricing starts at $1,149.
Source: InfoWeek – RLSLOG
The penalty is the largest award yet under the 2003 Can-Spam Act.
By Thomas Claburn
Facebook on Friday won $873 million in damages from a spammer, the largest award to date under the 2003 Can-Spam Act.
The penalty for illegal spamming appears to be rising. Facebook’s award tops the $234 million judgment won by MySpace in May against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. It also exceeds the $177,500 fine and $1.1 million ill-gotten-gain forfeiture that Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer were ordered to pay in October 2007 for the pair’s porn spam operation.
“We’ve all experienced spam — those unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages,” said Facebook director of security Max Kelly and deputy general counsel Mark Howitson in an e-mailed statement. “The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook’s users have been among those targeted. We don’t take this affront to our users lying down.”
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel handed down the award last week following four months of litigation. In addition to the monetary judgment, the ruling prohibits the defendants, Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, from accessing Facebook for any reason or assisting others in doing so.
Blockbuster just upped the ante in its competition against Netflix: The media entertainment provider Tuesday rolled out a digital media player that offers instant access through television sets to on-demand content of recently released movies. The service is essentially the evolution of Blockbuster’s Movielink.com site, which offers roughly 10,000 on-demand movies for download to personal computers. Some 2,000 of those titles can be downloaded to televisions via Blockbuster OnDemand. Two elements of Blockbuster’s recent offering are different from Netflix’s: the fees and the movies.
First, the 2Wire MediaPoint digital media player is available at no charge —but the customer must rent 25 Blockbuster OnDemand movies in advance, at a cost of $99 through the company’s online service. After the initial 25 rentals, movie rentals start at $1.99 each. The players will begin shipping in time for the holiday season. Movies stay on the player for 30 days; once a movie is started, it must be viewed within 24 hours. Rival Netflix has a free “Watch Instantly” feature, which streams movies to subscribers’ TVs or personal computers, but users must subscribe to its unlimited monthly service. Second, Blockbuster said the movies it is offering are more current that those of other subscription-based services. Many of the films will be available through the Blockbuster OnDemand service within weeks of leaving theaters, according to the company.
Source: CRN
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters): The world’s top two producers of ethanol, the US and Brazil, will join forces to speed up research into cellulose-derived biofuels, which use inedible plant matter rather than crops as their feedstock.
In a statement they said they would expand scientific collaboration led by the US National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) and Brazilian oil giant Petrobras’ Center for Research and Development CENPES.
The two nations would also to help five countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean to develop their own biofuel industries, investing $4.3 million in biofuel projects in Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Guinea Bissau and Senegal.
Existing partners already being helped to develop their biofuel industries including the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis would also benefit.
The US agriculture secretary Ed Schafer and Brazil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim announced their agreement late on Thursday at an international biofuels conference Brazil has been hosting in Sao Paulo, which concludes on Friday.
Security researchers at Microsoft Corp. late yesterday warned of a significant increase in exploits of a Windows bug that the software vendor patched with an emergency fix last month, confirming earlier reports by Symantec Corp. Microsoft again urged users to apply the MS08-067 patch if they have not already done so. The new attacks, which Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center said began over the weekend but spiked during the past two days, use the same worm that Symantec first spotted last Friday. Dubbed “Conficker.a” by Microsoft and “Downadup” by Symantec, the worm exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Server service, which is used by all versions of the operating system to connect to file and print servers on a network.
Microsoft patched the bug in an out-of-cycle update five weeks ago, after it discovered a small number of infected PCs, most of them in Southeast Asia. The worm also resets the machine’s system restore point, said Microsoft in its technical write-up, which may make it difficult or impossible to “roll back” Windows to a pre-infection state. PCs that have been patched with the MS08-067 fix are protected, Ziv Mador, researcher with the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, stressed.
Source: ComputerWorld – RLSLOG
The closure of a web hosting firm that is believed to have had spam gangs as clients has led to a drastic reduction in junk mail. Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper. Anti-spam firm Ironport has seen junk mail levels drop by 70% since McColo was taken offline on 11 November. But, it warned, it will be a temporary respite from the menace of spam.
“It is an unprecedented drop but will be a temporary outage as the networks move from North America to places where there is less scrutiny,” said Jason Steer, a spokesman for Ironport. The Washington Post has been gathering data on McColo for the past four months and passed the information to its internet service providers, Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric. Both decided to pull the plug on the firm on Tuesday. It is believed that it hosted gangs running botnets – networks of computers that have been taken over by criminals to send malicious software and spam. According to MessageLabs, botnets are responsible for over 90% of spam.
Source: BBC
