Technology archive for 2011-07-11

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:Apple seeds iOS 5 beta 3, iTunes 10.5 beta 3, Xcode 4.3 Preview 3, Xcode 4.1 GM to developers  —  Apple has just seeded the third beta of iOS 5 to registered to developers.  Beta 3 of iTunes 10.5 is also available and will be required to sync with iOS 5 beta 3 devices.

Microsoft is making a beta of the next release of its Windows Intune available for download on July 11, officials announced during the Worldwide Partner Conference 2011.

I love photo-sharing sites, especially when they involve food. Housefed isn't just about sharing pictures though; you can invite random people over and literally share your meal. Think AirBnb...

twoheadedboy writes "Yahoo has come under fire for updating its terms and conditions so it can scan user emails. The move has attracted the attention of notable privacy group Big Brother Watch, which has called on the email provider to scrap the feature altogether. Yahoo says it is only doing the scanning to identify spam and better target ads, but that still hasn't put people off from criticizing the firm." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As if more evidence of the iPad's dominance of the tablet market were needed, a research note from Canaccord Genuity now claims that the iPad is the tablet of choice among Android fans.

While Microsoft has enjoyed many successes over the past year, Windows Phone 7 hasn't been among them, admitted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during the opening keynote Monday at the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, being held this week in Los Angeles.

Apple on Monday released minor updates to GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto. Interestingly, the updates to the three iLife applications hit the Mac App Store first, long before appearing in Mac OS X's Software Update.

New research from Forrester introduces how companies will use mobile devices to deliver better customer experiences in their own context. What does that mean for IT? Ted Schadler explains.

Following the usual leak + wait-and-see saga, AT&T has today confirmed that it'll be the exclusive home to one half of HTC's Facebook-infused duo. The so-called Status will be making its way onto Ma Bell's airwaves on July 17th, with eager social networkers able to get their pre-orders in today. It'll sell for $49.99 on a two-year agreement, with that tally netting you a dedicated Facebook "Share" button that'll allow photos / videos /websites to be instantly uploaded to your account. We're also told that it'll ship with Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) onboard, with an "enhanced version" of HTC's Sense overlay. Other specs include a 5 megapixel camera (with autofocus and LED flash), a 2.6-inch touch panel, 480 x 320 screen resolution and capacitive navigation buttons. Oh, and if you're uninterested in the hue you see about, Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores will feature an exclusive mauve edition in due time. Fancy.Continue reading HTC Status ships July 17th, currently in a pre-order relationship with AT&THTC Status ships July 17th, currently in a pre-order relationship with AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  AT&T, Facebook  | Email this | Comments

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:Color Labs Chief Product Officer DJ Patil Resigns  —  Color Labs Chief Product Officer DJ Patil will soon be leaving the company as a full time employee, we've confirmed.  Patil, who was LinkedIn's chief scientist until March, was only with Color for about 5 months.  He'll transition to become an advisor to the company.

Facebook has blocked another tool that lets you export your Facebook friends so you can import them elsewhere, like to Google+.

Joe Gutheinz, a former senior investigator for NASA's Office of Inspector General, has made it his goal to collect all 230 moon rocks presented by the US to governments around the world, and put them in a museum. Deadliest Catch Captain Coleman Anderson wants to keep his little piece of the moon. Anderson says he found the rock in the trash mixed with debris following a fire at an Anchorage museum in 1973. He's kept it as a good luck charm ever since. "Our astronauts and their descendants are not permitted to have an Apollo 11-era moon rock to sell for their own enrichment and neither should a private citizen who acquired one in a less-noble manner," Gutheinz said. An Alaskan judge will now decide who legally owns the rock. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google's own e-Reader, the iriver Story HD, is coming to Target this Sunday. But will it be a Kindle-killer?

Tom Hals / Reuters:Courts approve Nortel patent sale to Apple/RIM group  —  Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Research in Motion Ltd and three other leading tech companies received court approval on Monday to buy wireless patents from the bankrupt Nortel Networks Corp for $4.5 billion.

Anyone who's been in a packed stadium or concert venue knows better than to expect to be able to browse the web or even check email, unless of course your device happens to be compatible with a certain underutilized data-only network. A new initiative from Cisco, however, aims to bring connectivity to the over-saturated masses. The company's Connected Stadium WiFi bundles the Aironet 3500p access point, designed specifically for "high-density stadium and arena deployments," with strategically placed antennas that target fewer seats with the same amount of throughput -- likely similar to the 884-device network AT&T deployed at Cowboys Stadium for Super Bowl XLV. We hope the lighter load placed on carriers -- and already sky high ticket prices -- would help make Connected Stadium a free service, but key words like "purchasing" and "monetizeable" in the networking company's announcement make us think that some greenbacks are likely to change hands once the service launches in the real, connectivity-challenged world of overcrowded venues.Continue reading Cisco boosts stadium WiFi, makes MLB slightly more tolerable for the internet-obsessed (video)Cisco boosts stadium WiFi, makes MLB slightly more tolerable for the internet-obsessed (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Wi-Fi Planet  |  Cisco Blog  | Email this | Comments

Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:Apple Reveals the Next Chapter for iBooks & New Chip for iOS Devices  —  Last week the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals one of the next chapters for Apple's iBooks.  For children's books, Apple has devised a number of new gesture options to make reading more fun and interactive.

When someone offers you the once in a lifetime chance to see something as historic as the finalSpace Shuttle Flight: You go. As a child I assembled a puzzle of the Challenger illuminated bythose bright xenon lights, and dreamt of space flight. And last week I went to see the last launchthe world will ever see of a Space Shuttle. Atlantis. STS-135. What follows is the story of my briefstay at the Kennedy Space Center. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reuters:Analysis: Apple-Samsung battle may spur supplier shakeup  —  (Reuters) - An intensifying quarrel between Samsung and Apple is triggering expectations that some of the pairs' $5 billion-plus relationship may be up for grabs.  —  With the electronics titans squaring off in an acrimonious battle …

It became standard procedure in recent years for Internet companies to launch early test versions of their newest services with hooks for external developers, but Google is bucking that trend with its Google+ social network.

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is seeking to invalidate a pair of Apple patents so the underlying technologies can be used as part of a royalty-free HTML5 stack.

Google officials say the company plans to make some changes to the Google+ social network this week.

Networking giant Cisco needs to cut 5,000 jobs, nearly 7% of its total workforce, in August to remain competitive, one Wall Street analyst recommended.

Apple could launch an iPhone this year that works on faster 4G wireless networks, but it would have to make financial and design sacrifices to do so, a research firm said today.

Android lost a major ally at Samsung Mobile this week, with the departure of Omar Khan. The CTO is leaving the hardware manufacturer for the industry analyst side of things, joining Citigroup's mobile solutions team. Khan has led the charge on a number of Android-based devices, including, recently, the S II and various other products in the Galaxy line -- he also made a memorable appearance on The Engadget Show, back in August of last year. Samsung's Nick Dicarlo and Gavin Kim will be stepping in to grab some of Khan's PR responsibilities at the company.Android-friendly Samsung CTO abandons ship for Citigroup originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Electronista  |  Fierce Wireless, The Droid Guy  | Email this | Comments

John Biggs / MobileCrunch:Samsung CTO Responsible For The Galaxy Tab Line Steps Down  —  Omar Khan, the Samsung CTO who was responsible for the rise of the GalTab and other Android-powered smartphones, is moving to Citibank to handle that company's global digital banking initiatives.

We aren't exactly lacking for digital bookstores, but Google's eBooks offering is indeed one of the slickest around. And evidently, it's not in nearly as many places as the marketers in Mountain View would like. The Goog just announced that iRiver's Story HD would soon become the first Google eBooks-integrated e-reader, with the new model going on sale July 17th at Target. It'll still sell for $139.99, and none of the actual hardware specifications will change from the existing model. Of course, the eBooks platform has been open to all publishers, retailers and manufacturers from the start; it's just that iRiver has become the first manufacturer to heed the call. Naturally, Google's teasing us by openly stating that more of these are on the way, and if you just so happen to be an e-reader maker... well, it'd certainly love to have a chat.iRiver Story HD becomes first Google eBooks-integrated e-reader, won't be the last originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Hot Hardware  |  Official Google Blog  | Email this | Comments

Lucia Moses / Adweek:Philly Papers to Sell Android Tablets  —  Publishers, desperate to prop up their legacy print business, have been scrambling to put their content on tablet devices.  Now the Philadelphia Inquirer and its sibling Philadelphia Daily News are making what may be the boldest tablet push yet.

Trailrunner7 writes "The Android platform seems to have become the playground of choice for attackers and malware authors looking to make a quick buck. The latest example is a premium-rate SMS Trojan that not only automatically sends costly SMS messages, but also prevents users' carriers from notifying them of the new charges. The new piece of malware, which is known as HippoSMS, has been found in unofficial Android app markets in China. This is just the latest in a series of similar incidents in which attackers and scammers have inserted either outright malicious apps or seemingly benign apps containing malware into app markets. Most of the attacks have targeted Android users, and several times Google has had to remove malicious apps from the official Android market." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bill Gross / Google+:I predict that Google+ will go from 0 to 100,000,000 users faster than any other service in history.  —  Okay, that's a bold proclamation - here's why I think it will achieve that.  The service is great.  It is timely.  People are engaging with it like crazy.  There are rumors that there are already 4.5m people.

Scammers are taking advantage of ignorant Facebook users by tricking them with claims of a Casey Anthony confession video.

By this time, hopefully, all of you who were on the hunt for a Transformer finally got your mitts on one. If you were holding out for the 3G version, though, you can stop fidgeting -- it's already been priced in mainland Europe, putting it almost a month ahead of its expected arrival in the UK. Notebook Italia spotted both the 16GB and 32GB iterations listed online, fetching €499 and €599, respectively, VAT included. Notebook Italia also grabbed a screenshot of an updated product page on ASUS's Italian site, though when we peeped the listing we just found the WiFi-only versions, with predictably lower prices to match. Either way you slice it, though, both the instruction manual and illustrated product guide are alive and well on ASUS' site, suggesting you should see this on the streets of Milano soon enough.[Thanks, Marco]3G-enabled ASUS Eee Pad Transformer spotted online, priced starting at 499 euro originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Notebook Italia  |  ASUS (manual), (guide), (product page)  | Email this | Comments

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:The Best Show on Web Video Is the One You Can't See: Inside the $100 Million YouTube Channel Sweepstakes  —  If this was a reality show, you'd definitely watch: Hundreds of competitors fighting for $100 million in prize money and a chance at worldwide exposure.  —  Alas, you won't be able to view the event — just the winners.

HTC is finally delivering its promise to unlock the bootloaders on future phones, starting with the EVO 3D and Sensation.

Microsoft is expected to deliver the third Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the next version of its SQL Server database during the Worldwide Partner Conference the week of July 11, according...

Kyle Wiens of iFixit shares insights and predictions about the next-generation iPhone expected to launch this fall.

Santander UK, a subsidiary of Banco Santander, has moved call center jobs from India back to the U.K., citing adverse feedback from its customers.

ndogg writes "The open source Python projects Pantyshot and Upskirt have caused quite a stir within the Python community, and catalyzed the leaving of one of their developers (a woman whose native language is not English.) The original developer, Frank Smit, has renamed Pantyshot to Misaka, but that too has suspect etymology, as Violet Blue points out." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've known it as both the Urushi and the ST18a, but Sony Ericsson's latest handset was just "accepted" over at the FCC as the Xperia Ray, getting the fed green-light with a full set of photos to boot. A quick perusal of the docs confirms that the Xperia Ray will bring on quadband HSPA compatible with AT&T and global carriers, but the lack of AWS indicates we won't see this showing up on T-Mobile shelves. Also included on the list of tested items is the ANT+ wireless tech responsible for the device's fitness-monitoring functionality. Making it through the FCC is always a significant hurdle for a company to jump over, so we'd suspect the phone's still on track for its planned Q3 release. In the meantime, however, check out the gallery below for the images so graciously provided to us in the documents.Gallery: Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray hits FCCSony Ericsson Xperia Ray swings through FCC donning AT&T bands originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  FCC  | Email this | Comments

If you're one of the lucky ones who landed themselves a Google+ account, you might have felt a little less fortunate when your inbox was bombarded by repeated notifications. Vic Gundotra, the Goog's social mastermind, took to the fledgling service to apologize and explain what happened. Turns out the servers in charge of tracking notifications ran out of disk space for about 80 minutes -- causing them to repeatedly send and resend the same messages. In his Plus posting Gundotra admitted, "we didn't expect to hit these high thresholds so quickly, but we should have." Sure, it may have been annoying to get 17 alerts that your old college roommate added you to his circles, but we've got to give credit to Vic for owning this mini fail. The company better hope it can scale up capacity quick -- Google+ invites are still a hot property and it's got a lot of growing to do before it can truly compete with the likes of Facebook.Filed under: InternetGoogle+ runs out of disk space, floods inboxes with notification spam originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink The Inquirer  |  Vic Gundotra (Google+)  | Email this | Comments

Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:Apple files second ITC complaint against HTC: better luck next time?  —  [DEVELOPING STORY — will be updated when the complaint enters the public record]  —  The ITC website reveals that Apple filed another patent infringement complaint against Android device maker HTC on Friday, July 8, 2011.

betterunixthanunix writes "A mortgage-fraud case may have widespread implications for criminals who use cryptography to hide evidence. The US Department of Justice is pushing for the defendant to be forced to decrypt her hard drive, claiming that if they cannot force such decryptions, law enforcement will be unable to gather important evidence. The defendant's lawyer and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have made the claim that forcing such a decryption would be a violation of the defendant's fifth amendment right not to self-incriminate. The prosecutor in the case has insisted that the defendant would not be forced to disclose her passphrase, but only to enter the passphrase into a computer to decrypt the drive." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you want some idea of the complexity of the human brain, consider this: a group of British universities plans to link as many as a million ARM processors in order to simulate just a small fraction of it. The resulting model, called SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network architecture), will represent less than one percent of a human's gray matter, which contains 100 billion neurons. (Take that, mice brains!) Yet even this small scale representation, researchers believe, will yield insight into how the brain functions, perhaps enabling new treatments for cognitive disorders, similar to previous models that increased our understanding of schizophrenia. As these neural networks increase in complexity, they come closer to mimicking human brains -- perhaps even developing the ability to make their own Skynet references.British researchers design a million-chip neural network 1/100 as complex as your brain originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink TG Daily  |  The Register  | Email this | Comments

Jason Pensill:LET'S TALK ABOUT MOBILE TECH  —  Written by Jason Pensill.  —  Now that I have had this post sitting in my ‘drafts’ section for some time now, I felt it was best to finally finish it.  With the updated iPhone rumors, RIM slander, and Touchpad love/hate, I couldn't see a better time to write.

Electronista:Netflix taking a pass on buying Hulu  —  Netflix and Hulu mutually uninterested in deal  —  New tips Sunday ruled out Netflix as one of the candidates to buy Hulu.  The movie streaming service hasn't been actively involved, sources for the WSJ said.  Hulu also reportedly hasn't been actively interested …

U.K. cybercrime investigators claimed victory with the sentencing of three men on Monday following the prosecution of an organized phishing gang.

The basic Web application paradigm hasn't changed in almost two decades. Even the latest, slickest HTML5 websites resemble those of the early days of the Web, at least at their core. A developer wraps tags around data and writes a bit of JavaScript to make the sites somewhat more interactive. So what's all the big fuss over HTML5 being a game changer for apps on the Web?

The Google+ social networking site malfunctioned this weekend, spamming its users with repeated notifications via e-mail.

Nothing like a little legalese to take the edge off on a Monday, eh? Just months after Apple smacked HTC with an ITC complaint, it looks as if the company's doing the same thing again. As if one ongoing ITC complaint against Samsung wasn't enough, the US International Trade Commission is reporting that HTC is being accused again. As predicted, the patent infringement complaint is asking for the entity to block the import of "personal electronic devices" by HTC, but until it becomes available for public viewing, it's hard to know exactly which device(s) ticked the lawyers in Cupertino off. As for the prior tiff? A judge is expected to rule on that August 5th, and those findings are then subject to review by the full commission. HTC's not commenting yet given that even it hasn't seen the details, so we'll be sure to keep you posted as the drama unfolds.Apple files second ITC patent infringement complaint against HTC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink   |  San Francisco Chronicle, FOSS Patents  | Email this | Comments

Monday morning analysis: Apple's App Store is a competitive advantage for its mobile devices. But we have yet to see its potential fulfilled in the iPad, Andrew Nusca writes.

DMandPenfold writes "Police are questioning whether a change in News International's email retention policy was part of an effort to conceal widespread phone hacking by the News of the World, a scandal which is threatening Rupert Murdoch's planned takeover of BSkyB. The trawl for emails and the questioning of changes in News International's email retention policy has important implications for IT security and corporate governance professionals, and is likely to see organizations examining their own policies and reminding their staff on acceptable usage and best practice for email." Read more of this story at Slashdot.