Apple iPhone is favoured by thieves

Posted on September 8, 2014 by - News

Apple_iPhone_5_white-330x330A report from the UK Home Office said that thieves are brand conscious and prefer stealing Apple iPhones compared to the rest of the pack.

The report said over 50 percent of all phones stolen between January 2012 to January 2014 were iPhones.  Other brands appealing to thieves are Blackberry and Samsung devices. People who have had their phones stolen believe the value of the personal data to be more than £760.

While vendors have made improvements to security that appear to have put off some thieves, the report analyses their effectiveness in some detail.

It suggests that the introduction of Apple iOS7 this time last year “has affected the black market value of some stolen iPhones”.  An analysis based in London suggests reduction in thefts because of iOS7.

phonechart

Samsung’s intro of Find my Mobile and the Reactivation Lock have also probably reduced thefts.

People worried about losing their mobile phones should register their mobile devices at no cost at immmobilise.com, use PIN locks, don’t leave your phone hanging about, install a tracker app.  If a phone is stolen, it should be reported to the network straight away, and report it to your local cop shop.

Fossil fuels Intel fashion wares

Posted on September 8, 2014 by - News

cocoSemiconductor giant Intel has long been looking for a way to diversify its business, caught as it is in the rise of smartphones and tablets and the decline of PCs.

It demonstrated that fact a few  years back by devoting its entire CeBIT press gig to designer handbags and now it seems to want to go a different way again.

It has signed a deal with the Fossil Group, a company which specialises in fashion accessories.  The big idea is to work to identify emerging trends in wearable technology – a sector that has already met with some derision.

And, as if to underline how silly this is all becoming, both companies are using the “iconic” word.  “Fossil will work with Intel to enable fashion brands within the company’s portfolio to participate in wearable technology in a fashionable way.”

Fossil, said CEO Kosta Kartsotis, said combining his firm’s fashion lifestyle brands with Intel’s expertise will let his company be a leader in the segment.

But there’s a financial element involved, because Fossil will tie up with Intel Capital.  Intel Capital has already invested in companies including Thalmic Labs and Basis.

No one knows how big the wearable sector will be. Or how small.

PC sales up. Secretly

Posted on September 8, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCSales of PCs in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region showed growth in the second quarter, stopping a continuous seven quarter decline. That applies to both notebooks and desktop machnes.

So says market research company IDC, which said growth in the quarter amounted to 2.2 percent, up by 4.5 million units.

Oddly, the bulk of the growth came in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine and Afghanistan.  Why is that odd? Because, according to Fouad Rafiq Charakla, research manager at IDC, no vendor make any official shipments of PCs into these countries.

Saudi Arabia and Pakisan showed growth in the region.  “The healthy shipments seen in most countries can either be attributed to a recovery from instability – be it economic political or social – or to previously low PC penetration rates. Bearing this in mind, Egypt and Nigeria are expected to be among the region’s fastest growing PC markets in 2014,” Charakla said.

The top dogs in the region are HP, Lenovo, and Dell. But the last suffered a shortfall year on year. Acer and Asus came fourth and fifth respectively.

Apple supplier taken to task

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

Photo of China from satellite - Wikimedia CommonsA report by China Labor Watch and Green America has alleged that one of Apple’s suppliers in mainland China exploits its 20,000 workers.

According to the non-profit organisations, the Catcher factory, based in Suqian makes iPhone and iPad parts but it’s alleged to have health and safety, environmental, and human rights violations.

Apple had promised to encourage the company to reform problems in April last year, but the report said that there are still serious problems at the factory.

Those include a lack of proper ventilation, inadequate equipment for people handling toxic materials, locked safety exits, dumping of industrial fluids and waste into groundwater and nearby rivers, excessive hours for all workers, forced overtime, hiring discrimination and other problems.

You can find the full report here (PDF).

Apple wakes up to security

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

blue-appleApple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has admitted to the Wall Street Journal that it needs to improve security on its users accounts.

But Cook said that it wasn’t Apple’s fault that hackers had broken into iCloud.  He said the hackers used various methods to get passwords for iCloud accounts but none of the material came from Apple servers.

He did, however, promise to do something to beef up security.  He told the Journal that Apple will now tip people off if someone changes a password, or when a new device attempts to access the iCloud.

That’s going to be carried out within two weeks, said Cook.

Apple has been widely criticised for its laissez faire attitude towards the recent hacking, and no doubt Cook has agreed to do an interview to defuse a situation that might spoil the launch of  yet another iPhone next week.

Brits are nuts about their smartphones

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericA third of British people look at their smartphones just after they’ve woken up, according to a survey conducted by Deloitte.

Before they attend to essential functions, 11 million UK adults check their phone within five minutes of waking.  They first check their text messages, then their email and then turn to Facebook and the like.

And, said Deloitte, one in six British adults look at a smartphone over 50 times a  day.  That’s not true for silver surfers. People between the are of 65 to 75 only look at their smartphones 13 times a day.

Ed Marsden, a lead telecoms partner at Deloitte somewhat understated the matter. He said: “Mobile phones have clearly become something of an addiction for many and has led to some people looking to unplug their devices and undergo a digital detox.”  Yes, there really are digital detox courses.

Twenty percent of people surveyed said they chose a network with the best internet connection, rather than quality for phone calls.

Dell updates PC line

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

Dell logoGiant PC supplier Dell said it has released redesigned additions to its Latitude and Optiplex PCs.

The Latitude 7000 Series 2 in 1, the Latitude 3000 and 5000 series laptops and the Optiplex 9020 and 3020 desktop PCs come with a set of fresh functions.

Dell claims its the only vendor to offer encryption, advanced authentication and malware prevention from a single source – and this helps its customers save time and cost.

The Latitude 7000 machine combines a business Ultrabook and a detachable tablet in one device, with a 12.20inch display and an instant go feature similar to those found in smartphones and tablets.

The Optiplex machines have a chassis design of only 1.2 litres and are aimed at places where space is at a premium.

Dell said its Chromebox   – a cloud based unit – offers multiple ports, Ultra HD resolution and several mounting options.

Dell also introduced the 55 Monitor, which, as its name suggests, has a 55-inch wide screen.

All machines are already available or will be available during this month.

Storage revenues fall

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

storageWhile still worth $5.9 billion, external storage systems revenue fell by 1.4 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to IDC.

The market research company said a decline in high end systems was coupled with a drop in midrange storage sales too.

While EMC stayed in first place, its market share fell in the quarter from 31.2 percent the year before to 30.1 percent.  NetApp and IBM tied in second place but they also saw drops in their sale.

HP appears to have profited from their market share drop, as it moved to fourth place, while Dell and Hitachi tied for the fifth position.

Moving from external disk storage to the total storage market the top four vendors were EMC, HP, IBM and Dell.

Apple agrees to add alerts to iCloud

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

lawrrenceAfter denying that its iCloud security was as good as a tent flap, Apple has agreed to warn users when their privacy is being invaded.

Jobs’ Mob hit the news this week after numerous beautiful celebs had their iCloud accounts hacked and naked pictures posted online.

Apple denied that its security was below parr but saw its share price tumble as people failed to believe it.

Now it seems that Apple is planning additional steps to keep hackers out of user accounts and will encourage users to take stricter security measures.

CEO Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that Apple will alert users through email and push notifications when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time, the report said.

He added that Apple will broaden its use of the two-factor authentication security system to avoid future intrusions and  aggressively encourage people to turn on the two-factor authentication in the new version of iOS.

However, Apple is still insisting that celebrities’ iCloud accounts were individually targeted, and that none of the cases it investigated had resulted from a breach of its systems. [Who is that woman you keep throwing into these Apple cloud stories, Nick? Ed.]

Security experts said that Apple was to blame for failing to make its devices and software easier to secure through two-factor authentication, which requires a separate verification code after users log in initially.

Ballmer wrote the blue screen of death

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

Steve BallmerNow that he has gone, Microsoftys are telling tales about the shy and retiring former CEO Steve Ballmer.

It now appears that the much feared Blue Screen of Death was Ballmer’s contribution to the Windows franchise.  Some people’s writings create a sense of awe in the reader, but few can actually say that something they had written had created such anger and loathing as the blue screen of death.

According to this posting on the MSDN blog  one of the differences between standard-mode Windows and enhanced-mode Windows was what happened when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del. Since 16-bit Windows applications are co-operatively multi-tasked, it is easy to determine whether the system is responding, and if not, it is also easy to identify the application which is responsible. In that case, Windows gave you options to close the non-responsive application, restart the computer, or cancel.

Ballmer was head of the Systems Division and the time and thought he would pop in on the Windows team to see what they were hatching up.

When they showed him the Ctrl+Alt+Del feature, he nodded thoughtfully and added: “This is nice, but I don’t like the text of the message. It doesn’t sound right to me.”

He offered to come up with something better and a few days later he emailed back what he thought the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen should say.

If only that legendary prose and hands-on control hand been on board for Windows 8 where a demob happy Ballmer was not involved at all.

According to insiders, Ballmer offered no direction to the Windows 8 team on the features of the new user interface. Windows president Steven Sinofsky kept him informed of the team’s progress, but Ballmer met with Larson-Green only twice during the development process, and he never got together with the team to green-light the design.

 

Huawei steals Apple’s thunder

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

lightningThe Tame Apple Press is fuming that the Chinese phone  maker Huawei has managed to steal Apple’s thunder by releasing a phone days before Jobs’ Mob’s traditional Nuremberg style rally.

Normally we do not think of a phone release as being sent as a spoiler to a rival’s event, but it is clear that someone in Reuters does.

Huawei unveiled shedloads of devices meant to showcase the Chinese company’s hardware technology,  and Reuters was clearly upset that it was putting the spoilers on Apple September 9 launch.

Dubbing the iPhone 6 as “highly-anticipated” it reminded its gentle readers that Apple was releasing the phone on September 9, even though the story was about Huawei.

Today Huawei markets its devices as comparable to Samsung and Apple products, which are often viewed by consumers as the technological cutting edge, patronised Reuters.

So what has Huawei released? There is a limited edition of its high-end Ascend P7 phone with a sapphire glass display. For those who came in late, Apple was rumoured to be mass-producing devices with sapphire technology and it so far has not happened.

The Ascend Mate Ascend P7 phone7 “phablet” will also be the first Android smartphone on the market with a fingerprint sensor. A fingerprint censor was something that Apple had installed on the iPhone 5s last year, Reuters fumed.

In a statement, the company’s smartphone division chief Richard Yu said the sapphire glass phone demonstrated Huawei’s “advanced craftsmanship” and its ability to “deliver the most advanced technology into the hands of consumers”.

Reuters seemed to think that this particular quote was rubbing it in a bit. The logic being that Huawei is releasing all these products which copy Apple just days before Jobs’ Mob is about to reveal its masterpiece.

That masterpiece, as it turns out, will be likely to be similar to everything else that is already on the market, but will still be plugged to the heavens by journalists who sacrifice their credibly to act as Apple’s unpaid press office.

Nvidia sues Qualcomm and Samsung

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

nvidia-gangnam-style-330pxNvidia has sued Qualcomm and Samsung for infringing its patents on graphics processing technology.

Nvidia said Qualcomm and Samsung had used Nvidia’s patented technologies without a licence in Samsung’s mobile devices and the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge.

Nvidia said Samsung devices made with graphics technology from Qualcomm, Britain’s ARM and Imagination Technologies infringed on its patents.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said that the pair were using Nvidia technology free and were shipping an enormous number of devices.

Nvidia did not say it is suing Imagination – part owned by Apple –  or ARM  – started by Apple really, but it did say it is asking the US International Trade Commission to prevent shipments of Samsung devices containing ARM’s Mali or Imagination’s PowerVR graphics architectures, as well as Qualcomm’s graphics technology.

However, since Imagination technology is also found under the bonnet of Apple’s iPhones, it could be that Nvidia plans to sue Apple.

It is clear that Apple was not a legal cage that Nvidia wanted to rattle yet. Huang said he was focused on Samsung and Qualcomm, and continues to have “productive conversations” with many other companies out there.

In other words the cunning plan is to take out Qualcomm and Samsung and the others will pay a lot of money to make Nvidia lawyers go away.

Samsung has said it will fight Nvidia, while the others have not made a comment.

Get your mind melded

Posted on September 5, 2014 by - News

mind-meldHumans just got a step closer to being able to think a message into someone else’s brain on the other side of the world.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Starlab Barcelona in Spain, and Axilum Robotics in Strasbourg, France have successfully achieved brain-to-brain transmission of information between humans.

The team used a number of technologies that enabled them to send messages from India to France without performing invasive surgery on the test subjects.

The test involved seeing if a person could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre wondered if it was possible to bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication long distance.

Using a combination of internet-connected electroencephalogram and robot-assisted, image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation, the team was able to communicate words from one human to another.

The set up was similar to those used in brain-computer interface studies. A human subject had electrodes attached to their scalp, which recorded electrical currents in the brain as the subject had a specific thought.

Normally the data is interpreted by a computer however this time it the output device was another human.

The words “Ciao” and “Hola” were translated into binary. This was then shown to the emitter subject, who was instructed to envision actions for each piece of information: moving their hands for a 1 or their feet for a 0. An EEG then captured the electrical information in the sender’s brain as they thought of these actions, which resulted in a sort of neural code for the binary symbols — which in turn was code for the words.

The researchers think that this represents an important first step in exploring the feasibility of complementing or bypassing traditional means of communication.

It is not quite a Vulcan mild meld yet. The bit rates were two bits per minute which is slower than an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping.

Potential applications, however, include communicating with stroke patients.

Microsoft shows off three smartphones

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

skippieSoftware giant Microsoft said it has released Nokia Lumia smartphones all using the Windows Phone 8.1 operating system.

The Lumia 830 comes with a 10 megapixel PureView camera that uses Zeiss optics, comes with Office Mobile, and 15GB of free OneDrive storage.  It will cost around £300 or so.

The Lumia 730 Dual SIM and Lumia 735 have front facing wide angle five megapixel cameras, and are intended to be used for Microsoft Skype – both of these will be introduced this month and cost around £200 or so.  They both come with 15GB of free OneDrive storage.

Microsoft also introduced Screen Sharing for Lumia Phones HD-10 which lets you beam content from a smartphone to an HDMI screen.

It has also updated Lumia Denim for the 930, Lumia Icon and the Lumia 1520.

Posted on September 4, 2014 by - News

Dyson 360 EyeJoining a gaggle of other producers of robotic vacuum cleaners, Dyson said it will introduce its own model, dubbed the 360 Eye.

According to the company, the machine uses a 360 degree vision system to map out the room it’s cleaning so that it knows where it’s been and knows where to go.

The machine generates high centrifugal forces to grab dust and pollen from its surroundings. The motor can spin at up to 78,000RPM and Dyson claims it will generate the highest suction of any robot vacuum cleaner.  It uses the Dyson equivalent of continuous tank tracks to trundle round the room and has two types of bristle that can handle both carpets and hard surfaces.

It also comes with an app for iOS and Android devices that lets you control the unit when you’re not at home and see maps of cleaning progress.

The robo cleaner won’t be available until next year, and Dyson gave no hint of how costly it will be.