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15
Oct 2009 |
A couple of weeks ago everyone's favourite search company released a collaboration tool that has been designed with improved security over e-mails, provided by none other than a 'sprinkle of crypto fairy dust'. Or so says the Wave product manger Greg D'alesandre.
User privacy is a huge concern for Google, and hence Wave ensconces 2 different levels of security which have been crafted to prevent would-be criminals sniffing Wave data as it traverses the internet.
"It is relatively easy to fake - or spoo... |
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15
Oct 2009 |
A new type of malware that involves hijacking a computer until the victim pays up or reformats the system has come to light, giving criminals a new avenue for making some spare cash from fake anti-virus programs.
In previous incidents, victims would receive warnings telling them to buy a paid-for version of the fake antivirus software, but this is now being combined with ransomware, according to online security firm Panda.
Computers infected with the virus are unable to run programs or even open docum... |
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15
Oct 2009 |
Nokia, the worlds biggest maker of mobile phones, has had its first net loss since the company began reporting quarterly in 1996.
The company on Thursday reported a Q3 2009 loss of R6,07 billion, which it blames in charges involving its Nokia Siemens business, and sales were down 20pct as compared to the same period last year.
A R9.8 billion impairment charge related to its equipment division is cited as the largest reason for the gigantic loss, and the company is also forking out R315 million for a r... |
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13
Oct 2009 |
American cellular provider T-Mobile has suspended saled of their Sidekick cellphones after data loss caused by a server, resulting in a great deal of customers losing personal information.
The provider's website showed the Sidekick as "temporarily out of stock" after the incident, which took place at an ironically named data services provider 'Danger', a Microsoft subsidiary.
During the weekend customers received apologies from Microsoft, Danger as well as T-Mobile in a statement saying "Regrettably p... |
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13
Oct 2009 |
According to Ovum's WiMax in emerging markets: the opportunity assessed report, they state the technology has failed to take off in developed countries, and may face an even bigger uphill battle in developing markets.
Salient factors such as cost, service provider choices, vendor support and coverage will hold back the technology's uptake, even despite the fact that the developing nations have low fixed-line penetration.
The first operator to reach the 100,000 WiMAX user mark is Scartel, a Russian int... |
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6
Oct 2009 |
The world's three largest free email providers - Hotmail, Yahoo and Google's Gmail have been affected by a large-scale phishing attack. AOL has also been affected.
A long list of over 20,000 usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses were released on a website which had previously also published the original list of 10,000 Hotmail users' details.
A BBC report today stated that "Some of the accounts appear to be old, unused or fake. However, BBC News has confirmed that many - including Gmail and Hotmail... |
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28
Sept 2009 |
The comScore Video Metrix service has released data for August 2009, revealing that over 161 million US web users watched videos on the internet during that month. This is the largest number recorded to date, and internet video reached another peak in August as over 25 billion videos were viewed during the month - YouTube accounted for nearly 10 billion of those, or 40 percent of all internet videos watched globally.
The comScore statistics also said that 81.6 percent of US internet users viewed videos o... |
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23
Sept 2009 |
Hard drive manufacturer Seagate today announced the Barracuda XT, the world's first SATA 3.0 hard disk drive.
The XT is currently the fastest consumer hard drive on the planet and sends data to a SATA 3.0 interface at up to the 6Gbps (750 Megabytes per second) - double the theoretical limit for current SATA 2 hardware.
The Barracuda XT is a 2TB drive that runs at 7,200 rpm with 64MB cache. Seagate's David Mosley made no bones of what the new SATA 3.0 technology was capable of, saying "Our aim is not t... |
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22
Sept 2009 |
Wireless product manufacturer Huawei announced yesterday that 2010 will see the commercial deployment of blazing fast 56Mbps wireless networks based on the HSPA+ technology.
This type of HSPA makes thorough use of multiple-in multiple out (MiMo) technology which allows for the vast increase in speed as it combines the data rates of more than one base station antenna's to increase the throughput.
Currently Asia has a few Huawei-powered wireless networks running at a not-insubstantial 28Mbps.
A massi... |
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22
Sept 2009 |
Benchmark tests by Computerworld have shown that Google's new Chrome 3.0 browser is the Windows browser and beats every other available browser - including Apple's Safari, which like Chrome, uses the Webkit browser engine - by a long shot.
Google launched Chrome 3.0 last week, and it is currently the fastest production version of the top five Windows browsers available, with JavaScript rendering more than 900 percent faster than Internet Explorer 8. It is 500 percent faster than Opera 10, 250 percent f... |
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11
Sept 2009 |
High Tech Computer (HTC) gave its latest smartphone a name it can live up to, Tattoo, because people who buy it will be invited to design their own personal skin for the phone.
Announced Tuesday, the HTC Tattoo is the company's fourth smartphone to use Google's Android mobile operating system and the second Android handset to use HTC Sense, the company's own user interface (UI). The UI is designed to let people create their own home pages with the most important data up front, whether a quick link to Fac... |
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11
Sept 2009 |
The Nokia 7705 Twist for Verizon Wireless is not only square, it also features a blast-from-the-past swivel design. Front and center is the 2.4-inch, 262-color display above a few navigation controls. There's also a ring around the swivel point that lights when you get a call or have missed messages. To find the full QWERTY keyboard, just rotate the swivel out from behind. The front of the Twist is black, but it comes with black and purple battery covers.
Features are centered around messaging, but the h... |
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11
Sept 2009 |
Twitter has altered its terms of service to permit advertising, as it looks for new ways to make money from its huge following, which now stands at 45 million monthly visitors.
Twitter, the two-year-old venture capital-backed company that lets people send an unlimited number of 140-character messages, is just now beginning to ramp up efforts to monetise and the revision to its terms of service to allow for ads is part of that..
"We leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options ope... |
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9
Sept 2009 |
According to a revised analysis by Credit Suisse, YouTube, Google's popular video site, will spend around $300 million on bandwidth alone in 2009, which means that the video sharing site won't be profitable for this year.
Credit Suisse analysts Spencer Wang and Kenneth Sena estimated in an April report that YouTube's bandwidth costs at about $360 million for the year, but the estimate was criticised for not taking "peering" into consideration. Peering is the voluntary interconnection agreement among larg... |
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2
Sept 2009 |
Google's free Gmail email service suffered a worldwide outage today, leaving millions without email.
The first reports of the outage surfaced on Astralian IT site Whirlpool just after 6AM AS tume, and the mail service seems to have been back to normal around 7.45am, although it is not clear if emails sent to Gmail email addresses while the outage was taking place have been restored.
Google initially stated that the outage affected only "a small subset of users" and that "service had already been rest... |
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