Thursday, June 30, 2011
RIM Responds to 'Open Letter' Criticisms with More Nonsensical Business Jargon [Smartphones]
Amazon Cloud Player review: functional, not mind blowing, and still US-only
It's hard to believe: our world-spanning network, our Internet, which is the cornerstone of free speech and free society -- which, on a good day, is capable of causing populist revolutions -- is still crippled by banal geolocation restrictions. We are, of course, talking about Amazon's two latest offerings, both of which are only available in the United States. Last week it was the excellent Android Appstore for Android, and today it's the Amazon Cloud Player for Web and Android.Along with Cloud Player, Amazon also launched Cloud Drive, which is basically just like any other cloud storage digital locker. It's not particularly feature rich, and there's no real reason to use it over something like SugarSync or SkyDrive -- it does work outside the US, however.
Its primary purpose, as far as we're concerned, is that it stores your your Cloud Player music in a subdirectory. You get 5GB of Cloud Drive storage for free, and then it's $1 per gigabyte per year if you need more space.
The Amazon Cloud Player itself will not, to put it bluntly, blow your mind. It works, but it's very much an early, and possibly rushed, release. Let's dive in to the Web and Android players for a closer look.
Continue reading Amazon Cloud Player review: functional, not mind blowing, and still US-only
Amazon Cloud Player review: functional, not mind blowing, and still US-only originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ACER ADOBE SYSTEMS ADVANCED SEMICONDUCTOR ENGINEERING ALLIANCE DATA SYSTEMS
Onkyo Latest To Pay Microsoft Royalties Over Android Tablets
Microsoft is on a roll. Onkyo is the latest company to trade Android tablet royalties for access to Microsoft's patent licensing program. The details of the agreement wasn't released. This makes Onkyo the third company this week that has signed such an agreement. Velocity Micro and General Dynamic's Itronix brand joined the club just days ago. ?We are pleased that Onkyo has taken advantage of our patent licensing program for Android devices and has signed this agreement,? said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. ?This agreement and similar agreements recently announced evidence the momentum and success of our licensing program.?
Hands-On With The New Olympus PEN E-P3
Calling all closet Henri Cartier-Bressons: buy you a PEN E-P3, a packet of Gauloises and start shooting people kissing in the street. This new camera, part of Olympus' extended PEN line, is probably one of the most solid and capable micro 4/3s cameras I've used and with a solid alloy 12mm lens and a Gallic sensibility you can grab some excellent shots.
MyPad, The ?Facebook For iPad? App, Is Now A Game Distribution Platform Too
We've written extensively about the vacuum created on the iPad by the lack of an official native Facebook application. That may change soon ?�there are reports that an official app is finally on the way ?�but there are already a handful of companies that have been able to take advantage of the opportunity, to the tune of millions of users. One of these apps is MyPad (formerly known as Facepad), which has now been downloaded nearly 10 million times since it launched five months ago. This week, the company is launching an updated version of its application, which includes improvements to some of the core Facebook features you'd expect ?�chat, photos, News Feed, and so on. But this update also introduces a new component: games. You can download the free version of the app here. 
Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch
The exploit, which used specially-crafted Flash embedding in Excel spreadsheets, was first reported on March 15 and has since been fixed. RSA was hacked sometime in the first half of March when an employee was successfully spear phished and opened an infected spreadsheet. As soon as the spreadsheet was opened, an advanced persistent threat (APT) -- a backdoor Trojan -- called Poison Ivy was installed. From there, the attackers basically had free reign of RSA's internal network, which led to the eventual dissemination of data pertaining to RSA's two-factor authenticators.
The attack is reminiscent of the APTs used in the China vs. Google attacks from last year -- and indeed, Uri Rivner, the head of new technologies at RSA is quick to point out that that other big companies are being attacked, too: "The number of enterprises hit by APTs grows by the month; and the range of APT targets includes just about every industry. Unofficial tallies number dozens of mega corporations attacked [...] These companies deploy any imaginable combination of state-of-the-art perimeter and end-point security controls, and use all imaginable combinations of security operations and security controls. Yet still the determined attackers find their way in."
What we'd like to know, though, is whether the attack on RSA was caused by Adobe's lackadaisical approach to patching Flash -- or was it the other way around? Was it the RSA attack that first brought the zero-day vulnerability to Adobe's attention?
Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
How Dumb Was Your First Online Handle? [Qotd]
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES (IBM) INTERDIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS INTEL INSIGHT ENTERPRISES
Oregon engineers roll out cheaper, less wasteful solar cells with inkjet printer
It looks like the push to turn the inkjet printer into the next great manufacturer of solar cells has found another proponent in a team of engineers at Oregon State University. That group of resourceful researchers claims to have created the world's first "CIGS solar devices with inkjet printing," thus giving birth to a new production process that reduces raw material waste by 90 percent. CIGS (an acronym for copper, indium, gallium, and selenium) is a highly absorbent and efficient compound, especially suited to creating thin-film solar cells. The team has used inkjet technology to pump out a CIGS ink with an efficiency of five percent, and a potential efficiency of 12 percent; apparently enough to produce a "commercially viable solar cell." Unfortunately, the group has yet to announce plans to bring the ink to our desktop printer -- so much for that backyard solar farm. Full PR after the break.Continue reading Oregon engineers roll out cheaper, less wasteful solar cells with inkjet printer
Oregon engineers roll out cheaper, less wasteful solar cells with inkjet printer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Audyssey Lower East Side Media Speakers
On the heels of the amazing South of Market speaker dock, Audyssey has released another neighborhood inspired audio product: The Lower East Side Media Speakers. These minimalist designed speakers invoke the artsy feel of the iconic New York City area, much like the South of Market dock was inspired by the San Francisco district of [...]
Speedtest.net overhauled with new look, new features
- New UI: The map widget is much improved; it actually looks like a map now, and it's easy to see where you are.
- Smart server selection: If there are several test servers nearby, Speedtest will now ping each to see which has the least latency and use that for the test. You can still specify servers manually, too.
- User accounts: You can sign up for a free account and aggregate results from several computers/connections.
- Speed Wave: This new feature lets you add your test results to the results of many other users, and get a nice composite view.
Speedtest.net overhauled with new look, new features originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Welcome to a Year Ago, Microsoft [Apps]
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