In the avalanche of second-quarter numbers that Sprint Nextel Corp. released Wednesday, there was a curious omission - or, at least, an omission that has continued for the past few quarters.
BOISE, Idaho a " A panel of federal judges is deciding where to consolidate several lawsuits against Google Inc.
Network World - So this guy at AirTight Networks says Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 has a "hard shell on the outside, but a soft underbelly inside"due to an overlooked vulnerability, and an attacker can decrypt traffic that's been encrypted with WPA2.
No release dates, product specs, or prices have been named, but HP spokesperson Marlene Somsak told us in an e-mail that a Slate-type computer is coming soon.
Slated For Fall
"We aren't saying anything beyond 'fall' for a Windows-based slate," she wrote. "And we have not set an official name or set pricing. We are aiming that product at the commercial market. webOS from Palm is the platform for our consumer slate -- no timing, name or pricing revealed there."
Somsak declined further comment.
Speculation abounded last week about the technology giant's tablet plans when the HP Slate made a brief appearance on the company's web site, listed as the Slate 500-1002TU, with no release date or price. First unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, the Slate was assumed to be dead when HP purchased the failing Palm, creator of webOS.
The Slate 500-1002TU was described in product specs as a fun device for social media, photos and videos, which means it's not likely the upcoming HP Windows device geared toward enterprises. It had an 8.9-inch screen, video and still cameras, a gigabyte of memory, a 1.6-gigahertz processor, and support for input from an electronic pen "to write or draw as if on a piece of paper," HP said.
That device disappeared from the web site after it prompted numerous articles in the technology media.
A Two-Pronged Approach
Taking advantage of Microsoft's strong desire to be in the burgeoning tablet market -- Ballmer on July 12 said it is "one of the most important things we'll do in the smart-device category" -- while also promoting webOS for tablets...
Lookout CEO John Hering and CTO Kevin Mahaffey told a session titled App Attack: Surviving the Mobile Application Explosion that a popular Android wallpaper app from Jackeey Wallpaper sent users' data, including phone numbers and SIM card numbers, to a server in Shenzhen, China. The wallpapers included My Little Pony and Star Wars.
Free apps can be risky, they said, with about 29 percent of free Android apps and 33 percent of those for the iPhone able to determine a user's location. Apple's iOS does, however, require apps to alert users when location information is accessed. iPhone users can also use the settings to block apps from accessing personal data.
In addition, Hering and Mahaffey said, about eight percent of Android apps and 14 percent of iPhone apps can access user contacts. And 47 percent of Android apps and 23 percent of iPhone apps have third-party code, usually for mobile ads and analytics, but sometimes for other purposes.
They urged app developers to be aware of security practices, especially when third-party code is added. Mahaffey noted, "The lesson today is that developers don't always know what's inside their apps."
Hering added, "Standardized APIs are making it easier and easier to actually create practical attacks. Instead of having to do something complex in a desktop-like environment, I know I can just call the contact API, for example, and have a very simple programmatic way to grab that information."
There are reports that upgrading the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS to iOS 4 causes the phone to drag and the battery to run out more quickly. Apple has said it is investigating the issue, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
"My I-phone 3G was running perfectly fine, till I updated to OS 4, it's been slower than the slowest, and even turns itself off at anytime, during browsing and even during calls. I updated to 4.0.1 only to improve things a little bit. Still the problems persist," wrote a user from India who calls himself I-Phone 4.0.1 bugs. "Am cursing myself why I updated it."
Worldwide Complaints
The problem isn't confined to Asia. Users in the United States are reporting the same issues. Some say the iPhone 3GS now "stutters." Others say the iPod capabilities on the phone are "completely busted." Still others report the updated iPhones won't go to the home screen and take 30 seconds to respond to various commands.
One forum complainer named "Savvytraveller" said his apps are crashing or just freezing after the upgrade to iOS 4.0.1. This same users reports the handset is getting hot. The complaints go on and on, giving Apple another headache after the iPhone 4 case giveaway just eased the last one.
Indeed, this isn't what Apple expected when it touted iOS 4, the newest version of the iPhone mobile operating system with the much-anticipated multitasking. Many iPhone 3GS users upgraded to tap into the multitasking capabilities, which promise to let users switch between apps while preserving battery life.
iOS 4 also offers a new Folders capability that...
U.S. stock futures pointed to opening gains Thursday on Wall Street, as oil major Exxon Mobil Corp.
However, Motorola said its mobile-device shipments declined from 8.5 million in the first quarter and mobile-device sales were $1.7 billion, down six percent year over year. Additionally, the company reported an operating loss of $109 million for its mobile-device business.
As a possible sign of better days to come, Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha noted that demand for the company's Droid X has been "exceeding our expectations" since its launch earlier this month. "I believe we have momentum going into the third and fourth quarter," Jha said. "As we continue to execute on our business strategy, we are in a strong position to continue improving our share in the rapidly growing smartphone market and improving our operating performance."
Betting On Android
According to Gartner, Motorola ranked sixth in the global smartphone market with a three percent share at the end of this year's first quarter, right behind Sony Ericsson at 3.1 percent. Moving forward, Motorola hopes to benefit from the rising popularity of the Android mobile operating system, which grew a stunning 707 percent year-on-year during the first quarter in the North American market, where Motorola recorded 66 percent of its mobile-device sales.
Motorola is also hoping to capitalize on the headline-grabbing antenna flaw sowing doubt about Apple's iPhone 4. A new IDC survey indicates that 66 percent of current iPhone owners have decided to put off their purchase of Apple's new smartphone.
Apple is attempting to address the flaw by offering a free case that promises to mitigate connectivity problems even as it contends that rival...
The made-over Kindle promises to turn pages 20 percent faster, offers up to one month of battery life, pulls content in Wi-Fi and free 3G, and doubles storage to accommodate 3,500 books. The price is $189. If you don't need the 3G capability, a Wi-Fi-only Kindle is expected Aug. 27 for $139.
At a $139 price point, some analysts are seeing commoditization of the Kindle. But Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis, disagrees: "I'm not calling it a commoditization because it's not a commodity. This is tied very closely to Amazon's bookstore, so it defies commoditization. This is getting into impulse-buy territory."
Just Buy the E-Books
Along with the new Kindle, Amazon is making sure the e-book-buying world knows that Kindle e-books can be read on other devices, including the iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC and Android-based devices. The bookseller also pointed to its Whispersync technology that keeps track of where a reader left off reading an e-book on one device so it picks up in the same place when the reader resumes reading on another device.
"The Kindle is a delivery mechanism for Amazon. Amazon is perfectly happy if you buy Kindle books and read them on the iPad or the PC," Greengart said. "But if you want a dedicated e-book reader, they are going to provide you with several different models at extremely aggressive prices so that you join the Amazon family rather than the Barnes & Noble family, the Sony family, or the...
Lookout Inc., a mobile-phone security firm, scanned nearly 300,000 free applications for Apple Inc.'s iPhone and phones built around Google Inc.'s Android software. It found that many of them secretly pull sensitive data off users' phones and ship them off to third parties without notification.
That's a major concern that has been bubbling up in privacy and security circles.
The data can include full details about users' contacts, their pictures, text messages and Internet and search histories. The third parties can include advertisers and companies that analyze data on users.
The information is used by companies to target ads and learn more about their users. The danger, though, is that the data become vulnerable to hacking and use in identity theft if the third party isn't careful about securing the information.
Lookout reported its findings this week in conjunction with the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.
Lookout found that nearly a quarter of the iPhone apps and almost half the Android apps contained software code that contained those capabilities.
The code had been written by the third parties and inserted into the applications by the developers, usually for a specific purpose, such as allowing the applications to run ads. But the code winds up forcing the application to collect more data on users than even the developers may realize, Lookout executives said.
"We found that not only users, but developers as well, don't know what's happening in their apps, even in their own apps, which is fascinating," said John Hering, CEO of the San Francisco-based Lookout.
Part of the problem is smart phones don't alert users to all the different types of data the applications running on them are collecting. IPhones only alert users when applications want to use their locations.
And...
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