Current date/time is Fri 12 Mar 2010, 10:02 am
The Energizer Bunny keeps going and going, but he picked up a nasty Trojan along the way. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security discovered that Energizer's Duo USB charger left Windows computers open to remote control, thanks to a back door in the product's battery monitoring software. Here's what you need to know:
What is the Energizer DUO?
It's a USB and AC charger for NiMH batteries. Bundled software for Windows and Mac lets you see how much juice is in your batteries. The DUO went on sale in 2007 in the United States. Energizer also released a USB charger...
Well, that was quick. After gamers found “evidence” that Valve may bring some of its wildly successful gaming products to the Mac, and Valve teased as much last week, we now have official confirmation. Valve is coming to the Mac in a big way.
In a press release Monday, Valve announced that Steam, its “Source” gaming engine, and a number of its most popular titles will be available on the Mac in April. Selections from Valve’s library that will be available at launch include Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half Life series.
Valve also announced...
Microsoft will ship two security updates on Tuesday to patch eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.
In its monthly advance notification, Microsoft spelled out next week's two-update Patch Tuesday, a far cry from February's massive roll-out of 13 security bulletins that fixed 26 flaws.
The downturn was not unexpected. "This is indicative of the on and off cycle that Microsoft uses," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. "Last month was more OS related, this month they're patching some applications."
Microsoft will officially launch Office 2010 to businesses at an event slated for May 12, the company announced today.
Enterprises with volume license agreements will be able to obtain the finished product that same day, Microsoft added. Office 2010 is set to go on general sale to consumers and business without licensing deals sometime in June.
As expected, Microsoft today also unveiled a program that provides a free upgrade to Office 2010 for customers who purchase the older Office 2007 between now and Sept. 30.
Earlier this week, Microsoft's chief financial officer...
Microsoft will discontinue development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) as of June 30, the company announced via a blog.
The blog calls the elimination of this package of integrated Microsoft back-office programs a move to "streamline [Microsoft's] server product portfolio."
"[M]idsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as ... virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness," the post stated. "Those capabilities are already available through other offerings, including...
Here we go again. Not long after apps with inappropriate content were pulled from the App Store, Apple removed all traces of another kind of app on Thursday—this time for less controversial reasons.
The victims of the moment are apps with Wi-Fi stumbling features, such as Wifi-Where, yFy, and Sekai Camera. These are applications that can not only show the location of every nearby Wi-Fi hotspot based on information from an online directory, but also can dynamically add more listings based on what Wi-Fi access points the iPhone detects in the immediate vicinity. There's just one problem;...
A mobile phone with Google's Android operating system that was delayed in China will now ship next week, in the latest sign that Android has gone largely unscathed by a row between Google and the Chinese government.
A subsidiary of mobile carrier China Unicom has started letting users reserve the Motorola XT701 and estimates the phone will ship around March 13, according to its Web site. The pre-sale appeared to have started Thursday or later.
The price of the Motorola XT701 was listed as 4,299 yuan (US$630) on the China Unicom site. The 3G phone has a 3.7 inch touchscreen.
Adobe Systems released a new version of its Photoshop.com Mobile application for Android phones on Thursday night, an upgrade that came with an apparent attempt to tweak Apple's nose.
The new version gets more editing options. It adds "vibrant" to make photo colors richer and "pop" for a pop-art style. Also new are "soft black and white," "warm vintage," "vignette blur," "white glow," and "rainbow," Adobe said.
But more significantly, perhaps, the mobile editing software also now can be incorporated by other...
Apple made it official Friday, announcing the iPad will go on sale April 3 with pre-ordering starting March 12. Apple says it will first sell its Wi-Fi-enabled iPads on April 3 and will sell Wi-Fi- and 3G-equipped models "in late April." On March 12 you'll be able pre-order either model.
Apple says iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, and $699 for 64GB. The 3G-equipped iPad will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB, and $829 for 64GB. iPad...
Microsoft published the Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for March 2010 and there are only two security bulletins predicted for next Tuesday--both rated as Important. Following the nearly record-breaking Patch Tuesday in February, IT administrators will appreciate getting a little bit of a break.
The advance notification discloses little in terms of details, but it does help IT administrators prepare by providing some warning of the number and severity of the security bulletins expected to be released next Tuesday, as well as a general idea of the type of vulnerability...
A promising and potentially useful iPhone application that would have allowed users to browse, view and even download content from the BBC was blocked by the corporation.
Manchester-based iPhone developer Camiloo unveiled Rewat.ch last month. The application, £1.19 (US$1.79) at launch, would have allowed users to browse all BBC iPlayer RSS feeds from a simple user interface on their iPhone or iPod touch.
A YouTube demo showed the ability to browse by channel, day, programme genre, and by the first letter of the programme name or by a search term.
More:
Microsoft is re-releasing the patch that caused Windows systems to crash in February with a Blue Screen of Death.
The software maker has re-written the installation package for the update, MS10-015, and will push it out automatically to users. It has written logic into the update to prevent the fix from being installed if the Alureon rootkit is present, it said in a Microsoft Security Response Center statement on Tuesday.
The Alureon rootkit, which makes changes to the operating system kernel, caused the February crashes, according to Microsoft.
"I...
As if keeping the differences straight between Opera's Mobile and Mini browsers weren't tricky enough already, Opera has added another twist by releasing Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows phones, a mobile platform that has previously only run the Opera Mobile app.
Until now, Opera's mobile browsers boiled down to this: Opera Mini (stable|beta) is the proxy browser for Java-based phones that feeds Web content through Opera's servers. And Opera Mobile (stable|beta), is the full Web experience for Symbian and Windows phones that's written with Web code.
The "Mini" browser...
On Thursday Google announced that YouTube is turning on its auto-captioning technology to all users--a move it hopes will make videos both easier to watch and find in its search engine.
The company is trying to make the service more accessible to everyone. At a press conference at YouTube's San Bruno, Calif., headquarters, the company touted the feature as useful to not only viewers who are hearing-impaired but also to people who are learning English as a second language.
Video providers are now able to apply for machine transcription on their own videos. And for videos that...
For those of you who enjoy security news, this week offered plenty of topics to digest. Microsoft attempted to shut down a botnet network by obtaining a court order that called for the closing of nefarious .com domains. Attackers are exploiting flaws in multimedia software, but overall instances of buggy software decreased last year, according to an IBM study. And not to frighten you, but the U.S. would lose a cyberwar, according to a security expert. Finally, we need to mention Google and its challenging week. In one day, three of its executives were convicted of privacy violations and European...
Microsoft told Windows XP users today not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of its reaction to an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE).
In a security advisory issued late Monday, Microsoft confirmed the unpatched bug in VBScript that Polish researcher Maurycy Prodeus had revealed Friday, offered more information on the flaw and provided some advice on how to protect PCs until a patch shipped.
"The vulnerability exists in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using...
Most of the developers whose browsers have been relegated to a second screen of the ballot Microsoft is now pushing to Europeans are mad as hell, and they won't take it anymore.
Four of the seven browser makers that have been shuffled off to an unseen page in the ballot are formally asking European antitrust regulators today to change the screen that users see when they're offered a choice of Web software to download and install.
"Frankly, we're concerned about the inability of the average user to find us," said Shawn Hardin, the CEO of Flock, a Redwood, Calif. company...
For eager beavers who want a taste of Firefox to come, Mozilla issued a second preview release Wednesday of the browser.
The software is based on version 1.9.3 of the Gecko browser engine that underlies Firefox. The current Firefox 3.6, and an update called Lorentz, are based on 1.9.2.
The headline feature of the new preview release is the same for Lorentz, though: out-of-process plug-ins, which means that Adobe Systems Flash Player and the like run in a separate memory compartment to protect the browser overall when they crash. Mozilla hopes people will see how well it works...
Google on Wednesday released the API for its PowerMeter energy-monitoring Web application, a move that could let people get detailed home energy data without the need for a smart meter.
The Web application gives people a real-time graph of electricity usage and historical data with the goal of providing clues on how to ratchet down power use.
So far, Google has partnered with a few utilities which are offering PowerMeter to consumers as part of smart-meter rollouts. One device maker, which makes The Energy Detective (TED) monitor, has an option to display electricity data...
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has issued a permanent injunction that bars RealNetworks from selling RealDVD, the DVD-copying software that Hollywood claimed in a lawsuit violated copyright law.
Real and the Motion Picture Association of America reached a settlement, according to statements issued by both companies, that called for Real to stop selling RealDVD or any similar products and to pay $4.5 million to reimburse the studios for legal fees.
"We are gratified by the successful conclusion of this important matter," said Daniel Mandil, the MPAA's general...
A few months back, I searched high and low for a few decent Mac games in preparation for a series of long flights and found myself looking at titles that were long surpassed by their PC brethren. Titles for the Mac are a dismal representation of what's going on in gaming.
But it looks as if that's about to change.
Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP of developer marketing, confirmed to MacNewsNetwork that the company is planning to port some of its most popular games to the Mac. And while details remain thin, most in the gaming community view this as a positive step.
Valve...
A group of researchers plans to release a version of the Firefox browser that includes the built-in ability to view 3D graphics, a capability that could open the door for more interactive Web pages from developers.
Some gaming companies have created plug-ins that allow 3D graphics to be viewed, but the latest method does not require one, which potentially would allow the capability to be used by more people, said Philipp Slusallek, a professor at Saarland University, at the Cebit trade show on Wednesday.
There are two ways to generate a three-dimensional image for a two-dimensional...
Ever stumble upon a site in another language--Mandarin, for instance--but leave disappointed because you can't read the text? One option, of course, is to try an online "machine" translator like Bing Translator, Google Translate, or Yahoo Babel Fish to decipher the foreign writings. But those services require you to tediously copy and paste blocks of text, or use plug-ins or browser extensions to get the job done.
The latest Google Chrome beta for Windows has an easier solution. When you access a Web page in a language other than your default choice (e.g. English), Chrome asks...
Microsoft today said it had restarted distribution of a security update that had crippled some Windows PCs last month with reboot problems and Blue Screen of Death error screens.
The update, dubbed MS10-015, originally shipped on Feb. 9, but was pulled from Windows Updates' automatic update two days later after complaints flooded Microsoft's support forum from users whose machines refused to restart after they had installed the patch. The affected PCs shuddered to a stop at the blue screen which indicates a serious software error and crash in Windows.
Within a week, Microsoft...
Microsoft's chief financial officer confirmed today that the company will offer a free upgrade to the upcoming Office 2010 suite starting this month.
In a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee program would kick off before the end of March.
Last month, details of the free Office 2010 upgrade program leaked to the Web when a Microsoft technology specialist posted information to the firm's partner community site. The site said that Microsoft would launch the Office...
Goodbye Futhark, hello Carakan.
With Tuesday's release of Opera 10.5 for Windows, it's time for a new JavaScript engine. Opera's new Carakan engine is much faster than Futhark, an important consideration given the increasing demands Web applications put on the Web-based programming language.
Earlier tests on a dual-core Windows XP machine showed Google's V8 JavaScript engine still ahead of the Opera 10.5 beta, but Opera won out in several others' testing. Other rivals in JavaScript are Safari's Nitro, nee Squirrel Extreme, and Firefox's new JaegerMonkey, which combines Nitro...
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