Windows Phone's new UI and Xbox games are most exciting aspects of Microsoft deal, says Nokia poll

In search for feedback on its momentous decision to dump Symbian in favor of Windows Phone, Nokia has put up the above poll on its Conversations website canvassing opinions about what users anticipate most out of the new deal. There's no consensus choice, with the equivocation of reactions being underlined by the fact that the "Other" option was the modal response, however of the given categories, a UI refresh and Xbox-related gaming boons turned out to be most important. No surprises there, Symbian's touchscreen UI shortcomings are well known about while the Xbox tie-up has been one of Microsoft's big selling points for Windows Phone 7 since its start. We'd just ask Nokia to be quick about delivering on these things -- spending too long in anticipation mode won't be good for our health.

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Feds seek new ways to bypass encryption

SAN FRANCISCO--When agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration learned a suspect was using PGP to encrypt documents, they persuaded a judge to let them sneak into an office complex and install a keystroke logger that recorded the passphrase as it was typed in.

A decade ago, when the search warrant was granted, that kind of black bag job was a rarity. Today, however, law enforcement agents are encountering well-designed encryption products more and more frequently, forcing them to invent better ways to bypass or circumvent the technology.

"Every new agent who goes to the Secret Service academy goes through a week of training" in computer forensics, including how to deal with encrypted files and hard drives, U.S. Secret Service agent Stuart Van Buren said at the RSA computer security conference last week.

One way to circumvent encryption: Use court orders to force Web-based providers to cough up passwords the suspect uses and see if they match. "Sometimes if we can go in and find one of those passwords, or two or three, I can start to figure out that in every password, you use the No. 3," Van Buren said. "There are a lot of things we can find."

Last week's public appearance caps a gradual but nevertheless dramatic change from 2001, when the U.S. Department of Justice spent months arguing in a case involving an alleged New Jersey mobster that key loggers were "classified information" (PDF) and could not be discussed in open court.

Now, after keystroke-logging spyware has become commonplace, even being marketed to parents as a way to monitor kids' activities, there's less reason for secrecy. "There are times when the government tries to use keystroke loggers," Van Buren acknowledged.

As first reported by CNET, FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told a congressional committee last week that encryption and lack of ability to conduct wiretaps was becoming a serious problem. "On a regular basis, the government is unable to obtain communications and related data," she said. But the FBI did not request mandatory backdoors for police.

Also becoming more readily available, if not exactly in common use, is well-designed encryption built into operating systems, including Apple's FileVault and Microsoft's BitLocker. PGP announced whole disk encryption for Windows in 2005; it's also available for OS X.

Howard Cox, assistant deputy chief for the Justice Department's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, said he did not believe a defendant could be legally forced--upon penalty of contempt charges, for instance--to turn over a passphrase.

"We believe we don't have the legal authority to force you to turn over your password unless we already know what the data is," said Cox, who also spoke at RSA. "It's a form of compulsory testimony that we can't do... Compelling people to turn over their passwords for the most part is a non-starter."

In 2009, the Justice Department sought to compel a criminal defendant suspected of having child porn on his Alienware laptop to turn over the passphrase. (A border guard said he opened the defendant's laptop, accessed the files without a password or passphrase and discovered "thousands of images of adult pornography and animation depicting adult and child pornography.")

Another option, Cox said, is to ask software and hardware makers for help, especially when searching someone's house or office and encryption is suspected. "Manufacturers may provide us with assistance," he said. "We've got to make all of those arrangements in advance." (In a 2008 presentation, Cox reportedly alluded to the Turkish government beating a passhprase out of one of the primary ringleaders in the TJ Maxx credit card theft investigation.)

Sometimes, Van Buren said, there's no substitute for what's known as a brute force attack, meaning configuring a program to crack the passphrase by testing all possible combinations. If the phrase is short enough, he said, "there's a reasonable chance that if I do lower upper and numbers I might be able to figure it out."

Finding a seven-character password took three days, but because there are 62 likely combinations (26 uppercase letters, 26 lowercase letters, 10 digits), an eight-character password would take 62 times as long. "All of a sudden I'm looking at close to a year to do that," he said. "That's not feasible."

To avoid brute-force attacks, the Secret Service has found that it's better to seize a computer that's still turned on with the encrypted volume mounted and the encryption key and passphrase still in memory. "Traditional forensics always said pull the plug," Van Buren said. "That's changing. Because of encryption...we need to make sure we do not power the system down before we know what's actually on it."

A team of Princeton University and other researchers published a paper in February 2008 that describes how to bypass encryption products by gaining access to the contents of a computer's RAM--through a mechanism as simple as booting a laptop over a network or from a USB drive--and then scanning for encryption keys.

It seems clear that law enforcement is now doing precisely that. "Our first step is grabbing the volatile memory," Van Burean said. He provided decryption help in the Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez prosecution, and the leaked HBGary e-mail files show he "went through a Responder Pro class about a year ago." Responder Pro is a "memory acquisition software utility" that claims to display "passwords in clear text."

Cox, from the Justice Department's computer crime section, said "there are certain exploits you can use with peripheral devices that will allow you to get in." That seems to be a reference to techniques like one Maximillian Dornseif demonstrated in 2004, which showed how to extract the contents of a computer's memory merely by plugging in an iPod to the Firewire port. A subsequent presentation by "Metlstorm" in 2006 expanded the Firewire attack to Windows-based systems.

And how to make sure that the computer is booted up and turned on? Van Buren said that one technique was to make sure the suspect is logged on, perhaps through an Internet chat, and then send an agent dressed as a UPS driver to the door. Then the hapless computer user is arrested and the contents of his devices are seized.

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Kno looking to sell off ambitious tablet hardware idea.

Competition usually giveth, but sometimes it taketh away too. All Things D is reporting today that Kno, the company that aimed to deliver a most bodacious dual-screen tablet to students, is investigating the possibility of selling off its hardware venture and focusing exclusively on its software offering. Internal sources claim the "quicker-than-expected" move into tablets by big electronics makers has made the environment tougher for Kno, which is now said to be negotiating with a pair of companies about offloading its slate-selling business. Apparently, just a few hundred pre-orders of the Kno were fulfilled before the company stopped shipping them recently, which could be an indication that a deal may be close. We can only guess what a purchaser would want to do with the Kno tablet designs, but as for the company itself, it'll look to the iPad and Android-based tablets for its new market of opportunity -- no point in wasting all those textbook distribution partnerships.

source : All Things Digital

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Acer Liquid mt hands-on

The Acer Liquid mt, everybody! Oh come on, don't be such snobs, so what if it only has an 800MHz CPU, a humble 3.6-inch screen and standard 800 x 480 resolution? It's a pocketable and delightfully rotund little device, and Acer's added a couple of tweaks that we actually found quite useful. The biggest is a part of Acer's skin atop Android 2.2, which is set to be upgraded to Gingerbread "soon," a boilerplate promise with any device not running Google's latest. The Liquid mt offers multiple lock screens, allowing you to do things like control media and check your messaging inbox without having to unlock the phone and enter an app. It's a pretty sweet implementation, as is the simulated page-turning unlocking animation. The handset's rear features a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and the stainless backplate that gives it its name (mt standing for "metal"), but its top is most intriguing -- it has multiple status lights integrated under the metallic surface, which light up to give you alerts for things like low battery status or unread messages.



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Samsung releases 8 and 12 megapixel CMOS smartphone sensors

Samsung releases 8 and 12 megapixel CMOS smartphone sensors, shoot 1080p on the go
What the world needs now is more pixels up in your phone, and Samsung has a selection of new offerings that offer just that for stills and vids. It's released details on two new sensors, one, the S5K3H2, clocking in at eight megapixels and the other, the S5K3L1, at 12. Both will record 1080p video, with the 12 megapixel offering doing it at up to 60 fps -- the lesser model makes do with a mere 30. Both can capture full-res stills at 30fps and, naturally, both are really tiny for fitting into things like smartphones.

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Sony announces A700 replacement, the A77, will ship this year

Sony announces A700 replacement, the A77, will ship this year
We've been hearing rumors about a mystical, magical A700 replacement since last year, and now Sony's gone ahead and made things more official. The teaser image shows a transparent case, but the bigger news here is the transparent mirror, the same as found last year on the A55 and A33. This allows for advanced, real-time autofocus while capturing stills or HD video. Behind that mirror will be an Exmor CMOS sensor and, while Sony isn't saying how many pixels it'll be packing, expectations are that it will fall in the 20 megapixel range. Sony has also announced a new battery grip and a new flash for the camera though details are slim on those as well. All are slated to ship "later this year," giving you plenty of time to make room in your camera bag -- and maybe your budget.

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Olympus SZ-10 and 3D VR-330 superzooms announced alongside entry-level VG-110

What's your preference for getting up close to the action? 18x wide 28-504mm or 12.5x super-wide 24-300mm optical zoom? If it's the former then Olympus just announced its $249.99 (ships in March) SZ-10 ultra-zoomer pictured above, with 14 megapixel 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor, 3-inch LCD, TruPic III+ image processing, and Eye-Fi Card support. Otherwise, Oly's new £159.99 3D VR-330 for Europe dials back the zoom to 12.5x and and forgoes the newer image processing of the SZ-10 while boasting the same 14 megapixel sensor. Both cameras pack dual-image stabilization, 720p video capture, HDMI-out (with CEC support so that it works with your TV's existing remote control), and a dynamic "3D mode" that instructs you to pan and shoot a second image that will be combined into a .MPO file suitable for playback on a 3D display. The VR-330 is also available without the 3D mode as the $199.99 VR-320 which ships Stateside in February. Bringing up the rear is an entry-level $89.99 VG-110 with 12 megapixel sensor, 2.7-inch LCD, 4x zoom, and VGA video. Look for it sometime later this month.

Future uncertain for in-home energy 'dashboards'

Smart-grid companies have introduced a parade of gadgets designed to help consumers manage their home energy use and boost efficiency. But it's still an open question as to how the transition from a monthly paper bill to richer energy information will happen.

This week's DistribuTech utility-industry conference brought still more home energy management systems into the market. In many cases, these are dedicated displays for a countertop or kitchen table that remind consumers how many kilowatts they are using or notify them when prices are moving into a more expensive peak-time bracket.

Schneider introduced its Wiser product set, which includes a wireless thermostat and a display, and Intel announced that Capgemini will use Intel's Home Energy Dashboard in its utility consulting practice. Energate introduced a smart thermostat that connects to a display and other appliances on a home network.

But even the companies producing these products--and the utilities offering the electricity service--know there's a steep hill to climb to gain consumer acceptance and realize big efficiency gains. Meanwhile, some say using technology to wring more efficiency from commercial buildings and transmission lines is arguably easier to achieve.

"There are a lot of green-focused consumers who will embrace this--we think that'll be a small market. The larger market will take years of education," said Mike Matthews, business development manager for residential energy efficiency at Schneider Electric Power Business. "A lot of displays just show energy information, but because they show this all the time, it's pretty easy to ignore as time goes on. We're trying to give a device the consumer can really engage with."
Home energy-saving technology (images)

For the most part, consumers aren't used to tracking energy use beyond a monthly bill and making changes to behavior based on changing electricity prices. A glance at a display or Web portal could indicate that their power consumption is higher than normal and lead them to turn off a TV or game machine not in use.

A dashboard, or smart thermostat, could also be a gateway for a utility to notify consumers of a peak energy emergency and that higher rates are in effect. To save money, a consumer could change the thermostat setting or delay running the dishwasher. If it's a preprogrammed and connected device, the change could happen automatically.

Lagging regulations and prices
Demand response programs, largely run with commercial energy consumers, are being used effectively by grid operators during grid emergencies, notably hot summer days when generators are maxed out.
A digital and green home

What sorts of tech do you want to improve energy efficiency?

    *

      A dedicated energy device for monitoring and control.
    *

      A web portal with real-time and historical data.
    *

      A smart thermostat connected to home nework.
    *

      No thanks, my monthly utility bill provides enough info.

Vote View results

But time-of-use or variable rates, which are supposed to reflect the fluctuating prices of daily power markets, are still not widely used for consumer customers, according to the Edison Electric Institute. Without time-of-use rates, consumers don't have a financial incentive to shift their power consumption to off-peak times.

Cost, too, is an issue, even if energy management systems are supposed to save consumers money.

Cisco's relatively high-end Home Energy Controller will sell for about $500 during a trial with Ecotality's EV chargers, which is significantly less than early smart-grid programs, said Larry O'Connell, product line manager at Cisco. But a lot of this functionality could be integrated into an iPad or smart phone application or accessed from a PC and TV.

"Realistically, we know that costs have to come down for us to hit the mass market. Maybe the controller gets integrated into the home network. You could decouple the display from the network function," he said.

Utilities aren't necessarily the only way energy management will get to consumers. Cisco is expecting EV charging equipment could lead to sales of its whole system, which includes back-end software and cloud services. A number of home security companies are offering smart thermostats and energy monitoring as well, another example of how different approaches are being tested.

From ratepayer to consumer
Trials with dedicated dashboards are useful to see how consumers use the additional information and remote control of their home climate settings, participants say. But there is downward pressure on prices, which appears to be leading to simpler displays. GE at the Consumer Electronics Show said it is creating a cheaper in-home energy display for utilities later this year. Tendril told Earth2Tech that its Vision display, created by renowned design firm Ideo, will be discontinued because it's too expensive.

Instead of fancy hardware and smart meters, at least some smart-grid companies appear to be focusing more on consumer-friendly software. For example, Tendril's Energize Web application lets consumers create a home energy budget and interact with peers and efficiency experts.

Utility executives are acutely aware of the need to improve consumer engagement to make the grid more efficient. Demand-response provider Comverge last week published a survey of more than 100 utility executives who said that "consumer education and awareness" and "consumer buy-in" were the biggest barriers to smart-grid adoption.

At the same time, analysts say that better energy management in commercial buildings and putting sensors on the transmission line to improve efficiency is typically a much easier business case than residential systems. So why the rush into home energy management?

"When you have large numbers of residential customers, that makes it attractive to venture capital investors who are looking for something to scale," said Rick Nicholson, vice president of research at IDC Energy Insights. "It's also attractive to politicians--all those consumers are voters."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20030373-54.html#ixzz1Cz1kCE00

EyeSight brings its gesture controls to Android tablets, Windows-based devices

EyeSight has been bringing its hand-waving UI to all sorts of mobile devices for some time now, and it's now expanded things yet again. Following up its launch on Android last summer, the company has announced that its gesture recognition software has now also been tailored specifically for Android tablets and other "computer-based" Android platforms, and it's announced that it's now available for Windows-based devices as well. As before, the software is able to work with just about any built-in camera, and the company says that it has been "highly optimized" for mobile platforms, with low CPU and memory requirements. It's not something available directly to users, though -- it's up to developers to license it and include the functionality in their applications. Head on past the break for an idea of how it works -- just try to ignore that conspicuously out of place iPad at the beginning of the video.

Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset flaw

The flaw Intel disclosed today in its Sandy Bridge chipset was caught early in the rollout of the company's new processor, so there aren't large numbers of systems in customers' hands. But the buyer beware caveat applies, as always.

Officially launched at this year's CES, Intel's Sandy Bridge chip lineup--what Intel refers to officially as "Second Generation Intel Core Processor"--is the chipmaker's first mainstream processor to integrate graphics silicon directly onto the main processor. It is also the first chip line based fully on Intel's leading-edge 32-nanometer manufacturing process. These two features allow Intel to offer a power-efficient processor with improved multimedia and gaming capabilities.

It bears repeating that this is a chipset issue, not a Sandy Bridge processor problem. The chipset--or companion chip to the Sandy Bridge processor--is codenamed "Cougar Point." That's where the flaw resides. Chipsets, generally speaking, are conduits that allow the main processor to communicate with hardware in a PC.

And the flaw, in this case, is related to how the Cougar Point chipset communicates with SATA devices, such as a SATA hard disk drive or SATA optical drive.

Bottom line: if you are a consumer who's run out and grabbed a high-end laptop or desktop gaming rig in the last few weeks with an Intel quad-core processor billed as Intel's Second Generation Intel Core Processor, then you potentially have a problem.

Intel: main points of Sandy Bridge chipset flaw:

    * Chipset: The issue is in Sandy Bridge's Cougar Point chipset, not the main Sandy Bridge processor. Sandy Bridge systems sold to date are quad-core laptops and desktop PCs. Potentially affected systems have been shipping only since January 9.
    * Issue: Affects SATA ports 2 through 5, not ports 0 and 1. Most laptops have two SATA devices, such as a hard disk drive and optical drive that would be using the unaffected ports 0 and 1. That said, Sandy Bridge-based systems with more than a couple of SATA devices could potentially be affected. The data itself is not affected. So, if a consumer had an affected system, data could be accessed by moving the storage device to another system or a working port.
    * How issue was discovered: Last week customers started telling Intel that there was an issue. As Intel stressed the part, Intel's labs started seeing a failure to access ports 2 through 5. The Intel stress test simulated time passing and it showed that over time this issue could come up.
    * How many Sandy Bridge chipsets shipped to date: 8 million. But Intel claims relatively few are in customers' hands. Most of those are in the sales channel and will be pulled out of the channel. Intel is supporting PC makers in this effort.
    * Issue fixed in new silicon: Intel has corrected the design issue--characterized by Intel as a "circuit design oversight"--and has begun manufacturing a new version of the chipset which will resolve the issue.
    * Delay of new Sandy Bridge chips: Intel expects to begin delivering the updated version of the chipset to customers in late February and expects full volume recovery in April.

Analyst's take: Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64, a chip consulting firm.

    * Affects consumer not corporate (enterprise): It was caught during the testing of consumer-oriented products, so when Intel finally launches Sandy Bridge processors that are targeted at enterprise--typically with vPro capability--those systems won't have the issue.
    * If a consumer has an early Sandy Bridge laptop: If a customer has a system with the potentially-flawed chipset, then the only real alternative is to replace the entire motherboard where the chipset has been soldered down.
    * Most laptops shipping today still use the previous generation of Intel processors: Because the Sandy Bridge products that use the Cougar Point chipset are just ramping now, the high-volume products continue to be last year's Core i series processors (codenamed "Westmere"). These products are not affected.

And how does this affect Intel financially? For the first quarter of 2011, Intel expects this issue to reduce revenue by approximately $300 million as the company discontinues production of the current version of the chipset and begins manufacturing the new version. "Full-year revenue is not expected to be materially affected by the issue," Intel said. Total cost to repair and replace affected materials and systems in the market is estimated to be $700 million.

Intel now expects first-quarter revenue to be $11.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million, compared to the previous expectation of $11.5 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Gross margin, a critical profit indicator, is now expected to be 61 percent, plus or minus a couple percentage points, compared to the previous expectation of 64 percent, plus or minus a couple percentage points, more info can be found on mac reviews or appdelete review.

"Obviously, no one wants to make a mistake of this magnitude. When all is said and done, we're looking at close to a billion dollars [to cover everything related to the fix]," said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research, a chip market research firm. "But this happened very early in the product ramp. The net impact is probably a few weeks delay in the ramp [of Sandy Bridge]," he said.

McCarron continued. "The best example, by contrast, that I can provide is Nvidia. The [chip] packing problem they had, where you had millions of systems deployed. They took multiple hundred million dollar charges. So, a mistake like this can get very expensive if it isn't caught early," he said.

Despite the company's financial impact, McCarron said the impact on consumers is small. "We're probably talking about systems [in consumers' hands] measured in the thousands," he said.

Airports in the UK are bringing in holographic security Agents

They've brought you presidential election coverage and promoted worldwide access to PCs, and now they're telling you to take off your belt and throw out your hairspray. Starting today, London Luton and Manchester airports will beam in images of holographic agents to prep passengers for the security line. Holly and Graham -- you heard right -- and Manchester's Julie and John are meant to cut queues, as well as human inconsistency. According to Luton's Glyn Jones, "Holly and Graham are not going to have a hangover; they're not going to have a row with their partner the night before." Just what we need: an army of holographic squares taking our jobs and making us all look a drunken mess in comparison. Thanks, technology.

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