Latest news

Leaked Nokia N9 press photos posted by PocketNow ahead of tomorrow's announcement.

Nokia's N9 is expected to be announced tomorrow at CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore. The MeeGo-powered device was expected to feature a QWERTY slider, but instead the pictures show a very slim in bright pink, blue and black. No specific hardware information is available yet.

LinkedIn, the professional social network that has seen strong growth in the past few years might have its first legitimate competitor.

BranchOut, an app on Facebook that does everything that LinkedIn does, saw its userbase jump from 32,000 to just over 900,000 (and growing) in the last week, following the addition of job listings on the front page.

The app originally launched in August 2010 with $24 million in venture funding but saw extremely stagnant growth as developers worked out designs and core features.

LinkedIn recently IPOd to huge demand, with a public offering price of $45 which quickly traded up to $123 on its first day.

Since then, however, LinkedIn has fallen to $60 a share as traders and investors cool to the idea of the social network.

(Pic via BI)

Eizo Nanao, the popular Japanese computer display maker has announced their DuraVision FDH3601 36.4-inch display this week.

Making the display important is the fact that it has 4Kx2K resolution (4096x2160).

Current "Full HD" 1080p monitors and TVs have a resolution of just 1920x1080.

Furthermore, the DuraVision is LED-backlit, has 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 700cd/m2 brightness, two DVI-D ports, two DisplayPorts (HDCP) and an EcoView Sense sensor, meaning the display will turn itself off given certain parameters.

Set for release on September 7th in Japan, the display has an expected life of 2 years (if on 24/7) and will cost a slight fortune at $36,000.

Hackers are given deterrent sentences.

Two men who allegedly targeted music artists including Dr Dre and Lady Gaga have been handed down prison sentences by a court in Germany. The pair targeted e-mail accounts to mine for personal information and other content which was then leaked online.

Details that the hackers are alleged to have stolen from music stars also include private banking information and personal communications. The investigation into the activity began when music industry investigators were alerted to a larger number than usual of pre-release (even unfinished) music tracks leaking onto the Internet, and at earlier dates than expected.

Anti-piracy teams narrowed down their search to Germany and alerted local authorities to the activity. The men were found guilty of copyright theft and computer intrusion. One of them was also found guilty of an extortion charge. They had allegedly profited from selling stolen pre-release tracks for up to $1,000 each.

To get the data they wanted, the hackers used phishing e-mails and also sent trojans disguised as music tracks. They then accessed the e-mail (and other) accounts of music artists and stole a large amount of personal and commercial content.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges misuse of copyright law in case involving third-party Xbox 360 memory cards.

The digital rights and privacy advocacy group filed an amicus brief with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. In the filing, the EFF urges the federal court to block Microsoft Corporation's attempt to thwart a competitor offering memory card products for the Xbox 360 games console.

The Redmond-based software giant is in the midst of a court battle with Datel Holdings, a British company that lists memory cards products for the Xbox 360 system among its line-up. At the heart of Microsoft's challenge is an assertion that end-users (yes, the gamers) violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if they use third-party cards with the Xbox 360.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA was created in the late '90s to address unauthorized access to copyrighted material by non-paying customers, and not as a weapon for a company to thwart competition in the free market or as a way to police users' behavior in regards to property they have bought.

The EFF warns that if Microsoft prevails in this argument, it could have far-reaching consequences in the consumer electronics market. It would effectively allow Microsoft to control the Xbox 360 aftermarket, and would make it acceptable for consumer electronics companies to put in place technological protection measures (which you cannot break legally under the DMCA) that have the primary goal of eliminating competition (and limiting consumer choice) instead of protecting copyrighted material from unauthorized access.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) hopes this time the U.S. Congress can bring Data Breach law to a national level.

News of major data breaches at some of the world's largest online services has been plastered all over the headlines this year. Some of the high profile cases include Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) and SEGA's ongoing investigation of a data breach that affects over one million people.

Other attacks of an even more serious nature have targeted the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Lockheed Martin in the United States and the European Union. However, what the BSA is really concerned about is how consumers will react to data breaches in systems run by the likes of Sony, and how it will effect confidence as industry and commerce moves even further into cyberspace than ever before.

The rise of cloud computing, for example, is promising for both enterprise and home customers as a low cost solution for all kinds of data computing and mass storage. The BSA is concerned that after the PSN hack saga and the increasing number of attempts to acquire consumers' personal information, a lack of confidence in data security could hurt the emergence of cloud-based services.

Across Russia, GPUs are being increasingly used for raw high-performance computation needed in research.

Moscow State University is upgrading its Lomonosov system (shown in picture) with NVIDIA Tesla GPU's. The upgrade will push the Lomonosov system into the world's faster supercomputer lists, comprised of 1,544 NVIDIA Tesla X2070 GPUs and an equal number of quad core microprocessors.

The upgraded system will provide up to 1.3 petaflops of peak performance, which will put it among the fastest in the world and easily the fastest in Russia.

"Our research requires enormous computational resources, and we need to deliver this performance as efficiently as possible," said Victor Sadovnichy, academician, Rector of Moscow State University. "The only way for us to achieve these twin goals is with a hybrid GPU/CPU based system."

The University system is used for research that requires staggering amounts of computational power, such as climate change models, ocean modeling, the formation of galaxies and post-genomic medicine.

Also in Russia, the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod (NNSU) and the Scientific and Educational Center of Parallel Computing at Perm State University are exploiting the high performance per watt promise of GPU technology.

Buying the company for an undisclosed amount, Google has confirmed it has purchased DVR and CE Extender company SageTV, which will be immediately integrated into GoogleTV.

SageTV's digital recording software allows users to run media centers for video/audio/picture playback and "its Placeshifter software lets users watch TV on any device with a high-speed Internet connection."

Reads the site of the acquired company:

Since 2002, we’ve worked to change the TV viewing experience by building cutting-edge software and technology that allows you to create and control your media center from multiple devices. And as the media landscape continues to evolve, we think it’s time our vision of entertainment management grows as well. By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services.

Although unconfirmed by Sony, it appears an updated model of the PS3, CECH-3000B, is coming soon.

The CECH-3000B will cut power consumption to 200W from 230W and slash weight to 5.73 lbs from 6.6 lbs.

Sony's updated console will still have a 320GB HDD, remove LED lamps and include "external changes to the power and eject buttons," says Andriasang.

It is unclear what those changes are, however.

Sony will ship the updated model when current stock is depleted, at the same price point as current units.

Netflix was down tonight temporarily with users trying to access the site from the Web or other devices getting the error posted at right.

While the service is back up and running (I'm streaming a movie via PS3 as I type), many experienced the downtime for hours.

Netflix has over 23 million users in the U.S. and Canada.

Angry users have blamed LulzSec for the downtime but it is unclear if the hacktivists are to blame.

For now, users are still reporting sporadic downtime, and there is no word if any data was compromised.

ChevronWP7, the group who released the aptly named ChevronWP7 jailbreaking tool for Windows Phone 7 devices earlier this year has posted this week that a Microsoft-sanctioned version of the software is coming soon, for a small fee.

After releasing the tool, which allows users to install homebrew on their phones, the group was contacted by Microsoft and it appears the two have worked together to create a legal way for users to get the most out of their devices.

Says the group:

As announced on the Windows Phone Dev Podcast, we will soon be launching an approved Windows Phone unlocking service as part of ChevronWP7 Labs. This will be available to developers across all skill levels and all regions.

The service will require a small fee — currently via PayPal — to offset costs but we assure you it will be more affordable than the App Hub. Those who wish to write and immediately publish apps are recommended to sign up to the App Hub instead.

PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso exploit new AMD hardware.

CyberLink has a track record of trying to keep up with hardware advances in its multimedia products. Now, the company has announced that its flagship products - PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso - have been optimized for the latest AMD A-Series Accelerator Processing Units (APU).

Keeping up with hardware evolution means CyberLink customers can benefit from available hardware acceleration for high-definition (and 3D) playback from Blu-ray, AVCHD etc., enhanced video editing and significantly faster video encoding.

"CyberLink is always striving to innovate the next generation of technology that creates the best consumer media entertainment experience possible," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp.

"We are delighted to leverage AMD's high-end A-Series APUs on CyberLink's complete product lineup to deliver enhanced and ultra-fast media experiences for consumers."

The popular PowerDVD 11 application leverages hardware acceleration technology of the AMD APUs in decoding Blu-ray, BD3D and AVCHD content, providing smoother Full HD/3D playback with much lower core CPU usage. PowerDirector 9 utilizes AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology to gain 2.2x faster rendering speed in tests.

Best Buy has noted this weekend that it will be expanding its current UK-only cloud music platform to the U.S. in an effort to challenge recent launches from Apple, Amazon and Google.

The new U.S. Music Cloud service will be available for BlackBerry and Android users.

Although it has not been officially unveiled, the app is already available in the Android Market.

Just like its rivals, the Music Cloud will allow users to upload their collections online and play it back wherever they have an Internet connection, saving space on their devices.

In the UK, the service is available for BB, Android and iOS.

Web payments firm setting the story straight.

There were some media reports in the latter part of the last week that PayPal had been hacked, and that PayPal account information had been made public by attackers. The company has responded to the claims, asserting with authority that, "the PayPal site has not been breached or hacked in any way."

In reality, a group of hackers claimed to have compromized another site, which PayPal points out is "less secure." From the breached website, the attackers mined usernames and passwords of a number of accounts. Upon releasing the information publicly, the hackers suggested that people try accessing personal online accounts on websites using the same credentials, and PayPal was listed as a suggestion.

So there was no breach of PayPal's system, instead the hackers were just suggesting that some users would have used the same password as they did for the compromised website.

"PayPal's security team became aware of this particular security situation early on and proactively began monitoring a number of accounts for suspicious activity, in order to protect our customers," the company stated.

"PayPal always safeguards our customers from qualified unauthorized payments sent from their accounts. We regularly monitor for unusual activity on accounts and will work directly with customers if they suspect their accounts have been accessed fraudulently."

If you wondered why Microsoft's thrust to add more features and functionality to its Internet Explorer browser has excluded WebGL, here's an answer.

You could be forgiven to tempt an assumption that a Microsoft snub of WebGL is simply the Redmond-based giant's way of ignoring an open standard, in favor of its own proprietary Direct3D, but Microsoft engineers have put forth some real questions for the emerging standard to answer on security.

WebGL stands for Web-based Graphics Library. It provides an (OpenGL-based) API for 3D graphics within web browsers, filling part of an increasing demand for a much richer web experience for end users. Mozilla, Google and Apple have backed the technology with their browser packages, but Microsoft is not yet ready to endorse it.

Microsoft engineers analyzed WebGL and found that they cannot endorse the technology from a security perspective, finding that Microsoft products supporting WebGL would have a difficult time passing Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle requirements.

The engineers split the problem into three main concerns with widespread use of WebGL.

• #1 - Microsoft: "Browser support for WebGL directly exposes hardware functionality to the web in a way that we consider to be overly permissive"