Windows 8.1 Is The Official Name Of Windows Blue

Windows 8.1 Is The Official Name Of Windows Blue

The recently confirmed Windows Blue appears to be the internal name for Windows 8.1 rather than Windows 9, according to multiple sources. More details on this after the jump!
It feels like Windows 8 has only been around for five minutes, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from getting ready for the next release of the operating system that powers most of the planet, with Windows Blue being the codename for the next version of Windows.
That codename is nothing new, we’ve been hearing about Windows Blue for some time now and Microsoft has confirmed that it is indeed internal speak for what the company is working on currently. As previously reported, Windows Blue, or Windows 8.1 as it is now knows as, will be an incremental update to Windows 8, which means it’s not a massive update over Windows 8 itself.

According to the oracle of all things Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley, her sources have confirmed that Windows Blue will ship as Windows 8.1. This news backs up an earlier leaked screenshot by @AngelWZR on Twitter that appears to show the newest version of Windows Blue, complete with a screen labeling the product as Windows 8.1 Pro.

Microsoft officials have said in the past that they expect Windows 8 to be more than one release, with more versions of the operating system coming under the Windows 8 brand. This backs up what we have been hearing today, and Microsoft does have form for such methods. Windows Phone Mango was released under the Windows Phone 7 umbrella as Windows Phone 7.5, for example.
As Mary Jo Foley points out, the fact that Microsoft appears to be set to brand Windows Blue as Windows 8.1 suggests that there may be more 8.x yearly releases on the horizon beyond this one. Microsoft could easily have chosen Windows 8.5 as the name for the next release of Windows, but the .1 moniker may point to other versions also falling under the Windows 8 branding in the future.
Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 is expected to be released to manufacturers around August time and will no doubt come in all manner of shapes and sizes. The first Windows Blue developer preview is expected to be released to devs at Microsoft’s BUILD conference, which is scheduled for June this year in San Francisco.

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Google Set To Shut Down YouTube After 8 Years

Google Set To Shut Down YouTube After 8 Years, Launches Google Maps With Treasure Mode [VIDEO]

In two rather surprising moves, Google today changed the way users will interact with two of its post popular services; YouTube and Maps. One has received an all-new mode for people to use, whilst the other is going the way of Google Reader.
First up, Google Maps is set to receive a whole new mode, with Treasure Mode stemming from Google’s discovery of treasure maps belonging to Captain Kidd (clue number one). Using Maps in a way that only Google can, the company hopes to enlist its army of users in the hunt for Kidd’s long lost treasures, mainly because Google’s two co-founders just don’t have enough money as it is.

Users will need to perform all manner of tasks in order to take up the Treasure challenge, with certain aspects of the map only becoming visible when exposed to heat, or direct sunlight for example. (For those paying attention, that’s clue number two right there).
Whilst Google Maps is all very interesting, it’s the news that Google is killing off YouTube that is the most interesting.
According to Google, YouTube is in fact an eight year competition for the best ever video and, starting tonight with the closure of the site, an army of 30,000 judges will set about the task of deciding which video is indeed the best to ever be uploaded to YouTube. We’ve all got our favorites, but which will win the prestigious award?

Unfortunately, we’ll have a long wait to find out, with Google saying that the winner will be announced in the year 2023 (that’ll be clue number three), when the video in question will be made available once more on YouTube.com for all to see. Until then, we will just have to try and guess the winner ourselves before they are all gone for good!
Of course, some say that these two announcements are just elaborate April Fools jokes, but we think they’re being overly cynical. After all, why wouldn’t Google kill off one of its most popular properties and the largest online collection of videos whilst simultaneously having people hunt for treasure the world over?
It makes perfect sense to us!
Is it April 3rd yet?

original post at readmore

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Google Nose(beta) - April fools prank

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/nose/

 Nose^BETA

Smelling is believing.

Try Google Nose^BETA

The new scentsation in search

• Coming to your senses: go beyond type, talk, and touch for a new notation of sensation.
• Your internet sommelier: expertly curated Knowledge Panels pair images, descriptions, and aromas.
• Take a whiff: the Google Aromabase - 15M+ scentibytes.
• Don't ask, don't smell: For when you're wary of your query - SafeSearch included.

What’s that smell?

• Google Nose^BETA leverages new and existing technologies to offer the sharpest olfactory experience available:
• Street Sense vehicles have inhaled and indexed millions of atmospheric miles.
• Android Ambient Odor Detection collects smells via the world's most sensible mobile operating system.
• SMELLCD™ 1.8+ high-resolution compatible for precise and controlled odors.

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Goat rider! - Goat and Monkey

FUNNY !!

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Google Keep review - How good is Google's Evernote rival?

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Evernote who? Google is taking on the perennial digital note-taking favourite with Google Keep, a service that lets you store quick notes, checklists, web links, and photos for things you need to remember or keep track of. (See also: Get started with Evernote.) Google Keep is currently available as an Android app and Android tablet app for Android 4.0 (and up) users, and in your browser at drive.google.com/keep. (You can find out more about Android apps in our Best Android Apps microsite.)

Even though Google is offering a way to get at your notes from your PC or laptop, don't be fooled into thinking this app was designed for both the desktop and mobile devices. The current version of Keep is all about creating notes on your Android smartphone or tablet and then accessing them from anywhere. You can certainly create new notes using Keep on the desktop, but the Web version for PCs comes with limitations the mobile version doesn't have. That's not to say Keep works fantastically well on Android, but the mobile app is far more developed than the current Web version.

Google Keep: Into the Keep

Google is billing Keep as a digital replacement for the swarm of sticky notes strewn across your desk, monitor, and refrigerator. The major digital advantage, of course, is that you can access your notes and reminders from anywhere you have Internet access since all your notes are synced to Google Drive.

Once you've got the Android app installed, creating a note in Keep is straightforward. At the top of the screen you have an icon menu allowing you to create a text note, checklist, audio note, or snap a photo. One handy-dandy feature transcribes audio notes into text, with the original recording being embedded in the body of the note. Photo notes include a spot for adding text if you wish. You can also add a quick text note by tapping the "Add quick note" area above the menu icons.

Every note you create is searchable and displayed right underneath the menu bar using the card metaphor that Google utilizes for Android services such as Google Now and a rumored Play store revamp. By default, your notes are displayed in a grid view, but a single column view is available as well. Tapping on a note opens it up in full screen view, and swiping a note to the left or right in the main screen archives it. You can view your archive by tapping the three-square icon in the upper right-hand corner and selecting "Archived notes."

Each note can be colour-coded by tapping the colour palette icon when viewing notes in full screen. This can be helpful if you want to separate your to-do checklists from general reminders, or you just want to identify photo notes at a glance. There are currently eight colours to choose from, including basic white.

Pro tip: If you change the colour of your note when using the "Add quick note" option that will permanently change your notes' default from white to the new colour.

Google Keep: Sharing for Keep

Android users can also share their notes with others by selecting the share icon inside a note while in full screen. Keep's sharing function works similarly to the general Android sharing options, allowing you to share notes using the apps installed on your device.

I found sharing notes via the Gmail for Android app is especially useful. Checklists are shared as plain text, using brackets to stand in for check boxes, and photos are sent as standard attachments. Subject lines for shared emails are chosen automatically, using the title of your note.

You can also add notes from other apps using Android's share options. That includes Chrome, which is helpful if you want to grab a Web page for later reading or just plain remember a site.

To add a Web page to a Keep note, select the three-square icon from the upper right corner in Chrome and tap "Share..." Next, select Keep from the share menu, add any extra text you want to the note, and you're done. (The same basic process should work with most Android apps.)

Keep is clearly designed to create a Website preview when you grab a page from Chrome, but it doesn't do a great job of that right now. The app is supposed to display the page's headline and URL, and there is a large space for an image from the page. In my tests, however, Keep failed to display an image for any of my saved pages from multiple sites, including TechHive, The New York Times, and ABC.com.

Google Keep: Desktop version

Keep may be a little rough around the edges on Android, but the mobile version is far more refined than the Web interface. For starters, even though Keep saves your notes in Drive, the service is not yet integrated into the Drive menu, meaning there are no quick links or shortcuts to get to Keep from Drive. Instead, you have to manually type in the URL, drive.google.com/keep.

Similar to the Android app, the Web version lets you view your notes in a grid or single-column view. You can also type in new text notes, create checklists, upload images, search, delete, archive and view archived notes. Beyond the basics, however, there are a few obvious features that are lacking. If you grab a URL from a news story on your PC, Keep doesn't create a preview of the Webpage and saves the URL as plain text--it can't even create a link. You can upload images from the desktop, but there's no option to use your Webcam to take an image. Grabbing a quick Webcam image of a receipt or product you want to remember is a very useful option in the Evernote desktop app. It's a shame Google didn't work a little HTML5 magic to include this option on its Web-based version of Keep.

If you don't have an Android 4.0 device, you could try using the Web version Keep on your device, but I wouldn't recommend it. Keep on the Web did not perform well in my tests using a Nexus 7 running Android 4.2.2. One-finger scrolling was very laggy, as was typing in a new note, making it almost unusable.

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Evernote says security has been breached

 

 

Evernote insists no payment data or personal details were accessed, changed or lost

Online information storage firm Evernote has asked all users to reset their passwords, following a security breach by hackers.

The California-based company, that allows people to store and organise personal data on an external server, is thought to have about 50 million users.

It said user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords were accessed.

But it insisted there was "no evidence" that payment details or stored content was accessed, changed or lost.

Evernote acts like an online personal organiser, with users able to save data such as video clips, images, web pages, notes and itineraries in an external storage system commonly known as the cloud.

In a statement on the company's website, the firm said its security team discovered and blocked "suspicious activity on [their] network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote service".

It added: "While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data remains secure.

"This means that, in an abundance of caution, we are requiring all users to reset their Evernote account passwords."

The firm apologised "for the annoyance" caused by the breach, which it said is becoming "far more common" at other "large services".

In February, Apple revealed a "small number" of its computers had been hacked, but added there was no sign of data theft.

The hack came a week after social-networking firm Facebook said it had traced a cyber-attack back to China after some of its employee laptops were hacked.

A month ago, micro-blogging website Twitter announced it had been the victim of a security breach which compromised the accounts of 250,000 users.

The company's information security director, Bob Lord, said the attack "was not the work of amateurs".

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Tomorrow's Apple and BlackBerry?

 

Summary: Apple has shown that having control over the hardware and software has its advantages, and BlackBerry once demonstrated that same success. Can this same model be applied to Android and Windows Phone? 

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Apple is the sole source of iOS devices and BlackBerry is the only maker of BlackBerry OS/10 smartphones. But the rest of the mobile world also looks to be moving toward a dominant manufacturer for each mobile operating system.

(Image: Samsung)

As James Kendrick stated, Samsung is Android, and, as we see in market share reports, Nokia is Windows Phone. Can the likes of HTC, Huawei, LG, Asus, and Motorola continue to compete against these behemoths?

Samsung

Reports this week indicated that Google is worried about Samsung's dominance because it fears that Samsung might try to renegotiate its commercial terms. While data shows that Samsung ships the majority of Android smartphones and has the one true device that consumers consider over the iPhone, currently the Galaxy S III, there are other players that have better designs and lower-cost phones for the new smartphone owner.
Samsung is dominant with Android, but also has Tizen plans. They have just dabbled in Windows Phone, but if this platform ever takes off, they could carpet bomb the market with phones potentially running on three mobile platforms.

Nokia

Nokia is serious about getting Windows Phone devices into the hands of consumers at every price point, and its announcement at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2013 of the Lumia 520 and 720 continues to fill out its lineup. Nokia not only offers compelling hardware, but distinguishes itself from the others with value-added software and services.
There has been talk in the past of Microsoft purchasing Nokia, and as Nokia continues to dominate the Windows Phone market, this idea doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Is either really likely?

Apple has shown that having control over the hardware and software has its advantages, and in the past BlackBerry demonstrated the same success. Can this same model be applied to Android and Windows Phone? Windows Phone seems more likely to me, since it is a very controlled platform, like iOS, and Nokia is so dominant in this market. Android has many more players, and is marketed as a more open platform, so even with Samsung's dominance I don't see Android becoming a single manufacturer platform anytime soon. I don't want to see that either as companies like HTC, LG, and Motorola are making better hardware now and have compelling offerings.

Origin and courtesy : ZDnet

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Serial DB9 F to RJ11 6 pin out Diagram

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Samsung Galaxy S4 - 3D render

Samsung Galaxy S4 detailed in hands-on video, shame it's make believe

The usual 3D render nonsense

S

Some people have a lot more spare time than us. Perhaps they don't have jobs, children, partners and DIY to do or require any sleep. We say this because, collectively, they seem to be filling up YouTube with fake videos. If it's not eagles grabbing babies, it's faked hands-on videos with the next Galaxy S phone. 

That's right, a phone that hasn't been announced yet has appeared in video. In the video, the imaginary device is shown in a variety of scenarios, including with the obligatory laser keyboard, that the unwashed masses seem to think is the be-all and end-all of human technological achievement, despite their being (a) available for ages now (b) utterly awful to use.

The imaginary specs are said to include a 13-megapixel camera, and a 1080p Grand AMOLED screen. There's also a 2.0GHz 4 quad-core processor, which could mean there are four quad-core processors in the new Samsung Galaxy S IV. It also runs Key Lime Pie, which is a reasonable guess.

The video also describes it as "the most thinnest one", thinner than both the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III, both of which are actual, real phones, so a future phone is both thinner, and lighter than real devices. Which is easy to do, when you don't have to actually follow the laws of physics.

The model number is shown as GT-I9500, which doesn't really make a huge amount of sense, given the original Galaxy S was GT-I9000, the SII was the GT-I9100 and the SIII is the GT-I9300. But, if you're going to make something up, why not let your imagination run free with the model number too?

As cross as we are about this sort of thing - blame it on a post-Christmas rage - we must admit that logic, and the specs that are floating around match. We wouldn't be surprised if the finished phone does end up looking a bit like this, and the specs are probably not far off the mark - with a single quad-core processor though, rather than four of them. Still, that laser keyboard thing is still rubbish, and you'll never convince us otherwise. 

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Another New Battle Between Apple and Samsung

In recent years Apple and its rivals have shifted their fight from the desktop to the pocket. Now the wearable tech becomes their new battleground. There are three different sources have confirmed that Apple is already planning an iWatch. 100 designers are working on the project according to the latest rumors. While Samsung is also applying its design teams to the task of making a similar device, Galaxy Altius Active or Fortius, which is the alleged smartwatch.

The iWatch is a Bluetooth smart watch which will hook up to an iPhone or iPad, feature a 1.5-inch OLED RiTdisplay screen, and sport a touchscreen front, much like the sixth-generation iPod nano. The sources within the supply chain say the device is already in an advanced stage and that its lauch is expected in the first half of 2013.

While the Samsung Galaxy Altius Active is reported to run a proprietary operating system – AltinusOS and it will sport 235MB of RAM. According to the leaked pictures, its app navigation screen bears a resemblance to the tiles seen on Windows Phone. The smartwatch will come with three accessories, compatible with your wrist, your bike, and with a protective cover.

With Sony offering another example in the form of its Android-compatible smartwatch, it is notable that Apple and Samsung appear to be preparing to face off yet again in a new market.

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8K UHDTV: How do you send a 48Gbps TV signal over terrestrial airwaves?

While the last 10 years have seen the rapid, consumerist adoption of HDeverything — from TVs to DVDs to digital cameras — another far superior technology has been making the slow crawl from laboratory, to prototype, to the brink of public testing: Ultra High Definition TV, or UHDTV for short. With a resolution of 7680×4320 (8K or 4320p), UHD is comparable to IMAX — and 16 times larger than HD’s paltry 1920×1080. A single 8K frame consists of 33 million pixels — higher resolution than almost every DSLR on the market.

UHDTV (also called Super Hi-Vision) has been entirely conceived and developed by NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting organization. Starting in 2003, NHK effectively strapped 16 HDTV cameras together to create a single 30-minute UHD clip. In 2005, a UHD TV program was transmitted over a 240km (160 miles) fiber optic network — and in 2010, NHK managed to transmit UHD from the UK to Japan, over the internet. Earlier in 2012, following various tech advances, NHK finally demonstrated the first shoulder-mounted UHDTV video camera — and now, the Japanese broadcaster has successfully transmitted UHDTV 4.2km (2.6 miles) over conventional, UHF airwaves.

One of NHK's prototype 8K cameras -- pretty chunky

This is no mean feat: At 120 frames per second (UHD allows for 24, 25, 50, 60, and 120 fps), a raw 7680×4320 video feed clocks in at 48 gigabits per second (Gbps). The Super Hi-Vision spec (SMPTE 2036) supports 22.2-channel sound, too, which comes in at around 50Mbps. After compression (NHK has developed a special codec for Super Hi-Vision), the entire stream clocks in at around 500Mbps. To put this into perspective, a 1080p TV channel signal (over the air) is around 10Mbps. The new 802.11ac WiFi standard can reach similar speeds (500Mbps), but over tens of meters — not 4.2km.

How does NHK transmit 500Mbps over a few miles, then? Using OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing), MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output, i.e. using more than one antenna), and two 8MHz UHF radio cahnnels. OFDM and MIMO, which are already used by many wireless technologies including digital terrestrial TV (DVB-T), 802.11ac andLTE, allow a vast amount of data to be squeezed into a single bandwidth block.

The huge transmission distance is simply a function of the transmission frequency and power. UHF channels in Japan fall between 400 and 800MHz, while WiFi generally uses 5GHz. Longer waves (VHF and UHF) can travel further without being attenuated by obstacles (such as houses) and atmospheric conditions. While we don’t know the exact transmission power used by NHK, we’re probably talking about 35 to 150 watts; WiFi is usually around 100 milliwatts — and stronger signals travel farther. It might help to think of NHK’s UDHTV broadcast as simply being a high-powered, one-way version of 900MHz LTE.

84 inches of pure beauty

Moving forward, the main takeaway is that it’s actually possible — right now — to transmit 8K television shows (and movies!) over the air. The main problem, though, is that there isn’t a single commercial display on the market that’s capable of displaying that resolution. Even 4K (2160p) televisions — which have a quarter of the resolution of UHDTV — are incredibly rare. Earlier this year at CES, Sharp showed off an 84-inch 8K TV (the world’s first, apparently), and LG showed off a beautiful 4K OLED unit (which is due to launch in 2013).

For the time being, then, 1080p HDTV and 3D are here to stay — but in a few years, when (if?) 3D loses its vogue, 8K will be ready to strike.

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Catch me If you can!- DA14 asteroid contains $195 billion of minerals

On Friday, asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass within 17,200 (27,700km) of Earth. DA14 is about 50 meters wide, and will be the closest ever fly-by of a celestial body that astronomers have known about in advance — at a distance of 17,200 miles, DA14 will actually travel inside the orbit of Earth’s geosynchronous satellites. If that wasn’t thrilling enough, though, celestial mining company Deep Space Industries is saying that the asteroid, if we were to harvest its resources, may contain nearly $200 billion of minerals and water.

Deep Space Industries (DSI) is a new company that recently announced that it plans to launch asteroid-prospecting FireFly spacecraft in 2015, and then larger, asteroid-mining DragonFly craft in 2016. DA14 doesn’t have the right orbit for DSI to chase down and harvest, but that isn’t really the point. With a diameter of 50 meters and a mass of 190,000 metric tons, DA14 is nothing more than an average-sized asteroid — and yet, if harvested, it would yield somewhere in the region of $65 billion of water, and $130 billion in minerals. The global metals and mining industry currently has a value of around $3 trillion — or 15 DA14-sized asteroids.

As for the actual composition of DA14, all we know is that it’s an L-type asteroid. Depending on their spectral shape, color, and albedo (i.e. what the asteroid looks like through a telescope), asteroids are allocated a class. The most common class is C-type, which are carbonaceous asteroids, meaning they are mostly composed of carbon-rich compounds, such as hydrocarbons. L-type asteroids are a sub-section of S-type (stony) asteroids, which are usually rich in metal silicates.

There are two basic concepts when it comes to actually harvesting these resources. The first, which is the route that DSI is taking, is simply landing a spacecraft on an asteroid with an agreeable orbit, mining your resources, and then returning to Earth. The second, which is much more exciting and more pertinent to DA14, is snaring a nearby asteroid and dragging it into an Earth or Moon orbit. A recent study [PDF] carried out by KISS/NASA showed that it’s actually somewhat feasible to grab a 7-meter-wide asteroid in a bag, and then drag it back to a Moon orbit. Once there, it’s much easier to mine the asteroid’s resources.

As for why we’re so interested in harvesting minerals from asteroids, there are two simple reasons: a) Earth’s resources are finite, and b) It is incredibly expensive to launch resources from Earth into space. Water and minerals harvested from asteroids are already in space — they don’t need to be lifted on the backs of incredibly expensive rockets. If we ever want to colonize the Solar System or beyond, establishing a foundry on the Moon (or Mars) and harvesting asteroids for resources would be a very sensible first step.

Incidentally, we’re almost certain that DA14 won’t collide with Earth — but if it does, a 50-meter asteroid impact literally isn’t the end of the world. Unless it lands on someone, anyway — in which case, you’ll be smooshed to smithereens.

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Cybercrime Network Based in Spain Is Broken Up- Arrested in Dubai- UAE

Europol, the European police agency, said Wednesday that it had dismantled one of the most efficient cybercrime organizations to date, led by Russians who had managed to extort millions of euros from online users across more than 30 countries — mostly European — by persuading them to pay spurious police fines for abusive use of the Internet.

The Russian head of the crime network was arrested in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in December. This month, the Spanish police arrested 10 other people — six Russians, two Ukrainians and two Georgians — along the Costa del Sol, a popular vacation destination in southern Spain, where the criminals are believed to have had their main base of operations.

The search continues, however, for other possible cells operated by the criminal network outside of Europe, investigators said.

The criminal threat, essentially a form of online extortion called ransomware, relied on malware that authorities believe was developed by the Russian-led gang. It locked a user’s computer, and send a message in the form of a fake police warning, demanding 100 euros ($134) to unlock it.

“This is the first major success of its kind against a very new phenomenon that we have only identified in the last two years,” Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said at a news conference at the Interior Ministry in Madrid. “This is a mass marketing scam to distribute this thousands of times and rely on the fact that even if only 2 percent fall victim to the scam, it is still a very good pickup rate.”

Mr. Wainwright estimated that 3 percent of those victimized had paid the fake fines. Europol did not give an overall estimate of how much money the criminals might have gained, but in Spain alone they are believed to have collected more than 1 million euros ($1.3 million), said Francisco Martínez, Spain’s secretary of state for security.

Computer security experts in the United States recently estimated that computer criminals make more than $5 million a year on ransomware, though many say that is too conservative.

Investigators suggested on Wednesday that the software used by the criminals could also be aimed at online users who were actually likely to have made unlawful use of the Internet, by picking up key words linked to illegal activities like child pornography or illicit file swapping. That would make the threat of a fine for abusive use of the Web more believable for the user.

Mr. Wainwright emphasized the complexity of the software, with as many as 48 mutations of the virus detected.

“It used the idiom and logo of each specific police service,” he said. “Even Europol and my own name have been used to defraud citizens.”

In most cases of ransomware, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a technician to remove the virus manually. In Spain, after thousands of complaints, the Interior Ministry set up a Web site to help users uninstall the virus. The Web site received about 750,000 visits last year.

The Spanish police received 1,200 official complaints about the virus since it was first detected in Spain in May 2011.

“What is clear is that the organization had a very well-structured and complex infrastructure developed from Russia,” said José Rodríguez, a chief inspector in Spain who handled the investigation.

But he said that it also allowed them to “keep track of victims in Spain, Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere” from their base in southern Spain. “These people could have operated from anywhere but somehow found it more convenient to do so from Spain,” Mr. Rodríguez said.

The Spanish police said six of the 10 people arrested this month had already been detained, charged with money laundering, fraud and involvement in a criminal organization. The four others remain under investigation. Europol offered no details on the Russian who was suspected of leading of the gang who was arrested in December.

The Spanish police also seized several computers and more than 200 credit cards. They said the suspects also had 26,000 euros ($35,000) in cash, which they were planning to transfer to Russia on the day of their arrest.

Europol and other police agencies are still trying to determine just how much money the criminals gained and what it was used for. The gang laundered the money in Spain and elsewhere and sent it to Russia via electronic payments.

Europol started its investigation in December 2011 from its operational center in The Hague, after six countries reported more than 20,000 victims of the virus. While the virus generally came with a police warning, the gang is believed to have used different versions to deceive more users, including one fraudulent message that was designed to look as if it had been sent by the Spanish association that defends artists’ copyrights.

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Chinese hackers bring cyberwarfare to The New York Times

Media companies, it’s time to fire up those firewalls.

The New York Times has reported that Chinese hackers secretly attacked its networks for four months. The timing of the attacks syncs with stories it ran investigating the family wealth of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, the newspaper said.

At the core of the attacks was the email account of Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza, who wrote the stories investigating Wen’s family. Hackers also targeted the email account of Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India.

According to executive editor Jill Abramson, there was no evidence that the hackers had actually accessed sensitive files or emails. This means either they were the worst hackers in the world or The Times really has no idea what the hackers got their hands on.

The report is significant because it shows just how easy it can be to infiltrate the networks of multinational media organizations. Clearly it’s not just the military and utilities companies that have to worry about being hacked by foreign bad guys.

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Adobe issues another emergency Flash fix after Mac & Windows attacks

Adobe has issued an emergency fix to its Flash software, yet another incident where Flash shows vulnerabilities to hacks and exploits.

Flash is one of the most notorious pieces of software for exploits, along with Java. Steve Jobs famously blasted Flash and blocked it from working on the iPhone and iPad over several issues including security concerns.

The latest Flash exploit targets people who use Flash in the Safari browser on Mac and the Mozilla Firefox browser on Macs and PCs. Adobe also warns that there are attacks happening in email as well — users are tricked into opening a Microsoft Word document attached to an email, but it actually hacks the computer using “malicious Flash content.”

Adobe recommends that all users of Flash immediately update to the latest version of the software to protect from these latest exploits. We think it’s a good idea too.

The latest fixes designed to block the exploits are specifically for Windows and Mac OS X. That said, Adobe also has issued new versions of Flash for Linux and Android as well.

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New air traffic system can be hijacked

New air traffic system can be hijacked

The Federal Aviation Administration is in the midst of upgrading its air traffic control system at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. A big price might not fix an even bigger problem, though, as hackers suggest that system could be compromised.

The FAA is already in the process of rolling out its Next Generation Air Transportation System, of NextGen, a state-of-the-art program that will keep tabs on every plane in US airspace using GPS technology in lieu of relying on traditional radar. In the wake of a series of incidents where GPS signals were spoofed, though, serious problems could emerge in the coming years.

"If I can inject 50 extra flights onto an air traffic controller's screen, they are not going to know what is going on,"Canadian computer consultant Brad Haines told NPR last year. Because Haines and others can emulate unencrypted and unauthenticated GPS signals sent from imaginary planes, he says NextGen stands to warrant some upgrades before it’s ready for the rest of the world.

"If you could introduce enough chaos into the system – for even an hour – that hour will ripple though the entire world's air traffic control,” Haines told NPR.

Haines’ ideas are outrageous, but not exactly out of this world. Just last year, a Texas college professor spoofed, or faked, GPS signals in order to hijack an unmanned aerial vehicle right in front of the US Department of Homeland Security. The United States stands to have as many as 30,000 UAVs, or drones, flying overhead by the end of the decade. When Todd Humphreys of the University of Texas at Austin spoke with RT though, he said those aircraft could come down if hackers have their way.

“The navigations systems of these drones have a variety of sensors,” Humphreys told RT, “…but at the very bottom is a GPS unit — and most of these drones that will be used in the civilian airspace have a civilian GPS unit which is wide open and vulnerable to this kind of attack. So if you can commander the GPS unit, then you can basically spoon feed false navigation information to the navigation center of these drones.”

“Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” the professor added in an interview with Fox News.

Indeed, the system implemented by the FAA under NextGen will rely on similar technology. With the deep pockets of the government involved in NextGen, though, the GPS signals sent by planes flying overheard are likely to be encrypted. What damage could still be done remains a mystery for now, though, since the FAA is unwilling to let hackers perform any testing to see what could be carried out.

"I still wonder if it would be possible to fool the system on the edges," Nick Foster, a colleague of Haines, told NPR. "I think the FAA should open it up and let us test it."

The FAA isn’t all that willing for the time being, though, and perhaps with good reason: a 2009 report filed by the Wall Street Journal found that civilian air-traffic computer networks have been penetrated multiple times in only a few short years. At the time, the Journal cited a federal report issued by the US Department of Transportation that they said “warned that the Federal Aviation Administration's modernization efforts are introducing new vulnerabilities that could increase the risk of cyberattacks on air-traffic control systems.”

Meanwhile, a report released just last month by the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that America’s critical infrastructures, including the transportation sector, were subject to unprecedented cyberattacks in 2012.

“The threat of hackers interfering with our air-traffic control systems is not just theoretical; it has already happened,"Rep. Tom Petri (R- Wisconsin) told the Journal for their 2009 report. "We must regard the strengthening of our air-traffic control security as an urgent matter."

Taylor Amerding of CSO says the NextGen system will cost taxpayers $27 billion, plus an additional $10 billion from the commercial aviation industry, in order to implement in full. Once it is rolled out, the FAA will still use radar to track flights, but only in addition to relying on GPS signals.

"Don't for a moment believe there won't be radar anymore," aviation specialist Martin Fisher tells CSO. "Commercial aircraft will still have anti-collision radar and proximity alarms."

copy right & courtesy to RT. 

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Windows 8 - 60 Million Licenses to date

At the 11th Annual J.P. Morgan Tech Forum at CES 2013 today, Windows Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller announced that Windows 8 has sold 60 million licenses to date. This represents the cumulative sales of Windows 8 including both upgrades and sales to OEMs for new devices. This is a similar sales trajectory that we saw with Windows 7.

We have seen a significant increase in the number of Windows 8 certified systems since general availability at the end of October. There are now more than 1,700 certified systems for Windows 8 and Windows RT. I suggest reading this post from Nick Parker putting the spotlight on several very cool new Windows 8 PCs announced by our OEM partners this week at CES.

This week we also highlighted strong growth in developers building for Windows 8. Since the opening of the Windows Store the number of apps has quadrupled and we passed the 100 million app download mark – just two months after general availability.

UPDATE 1/10: You can read the full transcript of Tami’s presentation at the J.P. Morgan Tech Forum at CES 2013 by Click Here

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Installing Exchange Server 2010

How to install exchange server 2010 on Windows 2008 R2 Server.

Our scenario:

Steps for Domain Controller:

• Make sure that DNS and Active Directory functions properly
• Insert Exchange Server 2010 DVD and open Command Prompt
• Prepare Active Directory   e:\Setup /PrepareAD /OrganizationName: ibestbuy
• Prepare Domains  e:\Setup /PrepareDomain 

Okay, Let me explain you what that those two commands do.

1. PrepareAD - switch will update your Active Directory Schema  for exchangeserver

    and you must run those two commands with Administrative privileged ( Enterprise admin & Schema Admin)

2. PrepareDomain or PrepareAllDomains or PAD - switch will prepare your domain for exchange server

okay, lets go to exserver.ibestbuy.in server.

Steps for installing Exchange Server 2010 on exserver

Prerequisites:

First, go and download Install Microsoft Office Filter pack 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17062

You need to install dotnetFramework 3.5 and Remote Admin tools for Windows 2008 R2.
 no worry, we can accomplish theses two in single command let on PowerShell.
Open Power Shell with Administrative rights ( I prefer the same user which you choose to prepare Domain Controller)
  command lets.

• Import-Module ServerManager
• Add-WindowsFeature NET-Framework,RSAT-ADDS,Web-Server,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Metabase,Web-Net-Ext,Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console,WAS-Process-Model,RSAT-Web-Server,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Dyn-Compression,NET-HTTP-Activation,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Client-Auth,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Http-Redirect,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Static-Content,Web-WMI,RPC-Over-HTTP-Proxy -Restart

Thats all, after this, your Server will reboot automatically.

Once finished reboot,  Insert Exchange Server 2010 media, start installing... according to your company requirements.

  more to come about exchange server 2010 roles.. keep tuned in..

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