Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones News - Page 312

The troubled economy might have Apple rethinking things, as they might now believe that they can make decent money on the low cost model, as many consumers want to own the iPhone but the price is the barrier to their buying one. Also, with the recent success of the BlackBerry Storm and other upcoming lower cost touch screen units, Apple may now feel that they have to be in this market space after all.

Our sources suggest that we should know more about Apple's actual plan in the next month or so once the additional tooling is in place to get the phones manufactured.

Tegra is the result of Nvidia's efforts to incorporate as much PC functionality onto just one small piece of silicon, much like Texas Instruments' OMAP processors or Qualcomm's Snapdragon.

Tegra is something of a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card for Nvidia if the firm manages to pull it off, with Nvidia hoping the platform could generate a sorely-needed $100 million in the second half of 2009. This would mean a phone (or phones) sporting the chip should be out within the next six months.

With the economy tanking and the high-end graphics card market becoming an ever smaller niche, Nvidia is doing its utmost to branch out, but instead of thinking big, the company is thinking small. And by that we mean form-factor small.

The companies didn't provide details on their alliance, other than to say they will share profits from the phone sales, split research and development costs and be responsible for distributing devices in their respective territories.

The companies have already developed the nuvifone G60, which they will unveil at the Mobile World Congress trade show, beginning Feb. 16 in Barcelona, Spain. Additional products will be unveiled throughout the rest of 2009, the companies said.

The nuvifone G60 is a touch screen device that includes many of the features of Garmin's nuvi line of navigational devices, including driving directions, weather and traffic information and connections to social networking Internet sites

Currently, the most popular way to secure a smartphone is using a four-digit PIN. But all hackers have to do is watch someone punch in their PIN to learn the pattern.

PINoptics software allows users to set a pass code using images rather than numbers. The images are randomly placed on different numbers or letters each time someone logs in. Users push the correct image sequence to get access to the device, rather than the same number pattern. This makes it more difficult for anyone watching a user log in to figure out the PIN simply by watching which keys are pressed.

In fact, PINoptic claims that a hacker would have to watch someone enter their login at least 10 times before being able to crack the code.

Several banks and credit card companies have also beefed up security to their Web sites by using pictures as a way to verify identity. Some Web sites require users to click on an image after they've signed in with a username and password to authenticate access.

The investigators are upset that Google allowed the posting of a video showing a disabled teen being bullied by other kids. Google executives could be banged up for 36 months if convicted on the charges.

The move is believed to be the first instance of a privacy executive being held accountable for his outfit's actions.

A spokesGoogle moaned that bringing the case to court was "totally wrong" and has said that it has repeatedly expressed its sympathy for the victim and his family. Google co-operated with the authorities to find out who the bullies in the video were and they have been identified and punished," she said.

However the company cannot be held responsible for everything that appears on the World Wide Wibble, she added.

HoweverIn late September and early October lots of tech sites reported comments from Paul Betlem, Adobe's director of engineering, who said that Adobe had stuck Flash on the iPhone. However he pointed out that more work was needed with Apple "beyond what is available through the SDK, its emulation environment and the current license around it to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone."

Apple has a good reason why it does not want Flash on the iPhone. It would lose control of both it and the iPod Touch as a mobile platform. Apple is even more of a legendary control freak than Microsoft and this is something it just does not want to do.

Certainly there appears to be few places that Flash developers cannot stick their software, so what is it that makes the iPhone is a "hard technical challenge". We can only guess, but the dark satanic rumour mill suggests that it might be that Apple have issued demands to Adobe that mean that it will only install Flash when it does not break the rest of Apple's controls.

There's also another useful facility which pundits appear to be overlooking. Its maker claims that the Sectera is the only PDAphone to switch between classified and unclassified communications at the press of a key.

If RIM did want to compete, it would have to build a single handset that works on either Cdmaone or GSM based networks - not one or the other.

The Crackberry provider would also have to invest R&D and effort into securing SCIP compliance, although both makers do seem to support EAL 2+ for secure Nato communications.

Gary McKinnon wasn't even a proper hacker. He did something called "blank password scanning", and because these military computers were so dumb as to lack proper passwords, he was able to roam around their intestines in search of evidence of little green men. He was so innocent and un-furtive in his investigations that he left his own email address, and messages such as "Your security is crap". And yes, since you ask, he does think that he found evidence that the US military is infiltrated by beings from the planet Tharg. He even knows the names and ranks of various non-terrestrial officers, though unfortunately they have been deleted from his hard drive.

It is brutal, mad and wrong even to consider sending this man to America for trial. He has been diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome, for heaven's sake. How can the British government be so protoplasmic, so pathetic, so heedless of the well-being of its own people, as to sign the warrant for his extradition? What kind of priorities do we have these days? We treat a harmless UFO-believer as an international terrorist, and are willing to send him to prison in America, and as for real terrorists - people who bombed and maimed innocent civilians in this country - we seem willing to give their families £12,000 each, on the grounds that they are all "victims" of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

No copy and paste here, move along everyone! What you can expect in the new, just-released 2.2.1 software update for the iPhone is "improved general stability of Safari" -- always encouraging -- and a fix for saved Mail images not showing up just right in the camera roll. It's like Christmas in January!

Apple is sticking to its guns that it has no desire to play in the low-end phone market space. Acting CEO Tim Cook made it clear that the company is not really interested in competing for market space where the Apple can't be the market leader and build the best phone.

Apple will continue to approach the iPhone as a software platform which sets the company apart from its competitors, who are primarily in the business of selling phones and which is a business model that is different from Apple.

As for the latest rumors about an imminent release of an Apple $500 Mac netbook, Apple continues to watch this space, but currently the company believes that there are too many trade-offs with the small screen size and cramped keyboard.