Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » août 9, 2012

BetaNews.Com (17 non lus)

Lenovo debuts ThinkPad X1 Carbon, I start selling my stuff to get it

Publié: août 9, 2012, 10:34pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The news has already broken. Three days ago in Beijing, Lenovo unveiled the latest ThinkPad ultrabook, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Last night, the company repeated its performance in a ceremony in New York city to simultaneously celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad line of notebook computers, and officially unveil to the U.S. some new products. Chief among the new devices was the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

The X1 Carbon is a 14-inch Ultrabook that weighs less than three pounds thanks to its carbon fiber chassis. It offers an eight hour battery, optional 3G mobile broadband, 720p face-tracking camera, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard, and a glass multi-touch touchpad. The base specs of the device include a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 CPU with 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD for $1,299. While modest specs for a baseline, they can be upgraded to an Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

It goes for sale on August 21st directly from Lenovo, and also through the company's regular retail channels, such as Amazon and Newegg in the United States.

Okay…so what?

The ThinkPad line is an impressive twenty years old its reputation as a business workhorse with a less-than-flashy exterior, kind of weak onboard display, but solid security and manageability have made it a family with very loyal users.

The Ultrabook versions of the venerable ThinkPad line, meanwhile, have existed for just about four years, even though they predate Intel's "ultrabook" distinction. This version of the X1 ThinkPad doesn't shrink the overall physical profile any more than has already been done in previous iterations, but it increases the display size by one inch, and increases the resolution to 1600 x 900, and decreases the weight by just about three quarters of a pound.

My daily work machine is a ThinkPad X220 with a 320GB HDD, but I also have a Macbook Air that I use for less intensive work tasks, or for days where my media consumption outweighs my media creation. With this particular iteration of the ThinkPad X1, I can maximize its configuration and only sacrifice a small piece of processor performance and storage size of my former unit, while compensating with the improved speed of an SSD.

It is, on paper (and in my own rationale), a lateral move in the performance department with a massive upgrade in the physical department. So I'm selling my Macbook Air and migrating my X220 to the X1 Carbon when it is released on August 21st.

See you guys on the other side!

Images: Lenovophotolibrary
Instagram is used by 40 percent of big brands, but only Audi uses it correctly

Publié: août 9, 2012, 10:27pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Social media analytics company Simply Measured released a study this week that illustrates the importance of brand presence on Facebook's photo-sharing social network Instagram. According to the survey, the nearly two- year old social network, with its 80 million users, has managed to attract the attention of 40 percent of the top 100 global brands.

Instagram’s adoption accounts for 40 percent of the Interbrand 100, which is actually the lowest in the study, but it has the most impressive adoption rate, when considering the background of the company. Instagram is currently owned by Facebook, through a $1 billion deal announced 4 months ago. The reason why a billion dollars was significant was because Instagram only had a dozen or so employees, and hadn’t generated any revenue.

Instagram currently has over 80 million users, and is expected to reach 100 million "by early fall." Despite until recently being available only on iOS, it has racked up more than 10,000,000 installs on Android in just a few months. According to Simply Measured, it took Facebook four years and Twitter five years to reach that many users. Instagram could do it twice as fast as Facebook did, and two and a half times faster than Twitter.

Facebook, has 955 million users, has managed to attract 98 percent of the Interbrand 100. Twitter, which has more than 500 million users, comes in second with 94 percent Interbrand 100 adoption. The two major social networks are the only ones with a higher than 90 percent adoption, with Google+ ranking in third with 64 percent despite the 250 million users it has. In fourth place, before Instagram, is Pinterest with 51 percent adoption from Interbrand 100.

Who's the most popular brand?

MTV and Starbucks Coffee dominate the charts, but MTV is at the top of the list with 813,201 followers, a total of 478 photos, 3,477 likes received, and a total of 88 comments from Instagram users. Starbucks Coffee has almost 60,000 fewer followers (758,146), 202 total photos, more likes at 3,812 and it has received 69 comments.

MTV and Starbucks Coffee occupy the first two places with more than 750,000 followers, with Starbucks Coffee having more than 300,000 followers separating it from Burberry, in third place.

At the 3^rd place from the bottom of the list, but still with more than 100,000 followers is Tiffany & Co. with 103,356 followers, 159 total photos, 1,676 likes and 32 comments. Hermes is on penultimate place with 51,136 followers, 303 total photos, 281 likes and 4 comments. On last place is McDonalds, which pales in comparison to the other 9 brands from the top 10, with 38,141 followers, 7 photos, 0 likes and 0 comments received.

McDonalds is last on all counts, while Burberry has the highest number of photos, Nike has received the highest number of likes, 6,399 and the highest number of comments, 135, despite being in fourth place with 322,721 followers.

Luxury brands such as Burberry, Audi, Guccy, Tiffany & Co and Hermes are in the top 10 most popular brands, with others such as BMW and Armani making an entrance in top 15, being on the 10 – 15 spot when it comes to total engagement.

60 percent of photos posted on Instagram by the brands on Interbrand 100 are filtered, with the “Valencia” filter having the highest engagement and a 7 percent usage and with “Lo-Fi” having the highest usage at 14 percent. It appears as if there is no recipe for success when it comes to the use of filters and instead there’s “room for trial-and-error” and optimization based on individual brand strategy.

Out of 1,736 photos posted, the engagement per photo is 4,028 actions. 32 percent of photos posted to Twitter receive 27 "engagements" (tweets/retweets/etc) per photo, but on Facebook, engagement is 40 (shares/likes/etc) per photo. The study suggests that there is a strong connection between the number of followers and engagement per photo, but the same rule doesn’t apply when it comes to the number of followers and the engagement as a percent of those followers. It’s been stated that the weak connection between followers and the engagement among them can be attributed to the lack of a "share" button, which isn’t present on Instagram as it is on Facebook.

Out of the Interbrand 100 brands using Instagram, Audi appears to be the most successful and the one that does what they are supposed to on a photo-sharing website: they post photos. They focus on posting pictures of their cars, which is their core product after all. But what the car manufacturer doesn’t do is announce deals, promotions or sales on Instagram, or direct their followers to Facebook contests. Basically Audi manages to have 4.5 engagements per follower on Instagram since June 20 2012, averaging 1,423 likes and 34 comments per photo; they also post once a day which helps keep momentum. According to the study, Audi manages to be much more effective when it comes to engagement on Instagram even if they have 104,511 followers, a relatively modest showing compared to MTV or Starbucks Coffee which have more than 7 times as much.

There are a few lessons to be learned when it comes to Instagram use, and one of those lessons comes from Audi. Judging by what Audi is doing, the key to success is to do what’s expected on a photo-sharing social network: share photos. Instead of utilizing it as a direct marketing tool, they use it properly. When it comes to the photo filters, it's not the most used that bring the highest engagement, but the use of the right filter that triggers an action from the users. Third, bigger isn’t necessarily better, and Audi’s numbers prove it. It's not the number of followers that bring the highest engagement on Instagram, but instead it's a combination of regularity of posting, the content of what's posted, and how it looks.
Mars Rover Curiosity camera isn't as good as your cell phone's

Publié: août 9, 2012, 10:19pm CEST par Ed Oswald

NASA's Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars on Sunday night, and almost immediately began transferring back to Earth the first images of the Martian surface. But for its reported $2.5 billion price tag, the images have a little less clarity than you might expect.

Curiosity's cameras have a maximum resolution of two megapixels. For perspective's sake, modern smartphones typically are 8MP or more. The result will be images that are sharper than those of Martian rovers past, yet lack the clarity that would be expected of a modern research craft.

So why does Curiosity have such a low-tech camera on board? There are two big reasons: the rover's long developmental period and limitations on the transmission of interplanetary data, says camera project manager Mike Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems.

In an interview this week with Digital Photography Review, Ravine notes that his company had been working on Curiosity's cameras as early as 2004. The specifications called for 8GB of on-board flash memory, which may sound like a lot is not much considering the rover's two year mission on the planet's surface.

A two-megapixel camera will obviously produce images that are small enough in size to permit thousands of images to be stored in Curiosity's on-board memory. Additionally in 2004 terms, 2MP wasn't so low-tech as it is now. That's when the design for the camera was proposed, and Ravine notes that his company couldn't develop something else once NASA approved its proposal.

An even bigger consideration for both NASA and Ravine's team is bandwidth. As it stands now, interplanetary data transmission is a slow and tedious process. Curiosity sends data to two satellites currently orbiting Mars -- the former Mars Reconnaissance and Mars Odyssey orbiters -- which then transmit data back to Earth. But at a speed of only 128Kbps, it's still quite slow in modern terms. This is not a lot of bandwidth given the scope of the Curiosity mission.

While pictures are what most of us are going to associate with the Curiosity mission, the rover has far more data that it must send back. With only about 250 megabytes of data able to be transmitted back to Earth daily according to Ravine, bandwidth is at a premium.

There still should be visually stunning images from these cameras. The image shown below of Curiosity's heat shield falling away from the rover before final descent is arguably one of the clearest images sent back from an outer space research vessel yet. At the same time, these will be the exception and not the rule as NASA will need to pick and choose which images to retrieve due to the lack of bandwidth.

So how do we solve this bandwidth problem? At last year's TEDxMidAtlantic event in Washington, D.C., Google chief evangelist and "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf talked about the need for an interplanetary Internet. The beginnings of such a system already exists in how NASA and other space agencies are repurposing orbiting spacecraft to become communications relays.

But what happens when spacecraft begin to travel longer distances in their missions, say to distant stars like Alpha Centauri? Our modern point-to-point radio link system will be far less reliable, and the delays will be immense. It will soon be time to re-imagine how our spacecraft "phone home", or face an ever more difficult time in leveraging our modern technologies to advance the pace of space research.
Microsoft and NYPD make new Precrime tool, hopes you won't get a red ball

Publié: août 9, 2012, 9:52pm CEST par Patrick Roanhouse

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly unvield a new partnership with the Microsoft Corporation. Working together, New York Police Department and Microsoft developed a crime prevention and counterterrorism information analysis platform they call Domain Awareness System. When fully deployed, the new system will provide NYPD investigators and analysts a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity. DAS will help aggregate and analyze public safety data in real time.

DAS takes tips, emergency response calls, and other live incident and safety reports and automatically ties them to richer amounts of information. A network of smart CCTV cameras, license plate readers, speed cameras, and pre-existing cross-agency database information is filtered to relate to those incidents and tips that match. Law enforcement can then develop live real-time incident reports that can be transmitted to police in the field.

Analysts working on the system could use it to track possible suspects, their known connections and even predict crime patterns for particular areas of the city using the stats data it provides. GPS tracking spatial systems in police cars also allow police to better allocate their resources and officers with live report information from the DAS. In a test case senario, if reports of unknown packages or suspicious vehicles come in they can be tied together, and DAS could track people around a given area to see if there might be possible connections automatically, without police having to do extra digging -- allowing the best choice for first responders and other officers with the ability to go and collect further evidence in other directions.

At the press conference Mayor Bloomberg made the statement:

Part of the reason we have been able to continue driving down crime to record lows while devoting considerable resources to counterterrorism is our heavy investment in technology and our willingness to develop new, cutting-edge solutions to keep New Yorkers safe, This new system capitalizes on new, powerful policing software that allows police officers and other personnel to more quickly access relevant information gathered from existing cameras, 911 calls, previous crime reports, and other existing tools and technology. It will help the NYPD do more to prevent crimes from occurring and help them respond to crimes even more effectively. And because the NYPD built the system in partnership with Microsoft, the sale of the product will generate revenue for the city that will fund more new crime-prevention and counterterrorism programs.

NYPD Commissioner Kelly statement:

The system is a transformative tool because it was created by police officers for police officers, Its development is a testament to the talent and experience of our officers. And this agreement with Microsoft will allow the NYPD to continue to fund innovative counterterrorism and crime prevention programs.

Microsoft claims the solution is uniquely tailored to meet the specific needs of its users but the basic tools would never have been possible without the help of the NYPD in their practical knowledge of what law enforcement agencies needed. Kathleen Hogan, corporate vice president of Microsoft Services, states:

Microsoft is honored to partner with the NYPD to provide these important public safety capabilities to other jurisdictions, The NYPD is a respected leader and is continually innovating to help ensure the safety of New York’s citizens. It is a privilege to support its work with our technology and professional services.

As the DAS was co-developed by both Microsoft and NYPD officers, the police department will receive 30 percent of revenue from all future sales to customers worldwide. Hopefully squashing any worries about tax payer money going to pay for the development costs of for-profit company products.
Your Windows programs can PlayOnMac

Publié: août 9, 2012, 8:55pm CEST par Mark Wilson

So, you’ve made your choice between Mac and PC and decided that OS X is the operating system for you. But whatever personal choice you may have made, there are various reasons why you might need to turn to Windows software from time to time. While it is less common with big-name applicaions these days, there are still numerous titles that are not available for OS X. If your work requires you to use such a program, PlayOnMac could be just what you have been looking for.

Working much like the likes of Wine -- in fact the software is based on Wine -- this is an emulation tool that enables you to run Windows software on your Mac. This is not a unique piece of software by any means, but PlayOnMac is designed to be easier to use than Wine, and it does not have a price tag like the comparable Parallels does.

While you could simply copy or download any Windows executable to your Mac, and test it to see if it will work, if you’re looking for guaranteed results, browser through a list of supported apps is better. By installing software from this list you are not necessarily going to find that a particular app or game will run perfectly at top speed, but it should at least be largely problem free.

The range of supported programs is fairly wide, but it is not exhaustive. Performance issues, particularly with any software that is heavily dependent on graphics, such as games, are not unknown, but PlayOnMac still acts has a handy, wallet-friendly solution to a problem that faces many Mac users who have made the transition from Windows to OS X.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the app by paying a visit to the PlayOnMac review page.
Google pays record $22.5 million for Safari cookies

Publié: août 9, 2012, 8:41pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

The rumors were true. Today, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for putting its hand in the Safari cookie jar. Technically, the amount is a settlement, but effectively a fine. The search and information giant circumvented Apple browser privacy controls to mine personal data.

Google isn't the only company accused of bypassing Safari privacy controls, but it is most answerable to regulators. The search company already is under 20-year oversight for violating the FTC Act. In October 2011, Google agreed not to misinterpret its consumer privacy practices.

"The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order", Jon Leibowitz, FTC chairman says. "No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place".

In February, Stanford grad student Jonathan Mayer discovered that Google and three other advertisers -- Media Innovation Group, PointRoll and Vibrant Media -- bypassed Safari cookie controls. "Unlike every other browser vendor, Apple enables cookie blocking by default", Mayer says. "Every iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac ships with the privacy feature turned on".

These advertisers successfully placed tracking code on computers and iOS devices, despite Safari's default configuration to prevent such activity.

Four days after releasing his initial findings, Mayer clarified them. "The circumvention behaviors affected all users, independent of whether they had a Google account, were logged into a Google account, or had made a choice about social advertising", he explains. "Google held an advantage over its advertising competitors that did not track Safari browsers. That advantage may have resulted in profit".

A consultant working for the Wall Street Journal later confirmed Mayer's findings and more: Out of the top-100 websites, 22 installed tracking code on desktop Safari, while 23 sites on iPhone.

According to the FTC, Google took advantage of a backdoor -- an exception allowing temporary cookies from the DoubleClick domain -- and placed others. So Safari users received tracking code even when cookies supposedly were blocked.

The FTC charged Google with violating its October 2011 agreement, leading to today's record settlement.

Photo Credit: gcpics/Shutterstock
If the manufacturers can't do it, modders can: Jelly Bean for your smartphone

Publié: août 9, 2012, 6:31pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Android smartphones aren’t known for timely updates, even if they bear the Nexus name, but when the very first Android smartphone gets Jelly Bean, you know something interesting is happening.

Thanks to Android modder jcarrz1 from XDA forums, even the 3 year old HTC Dream (or T-Mobile G1 as it’s known in the United States) can now get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The modding community is bringing Jelly Bean to older devices faster than HTC can offer it on their own flagship smartphones available now. But it’s not just the three-year old devices, as the Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X also receive a dose of Jelly Bean, before manufacturers release the updates.

The HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 gets Android 4.1.1 through a CyanogenMod 10 port of Jelly Bean. Like with any one-man job, there are some features that do not yet work, but impressively enough, the touchscreen, Wi-Fi, and featured applications all work. Even Google Now works, though only partially.

Cellular, data and rotation don’t yet work according to the developer, but the port is in pre-alpha state at the moment and therefore it’s not suitable to be used as the daily ROM. The effort is commendable, especially considering the age and low-end specifications of the device, which were considered somewhat underpowered even when the device was new.

As you might have guessed, the Dream/G1 isn’t the first Android smartphone to unofficially get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the list includes smartphones like the HTC One X, HTC One S, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy S II among other devices.

The HTC One X has received Jelly Bean before HTC can even give an upgrade timeline. According to the user behind the project, everything appears to be working on the Tegra 3 smartphone. If we’re to judge based on this video, the HTC One X is noticeably fast with a custom Jelly Bean ROM.

Not only does the HTC One X benefit from Project Butter, but it’s up to par with the Samsung Galaxy S III in terms of responsiveness, which also got Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean with the help of an XDA user. FM Radio doesn’t work and it has some issues related to camera, Wi-Fi tethering, transparency on homescreen and audio, but everything else appears to work based on his report. It’s a great effort to make Jelly Bean functional on cutting edge hardware, especially considering it’s a one man job and most of the features are working. Besides the two popular quad-core devices, the HTC One S and Samsung Galaxy S II also get Android Jelly Bean through the work of dedicated modders.

What’s more important is that the list is even longer and thanks to the Android community those who want the latest build of Android can turn to modders to give it to them even if the manufacturers don’t want to or haven’t yet released an upgrade. It shows that it’s possible to run Jelly Bean even on a three year old device, and once again illustrates that the manufacturers are the core issue when it comes to Android updates.

If a few people can work on delivering a relatively stable Android Jelly Bean ROM for popular devices currently available on the market, why can’t manufacturers release the updates sooner?
State-sponsored 'Gauss' cyber-weapon targeted Lebanon, says Kaspersky

Publié: août 9, 2012, 6:01pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Security company Kaspersky Lab on Thursday announced it had discovered a malware called Gauss which ran from September 2011 to July 2012, and was similar in design to the notorious Flame worm. The company believes Gauss to have been another state-sponsored cyberweapon.

Kaspersky said Gauss was discovered because of the increased efforts to identify and halt international cyber-weapons in the wake of Flame, Stuxnet, Duqu, and other military-grade security threats.

Gauss, according to the security company, was designed to steal sensitive information such as browser passwords, online banking account credentials, cookies, and local machine configurations/settings, and it infected approximately 2,500 machines, with Lebanon being the major target. Flame infected only about 700 machines.

"Functionally, Gauss is designed to collect as much information about infected systems as possible, as well as to steal credentials for various banking systems and social network, email and IM accounts. The Gauss code includes commands to intercept data required to work with several Lebanese banks - for instance, Bank of Beirut, Byblos Bank, and Fransabank," says the company's documentation of the malware.

"Code references and encryption subroutines, together with the Command and Control infrastructure make us believe Gauss was created by the same 'factory' which produced Flame. This indicates it is most likely a nation-state sponsored operation," the company said.

Kaspersky takes an aggressive position on international cyberwarfare, and warns that there is currently a global cyber arms race being built.

With this in mind, the company points out the major victims of the two similarly-crafted malwares were very different: Flame appeared to have targeted Iran, while Gauss appeared to have targeted Lebanon.

The command and control server IPs for Gauss were located in India, Portugal, and The United States, and the domains related to the malware were hosted alternately in India and Portugal as well.
Heat up August with one of these software bargains

Publié: août 9, 2012, 4:23pm CEST par Mark Wilson

The Downloadcrew Software Store is a great place if you’re looking for a software bargain, but with so much to choose from, it can be difficult to know just where to begin. Security and tweaking is a very good place to begin, and you can save 77 percent off the MSRP when you buy AVG Premium Security Complete Bundle for just $29.95. This exclusive deal gives you everything you need to keep yourself safe online and include four great AVG products.

Everyone wants to get the best possible performance from their computer and this is something that AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [1-PC, 1-Year] could help with. For just $8.95 -- saving your 78 percent off the MSRP -- you cn tweak and optimize your system in next to no time, and there’s an even better deal availbale if you want to take care of multiple computers. AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [3-PC, 1-Year] gives you the same great tuneup options, but it can be installed on up to three computers. This could be yours for just $10.95, saving you 78 percent. AVG Internet Security 2012 Plus Bundle is another great selection of four AVG products that could be your for just $29,95 -- saving you a massive 80 percen off the usual MSRP of $149.

You can also save 80% off PC Tools Internet Security 2012 when you spend just $9.95 on this security suite that includes virus, spyware and spam protection as well as a firewall. Another security tool available at a great discount is Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 [5-PC, 1-Year], which could be used to protect all of the computers in your house for just $34.95 -- saving you 73 percent. You might also want to take a look at Bitdefender Total Security 2013 [1-PC, 1-Year]. This new release include virus protect, a firewall, parental controls and much more, and it could be yours for just $19.99, saving you $49.96!

In the store you will also find a number of deals on creative software and utilities, starting with CyberLink Media Suite 10 Ultra which can be your for such $99.95 (a saving of 23 percent off the MSRP) and includes a free copy of PowerDirector 10 Ultra. You can also buy CyberLink PowerDirector 10 Ultra separately and this includes not only a 35 percent saving but also $89 worth of free software. If you’re looking for disc software, you can save 82% off the MSRP of Roxio Creator 2011 when you buy it for just $17.99 -- Roxio Creator 2011 Pro is also available at a saving of 81 percent for just $24.99.

Bringing this month’s highlights to a close are four more impressive tools. If you need to safeguard your data, look no further than Genie Backup Manager Pro 9. This powerful yet easy to use program will set you back just $39.95 -- a saving of 43 percent off the MRSP. Performance improvements are so important to most computer users, it is worth mentioning the excellent Auslogics BoostSpeed 5 which, for just $14.95, a savings of 70 percent -- enables you to boost the performance of your system without the hassle of selecting endless option.

In a similar vein is TuneUp Utilities 2012, which comes complete with a lifetime license that can be used on up to three computer and features a massive 64-percent discount, bringing the price down to just $17.99. The program is also availbale with security software if you buy the TuneUp Utilities 2012 + avast! Pro Antivirus 7 bundle. This will cost you just $19.95 -- saving a colossal 78% of the MSRP of the two tools -- and enables you to protect and optimize your machine. It’s also worth noting that if you added Extended Download Insurance to your order, you’ll also receive a free copy of CyberLink Media Suite 9 Centra worth $69.95.

Of course, these are just some of the highlights from the Downloadcrew Software Store -- take a browse and see what else you can find.

Photo Credit: iQoncept/Shutterstock
Net Guard keeps an eye on your Internet connection

Publié: août 9, 2012, 4:13pm CEST par Mike Williams

Whether you’re worried about security, hoping to optimize download speeds, or just trying to save money, keeping an eye on how your Internet connection is being used can be very helpful. Windows doesn’t provide many tools to help in this area, unfortunately, but there are plenty of third-party alternatives available -- and Net Guard is a great example.

The program opens with a tiny toolbar that just displays the upload and download speeds for any currently open connections. And so you’ll have an immediate indicator that lets you know that a process has gone online.

If you need to know more, a single click on the toolbar will display the processes which have uploaded or downloaded the most data recently, along with the total amount of data you’ve transferred today.

If even that isn’t enough, double-clicking the toolbar launches the main Net Guard window, where you’ll be able to take several different views on your online activities.

You might start by viewing your currently open Internet connections, for instance. Net Guard displays these along with their initiating process, protocol, local and remote IP address, ports and more.

The Net Monitor tab is a little more organized, displaying all processes which have gone online (whether they’re currently running or not), along with the amount of traffic they’ve generated.

If you’re more interested in the big picture then clicking Net Usage will plot your Internet usage over the current month. It’s able to project how much you’re likely to use over the month as a whole. And you can even have Net Guard display a warning if this figure gets close to a critical limit for your internet account.

The program also has a few issues, of course. The toolbar is annoying. This is small, so we placed it on the toolbar, where it seemed to fit well. But if you click elsewhere on the taskbar then Net Guard’s toolbar disappears. It’s now under the taskbar, and you have to right-click the Net Guard system tray icon, choose Hide Floating window, then Show Floating Window to bring it back.

The program can also feel a little inconsistent in places. Net Guard does offer a right-click “Kill” option to forcibly close a process, for instance, but this is only visible in the Net Monitor tab: if you’re using the Connections view then right-clicking won’t offer any options at all.

And this isn’t the most lightweight of tools, either. The program opened using just under 20MB of RAM on our test PC, and consumption rose from there, peaking for us at about 115MB. That’s not a huge deal, unless you’re running it on a seriously underpowered system, but you might want to keep an eye on this, just to make sure it doesn’t become a problem.

After spending awhile playing around with Net Guard, though, we still like the program overall: it’s capable, detailed, configurable and easy to use. Which isn’t bad at all, for a free tool, and if you’re looking to take more control over your internet connection then it’s definitely worth a closer look.

Photo Credit: Kheng Guan Toh/Shutterstock
Samsung brings VoLTE to the Galaxy S III, but they’re not the first as they claim

Publié: août 9, 2012, 4:02pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

The Galaxy S III is currently Samsung’s flagship smartphone and one of the best Android devices on the market today. To top it off, the Korean manufacturer has announced that the Galaxy S III will get VoLTE (Voice over LTE) starting August 2012 in Korea, which will be followed by "availability in global LTE markets" according to an announcement from the company on Thursday.

If the buyers of the Samsung Galaxy S III LTE model haven’t got the same quad-core processor or video card to play with (unless they’re in Korea), they now have VoLTE to play with which is exclusive to the LTE model.

Samsung is adamant that they have "the world’s first VoLTE service," according to JK Shin, President of Samsung’s Mobile Communications Division. The bold statement does come directly from Samsung thus carrying some weight, but they clearly haven’t found out that MetroPCS was first to announce the launch of VoLTE along with the first VoLTE capable smartphone, the LG Connect 4G.

That aside, Samsung has announced that the Galaxy S III LTE will only need a software update in order to benefit from VoLTE, which means that the update will be available to already-purchased Galaxy S III LTE units.

The Samsung Galaxy S III LTE comes in two different versions. The Korean units basically have the same specifications as the International version, but come with LTE and 2GB of RAM, while the second LTE version, which is available outside Korea in countries such as Canada and United States, has the same 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display with a 720p, 1280x720, resolution and comes with a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, Adreno 225 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 8MP back facing camera with 1080p video recording, 1.9MP front facing camera with 720p video recording, 16/32GB of storage, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, A-GPS with GLONASS support and a 2100mAh battery, among other features. It comes in Pebble Blue, Marble White and, exclusively on AT&T, Garnet Red. The Galaxy S III is running Android 4.0.4 with TouchWiz.

VoLTE, according to Samsung, doesn’t require the download of an additional application unlike mVoIP, and "inconveniences" such as call connection delays and call misconnections are improved significantly, while it will offer twice the frequency of 3G and use an HD-level audio codec. So if you have purchased a Samsung Galaxy S III LTE, besides the increased data speeds and 2GB of RAM you will also have VoLTE; having a dual-core processor doesn’t look like a disadvantage now, does it?
New Google trial includes Gmail in search results

Publié: août 9, 2012, 3:50pm CEST par Wayne Williams

Google is always trying out new ideas, and its latest experiment will allow users to locate personal Gmail messages through Google Search. Once enabled you just type what you’re looking for into the search box, and if there are any matching emails stored in your Gmail account they’ll be pulled out and displayed in a sidebar on the right of the results page. You can also search for contacts at the same time and, as a bonus, get updated information and statuses for any flights mentioned in Gmail messages.

At first glance this latest innovation might not seem a particularly useful feature, but it will allow you to find important messages without having to go into Gmail, simply by typing what you’re looking for into your browser’s search field. Obviously the results will only be visible to you and not to other users.

This is only a limited trial at the moment, so you’ll need to register your interest if you want to take it for a spin (Google Apps users aren’t eligible, unfortunately). Depending on demand, it may not be enabled for everyone who applies, and there’s the possibility, like many Google experiments, it won’t make it beyond the trial stage, although this idea does seem like the sort of thing the search giant will be keen to implement across the board.

A good idea or a bad idea? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Steve Wozniak is right -- users are going to eventually be burned if they rely solely on cloud backup

Publié: août 9, 2012, 3:01pm CEST par Robert X. Cringely

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak this week warned of the perils of depending too much on cloud storage and the general press reacted like this was: A) news, and; B) evidence of some inherent failure in cloud architecture. In fact it is not news (Woz never claimed it was) and mainly represents something we used to call “common sense”.

However secure you think your cloud storage is, why solely rely on it when keeping an extra backup can cost from very little to nothing at all?

No matter whose cloud you are depending on it will be subject to attack. Bigger targets get more attacks and something as big as DropBox, say, is a mighty big target, while that spare hard drive attached to a PC at your house (or my preference -- the house of a friend) is generally a target too small to even be noticed.

Whether it is bad guys stealing cloud data or generally good guys losing or otherwise screwing-up your cloud data, once it is out of your control that data is effectively gone. To read the news reports about this story it is not just gone but also now someone else’s property, given to them by you under their terms of service that you (and I, I admit) didn’t read.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the loss of ownership, because these cloud vendors are less interested in exposing your holiday office party photos than they are in feeding you ads that appear to be about subjects of interest. And even if you were giving away ownership of your data, which you aren’t, that doesn’t mean you are relinquishing any rights of your own to that dataespecially if you bothered to keep a copy.

So backup and backup again. At Chez Cringely everything is backed-up locally two different ways, also backed-up to cloud storage, and even backed up again to a server in another city (it’s a PogoPlug under a bed at my mother-in-law’s house and she doesn’t even know). Some of these techniques cost me money but not all do and my total outlay for such an extravagant backup strategy is less than $100 per year.

At home we have both Time Machine (actually an Apple Time Capsule -- there’s the investment) as well as my 100 percent free ClearOS (formerly ClarkConnect, a specialized version of Linux for network appliances) Internet gateway running a backup server in addition to firewall, antivirus, proxy server, DNS server, etc., all on an old Intel PC I had lying around. ClearOS is the best bargain I know in data security and is ideal for protecting multi-PC, multi-platform home networks. For home use it costs absolutely nothing, runs fine on old hardware, and easily replaces $100+ in security software from places like Kaspersky, McAffee, and Symantec. And with all that crap removed from your PCs they are faster, too. ClearOS protects the computers and their users by protecting the network.

Steve Wozniak is right -- users are going to eventually be burned if they rely solely on cloud backup. Forget about natural disasters and malware, what happens when these outfits just plain go out of business? Where is your data then? Nobody will know.

Photo Credit: T. L. Furrer/Shutterstock
Don't download, make a Mountain Lion install disk

Publié: août 9, 2012, 2:12pm CEST par Mark Wilson

Like its predecessor, Apple’s most recent version of OS X, Mountain Lion, has been made available in the app store. From Apple’s point of view this helps to dramatically reduce production costs, and these saving can then be passed to customers who reap the benefits of cheap upgrades. But what the online installer model fails to take into account is that many people have to work within monthly download limits put in place by their ISP -- this is something that Lion DiskMaker can help with.

Whether you have a single computer to upgrade, or want to bring your entire fleet of Macs up to date with Mountain Lion, it is quite possible that downloading a large installer could push you over your monthly limit, possibly resulting in hefty charges. If you have more than one computer you would ordinary have to download the installer separately for each machine. You might think that you could simply copy the installer but this is not easily achieved.

The problem is that once you have run through the installer, it will be automatically deleted preventing you from using it again. With this in mind, you should ideally use Lion DiskMaker before you perform an upgrade to Mountain Lion; you will only have to download the installer once. As well as saving your time and bandwidth, going down this route means that it is possible to upgrade computers that are not connected to the Internet.

The app can be used to create your own offline installer disk using an 8GB USB drive, SD card or a dual layer DVD. If you don’t mind taking a hands-on approach, this is something you could achieve with OS X’s built in Disk Utility, but Lion DiskMaker simplifies the whole process and takes care of everything for you.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the tool by paying a visit to the Lion DiskMaker review page.
Microsoft Attack Surface Analyzer 1.0 sniffs out security weakness

Publié: août 9, 2012, 1:08pm CEST par Mike Williams

After more than 18 months in beta, Microsoft released version 1.0 of its free Attack Surface Analyzer, a tool which aims to highlight security weaknesses that have been introduced by the installation of any given application on a Windows 7 PC.

And as with the previous builds, the program is very easy to use. You run a baseline scan to capture your setup now, install an application, run another scan, and the Analyzer tells what’s changed: new processes, services, loaded modules, network connections and a whole lot more.

The program is targeted very much at developers, system administrators and other high-end users, however, so there are no concessions to novices when it comes to the reports.

We installed Apache on a test Windows 7 PC, for instance, and Attack Surface Analyzer complained that “the process ApacheMonitor.exe was detected with the NX setting disabled”. Not sure what that means? Unlucky: even clicking the “Explain” link won’t help you very much.

However, the Analyzer also produces a more general “Attack Surface” report which simply lists everything potentially security-related which has changed between your two scans.

In the case of our Apache installation, for instance, this revealed that the program had added a new Windows User group; two new registered file types; a single new service; and assorted other new running processes, network connections and more.

Even if you’re not a developer, then, the Attack Surface Analyzer (both 32-bit and 64-bit) could be useful whenever you need to understand more about how your PC’s configuration has changed over time. Just run a baseline scan at some known point, another one later on, and allow the Analyzer to highlight any important modifications.

Photo Credit: kentoh/Shutterstock
Microsoft's Essentials 2012 drops Live branding, Vista support and pumps up Windows 8

Publié: août 9, 2012, 12:48pm CEST par Nick Peers

Microsoft has released Windows Essentials 2012 for Windows 7 and 8 users, but drops support for Vista. The new version drops “Live” branding and features notable new capabilities and improvements to its multimedia tools, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker.

The suite also drops Windows Live Mesh for the SkyDrive file-syncing tool. In addition, it includes Mail, Messenger, Writer, Family Safety and Outlook Connector Park, all of which feature in previous releases.

The major updates in this 2012 version can be found in both Movie Maker and Photo Gallery, one of which is restricted Windows 8. That’s a new Video Stabilization feature, designed to quickly and easily correct wobbly video footage, which takes specific advantage of Windows 8’s improved support for hardware graphics acceleration.

Other new features in Movie Maker can be found in both Windows 7 and 8. Clicking the Add Music button now reveals options for adding music from three online sources -- AudioMicro, Free Music Archive and Vimeo -- that come with the necessary rights for playing in distributed movies.

Sound is now displayed as waveforms, with the video’s own soundtrack displayed over the video thumbnail, and any additional music or narration displayed as a waveform on the green sound bar beneath it. Speaking of narration, Movie Maker also adds a third track specifically for adding narration -- either from an audio or video file (the video track is removed) -- to your movie.

With up to three audio tracks now competing with each other, additional options have been added to the Project tab that allow the user to emphasise one track -- video, audio or narration -- over the other if required.

Movie Maker also radically improves its text support, with an option for adding an outline around captions to help them stand out on screen. Finally, Movie Maker now uses the H.264 video codec as its default for saving movies, ostensibly to make it easier to publish video to popular sharing websites.

Photo Gallery includes one major new feature: auto collage. This allows the user to select seven or more photos and transform them into a striking collage with a single click.

Microsoft has also added a new sharing partner in the form of Vimeo, to sit alongside SkyDrive, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.

The other major change of note in Windows Essentials 2012 is the long-anticipated dropping of Windows Live Mesh in favor of SkyDrive for Windows. While SkyDrive provides file backup and sync options with the user’s Windows Live account, it doesn’t include other features found in Live Mesh, including direct PC-to PC synchronisation, remote desktop, and a choice of folders to synchronise (instead, all syncing is done through one central SkyDrive folder, a la Dropbox).

Contrary to some rumours, Windows Essentials 2012 does include the blogging tool Windows Live Writer, although the lack of a name change with this and other apps in the suite – including Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail – suggests development has stalled on these products.

Windows Essentials 2012 is a free download for PCs running Windows 7 or 8 only. Windows Vista users – as well as those wishing to use Windows Live Mesh – can still obtain Windows Live Essentials 2011, while XP users can install Windows Live Essentials 2010. Microsoft SkyDrive is also available as a separate download for Windows and Mac
Microsoft launches the Windows Phone Development Center

Publié: août 9, 2012, 3:02am CEST par Martin Brinkmann

Microsoft on Wednesday announced the opening of the Windows Phone Development Center. This is good news for Windows Phone Apps developers because they now have one location where they can submit apps and get SDKs. Since Microsoft has been engaged in the development of Windows Phone apps, the one area that may have been holding them back is a unified location to make the app development process easily available.

The new site is an evolution of the previous App Hub developer portal. The new site provides everything developers need to build, publish, and manage apps for Windows Phones around the world. After engaging in planning and attention along with developer feedback, it has new features to help make Windows Phone app development faster and more profitable.
App Hub
Earlier in the year, the App Hub site had become less responsive. The certification turnaround times increased on average by about one business day running from January through late March. This reflected the growing pains that any system experiences, especially when there is a lot more activity. During those three months, for instance, the number of apps in Windows Phone marketplace grew by 60 percent, to nearly 80,000. But that was not all. During that same period, Microsoft also nearly doubled the number of customer stores around the world to 54 that sell apps. But this impact, which is good-bad news, slowed down their backend systems.

As a result, a new system was designed to take advantage of the growing support for apps, but to make the integration and sales easier and faster.
The Windows Phone Dev Center
The Windows Phone Dev Center has a clean and streamlined look with an easy set of menu options and quick links, like Submit App, Get SDK, and View Samples, which work at providing faster access to common tasks.
Developer's Heaven
Another reason for using the Dev center is that it enhances the sales opportunities for developers. The arrival of the Windows Phone Dev Center brings more markets to developers. Developers will be able to register in four times as many countries or regions than before, and also get paid in some cases three times as much as what’s was possible before. Plus this year Microsoft is also nearly tripling the number of consumer storefronts around the world to sell your apps. Many of these new markets are now available, and others will be in the near future.
Payment
Then there is the pay issue. Microsoft is making it easier for developers to get paid. The Dev Center supports PayPal, which was something that many developers asked for. So if the PayPal service is available in your market, you can use it both to get paid and to pay for the developer account.

How much do you charge for the app? Well, since no two markets are ever alike, the Dev Center lets developers enter a unique price in each country or region that they plan to sell their app in. This is a new tool for fine-tuning the app marketing and profit-making strategies that developers want to pursue.

The overall effect of this is to give developers more leeway on how to push their apps out to the market, and it makes more Apps available to the Windows Phone market.