Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » mars 28, 2013

BetaNews.Com (6 non lus)

Google brings new compose message box to all Gmail users, like it or not

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 11:07pm CET par Joe Wilcox

Say, you know that new pop-up compose message box Google introduced last autumn. You don't? Well, get ready. Gmail is giving the ditty to everyone, whether or not wanted. That's what it looks like, in photo right.

"The new compose will be rolling out to everyone over the next few days", Phil Sharp, Gmail product manager, says. I've used the thing since October, in a sort of love-hate thing. On a laptop working in Chrome -- even better, on Chromebook Pixel -- the new compose box is great. On Surface Pro, using Internet Explorer 10 from Modern UI, the thing is unusable. The box flicks up and down from the bottom of the screen.

We're all guinea pigs in the Google lab, and Sharp praises our rodent brains: "In addition to telling us what you love about the new compose experience (like how much easier it is to multitask!) you’ve also been sending us helpful suggestions for what features you'd like to see added. As a result of your input, we're now ready to introduce the new compose experience as the default for everyone. We're looking forward to hearing what you think!"

I do appreciate the ability to compose a message and work in the inbox at the same time. It's good to see Google catch up with email features I first used in the 1990s.
DDoS attackers aren't knockin' on your door, they're breaking it down

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 9:56pm CET par Joe Wilcox

What would the Thursday before Easter be without a good scare to keep network administrators awake at night. Perhaps IDC just mixed up the candy holidays thinking it's Halloween. Whatever, the analyst firm warns of a troubling increase in enterprise distributed denial of service attacks and promises more are coming to you.

Of course, the real motivation here is to scare businesses into exploring DDoS-protective solutions. IDC forecasts 18.2 percent growth rate in DDoS products and services through 2017, reaching $870 million. To be fair, there's little dispute about rising DDoS risks.

The Spamhaus Project just finished a rocky week of "large-scale DDoS attack". Another DDoS disrupted Wells Fargo's website this week.

Last month, Gartner also warned of increased DDoS attacks, many targeting banks and often used as distractions to cover other criminal behavior.

Avivah Litan, Gartner vice president, warns about a "new level of sophistication in organized attacks against enterprises" and that "they will grow in sophistication and effectiveness" this year.

Payment provider Dwolla is under DDoS attack as I write. Site is inaccessible. "Yesterday afternoon, Dwolla’s service providers became the victim of a distributed denial of service event, resulting in limited or no availability to the website, Dwolla.com", according to the company. "This advanced event, still persists today, and is preventing people from viewing the website and consequently accessing its services".

Prolexic, one of those DDoS-protection providers IDC claims more enterprises will give money to, says that "fourth quarter of 2012 exhibited high levels of activity" of attacks against its "global client base". That's up 19 percent year over year and by 27.5 percent from Q3. Also quarter-on-quarter, there was a "67 percent increase in average attack duration to 32.2 hours from 19.2 hours".

"As these attacks surged in prevalence and sophistication, organizations were often caught unaware", Christian Christiansen, IDC veep, says about enterprise DDoS assaults last year. "Embedded capabilities were quickly overwhelmed and outages were readily apparent on the Web. This is driving the need for proactive solutions to protect customer's infrastructure from current and future attacks".

But wait, there's a sales pitch. "With the number of high-profile attacks steadily increasing, the market for DDoS prevention solutions will surge", John Grady, IDC research manager says "A defense-in-depth posture with a combination of on-premise equipment and cloud-based mitigation provides the best protection against advanced application and SSL-based attacks as well as large-scale volumetric attacks".

Photo Credit: Fabio Berti/Shutterstock
US and UK carriers announce Samsung Galaxy S4 pre-orders

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 5:58pm CET par Mihaita Bamburic

Samsung Galaxy S4 fans, be prepared to use your credit cards because it's pre-order season. A number of UK carriers, including Vodafone, EE and O2 have the new Android smartphone flagship on pre-order today, while in the United States AT&T announced that prospective buyers will have to wait until next month to get their hands on a new Galaxy S4 before it hits online and brick-and-mortar stores.

AT&T revealed that the Galaxy S4 will be available for pre-order starting with April 16 for $249.99 on a two-year contract. The carrier does not specify which model will be offered, but the 32GB Galaxy S4 is a good guess judging by the price of its predecessor at launch, during pre-orders. If 16GB, the price would be $50 higher than Galaxy S3 at launch and what iPhone 5 sells for today.

Vodafone UK offers the Galaxy S4 for pre-order, with no upfront cost, starting with GBP42 per month on a two-year plan. For the money customers get unlimited minutes and texts and 2GB of cellular data. The carrier also accepts trading-in a touchscreen phone, which makes the smartphone available, again, with no upfront cost, for GBP37 per month on a two-year plan (without a trade customers have to pay GBP69 instead). The plan comes with unlimited minutes and texts and 1GB of cellular data.

EE (formerly known as Everything Everywhere) also lists the Galaxy S4 for pre-order. For the smartphone, the lowest upfront cost is GBP19.99 for GBP56 per month on a two-year plan, while the highest upfront cost is GBP269.99 for GBP31 per month for the same contract length. Both plans feature unlimited minutes and texts, but the former comes with 8GB of cellular data while the latter only offers 500MB of cellular data.

O2 lists the Galaxy S4 for pre-order with an online exclusive offer. Customers have to shell out GBP99.99 in upfront cost and GBP37 per month with a two-year contract. The plan includes unlimited minutes and texts and 2GB of cellular data.
Google TV PrimeTime adds Amazon Prime, HBO GO and Netflix subscriptions

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 4:25pm CET par Alan Buckingham

I love Amazon Prime. If I had a Kindle I would probably love it even more, if that were possible. Over the past two weeks I have also come to love my new Google TV, which has taken over our living room, with control of the DirecTV DVR and apps thrown in to boot. One of those apps is Amazon and I use it quite often, keeping a string of movies and TV shows in my watch list.

Now the Google PrimeTime app for Google TV has been updated to version 1.4.3-43-79424. This innocuous little name actually comes with a huge feature update. Not only has Amazon Prime content been rolled into the service, but you can control it and Netflix and HBO GO subscriptions from within the app as well.

With this update, Google PrimeTime is now a truly one-stop shop for pretty much all of your content. With Netflix, HBO GO, Amazon Prime, YouTube, cable or satellite box shows and a bunch of other services.

Google also added an update to its Play movies and TV app that mimics Amazon's X-Ray. Ben Serridge, the Product Manager for Google Play, says "when you’re watching a film on your tablet, simply press pause and cards will pop up with information about actors on screen. You can tap on an actor’s face to learn more about him, like his age, place of birth, his character in the movie, and his recent work, or scroll through the info cards to learn more about the movie or soundtrack. When you resume the movie, the cards will disappear".

While that update is currently only for mobile it seems a logical next step is to add it to Google TV as well. Google's foray into the living room started rather slowly as the Logitech Revue offering fell flat on its face, but remember that Android thing got off to a rather slow start as well.
Imagine if you could get a drink at the Genius Bar...

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 1:41pm CET par Alan Buckingham

Apple has gone to great trouble to craft its stores and reputation. The company refers to its employees as geniuses, for goodness sake! Taking your device in for repair is alluded to as a visit to the "genius bar". It is an entire ecosystem designed to make the customer feel confident and comfortable when dealing with the company. It is also a setup that lends itself to comedy and U.K. hard cider maker Somersby saw that opportunity.

The company has produced a new one-minute TV spot that portrays the Apple Store as a bar that serves up its cider and the geniuses explain why it is so good. The ad does not so much make fun of Apple (that is what Samsung is for), but instead uses the tech company's concept as a basis for some good tongue-in-cheek humor.

The Somersby ad cleverly works in tech terms such as referring to sipping the cider as "downloading", and manages to include "interface", "wireless", "16-pit and 32-pit" and more.

It's very well done, right down to the line waiting outside before the "bar" opens. Only just released in the past couple of days, it is already racking up the views on YouTube and getting plenty of positive feedback.
Sysinternals updates Autoruns and Process Monitor

Publié: mars 28, 2013, 1:21pm CET par Mike Williams

Sysinternals has announced updates for Autoruns and Process Monitor, as well as the release of a new command line tool, Registry Usage.

The Autoruns tweaks are the most significant. In particular, all reports now include a timestamp for executable files, folders or Registry keys. And so if you browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the Everything view, say, you’ll now see a timestamp which tells you when that Registry key was last modified.

Of course, while this is a welcome addition, it does highlight one current failing of the program: you can’t simply click a column header to sort entries by date (or any other field). Perhaps that will be next.

Elsewhere, Process Monitor gains support for Windows 8 file information query types, as well as having a minor bug fix in its tooltip handling.

And the new Registry Usage (RU.exe) is a simple command line tool which give you details on the size, value and subkey counts of a specified Registry key.

To try the program out, just open a command line at the folder where it’s located, and launch it with a suitable path (short and long forms are supported: "ru hkey_current_user" or "ru hkcu", for example). After a pause you’ll see a report listing the number of values and keys within that path, and their total size in bytes.

Other options allow you to itemize subkeys, as well as control the number of levels the program will browse, as well as exporting the details as CSV for easy reference and analysis later.

And, as usual, launching Registry Usage without any command line switches will display information on the program’s various options.

Photo Credit: andrea michele piacquadio/Shutterstock