« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »
iPhone could increase Apple viruses
The iPhone might be a catalyst for new Mac viruses and malware admitted anti-virus experts at F-Secure.
The iPhone runs a basic version of OS X, so any malware written for it might attack Mac desktop and laptops too. Although there are a lot of unknowns, there's no doubt that the more devices Apple sells, the bigger a target it becomes. Apple's financial statements suggest its on track to sell 6.5-7 million desktops and laptops in 2007. This makes the 10 million iPhones Jobs wants to sell in 2008 a much bigger target.
A proof of concept trojan horse, where a Safari browser vulnerability meant hyperlinks got the phone to call premium rate numbers, was demonstrated last month.
All research suggests hackers and malware writers are focussing on making money through their work, which hasn't been a major issue up until recently and the well structured and easy to access billing system inherent to mobile phones makes them an attractive target for criminals. In fact, the Russians saw their phone bills go sky high in one such attack last year.
Of course, it's not just the iPhone that is becoming vulnerable to such attacks and a far more pressing concern are insecure spying tools that have serious consequences for our privacy. Iain from Vnunet has more on that though.
F-Secure specialises in mobile anti-malware products and Kimmo Alkio, CEO of the company, said mobile phone attacks aren't a big problem, but are growing, especially since smart phones are set to outsell PCs by 40million units in 2009.
For now, Alkio let the facts speak for themselves: “There are approximately 350 known malware on the mobile phones compared to over 400,000 malewares on the PC.”
Bluetooth headets get smarter
There will be a lot of Bluetooth devices in Christmas stockings this year, if vendors have anything to do with it. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group assembled in London today to show off a variety of headsets, earsets, car-handsfree kits and speakers.
The technology allowing phone headsets to double as music headphones has been around for at least a couple of years but it has finally gone mainstream. All the headphones on show would switch between phone and stero music mode, though earpieces still seem to be mono.
Jabra showed a gold-plated Bluetooth headset for the man (or more likely, judging from the style, woman) who has everything. It is also offering a headet that opens out to become a travelling speaker.
There were several neat-looking car handsfree kits, including a couple designed to clip over the sunshade. Oticon, which makes ear insets for people with poor hearing, showed a device that allowed them to link a hearing aid to a mobile phone to make and take calls. Apparently you can sometimes get screaming feedback if you hold a mobile-phone close to a hearing aid.
Most intersting for the future was a demonstration of Bluetooth version 2.1 with Near Field Communication (NFC), as used in smart cards. Anders Edlund, marketing director of the Bluetooth SIG, showed how an image could be transferred from a Nokia phone to an electronic picture frame after simply swiping the one device close to the other close to the other. Watch out for a round up of these devices in the magazine next month.
Mice get Kensington style
Kensington (the company, not the borough) is best known for those slots that allow notebooks to be shackled to a desk using an eponymous lock. But it offers a broad range of is mobile accessories and has just unveiled a raft of products designed to appeal on style as much as function.
They include some very good looking wireless mice, under the name SlimBlade, which cunningly hide inside them the dongle that plugs into the host machine to create the radio link.
Entry-level, if you can use such a term for a high-end range, is the £39.99 Presenter (pictured), a fairly basic mouse with a scroll wheel. It is very slim, like the rest of the range, so that it can fit easily in a notebook case without bulging.
The £44.99 Media Mouse has two sides to it. You can use it like a normal mouse or flip it over and take advantage of a multi-finction navigation pad. For £5 more you can get a Presenter Media mouse that includes a laser pointer – there a switch to toggle off the mouse function when used in that mode.
The £59.99 Trackball mouse uses Bluetooth and ball control instead of a scroll wheel.
Completing the range is what Kesington calls the SlimBlade™ media notebook set, consisting of a mouse, a keyboard, a keypad and a remote control that can be used individually but slot together magnetically. Looks like one for the executives.
Kensington is also offering a more down-market range of mice and a choice of FM links that plug into a car lighter socket and play the output of an iPod, or any device with a standard audio jack, though your radio.
Now Tesco sells Halo 3
First Argos was selling Halo 3 early, now Tesco in Chelmsford's guilty, according to my colleague who completed it last night.
The game isn't officially launched until this Wednesday, but Microsoft let Argos off the hook so perhaps Tesco thinks it will get away with it too.
An art designer at PCW completed it on 'Legendary' mode, which took several hours and is apparently awesome. Cooperative mode works too (online play with just two people) but he couldn't access Microsoft's multiplayer servers.
Why Moore's Law needs AMD
Intel appears to have walked all over AMD in the past few days, releasing new quad-cores to spoil the much-heralded unveiling of its rival's Barcelona processors and then flourishing 32nm and 45nm wafers to point up the fact that AMD is stuck at 65nm.
There was little new on the processor front at the Intel Developer Forum, but the mood was upbeat. Intel founder Gordon Moore said that his famous law predicting that transistor density (and thus processing power) would double every 18-24 months looked good for up to 15 more years.
Microsoft denies new HD DVD drive
Microsoft has denied there will be a new HD DVD drive next year or any new PC support, claiming a misquote. A Microsoft spokesperson also told me this morning that there will be no plans to incorporate HD DVD into the PC platform in the future.
Not too many people were paying attention to the briefing, but I was taking notes and a journalist on PCW's sister title, ComputerActive, can also confirm what I heard, especially since we discussed it afterwards.
Interestingly enough a female reporter, also present at the event, recorded the whole conversation on a Dictaphone.
He may have said something he didn't mean to, but Mark Bennett, business development director for HD DVD at Microsoft Europe, told me there would be a new HD DVD drive in 2008 when I pressed him about the dominance of Blu-ray in the market.
Bennett wouldn't go into details and I have no idea what kind of drive might be on the horizon, since it could be new colours, a slimmer redesign or internal changes to support upcoming triple layer HD DVDs.
Apple's new iPods go under the microscope
We got our hands on the new iPod Classic and iPod Nano this week, and no matter what you think of Apple it's difficult to deny they are startlingly good looking.
However, they're not without their problems. Getting video onto them, for example, is a real pain. iTunes will refuse to convert files, leaving Apple to recommend it's Quicktime Pro application, which costs £20.
The much hyped Cover Flow feature, which lets you browse through the album art of your music as if you were flipping through a vinyl collection, is hampered by iTunes insistence that you sign-in to the online store in order to use the 'Get Album Art' tool. And to get an iTunes account you need to hand over your credit card details - regardless of whether you intend to purchase any music.
Meanwhile, Apple still ships them with the iconic, yet incredibly uncomfortable plastic ear buds. We think Apple should take a leaf out of Sony's book and start shipping decent, in-ear noise-reducing 'phones.
Of course, we're just highlighting the bad points here. You can read the full iPod Nano review for all the details - reviews of the iPod Classic and iPod Touch will follow soon.
Drivesentry living Symantec's dream
It was interesting to see Symantec announce the future of anti-virus software lies in categorising everything that's good on a white list, rather than what's bad.
It's not just that there are more bad things than good, but viruses, spyware and other baddies can be encrypted a thousand different ways or embedded in other files so a signature file can't detect it anymore.
This means the combination of customised malware eluding detection could be limitless, whereas white lists are more manageable.
While Symantec is planning this for the future, Drivesentry is already using this technique now where every application you run is checked against a known good configuration on a white list on Drivesentry's servers.
Nokia unveils the E51
Nokia's new E51 may be flagged as a business phone, but it looks like it has all the features to be popular with consumers as well.
An email shortcut key and new mail LED indicator, VoIP and office-related tools are joined by a 2 megapixel camera, MP3 player, FM radio and web browser. Other features include a 2in 320x240 display and Wifi.
Battery life also looks like it might be enough to persuade the growing number of disgruntled 'charge every day' mobiles.
The Nokia E51 will be available for around €350 (£240), but with a contract you'll probably be able to pick it up for free when it launches next month.
Expect to see a full review soon...
AMD announces triple core processors
AMD's triple core processor annoucement is a bit of a master stroke really, since AMD is painting it as a new initiative, however a spokesperson admitted to me triple core chips are simply quad cores that didn't make the cut.
Because AMD's quad cores are a built together on a single die you get a bigger chance of individual cores being faulty. They might not run at a desirable speed or they might not work at all. So rather than throw them out AMD can simply rebrand them triple cores. And at present, Intel can't do this at all because it builds quad cores with two dies.
Magellan launches world's thinnest sat navs
Magellan has launched a new range of sat navs which it says are the thinnest in the world.
Its new in-car designs form the Maestro 4200 line-up and measure just 17.8mm thick.
They cost between £189 and £299 and all the new 4200 models are based on a 400MHz Arm9 processor which Magellan thinks will speed up route calculations.
Another nifty feature is the detour icon which pops up when you're in a traffic jam. It intelligently calculates a detour for you so you can avoid the traffic build up.
Navman S-Series UK launch
Navman launched its S-series at the ineptly named Modern Design centre last night. One speaker said the new models were targeted at "old people who drive a lot but have lost their confidence," among others.
All four products share a new design and use the touch screen, rather than mechanical buttons, for navigation now.
So, from top to bottom: the S90i is the jewel in Navman's crown, costing £299.99 and packing a 2megapixel camera on its backside.
It has a 4.3in widescreen display, just like its younger siblings the S70 and S50. They cost £199.99 and £179.99 respectively and are identical apart from the S70 has European maps installed alongside UK ones.
Should I upgrade to Nokia's N95? Orange doesn't think so
After months of anguish, I finally decided to upgrade to the Nokia N95 - a phone I reviewed back in April.
The only real stumbling block for me is the battery life, but having lived with the power-hungry N70 for a year or so I decided I could cope with having to charge it pretty much every day.
What I wasn't expecting was for Orange, my network operator, to basically tell me not to get the N95. The customer services assistant first asked me why I wanted to upgrade to the N95 specifically - which I though was a little odd - then proceeded to say that Orange has had some "very negative feedback" on the N95, including bad battery life, sat nav that keeps losing its connection and regular application freezes.
Just to be sure, I asked whether Orange was recommending people don't upgrade to the N95, to which the answer was "yes".
I ended up finishing the call without getting my N95 and in a slight daze that Orange is so critical about the flagship phone of the world's biggest mobile manufacturer.
Hard cheese in Modena as VPro launches late in Europe
Intel flew journalists from all over Europe to Modena, Italy, to launch its new quad-core 7300 server chips and second-generation VPro business platform. For reasons that were not entirely clear this was a virtual launch, as both technologies were unveiled days ago and have been widely reported.
Naturally we assumed the delay was part of a cunning plan to spoil the impact of the previous day's launch of AMD's rival Barcelona quad-cores, but we were assured that the coincidence was accidental and that the event was planned months ago.
Enter the second, er... the third, er... the fourth AMD generation
Nobody from PCW Towers could make it to today's launch of AMD's Barcelona chips in Barcelona (where else?) and we could find no-one at the company to elucidate a somewhat confusion announcement. The nine new quad-cores all have names of the form 83xx or 23xx. The first digit, according to AMD, indicates the scalability: eight means that number can be used on a single motherboard.
The last two digits indicate relative performance, and the second digit the generation. So, following this logic, all today's processors are third generation.
But, according to an AMD presentation, all the quad-cores including 45nm versions launching next year, are second generation and the third generation will come in 2009 with the launch of 45nm octal-cores. And yet another AMD paper refers to them as fourth-generation, though this could relate to the manufacturing process used. We trust that the processors themselves won't get their data so mixed up.
Retro satnav, 3D TV, and networks made flesh at show rivalling Cebit
Rumour has it that the organisers of Cebit, the annual IT show in Hannover, Germany, are worried about a drift of exhibitors to the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. IFA, which closed on Tuesday this week, has been getting larger year by year. It has a narrower focus, but Cebitters are right to be worried if the history of the old US Comdex show is anything to go by. That was killed off partly by exhibitors defecting to the US Consumer Electronics Show. Another factor, also faced by Cebit, was a trend towards small specialist shows where exhibitors believed they get a better business focus.
Cebit is still huge, though, and it remains peerless for the breadth of its IT coverage. Most computers at IFA are disguised as devices like satnavs, media players, and set-top boxes. Fujitsu-Siemens showed a couple of new notebooks and a box called Scaleo (left in picture above), using Microsoft's soon-to-be-released Windows Home Server operating system.
iPod touch samples don't have Bluetooth
There are a lot of stories floating around the net that the iPod touch has Bluetooth, however I held one last night and took some pictures in the process…
The pics are rather blurred because lighting was low and my camera's flash poor, but I'm almost convinced there's no Bluetooth on it.
If you look carefully at the corner where said icon should be, there appears to be a play arrow (click to enlarge). I've got 4 pics showing this arrow and I've uploaded the best quality one below.
Bluetooth could, of course, still be enabled on final models though.
The beat goes on
Steve Jobs unveiled an attractive new iPod Nano, two updated iPod videos (now called iPod Classics) and an iPhone without the phone bit, called the iPod touch, last night.
Details and pictures of the new products had already been leaked out weeks in advance, so the most surprising announcement for many was the 8GB iPhone getting a $200 price cut and the 4GB version disappearing altogether.
This means Americans can now buy an 8GB iPhone for $399 (around £200) plus a premium contract, which no longer makes it look extortionately expensive compared to many smart phones on the market, just expensive.
The line-up's top end is a bit muddled since you can either have a spacious 160GB iPod Classic or a restricting 16GB iPod Touch, which has a bigger screen and Wi-Fi.
While the official launch was held in San Francisco, hundreds of European journalists, Apple workers and associates turned out at BBC's White City to watch a live feed on a big screen. We then got to play (albeit briefly) with the new iPods.
Steve Jobs started the night by announcing a new ringtone maker for the iPhone. And while European journalists sat in bewilderment as Apple said it will charge $1 to cut a tune you already own down to 30 seconds, the American media applauded and whooped at this announcement.
As any Nokia, Samsung or Sony Ericsson owner will know, making mobile phone ringtones is usually free.
On that note, Sony Ericsson showed off its new HSDPA phones last night in London too. The top model is called the W960i, has 8GB of storage (like the iPhone) and falls under the Walkman brand. However, as I used the W960i it became clear to me: the interface is archaic compared to what Apple can do.
Military drone takes off
A remote control flying saucer that promises to spot snipers in battles, scour the coast line for people in sea trouble and help famers maintain their land, has been shown off at a tech day in Cambridge.
Mark Broughton from GFS said its UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) will cost in the low tens of thousands of pounds, which rules it out as my birthday present. It is very good value for money when you compare it to hiring a helicopter though, which costs thousands of pounds per hour.
And as such, these things could be flying all over the country in the near future. Combined with simple cameras, farmers could use them to spot dry patches in their fields and go and water them. Coast gaurds could use them to spot people in distress and the police could use them to photograph crime scenes quickly and effectively.
It will be entering the Ministry of Defence's upcoming Grand Challenge that pits new warfare technology against each other, with a sizable contract possibly awaiting the best entries.
The battery powered saucer (pictured) can last 90 seconds, but upcoming combustion engine ones can last an hour.
Try out Google Earth's flight simulator
Google has incorporated a hidden flight simulator in the latest version of Google Earth - to try it out, launch Google Earth (the new version that also gives you Google Sky) and press the Ctrl + Windows Key + A keys simultaneously. This brings up an options panel that lets you choose one of two aircraft and your starting point. You navigate using either the mouse or the keyboard arrow keys. It's great fun for a freebie. Full details at the Google Earth user guide site.
