Archive for the ‘Tech News’ Category

Yahoo knew about the attacks and didn’t want people to know they had been a target? Why not? It’s not like they had hemorrhoids or anything and needed some hemorrhoid creams to cure themselves. It was a public attack by a foreign government, people should have been told.

Yahoo Inc knew it had been a target to sophisticated Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. corporations before Google alerted the company to them, a source familiar with the matter said, but chose to remain silent after its bigger rival went public.

The two Internet search and email providers had discussed a highly coordinated attack originating in China prior to Google’s high-profile announcement on Tuesday, the person said.

Google said the hackers’ primary goal was to access Gmail accounts of human rights activists, and that at least 20 other large companies had been targeted. It was unclear whether the attacks on Yahoo were also aimed at grabbing information off emails, or if they had been successful.

I plan on getting a new laptop or MacBook in a few months, so this news couldn’t have come at a better time.

Earlier today, WD announced the latest (and fastest) member of its popular My Book external drives, the My Book 3.0. The drive is available now in a 1TB configuration.

As the name implies, this drive features the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface.

USB 3.0, just starting to appear in products aimed at PCs, offers transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but will operate at slower USB 2.0 speeds—rated at 480Mbps.

You watch, Microsoft is going to make a deal with News Corp. Microsoft couldn’t hide their flaws even if they tried. If they were bald and used hair supplements, we’d still see their bald spot.

Microsoft Corp has had talks with News Corp about a tie up, which would involve News Corp getting paid to take its news websites off Google Inc, a source familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
News Corp, which owns such papers as the Wall Street Journal and the Sun, started the discussions, which were at an early stage, the source said.

Awesome news for Facebook, but since this affected our accounts, shouldn’t we be the ones who get the new tile flooring because of it? I would hate to see the powers that be at Facebook wasting that money on, well, donuts and bagels and such.

Social networking website Facebook was awarded $711.2 million in damages relating to an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace, court documents show.

Wallace did not oppose the motion or appear at the hearing on September 18, 2009, according to a filing on Thursday in a San Jose, California federal court.

The site filed an anti-spamming case against Wallace in February for accessing people’s Facebook accounts without their permission and sending phony mail and posts to the individuals’ public message wall, the company said in a blog post.

Maybe they could paint my walls too?

Word has it that everything the French President does in Denmark this December will be Twittered. I wonder if his assigned “twitterer” will make it all the way through the summit or if he’ll surrender halfway through the proceedings?

Nicolas Sarkozy’s every move at the climate summit in Denmark will be tracked on Twitter, but the French president won’t be busy typing updates on the micro-blogging website himself, officials said.

I’d love to see Sarkozy and Obama both on their Blackberries at the same time, smoking Rocky Patel cigars. Now that would be worth seeing.

Does IBM really think many people will choose their new service over Google’s based solely on price?

To compete in today’s market you need a lot more than an “email in the cloud” service. What happened to search capabilities, archives, live chat software, and everything else out there?

IBM on Monday will begin offering businesses a basic “cloud computing” email service at a price that undercuts a plusher offering by Internet giant Google.

IBM unabashedly pitched its new LotusLive iNotes as an alternative to email service Google has been promoting as part of a campaign to win businesses over to using applications hosted as services on the Internet.

It will be interesting to see how well their service fares after a couple months.

Apple announced the MMS capabilities in June. AT&T was dragging their feet but promised to implement MMS on their network before the end of summer. Summer ends on September 19th.

iPhone owners have been clamoring not-so-quietly to use the MMS features that are still lying dormant in their devices since Apple’s iPhone 3.0 update in June. Earlier, we took another look into what the holdup might be, and as if by magic, AT&T has finally answered the call for a due date: September 25.

Why on Earth would they add the functionality in June but delay releasing it until September? That’s like selling me a large screen television and making me wait three months for a tv stand.

Does it really matter that they will be six days late? It’s not like we haven’t been waiting for three months anyway.

While I agree that Google should not have released the personal information of this blogger, you can hardly say they failed to protecter her “right to privacy”. You have no right to privacy from a company. You have a right to privacy from the government, not people.

A blogger who called a magazine cover model offensive names on a Web site says Google failed to protect her right to privacy.

Rosemary Port tells the Daily News in Sunday editions that she’s angry that Google unmasked her after a Manhattan judge forced the company to reveal her identity.

I wonder what the attorneys really discussed though. When the model’s attorney asked for the information, how long did it take them to respond? Did they sit and chat about softball games, little league, or Monday night bowling? Maybe they sat down to compare term life insurance rates just to pass the time and pad the books?

Seriously, doesn’t it just seem too convenient that Google turned over the name of the blogger so willingly?

Some not so good news from Qualcomm today. Everything keeps shrinking. The economy, the job market, the chip business. It’s almost like our economy has been taking diet pills. We’re looking thinner, but now we sure are hungry.

Wireless chip and technology supplier Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) issued a revenue target for the current quarter that was below Wall Street expectations, sending its shares down about 5 percent.

Qualcomm, which also posted a small drop in fiscal third-quarter profit, forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $2.55 billion to $2.75 billion, implying a midpoint of $2.65 billion, which is well below analysts’ average estimate for $2.72 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

How soon do you think it will be, until things really start to turn around?

With all the steel and concrete in Las Vegas, is the WiMax service going to be dependable enough to penetrate even the deepest parts of the Las Vegas Strip? Seriously? If you ran a WiMax network outside of some steel buildings can people still access the network deep inside?

Residents of Sin City now have a speedier network. Clearwire Communications said residents of Las Vegas have hit the jackpot with the company’s soon-to-be available WiMAX mobile Internet service.

Beginning Aug. 1, the approximately 1.7 million residents of Las Vegas will have wireless Internet access at speeds faster than 3G networks, according to the company.

It will be interesting to see if this works out for Clearwire and the people of Las Vegas.