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On Apple's iPhone the music website Spotify launches

The Swedish music streaming website Spotify,  announced launch of its software on Apple's iPhone on Monday. The best-selling handset that features high speed internet access.

The Swedish company said in the statement that, the application of the software is available to download for free from the AppStore, Apple's online shop, for customers that subscribe to its premium service.

Music fans can sign up for the company's ad-supported free service or a premium service with no commercials that costs 9.99 euros a month.

Users can search for new tunes and then stream them directly on their handsets. Playlists can even be saved for use when there is poor mobile reception.

The service, which first launched last year, is seen as a potential rival to iTunes because of its huge, free library of millions of songs.

The Swedish company first asked Apple in July if its software could be made available on the iPhone and both companies struck a deal at the end of August.

Spotify is currently only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, France and Spain.

According to analyst iPhone is cash machine for Apple

According to analyst Vicent Rech, iPhone is making far more cash for Apple than the Street generally believes. 

On Friday Vicent Rech wrote in a research note that 'Due to the Apple's practice of amortizing iPhone revenue and costs over a 24-month period, there is a substantial difference between reported numbers and underlying cash generation.' However, "most market participants including us have missed the dramatic impact of this specific accounting practice because it hides profitability trends," Rech asserted. 

Rech contends that iPhone gross margin is already running at about 60%, compared to 33% for the rest of Apple's activities. He sees iPhone accounting for 28% of adjusted revenue in 2009, growing to more than 40% in 2012. Even if iPhone gross margin drops to 50%, he says, Apple's reported gross margin will rise from 36% in fiscal 2009 to 39% in 2012 due to a shift in product mix.

Even if Apple sells sold no iPhones after June 2009, he writes, assuming other activities produce a 33% gross margin, the reported margin would reach 37% in Q4, with 2010 still flat at 36% versus 2009. He notes that the Street consensus calls for flat gross margin in the 2009-2011 period, which he contends would imply a dramatic fall in Mac and iPod profitability.

The analyst sees the company producing adjusted EPS of $9.13 in the September 2009 fiscal year, $11.16 next year and a whopping $13.83 in fiscal 2011. On a reported basis, he expects $5.42 this year, $7.92 next year and $10.18 in FY 2011.

Rech on Friday raised his target price on the stock to $255, from $170.

The analyst also contends that the fat profitability of the iPhone gives the company substantial room to cut prices, a factor he says poses a risk for Nokia, which he already rates a Sell.

Surprise discover: The Most distant galaxy with black hole

An amazing news found in a Most distant(12.8 billion light-years far from Earth) Galaxy.

The most distant known galaxy to host a supermassive black hole has been discovered in a galaxy that formed in the early history of the universe. 

The galaxy, as large as the Milky Way, is about 12.8 billion light-years away and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our sun. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and faraway objects like this are seen as they existed near the dawn of time, their light just now arriving at Earth. 

The find, to be detailed in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society later this month, was unexpected:

Italian Antitrust agency blamed Google

ROME, ITALY: "Google's Italian news website coerced Italian newspapers into posting their stories to include U.S. parent Google Inc." Said, 'Italian antitrust agency on Friday in its broadening investigation report .'

The competition authority launched the probe this week after the Italian Federation of Newspaper Editors alleged that any publication refusing to appear on the Google News Italia (news.google.it) website was excluded from Google's search engine. 

"Considering that, from the assembled documents, it appears that Google News Italia is managed by the company Google Inc ... it is deemed necessary to broaden the ongoing investigation to the company Google Inc.," the competition watchdog said in a statement on its website (www.agcm.it/). 

It said the company had 30 days in which to present its case to competition authorities. 

A spokeswoman for Google in Italy was not immediately available for comment. 

The newspapers have alleged that Google's use of their online material on its Italian website hurt their ability to attract readers and advertisers to their home pages but if they did not allow them to appear on the site they were barred from its search engine. 

The antitrust body, which opened the probe under EU law governing the abuse of dominant market position, said it was investigating whether Google was distorting the online advertising market. 

Google and its competitor Yahoo face complaints from news providers in the United States and elsewhere that their search engines make money from news generated by others. 

Google has argued that it helps newspaper websites make money through online advertising and does not misappropriate content.

Google offering training for Mauritian IT Pros

At the G-Mauritius 2009 of Ebène Cybercity, situated in the heart of this small, independent, developing state off the east coast of Madagascar,google is looking IT professionals for that are expecting that they will hire some employees from the African continent 

One of the main objectives of the forum, organized by Google and the local Board of Investment (BOI), is for Google to offer intensive technical knowledge to local developers and entrepreneurs. Approximately 100 people in Mauritius' ICT sector will have the opportunity to learn from Google. 

"The best ones might even be employed by Google to help them develop Google's activities on the island and elsewhere," said a BOI official.

Google also might outsource development work to Mauritius as a consequence of the forum. The company has multiple projects under way in Mauritius, such as a complete mapping of Mauritius on Google maps and the provision of customized accounts and tools to tertiary students. Google has also deployed servers in Mauritius and has set up a dedicated Google.mu in the Kreol language.

Astronauts embark spacewalk at the international space station

A couple of astronauts have stepped out on a spacewalk at the international space station.

The first spacewalk of the mission got underway Tuesday evening, shortly after the space station got a new $5 million treadmill. The treadmill is named after TV comedian Stephen Colbert, who was out of the country Tuesday. But he said through his New York publicist that he was proud his treadmill would be used "to help trim down those famously fat astronauts."


Spacewalkers Nicole Stott and Danny Olivas will remove an old ammonia tank from the space station. A new, fully loaded tank will be installed during another spacewalk Thursday as part of the cooling system. In all, three spacewalks are planned during shuttle Discovery's visit.

Wolfram Alpha Development Intensifies over the Summer

A couple of months ago Wolfram Alpha was launched with much fanfare. The new search engine tried to be different and for the most part it succeeded. But different doesn't necessarily mean better and, while it did bring some very interesting features to the table, it failed to get much traction and traffic numbers have died down recently. Still, the development team has been hard at work over the summer, adding an impressive number of changes and fixes. 

 
“I just looked up what’s actually happened to the Wolfram|Alpha codebase since launch. And I have to say that I’m quite astonished: it’s grown by a staggering 52%—adding well over 2 million lines of Mathematica code,” Stephen Wolfram, the creator of the search engine, wrote. “There have also been nearly 50,000 manual groups of changes to our data repositories over the past 3 months.”

But it's more than just adding new code; the development team has also been working on making the best of the powerful features that it already had available. One area that has seen a lot of focus is on understanding what the users are asking. Because Wolfram Alpha uses natural language, semantic search users can simply “ask” the search engine a question instead of entering a few keywords. But computers can have a hard time understanding human language; in fact, half of the time Wolfram Alpha can't give a result because it doesn't understand what it is being asked to do and not because of the lack of data or a faulty algorithm. 

Things are getting better though and the progress so far is actually quite impressive considering the scale of the problem. In the few months since it was launched the search engine has reduced the number of queries it doesn't understand by 10 percent and Wolfram is confident that it can go a lot further.

Despite the powerful technology the traffic numbers haven't been that great. This isn't too much of a problem as the engine was launched just as a way of getting real world usage results and is still pretty much in the early stages, hence the “Alpha” moniker. But even if the traffic numbers increase there are many who believe that scaling would be too expensive for the search engine to do it by itself. There is some good news though, as it now seems that Microsoft has reached an agreement with Wolfram to license some of its data. 

Microsoft Certifies GeForce Driver for DirectCompute in Windows 7

Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has announced today that it has received the Windows Hardware Qualification Lab (WHQL) certification for a driver that has been designed to support the DirectCompute technology and Windows 7 operating system. The announcement represents another milestone for the company, which has been actively promoting the performance capabilities of its GPUs in general-purpose  
computing-enabled applications. The certification will enable users to see increased performance for a 
number of apps that take advantage of the company's GeForce GPUs in the Windows 7 OS environments.

“Windows 7 combined with applications that take advantage of the new DirectCompute technology have the potential to transform the personal computing experience for millions of customers using GPUs to turbo-charge scenarios in digital media applications,” said Mike Ybarra, general manager for Windows Product Management at Microsoft Corp. “We've already seen some applications come to market that take advantage of the GPU, Windows 7 and DirectCompute will make it even easier for developers to write applications and deliver these benefits to millions of additional customers.”

The chip maker has announced that the new driver will be made available through its website later this week, enabling the DirectCompute technology to work on systems running on GeForce GPUs and Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. Applications that are optimized for DirectCompute are to deliver smoother and an overall better quality in NVIDIA GPU-enabled systems.

In addition to the DirectCompute feature, which will be part of the upcoming DirectX 11 API, Windows 7 will also provide users with an increase in performance for gaming applications. According to NVIDIA, using its SLI technology and the new OS, users should see a 14% increase in performance across top gaming titles, compared to previous generations of GPUs. Windows 7 is also expected to bring H.264 high-definition video playback to Windows Media player, which will also take advantage of the performance delivered by the system's graphics processing unit.

How the First Planets Formed

Questions related to how the solar system appeared some 4.7 billion years ago have been around since the first people started using their brains for more than capturing their next meal. Science has only recently been able to provide some preliminary answers to this type of questions, although numerous ones still remain unanswered. Now, experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, solve a small piece of the mystery, by proposing a theory on how the planets in the solar system today formed. 

 
Astronomical observations have thus far revealed the fact that young stars, which have just formed, are generally surrounded by a ring of debris left from their own formation, called the protoplanetary disk. These structures are the precursors of large-scale planets, in spite of the fact that they are only made up of dust at first. According to a leading theory on how planets formed, grains of dust would orbit the newly formed star at high speeds, bumping and clogging with each other, until they formed larger grains of dust. 

Through numerous cycle repeats, the grains would eventually reach the size of small rocks, and so on. After a while, the theory goes, some of these rocks would grow to asteroid sizes, and then beyond, to small planets. The problem with this line of reasoning is that space rocks larger than one meter (three feet) in diameter would have been significantly slowed down by gas in the protoplanetary disk, which would have caused them to spiral down into the Sun and get vaporized. According to the new theory, it may be that the small rocks “jumped” in size suddenly, from one meter to several kilometers in diameter. 

The newly formed objects would have had enough drag to plow through the protoplanetary disk under these circumstances, overcoming the influence of the gas, whilst having their own orbits only slightly modified. The data used for this conclusion was drawn from astronomical observations, which show that asteroids less than one kilometer in diameter can be found in abundance, while the number of those over this limit is extremely limited. The JPL experts propose that the asteroids we see today are what was left behind after the original, much larger ones, broke apart

Automatically Answer Your Phone on LoudSpeaker

It seems that very often people that drive need to answer their incoming calls and do it by using some handsfree equipment. SymbianGuru has developed a special application that enables users to talk using the phone's loudpskear. The LoudSpeaker piece of software can answer any incoming call automatically and turn your phone's Loudspeaker on, according to your profiles settings. The application is compatible with Symbian S60v3 and S60v5 devices. Bear in mind that for the latter you will need to download an additional application called VoipAudioServer. The additional software needs to be installed only after the LoudSpeaker piece of software has been correctly installed on your Symbian smartphone.

 
LoudSpeaker can easily replace your car wireless handsfree or your Bluetooth headset. The software is fully customizable, starting with the possibility to select the profile to use the loudspeaker with, to the amount of time a specific call should be answered. Users will also be able to choose what sound to use when answering or closing a call. The application can be set to Autostart every time their smartphone is powered on. There is also a downside to the application, namely the fact that it won't work as it will be inactive as long as the phone is locked.

Some of the advantages of this application are simply based on users preferences: answering an incoming call automatically, an excellent alternative to a Bluetooth headset, customizable sounds, availability for new Symbian touchscreen devices with Symbian S60v5. LoudSpeaker can be acquired for only 9.99USD, but a ten-day, fully featured trial can also be downloaded for testing purposes.

Free Exchange Server 2010 Training Available

Earlier this week Microsoft has reached an important development milestone with the next iteration of Exchange Servers. As of August 18th, 2009, the Redmond company is offering testers the Release Candidate build of Exchange Server 2010, a clear signal that the gold bits of the products are not that far off in the distance. As is the case with major Microsoft software products, Exchange Server 2010 is accompanied by a range of resources, including content designed to help customers get an insight into the solution. In this regard, Microsoft has made available free Exchange Server 2010 training, in an effort to feed the market’s hunger for the successor of Exchange Server 2007. 

 
Just as it was the case for Windows 7, the software giant is offering customers free Learning Snacks, nothing more than training content served in bite size chunks with the help of Microsoft Silverlight. Tamir Bar-Haim, Microsoft audience marketing manager, pointed out that two Exchange Server 2010 learning snacks could already be accessed: Unified Messaging in Exchange 2010 and High Availability and Storage in Exchange 2010. 

At the same time, Microsoft is offering for download a consistent portion of the Exchange 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, namely Chapter 1: Exchange Server Administration Overview and Chapter 6: Mailbox Administration. In addition, there are no less than three eLearning Clinics from the software giant, also made available at absolutely no charge:Collection 6899: Exploring Features in Exchange 2010 (2-hours); Collection 6900: Introduction to Exchange 2010 (1-hour) and Collection 6901: Exchange Server 2010 in an Enterprise (1-hour).

The training and learning content offered by the Redmond company along with the first Release Candidate of Exchange Server 2010 make an excellent combination. Customers interested in the next version of Exchange should not hesitate in the least when it comes down to grabbing the Exchange Server 2010 RC bits and turning to the content to help discover the best that Exchange 2010 has to offer. 

Also, I’m hearing that Microsoft has a few more surprises up its sleeve, covering multiple products, all designed to help customers leverage its technologies as best as possible. But more on that in due time. 

NASA wants proposals for space taxis to seed development of commercial passenger transportation service to space

On Monday the agency officials of NASA said that, NASA plans to use $50 million of federal economic stimulus funds to seed development of commercial passenger transportation service to space, agency officials said on Monday.

Astronaut Christopher Cassidy

Aspiring spaceship operators will have 45 days to submit proposals, which will be competitively evaluated. Awards for the Commercial Crew Development program are expected to be announced before the end of September.

The United States is retiring its fleet of space shuttles next year after seven more missions to complete construction of the $100 billion International Space Station, which orbits about 225 miles above Earth.

After that, the United States plans to buy rides for astronauts to and from the station from Russia, one of the 16 nations involved in the station program.

NASA is spending $500 million to help two U.S. firms, Space Exploration Technologies, a privately held company known as SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp, develop rockets and capsules to deliver cargo to the station.

SpaceX's contract includes an option to upgrade its Dragon cargo ship for passenger service. The company has said it needs $300 million, most of which would be used to develop a launch escape system for the crew.

Nevertheless Musk hailed the move as a step in the right direction.

"The main thing that the public should be taking note of is that right now we are (solely dependent) on the Russians (for space transports) after 2010," he said.

The White House has convened a panel, headed by former Lockheed Martin chief Norm Augustine, to review NASA's human space program. The current plan is to finish the station next year, retire the shuttles and develop new vehicles that can travel to the space station as well as to the moon and other destinations in the solar system.

Funding for the follow-on program has been scaled back to $81.5 billion from $108 billion between 2010 and 2020, the year pegged for the first post-Apollo moon landing.

The panel, which is scheduled to make its report by August 31, also has been mulling extending the life of the space station beyond its projected shut-down date of 2015.

NASA plans to hold a workshop in Houston on Thursday for companies interested in partnering to develop commercial passenger service to space.

Firms expressing interest in the program include Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Airborne Systems, SpaceX, Boeing Co, Tether Applications, Retro Aerospace, Emergent Space Technologies, Davidson Technologies, and Paragon Space Development Corp.

The competition is only open to U.S. firms.

EBay, Tuesday GM starting car-selling trial

Hundreds of General Motors' California dealers will let consumers haggle over the prices of new cars and trucks through the eBay online marketplace under a trial that begins Tuesday.

About 225 of California's 250 GM dealers are set to take part in the program. They will be selling Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac vehicles on cobranded Web sites through eBay Inc.'s online auto marketplace, eBay Motors, until Sept. 8. The cars will also be searchable through eBay Motors and eBay's main site.

The trial is part of Detroit-based General Motor Co.'s turnaround plan, making more official a practice some of its dealers had already participated in on their own. It expands an existing partnership covering GM certified used vehicles sold through eBay.

It also marks a shift for San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, since most of the vehicles sold on eBay Motors — a site that sells various types of vehicles and auto parts — have traditionally been used.

Starting Tuesday, eBay visitors will be able to visit Web pages like gm.ebay.com and chevy.ebay.com, where they can browse new 2008 and 2009 vehicles, ask dealers questions and figure out financing. Select 2010 models also will be available.

The cobranded sites will also include a Web tool currently on eBay Motors that helps shoppers determine if they're qualified to trade in their old car for money toward a new one under the government's just-refilled "cash-for-clunkers" stimulus program.

Car buyers will be able to choose between the two standard options currently offered on eBay Motors: Negotiating a price with a dealer through the site or purchasing right then at a fixed price. Cars will be picked up at the dealerships.

EBay Motors Vice President Rob Chesney said the companies decided to run the trial in California because there are many tech-savvy consumers there. EBay users who live outside California can contact dealers to see if they're willing to sell and ship vehicles to them, he said.

The test comes a month after GM made an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection with ambitions of becoming profitable and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now leaner, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without additional federal loans.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson said in July that the company was working on an experiment that would let eBay users in California bid on vehicles or buy them at a fixed price. Dealers were to distribute the cars. At the time, no deal had been completed, though.

Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of U.S. sales, believes that getting the auto maker directly involved in new online sales will give customers a larger sense of security about buying a car on the Web. Currently, many consumers research new cars online, but most still go down to a dealer to make the actual purchase.

He's hoping it generates more interest in GM vehicles in California — a market he said the company needs to improve in.

For eBay, the program fits in with its strategy of growing its market for goods that are still new but not necessarily the latest models. It's also a chance to get more people interested in making new, large purchases on a site whose past is steeped in the sale of hard-to-find collectibles. The sale of used cars on eBay is already proof that consumers are getting more and more comfortable buying higher-priced items online, Chesney said.

"New cars are like the next frontier of that," he said.

The companies would not give financial details of the deal, but GM spokesman John McDonald said it is an arrangement that they think will be profitable for both firms.

Inder Dosanjh, a Dublin, Calif.-based dealer who owns four GM dealerships and currently sells used cars on eBay, said the program shows GM is trying to step outside the box and find new ways to sell cars. He plans to list all his new inventory on eBay this week. 

"I think they should have done this a long time ago," he said.

At the Apple iPhone 3G S unveiling, AT&T gets lousy reception

In the secrecy that often surrounds Apple Inc.'s every move, industry cryptologists had plenty to study in Monday's otherwise widely hailed unveiling of the company's newest iPhone, the 3G S.

The focus was on AT&T Inc., the only U.S. provider of the iPhone. That's because Apple left its partner in an uncomfortable position.

Some of the new features that iPhone users have clamored for, including the ability to use photos and video in text messages and to tether the phone's Internet connection to a laptop, won't be immediately available on AT&T's network.

But they will be available in many countries around the world.

"Poor AT&T. They got totally flayed today," said Rana Sobhany, vice president of marketing for Medialets, a New York firm that sells ads on cellphones. "Apple was positioning them as the villain."

She said Apple's move might be aimed at pressuring AT&T to end its exclusive agreement now or face the possibility that Apple won't extend its ties to the carrier beyond the contract's expiration in 2010.

Apple showed off the iPhone 3G S -- the S stands for speed, to signify how much faster the new phone is -- at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, a gathering for the people who write software for Apple computers and phones. More than 5,200 developers from 54 countries attended, Apple said. And though the developers largely cheered each new feature announced for the iPhone 3G S, they jeered every mention of AT&T.

"You know you've got a problem when you're at an Apple developers' conference and you get booed more than Microsoft," said analyst Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at research firm Interpret.

AT&T said it would offer the new features eventually. Sending photos and videos in text messages, known as MMS, will be available by the end of summer. The carrier did not say when "tethering," the practice of using an iPhone's Internet connection on an accompanying laptop, would be available.

AT&T would probably charge for tethering but not for MMS, a company spokesman said.

In addition, some existing iPhone users were rankled to learn that they would have to pay steep prices to upgrade to the iPhone 3G S. New AT&T subscribers will pay $199 for a 16-gigabyte version or $299 for a 32-gigabyte version, but existing customers will have to pay $399 and $499, respectively, for the new phones.

"I'm disappointed that I can't get a free upgrade to the 3G S," said Mihir Sridhar, a computer science student at the National University of Singapore, who bought his iPhone in December.

The new phone won't be available until June 19, but Sridhar went to an AT&T store immediately after it was announced and got the bad news.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said the company subsidizes the cost of the device for new customers who commit to extended contracts, which allows the company to recoup the subsidies, but it can't afford to do that with existing customers in mid-contract.

The price for the currently available iPhone 3Gs dropped to $99, which analysts said would shake up the market for smart phones.

AT&T shares fell 16 cents to $24.40; Apple's shares slipped 82 cents to $143.85.

Apple has sold more than 40 million iPhones and non-phone iPod Touch devices, said Scott Forstall, the company's senior vice president for iPhone software. Through its iTunes online store, Apple offers more than 50,000 applications, which have been downloaded more than 1 billion times.

The iPhone 3G S can record videos, can display an internal compass, has a longer battery life and offers voice control that lets users tell the phone to make a call or play a certain song. It also runs an upgraded operating system with 100 new features, including the long-desired ability to copy and paste text and to search the contents of the phone.

Some application developers who had had an early look at the phone showed off several of its new capabilities.

Dr. Cameron Powell of Airstrip Technologies demonstrated one program awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration that would let doctors remotely monitor patients' health -- using such indicators as blood pressure, pulse and oxygen.

The developer network is one of the key weapons in Apple's arsenal to stave off rivals, including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., cellphone giant Nokia and Palm Inc., which last week unveiled the Pre smart phone to largely favorable reviews.

The Cupertino, Calif., company's chief executive, Steve Jobs, who typically shows off fancy new hardware, did not attend Monday's session; he is on medical leave after a bout with pancreatic cancer. He is due to return at the end of this month.

Blue Man Group in sync with iPhone

Blue Man Group, an organization with a dynamic blend of music, comedy, and multimedia, and productions in seven cities worldwide, plus touring shows, as the group is described on Apple's web site, under iPhone. 

Blue Man Group’s dynamic blend of music, comedy, and multimedia was launched two decades ago by the original three Blue Men: Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and Matt Goldman. Their energetic performances proved so universally appealing that Blue Man Group has since expanded globally, with longstanding shows in New York, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, Berlin, and Tokyo, not to mention touring productions like their satirical rock concert, How to Be a Megastar. Blue Man Group has also released CDs and DVDs, scored films, and contributed music to TV shows such as Arrested Development and Scrubs.

For the inventive minds behind Blue Man Group, there’s a constant stream of information and inspiration to share — and with so many far-flung productions, mobility is key. “With the amount of travel we do, it’s essential that we’re able to communicate,” says Creative Director Michael Quinn. “iPhone is a big part of that.”

“iPhone is not only a great creative tool — it’s a great way for any business to stay organized,” says Jeff Turlik, Associate Creative Director and Music Director for Blue Man Group. “It’s easy to share information and connect with each other, from scheduling meetings to sharing audio and video files or even spreadsheets.”

Initially formed by “blue men” Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and Matt Goldman, The Blue Man Group is a creative organization that produces theatrical shows and concerts featuring music, comedy and multimedia. The group has recorded music and scores for films. Television appearances include shows such as The Tonight Show, Scrubs, and Arrested Development. The Group also has a children's museum exhibit ("Making Waves"), and is responsible for a set of custom-made musical instruments, many of which are crafted from common materials, such as PVC pipes. The trio's “blue” appearance is truly unique.

A new phishing campaign is attacking Outlook users

Security researchers warn that a new phishing campaign steal e-mail accounts from Outlook users. Outlook users are falsely informed that their e-mail client needs to be re-configured online on a fake page under the control of the attackers.A related malware distribution attack has been reported.

The offending e-mails, with a subject of "Microsoft Outlook Notification," come from a spoofed address and their content reads "You have (1) New Message from Outlook Microsoft. Please re-configure your Microsoft Outlook again. Click on the link below." The included link points to a phishing page with a fake form asking for things such as POP3 or IMAP server, SMTP server, account name and password.

"Interestingly, the domain hosting the bogus webpage was also used earlier this week in a more traditional banking phishing campaign, targeting the Commonwealth Bank of Australia," notes Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos.

Speaking of the same attack, Sarah Calaunan, fraud analyst at Trend Micro, explains that "Unlike micro-blogging, social networking, or even banking accounts, a user name and password is not enough to take full control of an email account. Mail server information is also necessary, which explains the need for them in the phishing page."

Greenlight is launching a new electric-car recharger at an expensive price

Washington based  Greenlight is discharging a new charger for  electric cars and plug-in hybrids for  an expensive price.

 

The ChargeBar can charge both 120-volt (the standard U.S. household socket) and 240-volt batteries, and the company says it will work with virtually any electric car or plug-in hybrid, including the upcoming GM Volt. 

The exception is electric cars that use 480-volt charging, which according to the company is not yet an established standard for upcoming electric cars. 

A number of electric sedans are planned for market introduction in the next two years. But automakers say that establishing a charging infrastructure in public places is critical for their acceptance with consumers. 

 The ChargeBar will charge about seven to eight hours for 110-volt cars, and about four hours for 240-volt cars. The charger will cost $3,200 including installation. That is the equivalent of 1,300 gallons of gas in California today. 

The product is aimed at the consumer market: indoor garages, family houses, businesses, and institutions such as museums. 

However, the charger has no billing mechanism. 

"In our first release, there is no point-of-charge mechanism," said Max Brown, partner and co-founder of Greenlight. "Right now it is only about a dollar a day to charge a car." 

Instead, Greenlight hopes companies and institutions see the charger as an amenity to attract customers, tenants, and employees.

"There is plenty of grid capacity for the number of cars we are talking about, certainly the first couple of years," said Max Brown, partner and co-founder of Greenlight.

Currently, the ChargeBar is in its final testing phase. 

Manufacturing is expected to start in three months, and no orders have been placed yet. Greenlight will primarily market to the East Coast, with deliveries expected in the first quarter of 2010.

Astronauts are trying to set camera in orbit for the first time ever

Spacewalking astronauts  give the Hubble Space Telescope a better view of the cosmos by installing a new high-tech science instrument and fixing a broken camera .

shuttle Atlantis' crew's got third spacewalk in three days and was expected to be the most challenging ever performed because of the unprecedented camera repairs. Astronauts have never tried to take apart a science instrument at the 19-year-old observatory.

John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel got started on the daunting job Saturday morning as the joined shuttle and telescope soared 350 miles (560 kilometers) above the planet. Orbiting so high put Atlantis and its astronauts at an increased risk of being hit by space junk. NASA had another shuttle on launch standby in case a rescue was needed.

Taiwanese computer maker Acer Joins Open Patent Alliance

Worlds first PC OEM board member, Acer will assist the proliferation of WiMAX technology, devices and applications around the world.

The OPA was formed in June 2008 by members of the WiMAX ecosystem. Acer joins current OPA members Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Cisco, Clearwire, Huawei Technologies, Intel Corporation and Samsung Electronics to foster an ecosystem focussed on broader choice and competitive equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally.

"We are proud to welcome Acer to the OPA. Adding their voice further strengthens the support for an innovative and open WiMAX ecosystem," said Yung Hahn, president, OPA. "Taking a collaborative approach to IPR issues, the OPA can continue to foster greater WiMAX innovation, collaboration and competition. The OPA is excited to expand the reach of the 4G WiMAX ecosystem to include non-traditional companies like Acer – a leading innovator on the cusp of the computing/cellular convergence revolution."

Today, Acer offers several embedded-WiMAX notebooks and netbooks from the Acer Aspire and Acer TravelMate lines around the world.

Added Jim Wong, senior corporate vice president and president, IT products global operations, Acer, "Acer has focussed on delivering state-of-the-art, innovative PCs to consumers since 1976. Consumers today want longer battery life, thin and light, innovative form factors with great processing and communications technology at affordable price. As the first global PC OEM to join the Open Patent Alliance, we hope to lead the charge in bringing several devices that harness the power of WiMAX wireless broadband technology to the hands of consumers worldwide."

The shuttle Atlantis blasted off on Monday to service the Hubble Space Telescope

Seven astronauts take off to the skies on Monday on the last space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope.Hubble's life would be extended until at least 2014 and provide it with its best vision yet.

The space shuttle Atlantis successfully reached orbit about nine minutes after blasting off at 1801 GMT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The 11-day shuttle mission will be the last to visit the iconic telescope. Over the course of five consecutive spacewalks, astronauts will install six new gyroscopes that help the telescope stabilise itself, six new batteries, two new science instruments and will repair two others.  

"In some ways, this is the toughest servicing mission we've ever attempted," NASA's associate administrator for science Ed Weiler told reporters at a pre-mission briefing in April.

In addition to those parts, Atlantis is carrying 180 tools that astronauts will need for the installations and repairs. Of those, 116 are new tools developed specifically for this mission.
 
After the primary checks, the shuttle will rendezvous with the telescope, which orbits some 560 kilometres above the Earth. On Wednesday, astronaut Megan McArthur will use the shuttle's 15-metre-long robotic arm to grapple Hubble and put it on scaffolding attached to the shuttle to prepare it for repairs.

The first of five servicing spacewalks will begin the next day, when astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel will remove Hubble's 15-year-old Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and install a $126 million, 900-pound replacement called Wide Field Camera 3.

The pair will also replace a unit that relays commands and images to and from the telescope's instruments. Hubble's router, which has been flying since the probe was launched in 1994, experienced a glitch last year that incapacitated one of its two equivalent sides. The shuttle launch was postponed for six months in order to prepare a replacement.
 
The long-awaited mission was originally slated for 2006. But it was cancelled after a board investigating the Columbia space shuttle accident recommended that any shuttles not travelling to the "safe haven" of the International Space Station – where astronauts could take refuge in an emergency – be able to repair any damage to its protective tiles or panels while the shuttle was still in orbit.

In 2006, a new NASA administrator overturned this decision, adding new safety requirements to deal with potential damage. To reduce the risk to the mission, a second space shuttle – Endeavour – is standing by on another launch pad and will be sent to retrieve Atlantis's astronauts if Atlantis is damaged beyond repair.

Security guru Phil Zimmermann warns about surveillance dangers

Computer security veteran Phil Zimmermann warns about the seductive nature of technology.

The UK is risking sliding unwittingly into a police state because of the growing use of surveillance technology, says security guru Phil Zimmermann. 

"When you live in that society and it changes incrementally over time you are less likely to notice the changes," he told the BBC. "But if you come from outside the picture as it stands is more abruptly visible as something wrong." 

Mr Zimmermann has spent his career in technology wrestling with privacy and security issues. He created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) which encrypted e-mail to protect it from prying eyes. 

Friction free 

For him, the wholesale use of surveillance systems has gone too far in the UK. 

The coupling of CCTV cameras with face-recognition algorithms that can track people through crowds, read registration plates and fuse all the sources of data was, dangerous, said Mr Zimmermann. 

"It adds up to something that I think is able to undermine democratic institutions," he said. 

For Mr Zimmermann what is creating the problem is the "seductiveness" of modern computer technology. 
CCTV systems work with face recognition systems to track individuals


"As the years have gone by governments have sort of indulged themselves in the seductions of surveillance technology," he said. "Advances in surveillance technology made it possible to collect vast amounts of data, to reduce the data by computer analysis and become more aware of everything." 

Advances have removed the "friction" that, in the real world act as a balance to excess, said Mr Zimmermann. 

For instance, he said, the reason that the postal system is not swamped with junk mail like e-mail systems is because sending direct mail costs money. 

"In e-mail it costs nothing and so that makes the friction disappear and because of that we get thousands of junk e-mails a day," he said. 

"By analogy, if it takes some work, some elbow grease, to investigate people then I think you get a reasonable balance of civil liberties," he said. 

The danger, he said, came when technology removed that friction and made it possible to get at huge amounts of data about people and analyse it to get a picture of what everyone is doing. 

"It becomes possible to know everything about everyone all the time," he said. "It becomes possible to become omniscient." 

Police power 

It was "absurd" to suggest, said Mr Zimmermann, that only criminals or people who had something to hide would be threatened by such a state of affairs. 

"Everyone has something to hide," he said. "We have our medical records, our private lives, our intimate selves, our financial lives. Things about our lives we do not want others to know. And this can be abused." 

He added: "The power of the incumbency becomes amplified when it has access to enormous surveillance resources."  
Spam is rampant because it is "friction free" said Mr Zimmerman


While technology could help people defend themselves against some intrusions into privacy, such as using encryption to scramble the content of e-mail messages, it could not defend against the wholesale use of surveillance systems in public. 

"I can't encrypt your face," he said. "We live our physical lives in the physical world and that's not really subject to encryption." 

Mr Zimmermann did not deplore all use of surveillance systems by government and police. In some cases, he said, this was appropriate given that many criminals were using technology too. 

But, he warned, that did not excuse the extent to which it was starting to be used. 

"These technologies tend to over-amplify the capabilities so that you can become extremely efficient in knowing everything," he said. "You can overshoot the mark as you attempt to catch up with the criminals and become aware of what everyone is doing all the time. 

"I think that is harmful to society," he said. 

"If you create a system where the police have too easy a job there's a threshold where if it becomes too easy it can slide into a police state," warned Mr Zimmermann.

Robot to create Facebook profile

The Ibn Sina robot will soon get a Facebook profile page
Facebook could soon be helping bridge the divide between humans and robots. 

Researchers are giving a robot its own Facebook profile page to help foster meaningful relationships with people. 

The page will be populated with interactions the robot has with people as well as photos of the time it spends in human company. 

Its creators hope that embedding it in a social web will demonstrate that a sustainable friendship can grow up between man and machine. 

Ancient scholar 

The coupling of robot and social network is the idea of Dr Nikolaus Mavridis and co-researchers as they look into ways of overcoming the reluctance of people to stay in touch with robots. 

While robots that can engage people have been produced before now, research suggests that humans lose interest - at most a few weeks after being introduced - as the behavioural repertoire of the machine is exhausted. 

In a paper on the pre-print website Archive.org server, the researchers say they want to find out if this can be thwarted by giving humans and robots a pool of shared memories and if they are part of the same social circle of friends. 

The platform for exploring the problem is a robot that can recognise faces created by Dr Mavridis and colleagues from the Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML) at the University of the United Arab Emirates plus co-workers in Germany and Greece 

The prototype is based on a PeopleBot machine from ActivRobots to which they have added a range finder, touch screen and stereo camera. The current prototype is called "Sarah" but when the project begins this will be swapped for a machine with the face of Islamic scholar Ibn Sina, aka Avicenna. 

Under the hood the machine has three software modules to help it interact with people it meets at IRML. One module recognises the faces of real people or the images they place of themselves on Facebook. 

It also has a language module so the machine can carry on real-time conversations and it will maintain a database of its friends and their social relationships based on information in Facebook. This social database will also keep its own Facebook profile up to date. 

In a month-long trial, Dr Mavridis aims to let Ibn Sina wander around IRML talking to people it meets and trying to get to know those that it does not. When it meets anyone for the first time it will check on Facebook to see if they have a profile page and use what it finds there as the starting point for a conversation.

Zombie computers 'on the rise'

Twelve million computers have been hijacked by cyber-criminals and detected by security vendor McAfee since January, the firm has said. 

It reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called "zombie" computers since 2008. 

The true number of newly hijacked PCs is likely to be higher than those detected by McAfee alone. 

The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed. 

"Doing nothing is not an option," said Deloitte's Greg Pellegrino. 

Everything that depended on cyberspace face unprecedented risks, said Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT). 

"This issue is moving so quickly, and with so much at stake economically and in terms of safety and security for people, we don't have 100 years to figure this out," explained Mr Pellegrino, who is a global public sector industry leader at DTT. 

McAfee also revealed that the United States now hosted the world's largest percentage of infected computers at 18% with China a not too distant second with just over 13%. 

"The massive expansion of these botnets provides cyber-criminals with the infrastructure they need to flood the web with malware," said Jeff Green, senior vice-president of McAfee. 

"Essentially, this is cyber-crime enablement."

Microsoft ready to Windows 7 release

 the next major release of the world's most popular operating system Windows 7, goes public in trial form in the next week.

Windows 7 has been designed to be compatible with Vista so users do not have to invest in new hardware. 

 in the next nine months,Windows 7 could be realease in commercialy 


Microsoft's Charlotte Jones demonstrates Windows 7's new features

A test version of Windows 7 will be available to developers from Thursday, while the public can try it out from 5 May. 

John Curran, Microsoft UK's director, Windows Client Group, told BBC News that "shortfalls" in the Vista release had caused problems for some users.

"There were challenges on hardware and application compatibility with Vista in the first couple of months - and that has left a little bit of an aftertaste for a segment of people." 

When Vista was launched many users expressed frustration that the operating system did not work with all types of existing hardware and peripherals, or programs used commonly on PCs. 

And a Vista compatibility programme for hardware proved to be confusing and, in some cases, somewhat misleading.

Government PCs has been entraped by Botnet

Malicious hackers hacked Almost two million PCs globally, including machines inside UK and US government departments.

Security experts Finjan traced the giant network of remotely-controlled PCs, called a botnet, back to a gang of cyber criminals in Ukraine.

Several PCs inside six UK government bodies were compromised by the botnet.

Finjan has contacted the Metropolitan Police with details of the government PCs and it is now investigating.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office, which is charged with setting standards for the use of information technology across government, said it would not comment on specific attacks "for security reasons".
 

How does a botnet work? 


It is the second time in a year that PCs inside government departments have been hacked to form part of a botnet. 

On this occasion, the machines were infected with software which allowed them to be taken over and enslaved in the botnet due to vulnerabilities in web browsers.

BBC iPlayer runs with high definition

The BBC's iPlayer is ready to high definition (HD) streams and downloads of some programmes.

It will improved picture quality on streams to web browsers. 
 

The iPlayer has been a runaway success, with more than 387 million requests to stream or download since it launched on Christmas Day 2007. 

BBC's head of digital media technology, Anthony Rose, who is responsible for delivering the next generation of BBC iPlayer, said the launch of an HD iPlayer was a significant milestone in improving video quality.