Apple Recalls Some Verizon iPads 2

Apple support forums have been flooded with users complaining about iPad 2s that won’t connect to Verizon Wireless’s CDMA 3G network and pple has given all the stores a list of serial numbers to scan, if company told to set aside and ship back to Apple, these are only for Verizon iPads. The first store to give notice had over 100 units to be sent back and the issue seems to only affect Verizon iPad 2′s right now, a similar situation to earlier in the year when customers visited the Apple forums to complain of Verizon iPad 2′s they had ordered being stopped and sent back.

Apple Inc. announced that it is recollecting an extremely small number of iPad 2 tablet computers to eradicate a manufacturing fault that stop some users from connecting to the Verizon Wireless network. Apple, on Friday reported to different sources that it has recalled a very small number of Verizon iPad 2 models after the items were unintentionally shipped with the same electronic serial numbers. The numbers, publicly known as mobile equipment identifiers (MEIDs), are significant in the activation of gadgets that were use under Verizon’s cellular network and are intended to be sole to the individual device. Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino based Apple company, stated that the recall only comprise in devices of theVerizon network. She added that the company will change those tablets with new ones but refused to say how many clients were affected. An Apple agent announced on Friday that duplicated MEID numbers were sparked onto a very small number of iPad 2 units for the Verizon 3G networks.

Although most of the devices which were involved were still in the procedure of striking the market, a few had already established their way into customers’ pockets. Apple made an announcement at its developer conference on Monday that it has sold 25 million iPads since the genuine tablet was published last year and some analysts supposed that it could sell another 8 million this quarter. However, there have been some problems along the way, including a lethal May 20 explosion at a Foxconn plant in China, which is thought to be manufacturing the iPad 2. This isn’t the first issue Apple has had with Verizon iPads.  Earlier this year, Discussion forums went ablaze with complaints that were later fixed.

 

Facebook Happening Now Feature

Facebook is engaged in limited testing of a new feature known as the Happening Now sidebar and the beta sidebar alerts offers comprehensive status updates in real-time, including what their friends are sharing, who they are friending, along with other status updates in real-time.The Happening Now toolbar sits to the right of a user’s newsfeed and scrolls through updates in real-time, automatically refreshing and emphasized by past previously launched features like real-time commenting.

Facebook is currently testing a new version of the news feed that displays liking and commenting activity by a user’s friends in real time and it’s odd that it would show up directly next to the most recent feed. Docked to the right hand side of the screen, it displays real-time updates from your friends, such as wall posts, comments and check-in information, allowing users to see how their friends are interacting with one another all from the main screen. However, users have taken to Twitter to blow the whistle on a major bug with the feature not fully rolled out to the 700 million users, involving friends permissions.

European regulators are looking into Facebook’s method of delivery on the facial recognition features made available to users on Tuesday. Three users, @dezinezync, @benjacob and @hackatac who discovered the bug, explained to me on Twitter the implications:

“Say a user’s photos are viewable to friends only, and this user is not in my friends list. If a friend of mine comments on the photo of that user, I can see it from the ‘Happening Now’ feed.”

There appears to be a permissions error where those who are not in their friends list can see photos of people, even though the album is restricted to who can see it. Effectively, if your Facebook privacy settings are not locked down, it’s a “wild west scene for all to see”, another discovering user described. For now, you can limit this bug by setting your permissions onFacebook to ‘friends only’, as it is unclear how far this bug spreads, or whether it goes beyond photos only. Facebook told The Next Web:

“We are currently testing a feature within the news feed that gives people the ability to see what their friends are commenting on and liking, as these actions are being taken on Facebook.

This test includes a small percentage of Facebook users, just a fraction of a percent. In the coming weeks, as we learn more from this test, we’ll keep making improvements and may expand it to more people.”

While this is not yet a fully rolled-out feature only featuring on a select number of profiles this permissions error is indicative of a permissions error which could fall deeper into the site. Spokesperson Jaime Schopflin told me that Facebook refutes this ‘bug’, and that “this is how photos work”. “When a person tags their friend in a photo, the photo is posted to their friend’s Wall where their friends can see it.” Users can disable this feature by unchecking the “Let friends of people tagged in my photos and posts see them” option in the main Facebook privacy settings.

 

Apple Announce iCloud Storage Service

Apple have announced iCloud, their new online cloud service designed to enable simple wireless file sharing between users.  Rumours and speculation have been surrounding iCloud for more than a year now, so this announcement by Steve Jobs at the Worldwide Developers Conference has been very welcome.

iCloud is a direct alternative to the cloud based services offered by Google and Amazon, and an extension of many techniques that have already proved useful in the business community.  Basically, iCloud users will be able to share photos, music, calendars, email, and other data  between mobile devices and desktop computers.

Jobs put a lot of emphasis on what he calls “the post PC experience”, Apple’s current buzz-phrase and badly disguised attempt to hasten the death of traditional computing.  However, according to Carl Howe, director of Anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, Apple have the goods to follow through.

“This does put Apple back in the lead, mainly because they’re really thought out the post-PC connected experience.” said Howe. “I buy what Jobs said – no one else can create this type of post-PC service that ‘just works’ the way Apple can, because they just don’t have enough of the ingredients. Apple can and will,” Howe added.

When the cloud is factored into the equation, Apple’s iDevices could potentially make even more sense to consumers, whose data can be synchronised and automatically stored in the cloud.  Jobs has also promised that all cloud services will not carry advertisements, which is great news.

The iCloud offers users 5GB of free storage for mail, documents and backup, although this doesn’t count music, apps, books, or Photo Stream.  Also, only music purchased on iTunes will be supported by these cloud services.  A developer beta of iCloud is now available, with iCloud shipping with iOS 5 some time this fall.

Source: geekwithlaptop.com

 

Google Makes Image Search Easy

Google has always been about upgrading its services to make things faster for everybody and they’ve just introduced a new update to their search engine to make it easier to look for images. Whenever you search for something on the regular search, Google will try to determine if you’re looking for images or not and if it believes that you’re looking for images rather than text, it will show you more image results than regular text links in the search results.

Google has made significant improvements to its image search functions this week, rolling out the latest updates to Google Images and Google will now automatically try to figure out whether or not you are looking for images, even before you remember to hit the Images tab. “Starting this week we’re making it easier to quickly find great images right in your Google search results,” reads a recent post from Google software engineer, Grant Dasher. “Drawing from last year’s broader update to Google Images, we’ve integrated many of the features we introduced at that time into our main search results. Images will now appear in a tiled layout, with hover previews that give you a larger thumbnail and more information about a particular image.” Basically, if Google thinks that your query has “high image intent” then they will start to automatically show you lot more photos, pictures and other images on the page. The Google engineer gives the example of a search for [nebula pictures] which “instead of just three or four pictures at the top of the results” throws up “more than a dozen beautiful pictures filling up most of the page.”

 

Secured USB Devices for Confidential Data from Kingston

Kingston Digital has launched the secure USB version especially designed for professionals who work with confidential data. The DT4000-M storage USB unit is part of the Data Traveler 4000 series and uses the SafeConsole app provided by BlockMaster to offer the best data protection.

Recent statistics and events related to data loss show just how important data security is and suggest that corporation should adopt such secure USB devices. US corporations lost $258 million last year alone because of unsecure mobile storage devices the Ponemon Institute revealed in a survey.

Data from the industry sector showed that financial losses reported by companies increased by 400% in 2010 compared to previous years. Storage devices that contained essential information had been lost or damaged and this is what triggered the financial losses. Moreover, 76% of all corporate employees connect foreign storage devices to company notebooks, thus bringing viruses into the corporation’s network, a recent study carried out by BlockMaster revealed.

Data encryption prevents unauthorized persons from accessing confidential data, but it can also make data transfer more difficult. For this reason, employees prefer to use storage devices designed for regular users and this is what happened in the case of the Cambridgeshire County Council in February 2011. The council lost a memory stick containing sensitive data related to vulnerable adults.

“The DT4000-M is truly impressive. It represents the first time a managed secure FIPS drive is being made available for corporate use at a price point designed to fuel wide and rapid adoption by enterprises. The 100-percent secure and 100-percent managed DT4000-M is a SafeConsoleReady device that will attract a lot of attention”, said Anders Kjellander, Chief Security Office, BlockMaster.

DT4000-M USB devices have a price tag ranging from $62 for the 2GB version to $192 for the 16GB model.

 

AMD to Start Making Processors for Tablets

Rumors about versions of Fusion processors designed for tablets had been swirling around for a few months and they have eventually been confirmed at Computex.

AMD’s APU Z series (Accelerated Processing Unit) codenamed Desna has been officially introduced at Computex. The new  X86 based APU has been designed to run smoothly on Windows 7 and represents the alternative AMD offers for powering tablet devices. It comes with a 1  GHz Bobcat dual-core processor and a  Radeon HD 6250 GPU which is more than enough for running any effects in a Windows Aero interface, for rendering HD content and for gaming or streaming. Since we are talking about a table, there is one thing more important than its size and battery’s autonomy. The new Z series APU has an average power consumption of 6W, which is far lower than the 9W required by the Ontario APU used in Acer’s W500 tablet.

The new Windpad 110W from MSI is, as far as it seems, powered by Desna. As for the evolution of the Fusion platform,  AMD has announced  is planning to develop new A and E series models so as to attack Intel’s high-performance Core i7.  When it comes to choosing the names of a new hardware or software component, it seems that the companies compete against one another in finding the weirdest possible names for their new products. Since AMD had to follow the pack, the company decided to give the name „Llano” to its new midrange APUs expected to be launched soon. AMD has  gone so far so as to say that the next „Trinity” ( another nice name) will be the best APU in 2012.

Phil Hughes, AMD’s Senior PR Manager  has listed the functionalities of the new APU Z series chipset in a post on his personal blog.

• AMD Z-01 APU with AMD Radeon HD6250 – graphics card with dedicated memory. This APU includes  two 1GHz cores  Bobcat and a  5.9W TDP
• full support for Windows 7
• user interface continuity with office and home apps, irrespective of the device’s format.
• full access to viewing and editing options for documents created in Microsoft Office or other text editing programs
• free and automatic support for all Windows 7 updates
• 100% compatibility in interaction with iPhone, Windows Phone, Blackberry or any other phones
• support for any task involving any USB devices
• HDMI port for 1080p video streaming
• integrated support for XBOX 360 Media Extender

 

Intel’s Atom Processor Evolution Outpaces Moore’s Law

Intel has offered additional information about its next Atom processors for tablets, notebooks and smartphones during Computex 2011 in Taiwan.

Atom processors will outpace Moore’s Law by speeding up the progress from the 32 nm technology to 22nm and then to 14 nm in the next three years. Given the annual update rate (a new generation of processors), transistors will lose far less energy and will have a lower real output. This means that smartphones, tablets and notebooks will bring higher performances and better battery autonomy.

Intel is also preparing the next generation platform for notebooks, codenamed „Cedar Trail”. This is the first netbook platform based on the 32 nm technology which will allow manufacturers to build ultra-thin equipments with new functionalities without having to use a cooler. Such equipments are Intel Rapid Start Technology (which quickly evaluates the system’s activities), Intel Smart Connect Technology (quickly runs the activities even in the stand-by mode) or Intel Wireless Display and PC Synch (allows consumers to use wireless updates and synch document or media content between several devices).

Moreover, the new platform will ensure 10 hour battery autonomy for active using or several weeks autonomy in stand-by mode. Cedar Trail will support various operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Google Chrome and MeeGo.

Sean Maloney, Intel’s’ vice-president has introduced over ten tablets powered by Intel’s Atom Z670 which run three different operating systems. These tablets are available for purchase.

Maloney has also revealed information about Medfield, the first 32 nm platform designed for smartphones and tablets. The platform has been optimized so as to offer high performances and low energy consumption together with a longer battery life, high-quality gaming performances and clear image rendering.

In order to show the progress done in the tablet segment, Intel has introduced a Medfield prototype for the first time on the Google Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). The platform will run into production in the near future and will allow manufacturers to produce equipments whose thickness will be less than 9mm and will weigh under 700grams. The tablets bearing these specs are expected to hit the market in the second half of the 2012. Medfield will also be compatible to various operating systems such as Android and MeeGo.

 

Verbatim’s Solid State Drive is A Good Alternative for HDD

The new Verbatim SSD 2, 5’’ SATA II series (Solid State Drive) represents a good storage alternative for replacing laptop and PC HDDs. The drive offers good transfer rates of up to 250MB/sec for reading and 220MB/sec for writing, accelerated starting and faster system response. It can also increase battery life and provide better shock resistance compared to HDD-equipped systems.

The device is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB versions and enables advanced wear and error administration for increased performances in the long run.

SATA II SSDs also include a 3.5’’ adaptor in the package and a charging cable for additional installation on desktop systems.

One of the advantages brought by SSDs is the fact that they use semi conductive flash chips to store data, therefore, unlike HDDs, they do not incorporate any mobile components. Due to this reason, SSDs are more stable mechanically thus generating less errors. Moreover, they  generate very little noise and do not use much power.

The retail version will be available from the third quarter of 2011. Additional features such as ghosting software and data transfer data could be included in the future.

 

Oracle Donates OpenOffice To Apache

Oracle has ceded control of the OpenOffice.org code base to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator project and it was donating the open-source code so as to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open-source communities.

Oracle is shunting OpenOffice onto the Apache Software Foundation, sidelining the original OpenOffice community that forked of the project as LibreOffice last year and they are proposing to contribute OpenOffice.org code to Apache Foundation. With this move, Oracle hopes to get some positive karma from the open source community. “With today’s proposal to contribute theOpenOffice.org code to The Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator, Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development.” — Luke Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group. OpenOffice.org will be the Apache incubator project for a while before it graduates to a top level project, a standard procedure with any project entering the Apache Foundation. Jim Jagielski, president, The Apache Software Foundation, will be the podling member during the incubation process. He will be responsible for creating a reporting schedule, setting up a project status page, mailing lists and repository space.

This move is interesting because it splits OpenOffice.org community (before the fork) in the middle with one side aligning more to protect the consumer interests and the other aligning more with enterprise interests. After Oracle took over Sun Microsystems and grabbed the rights to OpenOffice.org, a powerful group of developers upset with Oracle forked the project and formed Document Foundation. They released the fork as LibreOffice, a more open and inclusive version of OpenOffice.org. Well, the grumblings were there even before the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems but the new owner made it easier to fork, driving a large chunk of the community to the new non-profit foundation. The Document Foundation, which had some expectations for a merger between the two communities, was a bit disappointed :

The Document Foundation would welcome the reuniting of the OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects into a single community of equals in the wake of the departure of Oracle. The step Oracle has taken today was no doubt taken in good faith, but does not appear to directly achieve this goal. The Apache community, which we respect enormously, has very different expectations and norms – licensing, membership and more – to the existing OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice projects. We regret the missed opportunity but are committed to working with all active community members to devise the best possible future for LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org.

On the bright side, one benefit of this arrangement is the potential for future-proof licensing. The Apache License is compatible with both the LGPLv3+ and MPL licenses, allowing TDF future flexibility to move the entire codebase, to MPLv2 or future LGPL license versions. The Document Foundation believes that commercially-friendly, copy-left licensing provides the best path to constructive participation in, and growth of the project.

Thus, the event is neutral for The Document Foundation, which – as always – remains open to every company, individual or foundation that wishes to participate in co-development. There has never been a better time to get involved and advance the state of the art in free software office suites.

 

On the other hand, IBM’s Bob Sutor is very excited about the move to Apache Foundation

With this move, we’ll get a chance to see what empowered individuals with the right technical chops can do in a community to innovate on the current code base. I’m very excited to see what they come up with.

 

Google Introduced +1

Google announced Wednesday that it has created website partnerships for its recently released +1 button and the ability to embed the button on pages across the web, sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, The Huffington Post, Best Buy and Nordstrom will now have a +1 button on pages so users can recommend products, news articles, and more to friends and family. The +1 button was introduced in March and allows users to recommend content to their associates directly from Google search results and  Google has been rolling out the +1 button into English-language searches.

Google has announced the expanded reach of its new sharing button the +1 option, introducing a version that websites can put on their site, alongside Facebook and Twitter’s dominating Like and Tweet This buttons. The button has little benefit currently, but it’s clearly part of the infrastructure for a bigger project — Google’s long-rumored social networking competitor to Facebook. It’s like putting a way to fill your cart before the cart and horse. The button allows signed-in Google users to recommend the page to their friends and contacts, who can see the vote and a thumbnail photo of the voter if the page shows up in search. Early partners include media outlets such as Bloomberg, Reuters, The Washington Post and Mashable, and the widely used sharing plug-in ShareThis, which makes a sharing toolbar bloggers and publications can just drop into their site. Extending that reach, the button will also be on YouTube videos, next to apps in the Android Market, on Blogger blogs, and on its shopping search site. Google introduced the “+1″ button on its U.S. search pages in March, but the problem with the button was immediately evident. In order to like a search result, you’d have to either know before clicking on it that you liked it, or you’d have to visit the page, and then return to the search page to vote it up. Google is positioning the +1 button as a way to add “social” features to search, adding a layer of recommendations on top of its powerful search algorithms, which are constantly handling sites using nefarious tactics to game their way to the top. Google has watched closely. And it’s going to fill the web with its sharing button, thanks to the power of its search engine. And then when (not if), Google announces its social network, your likes will already be there and the buttons will be there to add even more.