Facebook Inc. priced its shares in its initial public stock offering at $38 late Thursday, setting the stage for its historic market debut Friday. The IPO values Facebook at $104 billion, the largest-ever for a newly public company. The $18.4 billion that Facebook is expected to raise in the IPO itself would be the second-largest […]
SAP’s Afaria mobile device management tool is now available on Amazon Web Services’ cloud, offered as a way to make it easier to start using the platform, SAP said at the Sapphire conference on Monday. The availability of Afaria 7.0 server on AWS gives enterprises a fast and simple way to buy and implement an […]
The Texas Bankers Association’s 128th Annual Convention & Exposition will be held May 9-11, 2012, at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel and Fort Worth Convention Center. Attendees; we are located at Booth 323. Come by and enter for a chance to win a Scotty Cameron Putter. IT Support Services […]
In the last couple of years Barnes & Noble has made some big inroads into the e-book market, cutting into Amazon’s huge lead. As it stands, Amazon still has about 60 percent of the e-book pie, Barnes & Noble has around 25 percent, and Apple sits at around 15 percent, with smaller players like Sony […]
Microsoft plans to release a nearly final version of Windows 8 this summer that will give consumers and businesses their final chance to kick the tires on the redesigned operating system before it’s released for sale, most likely later this year. Windows group president Steven Sinofsky announced the Windows 8 Release Preview at a technology […]
April 19th and 20th | Galveston Island Convention Center at the San Luis Resort, Galveston, Texas. Percento Technologies is sponsoring and will have a booth at the 2012 Texas Credit Union League Annual Meeting and Expo. The event will offer the latest review of best practices, state-of-the-art technology solutions and a look into the future. […]
We hope you’re sitting down, because you’ll need to be to in order to hold the Excite 13 in your hands. Starting at a steep $649 and available June 10th, this is the largest Android tablet yet, featuring a billboard-like 13-inch screen. What’s the point of being 3 inches bigger than the iPad? Toshiba says […]
Apple Inc.’s new iPad was named the best tablet computer in a ranking by Consumer Reports, two weeks after the magazine said the device runs “significantly hotter” than previous models. The new iPad’s high-resolution screen provides the best detail and color accuracy of all tablets Consumer Reports has seen, the publication said today on its […]
Google reportedly plans on launching an online store to sell co-branded tablets running its Android operating system. According to the Wall Street Journal, the tablets will be manufactured by partners such as Samsung and Asus and bear the Google logo. The report cites “people familiar with the matter.” Neither Google nor Asus, one of the […]
Apple Inc’s new iPhone will have a sharper and bigger 4.6-inch “retina” display and is set to be launched around the second quarter, a South Korean media reported on Thursday. Sales of the iPhone, first introduced in 2007 with the touch screen template now adopted by its rivals, account for around half Apple’s total sales. […]
Google reportedly plans on launching an online store to sell co-branded tablets running its Android operating system.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the tablets will be manufactured by partners such as Samsung and Asus and bear the Google logo.
The report cites “people familiar with the matter.”
Neither Google nor Asus, one of the hardware makers reported to release a co-branded tablet later this year, offered comment.
If correct, the move by Google would put it on par with Apple and Amazon, both of which have online outlets to sell their iPad and Kindle Fire tablets, respectively.
Google has tried this before. In 2010, it launched the Nexus One, a co-branded smartphone built by HTC and sold through a Google website. But as the Journal points out, Google killed the endeavor after a few months.
The report also claims the next version of its Android software, code-named “Jelly Bean,” will arrive in the middle of the year.
Apple Inc’s new iPhone will have a sharper and bigger 4.6-inch “retina” display and is set to be launched around the second quarter, a South Korean media reported on Thursday.
Sales of the iPhone, first introduced in 2007 with the touch screen template now adopted by its rivals, account for around half Apple’s total sales.
Apple has decided on the bigger 4.6-inch display for its next iPhone and started placing orders to its suppliers, the Maeil Business Newspaper said, quoting an unnamed industry source.
Its major display suppliers LG Display and Samsung Electronics Co declined to comment.
Samsung, which is also the biggest challenger to Apple in smartphones, uses 4.6-inch OLED display for its flagship Galaxy S II smartphone, introduced in April last year.
The high-definition “retina” display–containing several times as many pixels within the same area– is used in the latest iPad released earlier this month.
The latest iPhone 4S was introduced in October last year.
AUSTIN, Texas–Darren Kitchen spent this weekend walking around the SXSW festival with an unobtrusive but relatively evil red box attached to his backpack: it impersonated Wi-Fi networks in hopes of convincing laptops, phones, and other wireless devices to connect to it.
Kitchen’s hot-spot honeypot worked. During just a few minutes in the lobby of the Omni Hotel here, he disrupted dozens of Wi-Fi connections and rerouted them to his own “network” that replaced all Internet pages with a video of the Nyan Cat kitten flying through space. Someone with malicious intent could have done far worse.
Kitchen, founder of Hak5, says the WiFi Pineapple Mark IV box highlights the security flaws of the way Wi-Fi has been implemented. There’s also a privacy flaw. Currently, Wi-Fi devices broadcast the list of open Wi-Fi networks to which they previously connected–meaning an astute observer may be able to tell where the owner works and socializes.
His five tips for how to prevent your Internet connection from being hijacked by someone with the WiFi Pineapple Mark IV (available for purchase for $89.99):
1. Turn off Wi-Fi
If Wi-Fi isn’t enabled, there’s no privacy or security risk. Use a 3G or 4G USB stick instead. Or, on a laptop with a wired Ethernet connection, use that.
2. Avoid open Wi-Fi networks
“For the most part I tell people: avoid open Wi-Fi altogether,” Kitchen says. If you do use Wi-Fi, stick to networks that are WPA-encrypted with a password. The WiFi Pineapple Mark IV can’t impersonate those.
3. Use a VPN
If you do decide to connect to an open network, use a VPN or SSH tunnel to give yourself additional security. But even then, an attacker can interfere with the Wi-Fi connection by sending a false deauthentication frame. “It looks like it came from the legit Wi-Fi network,” Kitchen says. “I could piss you off and maybe you’d go unencrypted” by disabling the VPN and making the connection vulnerable.
4. Change your Wi-Fi settings
If your Wi-Fi settings are changed so your computer (or phone) no longer remembers previous open networks it connected to, that will help. It will also protect your privacy because the names of stored networks will no longer be broadcast. On a Mac under OS X, for instance, go to network settings, and under advanced, turn off “Remember networks this computer has joined.” Also erase the list of “Preferred networks.”
5. Ask your manufacturer to fix the problem
Should your phone really trust that an airplane-based Wi-Fi network is legitimate when it shows up at a conference or hotel? Probably not. Adding security through geolocation or making sure the MAC addresses are the same are some options that manufacturers could choose. But there’s been little movement toward an industry wide fix.
Apple’s retail and online stores will kick off sales of the new iPad early this Friday in the U.S., the U.K, Japan, and a host of other countries.
Tablet buyers around the world eager to buy the new iPad will get a chance at 8 a.m. on Friday.
Apple’s retail stores and its online store will both start selling the third-generation iPad at 8 a.m. local time this Friday across several countries, Apple announced today. The shift represents an early opening for Apple Stores, which normally unlock their doors at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.
The new iPad will initially sell in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In the U.S., the new iPad will also be available at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Target, and Walmart, Apple added.
Buyers who snag a new iPad at an Apple retail outlet will be offered a free setup service from a store employee who can help them customize the tablet, set up e-mail, and load new apps. Such a service is a thoughtful option, especially for first-time buyers. I teach an iPad course, and many students arrive in class with no knowledge of how to initially set up their tablets.
A personal pickup service also lets customers purchase an iPad from anywhere and then pick up the item at their local store.
The new iPad will travel even further around the world on March 23, reaching Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.
So even at 8 a.m., what are your chances of actually scoring an iPad on Friday?
An Apple representative told CNET last week that “beginning Friday, March 16, the new iPad will be available for purchase at Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers on a first come, first-served basis.”
The “first-come, first-served” part means that anyone eager to grab a new iPad on Day One will need to arrive at the store a lot earlier than 8 a.m. and be ready to while away the morning hours waiting in line.
Unveiling the new iPad a week ago, Apple sold out of its initial stock in online pre-orders within two days. Current estimates at Apple’s online store show a wait time of 2-3 weeks.
So, if you’re eyeing the new iPad, are you better off waiting in line or online? I second the motion from my CNET colleague Scott Stein in advising people to order online.
Last year my wife and I stood in line outside our local Apple Store early one morning waiting to pick up a couple of iPad 2 tablets. After several hours we finally reached the doors of the store only to discover that all available stock had been sold out. We went home that day, ordered a couple of the tablets online, and received them a few weeks later.
Of course, there are always those techies who want to be the first one on the block to own a new device. But for the average consumer, a few weeks wait isn’t going to be a hardship.
I’ll certainly drop by my Apple Store this weekend to check out the new iPad. But even if I decide to buy one and the store is sold out, I’ll just go home to my trusty browser, place my order, and wait for the tablet to reach my doorstep.
Looking for free, reliable cloud storage? Dropbox offers 2GB, while SugarSync gives you 5GB. Microsoft’s SkyDrive raises the stakes even higher with 25GB, though for the moment it lacks any official companion apps.
Although Box positions itself primarily as a provider of business storage solutions, this deal is for personal use only. Just install the free Box app on your device, then register for a new account–or log in if you already have one. Either way, you’ll get upgraded from the usual 5GB of free space to a whopping 50GB.
And although the promotion ends (for Android users, anyway–others have until the end of the year) on March 23, you get to keep that space for life.
Box has also upgraded the upload cap to 100MB from the usual 25MB. That’s great if you’re looking to archive or share, say, a large presentation or video.
The Box service itself is pretty straightforward: you upload your files and folders, then access and/or share them as needed. You can do this from just about any device that runs apps or has a Web browser.
Now for the bad news: Box doesn’t do file-syncing the way Dropbox and SugarSync do. There is a desktop component called Box Sync, but it’s available only to Business and Enterprise account holders.
That definitely limits Box’s versatility. On the other hand, 50GB of free storage is 50GB of free storage, even if it’s not quite as convenient to use. You might as well score the space while you can, and figure out later how you’ll make the best use of it.
If you’ve had any hands-on experience with Box you want to share, hit the comments and speak your mind!
By now you’ve probably heard about OLED, or organic light-emitting diodes. LG and Samsung both revealed potential models at this year’s CES, with the LG winning CNET’s Best of CES Award.
Make no mistake, this is the most important advancement in TV technology in over a decade, and a vast improvement over both LCD and plasma. Here’s why.
The What
You only need red, green, and blue light to create a TV image. OLEDs work by putting electricity through certain materials that glow these specific colors. No other TV technology creates light directly like this. LCDs use color filters and light-blocking liquid crystals above a light-creating backlight. Plasmas use UV light created by igniting pockets of gas to excite red, green, and blue phosphors.
The Why
What does this mean? Well, OLED TVs will be thinner, lighter, more efficient, and better performing than any current television technology. Each pixel can be shut off, for an absolute black (no other tech can do this, save CRT), meaning an actual infinite contrast ratio, not just marketing hype.
For example, LG’s 55-inch OLED unveiled at CES weighs 16.5 pounds and is about as deep as a pencil (3/16 of an inch).
It’s hard not to be excited about OLED, as it ticks all the boxes of a dream television: incredible contrast, impossibly thin, extremely energy efficient.
LED vs. OLED
As we’ve discussed before, current televisions marketed as “LED TVs” aren’t actually LED TVs. They’re LCD TVs that use LEDs for the backlight. While LED LCDs are energy efficient compared with “regular” LCDs and plasmas, they’re still not as energy efficient as OLED. As far as the difference between LEDs and OLEDs, the latter uses materials that include carbon (“organic”) to create light when supplied a current. In an extremely oversimplified and generalized explanation, LEDs are like tiny light bulbs, while OLEDs are light-emitting areas or surfaces.
The only real “LED TV,” as in a TV that used LEDs for the image itself, was Sony’s Crystal LED prototype it showed at CES. If this technology moves past the prototype stage, we’ll report on it more fully.
RGB OLED vs “White” OLED
The current OLED TV technology can be split in two camps: RGB OLED and “White” OLED. RGB OLED is similar to how plasma TVs work, with separate red, green, and blue OLED subpixels.
White OLED is rather different, and a bit confusing at first. Red, green, and blue OLED materials are sandwiched together. When powered, these create a white light. This white light passes through a color filter, to create the red, green, and blue subpixels.
This seems weird, right? I mean, if you’ve got all three colors there already, why make white just to then turn it back into specific color? Well, it turns out White OLED has several benefits. There are some claims that this white sandwich has longer life and less chance of color shift versus separate R, G, and B OLEDs. LG wouldn’t commit to a lifespan claim when I asked it directly, however, saying only that while “long-life testing is still under way, we believe our WOLED will perform quite well vis-à-vis other displays.”
What they did say, and this is very important, is at this stage it’s easier to manufacture. That means “cheaper.” I’m in the camp that anything that gets OLED to market sooner is a good thing.
Lastly, and this could be where White OLED wins out: it’s easier to scale to different screen sizes, which means bigger (or smaller) OLED TVs sooner. That also means it’s easier to scale to 4K resolutions. I’m on record saying 4K TVs are stupid, but I admit it’s inevitable.
I know some of you are thinking: “blech, color filters!” what kind of LCD-esque step back is this horror hybrid? At first, I was in this camp as well, but the more I’ve researched, White OLED offers a lot of advantages, separate from the “pure performance” aspect. Could RGB OLED be slightly more efficient, or have slightly better performance? Maybe, but at this stage, it doesn’t matter. If White is easier to make, that’s the road we’re on.
OLED needs to come to market before we can argue the potential benefits of one version of the technology over another. OLED, regardless of the specific flavor, is going to perform better, and be more energy efficient than any current television.
Inevitably, future versions of this technology will perform better. We can fixate on that pixel when we come to it.
Cell phones and other small portable devices often specify that their screens are “AMOLED” instead of just “OLED.” The “AM” stands for “active matrix,” which is how the screen is addressed by the electronics of the device. It is just a different way of running an OLED screen, one that’s better for motion (like video). Each pixel can be addressed individually, which is what you want in a television.
Those of you with long memories will remember the days when LCD monitors were called TFT LCD or active-matrix LCD. You hardly ever see that clarification because every LCD you’re now likely to come in contact with (either phones, tablets, TVs, etc.) is active matrix. Same idea here. OLED TVs will be some kind of active matrix.
The When
Like any new technology, OLED TVs will be expensive at first. Don’t forget it wasn’t too long ago that big-screen LCDs and plasma were well beyond the means of us mere mortals. Let the 1-percenters buy these first-generation panels (estimates say $8,000 or so), driving down the cost for the rest of us. Within a few years of launch, expect to see OLEDs as a significant, but reasonable, step up over LED LCDs and plasmas.
In the meantime, you can check out what OLED looks like now. Many cell phones, including Samsung and HTC models, feature OLED screens. Samsung has released a new tablet with a 7.7-inch OLED. The new Sony PlayStation Vita has a 5-inch OLED screen.
In the future, OLED has few limitations on size or resolution. Wall-size OLED screens have been hypothesized. Flexible OLED, still many years off, fulfills the sci-fi promise of screens you can roll up like a magazine.
The event is expected to bring the launch of Google‘s online music download store, the latest such digital storefront from the search giant. Google already operates a digital store for books, as well as for software applications on both its Android and Chrome platforms.
The new service will play into Google’s existing music offering, a beta service that lets users store digital copies of their music tracks on the company’s servers.
Alongside the formal launch of that service, Google is expected to unveil deals with most of the big record companies to sell digital music downloads from those catalogs. Purchased tracks can then be accessed from both the Web and on mobile devices, including those running Google’s Android operating system.
There may be more too. CNET broke the news that Google will add extra social features on top of its store. According to the Wall Street Journal, that social feature will include letting users share tracks they’ve purchased with their friends on Google’s social network Google+.
The press event kicks off at 2 p.m. Pacific, and Google is providing a live stream of it at YouTube.com/Android. As usual, we’ll be using Cover it Live to bring you updates and photos from the press conference as it’s happening. Just bookmark this page and come back to it Wednesday afternoon, or sign up to get an e-mail reminder just ahead of the start. Plus: We’ll have running commentary in a special Google Music segment on Buzz Out Loud.
Google has a secret laboratory, unknown even to most of the company’s employees, where it develops projects that sound like something taken from a sci-fi movie, the New York Timesreports.
At the lab, located somewhere in the Bay Area, Google’s brightest engineers are working on some hundred projects, including smart refrigerators and dinner plates, robots that fetch the groceries and elevators that can take you to outer space.
An unnamed Google engineer says that the lab is run mysteriously, in two different office buildings — one for logistics and the other for robotics projects.
The scientists working in the lab include hires from Microsoft, Nokia, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and New York University. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin is reportedly “deeply involved” with the project, and he and co-founder Larry Page have come up with a list of ideas for the lab.
It is reportedly headed by robotics and artificial intelligence expert Sebastian Thrun from Stanford, best known for his work on the world’s first driverless car. Andrew Ng, a Stanford professor and an esteemed A.I. expert, also works at the lab.
A Google spokeswoman would not confirm the existence of the lab, but she did say that Google likes to invest in speculative projects. Google’s 20% rule, which lets engineers spend one-fifth of their work time on personal projects, is one example of that, but a secret lab takes this idea a step further and makes you wonder which of these technologies will graduate to be full-fledged Google projects.
The new-look Gmail that Google accidentally told us about last weekis now rolling out to all users.
The changes, officially announced in a blog post Tuesday, allow Gmail users much more control over the look of the service. You can drag sidebars around to your preferred size and width, choose from a wider selection of high-resolution background pictures, and decide whether you want lots of email on your screen or more white space between mails. (Your choice of email density is between “Comfortable,” “Cozy” and “Compact.”)
Heavy Gmail users will also be pleased to learn that there’s a new search function — that is, you can now access Advanced Search by clicking on the search bar. Conversations have been condensed, and profile pictures added.
These are more features than Google offered in its sneak peek of the new Gmail, which started in July. Here’s the video about the new features Google mistakenly made public last week:
For now, at least, the new features will be opt-in — and not all of us will be able to access them immediately. “If you like what you see, over the next few days you’ll be able to switch to the new look by clicking on Switch to the new look in the bottom-right of Gmail,” writes Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell.
So do you like what you see? Will you be switching? Or is Google messing around too much with a good thing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
AUSTIN, Texas–Darren Kitchen spent this weekend walking around the SXSW festival with an unobtrusive but relatively evil red box attached to his backpack: it impersonated Wi-Fi networks in hopes of convincing laptops, phones, and other wireless devices to connect to it.
Looking for free, reliable cloud storage? 
By now you’ve probably heard about 
The event is expected to bring the launch of 
Google has a secret laboratory, unknown even to most of the company’s employees, where it develops projects that sound like something taken from a sci-fi movie, the New York Timesreports.