Google Glass user fined while driving

Using a cell phone or other distractive devices with a monitor while driving is forbidden in many parts of the world. Now, a Google Glass user has for the first time been fined by the police for driving with them.

Google Glass is in many ways an innovative product which should be released by the end of the year according to the new Google Glass version recently announced by Google. While the product itself opens up many new unexplored technical possibilities, these new things are not too uncommonly frowned upon by the ageing and slowly changing laws in the society. Recently, Cecilia Abadie from California managed to get stopped by a police and given a ticket for wearing her Google Glass while driving.

Facebook not cool any longer for teenagers

There is no doubt that Facebook is a very successful company. However, recent events may indicate troubles at the horizon as apparently Facebook has lost its coolness factor which has resulted in it being less popular among teenagers. This has already reflected itself on the Facebook shares which dropped by almost 20% following the last quarter report.

The last quarter report by Facebook revealed both positive and negative aspects of the company. On the positive side, the mobile ads appear to finally gain some traction and accounted for about half of the incomes. The turnover also increased by over 50% compared to the same quarter last year and the number of users had also increased by 25% reaching a total of 728 million active users. This resulted in the share prices jumping up by 15% and reaching a price of $57.98.Unfortunately, a few hours later, the increase was completely eradicated by a statement by the CFO, David Eberman who said:

"We did see a decrease in daily users specifically among younger teens."

Swallow a tablet and forget about your passwords

Usernames and passwords are something that we are all haunted by daily. Now researchers from Motrola has demonstrated a tablet that stores the user credentials on a chip and activates once it is swallowed by a user.

Motorola recently announced the Proteus Digital Health, a somewhat unconventional technology which is a tablet that the users are to swallow for the purpose of authentication. The tablet itself is equipped with a small chip that once swallowed begins to harvest power from the acid in the stomach of the user. 

Once powered, the chip will emit a 18-bit EKG-like signal that can be picked up by proper equipment. This signal obviously can then be made unique and therefore can authenticate the users against other units or accounts. 

Apple attacks Game Center cheaters

The top-scores of Game Center games have since the very beginning been plagued by impossible scores created by cheaters who in one way or the other manipulate the scores. Now, Apple has decided to do something about it and has given the developers the tools to ban cheaters from Game Center top-score-lists.

The Game Center in iOS has many functions such as allowing multi-player modes but also allows users to upload their top scores and achievements and be ranked among other Game Center players. However, so far, the top rankings of the Game Center for almost all games have very clearly been occupied by cheaters with impossible scores and no-one has been able to do anything about it. This has changed now, and Apple has now given registered developers the power and tools to block and ban users who cheat from the top score lists. 

New Google Glass version released soon

Google has been testing their cyber-glasses known as Glass for a while now and apparently things are going good. Google has announced now that a new version of Glass will be available soon and all current owners of Google Glass can invite new users to the fun!

Google has been quiet regarding their Glass testing process for a while now. Recently, Google announced that it will release a new version of Google Glass and in this process also expand the number of users by a factor of 3.

Google has decided to allow anyone who currently owns a pair of Google Glass to invite up to 3 new users to the new Google Glass versions who will be able to purchase the new version from Google directly. Nothing was mentioned regarding the price, but it is very likely that the price will land at $1500 just as the original Google Glass version.

Safari disables Flash by default: Apple attacks Flash again

Apple has never liked Adobe Flash. For example, no iOS devices support Flash and outdated Flash versions in Mac OS X are consistently disabled or blocked through Apple updates. Now, Apple attacks Flash again through the newest Safari update which disables Flash by default through the "Safari Power Saver" feature.

Apple has released a new version of Safari together with its newest OS X Mavericks operating system. While the new version of Safari itself is pleasant and definitely needed, the new Safari version also by default comes with the feature Safari Power Saver enabled. This feature, by default disables all Flash contents unless the users actively start the Flash contents. The feature certainly makes a lot of sense for the users as Flash is known to be one major source of CPU and battery killer. However, Adobe Flash and certainly advertisement networks are probably not as happy as power-aware users.

iOS 7.0.3 released: Summary of the highlights and changes of iOS 7.0.3

On October 22, 2013, Apple released iOS 7.0.3 update for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices together with the introduction of the iPad Air and iPad Mini 2. This new point release fixes multiple bugs and adds new features to the iOS system as described below.

The initial iOS 7.0.0 was released on September 18, 2013, and only one month later, Apple is pushing out the third point release update, being the iOS 7.0.3. The iOS 7.0.3 update carries multiple outstanding and annoying bug fixes as well as a more severe lock screen bypass exploit fix. In addition, the iOS 7.0.3 update also introduces the long-awaited iCloud Keychain feature as well as a few more subtle new features. 

The changes of this important iOS 7.0.3 point release is summarized below, and anyone on iOS 7 should update their devices as soon as possible. Updating can be accomplished by either going to Settings -> General -> Software Update or through iTunes from a computer. As always, before updating the users should make sure that they have a full backup of their phone first!

Microsoft retracts their own Windows Phone WebApps

Microsoft has retracted multiple Windows Phone WebApps developed by themselves due to them being illegal and copyright violating.

Windows Phone Store has a category known as WebApps. This category is filled with apps that more or less are only dummy apps of well known brands that redirects the users to a homepage of choice. The idea here is to expose brands to customers, while the value such WebApps offers is rather limited. 

Since the release of Windows Phone Store, Microsoft has created multiple WebApps for a large number of established and well known brands and companies. However, now, Microsoft has retracted many of their own WebApps due to copyright infringements caused by the use of logos and trade-marked names, including the Atari, Cars.com and Southwest Airlines WebApps. 

iPad 2 still the most popular iPad model

Apple is expected to very soon launch new iPad and iPad Mini models. However, recent analysis shows that even though at present iPad 4 is the newest model, the more than 2 years old iPad 2 model is still by far the most popular model used today.

The iPad has really opened up the tablet market and at present the iPad 4 is the newest model with the release of the iPad 5 just around the corner. Considering the multiple iPad models on the market today, Localytics has recently conducted a survey on the usage statistics of iPad models.

The data by Localytics showed that iPad 2 is by far the most popular iPad model active today and used by 38% of the users. The iPad 2 was released on March, 2011, and is today considered to be somewhat outdated, but apparently still remains very popular.

iPhone users most satisifed

A recent survey by J.D. Power and Associates once again shows that the iPhone users are the most satisfied compared to other smartphone brands.

Every year J.D Power and Associates conduct a survey to measure the satisfaction index of American consumers related to their cell phones. The results from this year once again places Apple on the top. For the fifth year in a row, Apple manages to score the top rankings in the satisfaction index with a score of 865 out of 1000 points. The closest runner up was Nokia which scored 16 points less than Apple followed by Samsung which scored 17 points less.

iMessage security encryption easily cracked

Apple claims that iMessage uses encryption that is impossible to crack. However, a security researcher now states that this is a pure lie and that Apple can easily eavesdrop on any user they like due to the design of iMessage.

At the security research conference, Hack in the Box, in Malaysia, the security research firm, Quarkslab, has presented some results concerning the security of the Apple iMessage system. Apple has since its release claimed that the encryption system used by iMessage is impossible to crack and still withholds this stance. However, Cyril Cattiaux at Quarkslab has now studied the implementation of iMessage and states that the Apple iMessage encryption system is very easily cracked and any messages transmitted using it can easily be intercepted and decrypted. 

iOS ads more profitable than Android ads

Advertisements on smartphones are still relatively unexplored and new. New studies by Nanigan shows that iOS ads nets significantly larger profits as compared to Android ads.

With more and more users using smartphones on a daily basis advertisements on smartphone operating systems are also becoming more and more of interest. Nanigans has conducted a study based on 200 billion ad impressions on Facebook to compared the performance of iOS ads and Android ads.

iOS used on 70% of the iDevices: proof that iOS 7 is good?

Recent data show that the adaptation and upgrade to iOS 7 happens very rapidly. Only one month after its release, iOS 7 is already on 7 out of 10 active iDevices.

iOS 7 was released on September 18, 2013 and despite the iOS 7 security issues and the early iOS 7 bugs, users seem to upgrade and adapt to it extremely fast. Recent data from Mixpanel show that 71% of the users already have upgraded their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to iOS 7. Furthermore, the data shows that the user share of iOS 6 is down to 25.34% and for iOS 5 or older versions, the user share is as low as 3.66%.

Considering that there are approximately 350 million iDevices in use today, a 71% usage share would mean that iOS 7 is used on approximately 250 million iDevices. 

Murderer with visible gun goes unnoticed due to smartphones

The sight of a crowd of people staring down on their smartphones has been experienced by most people entering a public transport vehicle. Now the San-Francisco police claim that this caused the passengers on a public train to fail to notice a murderer holding a gun fully visible.

According to the San Francisco police, surveillance pictures show how a suspected murderer sits on a public transport train with a fully visible gun without anyone noticing. The suspect even wiped his nose with the same hand as the gun hand without anyone taking notice. It was not until a 20-year-old student is shot fatally that the suspected murderer was noticed. According to the San Francisco police, the smartphones are to blame which steals all the attention from the passengers who were all staring down on their smartphones. This is alarming as the public becomes un-aware of their surroundings which could at least lead to an increase of accidents.

Billion year lifetime data storage medium

The common optical, magnetic and flash memory based storage media all have limited lifetime, measured in at best a few decades. Now, scientists have investigated the use of a silicon-nitride and tungsten based medium which will enable a storage medium capable of having a lifetime of a billion years.

For most people, the lifetimes offered by conventional storage media such as magnetic hard drives, flash memory drives, and optical media (CDs/DVDs/BluRays) are more than sufficient even though they typically only last a few decades. However, certain data require more secure and long-time storage of, such as those related to our cultural heritage. 

Now, German and Dutch scientists have managed to create a wolfram-based medium coated with a thin film of silicon-nitride, that can be used to store digital data for a billion years. The choice of wolfram was taken due to the fact that it has the highest melting point out of all metals and by encapsulating the wolfram with silicon-nitride, oxidation of it was minimized.

Windows 7 in companies for the forseeable future

Despite Microsoft's ambitions to shorten Windows cycle times, companies show very little interest to keep up with the pace of new Windows versions according to an analysis by Gartner.

During the last few years, Microsoft has clearly shown that it intends to shorten its product cycles, meaning that new versions of its popular software, such as Windows and Office, will be released very frequently. This has already been demonstrated with the release of Windows 8, only 3 years after Windows 7. The question is though if its customers agree with this fast-paced product cycles.

According to a recent analysis by Gartner, most companies and also government agencies have decided to standardize around Windows 7 and Office 2010. This means that they will show little interest to keep up with Microsoft's new faster pace. Gartner instead suggests the customers to use the 10-year product lifetime and stick to it.

Scientists discover invisible method to track online users

The Stanford security research Hristo Bojinov has demonstrated a new method for corporations or governments to track users in an invisible fashion to the users.

With smartphones becoming more and more commons, certain privacy issues also arises. For example, on the Apple iPhone, prior to iOS 6, developers could see the unique ID code (UUID) of the device their apps were running on and in this way track and monitor the activity of individual users. Primarily, this has then been used to serve directed advertisements to the users based on their usage patterns. With the release of iOS 6, after massive protests, Apple removed the UUID from being visible for a third-party app and added an alternate ID instead that the users could turn off in their Privacy settings. Users who are concerned with privacy therefore could hide their tracks relatively well by turning off tracking and also browser cookies.

Apps crash twice as often on iPhone 5S

The new hardware in the iPhone 5S causes apps to crash twice as often as compared to iPhone 5 or iPhone 5C. 

According to a new study by Crittercism, the probability of an app to crash on an iPhone 5S is twice as high as compared to the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C. The iOS 7 system is not to blame this time though and the proneness to crashes is instead attributed to the new hardware in the iPhone 5S, primarily being the new 64-bit CPU (Apple A7) and the motion-sensor-processor (M7). 

Final Fantasy VI for iOS and Android coming!

Final Fantasy VI (formerly known as III) for iOS and Android has been announced by Square Enix and will be released sometime during this winter.

Final Fantasy VI (previously known as Final Fantasy III in the North American market) is considered one of the greatest video games of all time and the SNES and PlayStation versions have almost 3.5 million copies worldwide since its release in 1994. Now, Square Enix has announced that the game is in the progress of being ported and released on the iOS and Android systems (sorry Windows Phone)!

The exact release date has not been set, but the game will be available sometime during this winter. The game will also feature improvements in graphics and the combat system. For the latter, apparently, the number of battles will be decreased somewhat. 

iPhone 4S wifi problems in iOS 7

The iOS 7 carries a huge amount of changes to the iOS environment and has been plagued by numerous of bugs and security issues since its launch. Now, another issue has been revealed which affects iPhone 4S users. Many iPhone 4S users have reported that they are having trouble using wifi following an upgrade to iOS 7 on their phones.

iOS 7 while being the largest change to the iOS interface, ever, also has been plagued by several issues since it was first released. It has been plagued by security issues that allowed intruders to bypass the lock screen and also carries some problems with iMessage that can render the messaging system useless for some users. Now, another issue related to wifi has emerged for iPhone 4S users.

iPhone 4S users who have upgraded to iOS 7 report that the wifi functionality on their phones is not working properly. First of all, connection to wifi networks is troublesome and only works occasionally. What makes matter worse is that for some users, the wifi symbol is not even present in the iOS 7 settings.

New iMac (21.5" and 27") review - worth the upgrade?

The new iMac models have arrived and can be found in either 21.5 inches or 27 inches. The chassis of the new iMac models are identical to the 2012 models meaning that all new changes are made under the hood. This review describes the changes made to the new iMac models which hopefully will make it easier to decide if an upgrade is worth it or not.

Image: andrew-gw.deviantart.com

Apple follows its tradition of releasing a new generation of iMac models every year. The new iMacs (available in 21.5 inches and 27 inches) from 2013 are built upon identical chassis as the iMacs from 2012. This means that all the changes and updates to the iMac computers are under the hood with no visual difference from the outside. The question is hence, from a perspective of an average user, if an upgrade is motivated. 

Fastest tablet response times for iPad monitors

The monitor in a tablets is of extremely high importance to ensure good user experience. Agawi has recently tested the response times for flagship tablets and found that Apple iPads have the fastest monitors with the lowest response times.

For computer monitors, response times down to a few ms are not very difficult to find and even budget monitors can easily provide response times of only a few tens of ms. However, for tablets, the response times are generally much longer due to the feed-back system from the touch-screen mechanisms. Since the monitor of a tablet is the major central part, a lot of emphasis has been placed by the manufacturers to make bright monitors with high resolution as well as good color representations. While these things can immediately be assessed by anyone who has seen the tablet, the response time is something which can only be assessed by using the tablet, therefore, this is also one aspect that many manufacturers neglect.

Flashcache 3.0 released by Facebook to enhance SSD

Flashcache is a highly open-source (GPL2) regarded software developed by Facebook which aim to reduce the wear of SSD disks while simultaneously enhance the performance. Now, Facebook has released Flashcache 3.0 to the public.

Facebook clearly deals with massive amounts of data in every given instance. During the past few years, Facebook has gradually migrated to SSDs in favor of the conventional mechanical disks. The enhanced read/write performance of SSDs, in particular when it comes to seek times during random events, results in significantly faster user-content serving, something which obviously enhances the user experiences. However, while SSDs offer excellent performance, the inherent nature of the underlying flash memory technology means that each module can only be written to a finite number of times before it malfunctions.

Windows 8.1 hack awarded with 100,000 USD

The culture of awarding individuals or organizations who report vulnerabilities is growing with more and more major companies participating. The latest example is from Microsoft who has just awarded a security researcher with $100,000 for identifying an exploit to circumvent the protections schemes in Windows 8.1.

Microsoft recently awarded the security researcher, James Forshaw, with $100,000 for reporting and demonstrating a Windows 8.1 exploit that could circumvent the built-in security schemes in the system. According to Microsoft, a similar attack vector was known previously, although Microsoft still decided to award Forshaw based on the very high quality of the report which also included multiple variants of the same attack.

YouTube for Windows Phone epic fail... again

Windows Phone is having considerable problems on multiple fronts. Still, there is no functional official YouTube app due to disagreements between Google and Microsoft. After multiple attempts, Microsoft has released YouTube for Windows Phone 3.2, but according to the users, the app performs extremely poorly and hardly ever works.

Google has so far shown very little interest to support the Windows Phone smartphone operating system and as a result, Google has never released any official YouTube app for Windows Phone. Since YouTube is a popular service for many users, Microsoft has attempted to remedy this by releasing their own YouTube for Windows Phone app. However, this has been shown to be a bit difficult and every time Microsoft releases an app, Google blocks the app due to it breaking certain terms of use for YouTube. For example, the YouTube app from Microsoft has removed all ads, something which obviously upsets Google and clearly breaks the terms of use.

Firefox Shumway to remove the obsolete Flash

Adobe Flash has been the dominating but hated multimedia content delivery platform. iOS never supported Flash and Android has lost its Flash support as well with computer users repeatedly complaining about performance and security issues related to Flash. Now Firefox makes their move against Flash as well through the Mozilla Shumway project which aims to completely remove the need for users to have the Adobe Flash plugin installed.

Image from the Shumway project:
http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/

For a very long time, Adobe Flash has by many considered to be a necessary evil on the internet. The Flash platform allows content creators to deliver interactive multimedia experience to the users. However, the management of Flash by Adobe has been less than ideal. The Flash platform is one of the primary virus infection sources for users and simultaneously is extremely inefficient and easily slows down the user experience even on powerful computers. Over the years, this has led to Flash being abandoned by more and more people, in particular Apple has always hated Flash and its highly successful iOS system used on iPhones, iPads and iPods has never supported Flash. Recently, Android lost its support of Flash as well and Flash is similarly very poorly supported on Linux. 

NSA: Tor is king of anonymity online

The Tor project aims to bring a free way of giving users full anonymity online through a technique known as onion routing. The technique is so robust that NSA in a report has expressed frustration over the fact that it cannot crack the networks and de-anonymize the users.

A recent report by the British Guardian shows that NSA has over the years for multiple of times attempted to crack the anonymizer service known as Tor. However, due to the onion routing technology utilized by Tor, NSA has had very little success and failed repeatedly to directly crack the network with the purpose of un-anonymize individuals or groups of users on the Tor network. This is apparently becoming exceedingly frustrating for the NSA as the Tor project gains more and more traction with more and more participants and in a report by the NSA, the NSA claims that they will never succeed in de-anonymize all individuals on Tor, but they may through manual means identify a small portion of users on the Tor network, but not down to one specific individual. 

Human owner of Siri's voice identified

Siri is the intelligent personal assistant that Apple launched in 2011 with iPhone 4S and most people have probably at some point heard Siri's voice. Now, the real human owner of Siri's voice has stepped forward and revealed her identify.

The appealing and calm voice of Siri that has been incorporated in all iDevices since 2011 is one of the more iconic things about Apple devices. Although many have wondered who the human owner of Siri is, Apple has not revealed any such information. Now, a woman called Susan Bennett has stepped forward and revealed to CNN that Siri's voice is based on recordings of her voice.

Apple has so far not confirmed the claims of Susan Bennett, and it is unlikely that Apple would ever do it, however, audio experts hired by CNN have analyzed her voice and claim that there is a 100% match between Siri's and Susan Bennet's voice. 

Galaxy Gear beats iWatch and launches

The Apple iWatch has been anticipated by many to be the next greatest product. Now, through a massive campaign, Samsung has launched the Galaxy Gear, well ahead of the Apple iWatch.

To many, smartwatches are believed to be the next big thing in the technology market and currently multiple of companies are working on various smartwatches products, with the Samsung Galaxy Gear and the Apple iWatch probably being two of the most well known. While the release date for Apple iWatch is not known, it is likely still at least half a year in the future, but for Samsung, the Galaxy Gear smartwatch has now been launched.

Samsung does indeed put a lot of emphasis on the release campaign. For example, it occupies 10 color pages in the New York Times to use in its ad campaign, something which costs somewhere around 1.5 millions USD alone.

iPhone 5S sensors not working and malfunctioning

Since its release a few weeks ago, several problems have popped up, mostly concerning security bugs. Now, a potentially more practically serious issue has been revealed which is that test results unambiguously show that the sensors (compass, gyroscope and accelerometer) in the iPhone 5S consistently provide incorrect values.

Since the iPhone 5S was released, Apple has given its sensors a whole lot of attention, in particular of course the controversial Touch ID fingerprint sensor but also the hyped incorporated dedicated computing units for the rest of the sensors to improve user experience in the M7 processor. Unfortunately, a recent test conducted by GIZMODO shows embarrassing poor readings and accuracy of the compass, gyroscope and accelerometer in iPhone 5S. The findings also very much agree with the large number of users in various discussion forums discussing sensor problems.

No asteroid warnings during government shutdown

Due to the government shutdown, the asteroid warning service by NASA is offline. How will we now know if we are to be hit by an asteroid?

For the last few years, NASA has through the Twitter account, @AsteroidWatch, provided updates on asteroids in the proximity of the earth or asteroids that are expected to come into contact with the earth. This information has usually been very much valued by amateur astronomers who are out to see shooting stars or to observe asteroids through telescopes. 

Outlook recycles and re-uses old addresses

Users who are using the Outlook e-mail service by Microsoft need to be aware that their e-mail address may be recycled and given to someone else if they do not login occasionally.

It is well known that the free e-mail services through Hotmail and Yahoo Mail have enforced a user activity requirement to keep their e-mail accounts active. Inactive accounts will eventually be deleted and the e-mail address will be available for registration for other people. This clearly and obviously poses security issues since most online services authenticate and perform password resets through e-mail addresses. 

Worst quarter in the history of HTC

HTC just published its quarter report which shows the absolutely worst quarter in the history of HTC, likely related to the delay and delivery problems of new models.

HTC has been a very successful manufacturer of smartphones and has since the very beginning in 2002, always made profit with popular models. However, the success story of HTC may be reaching its end according to the recently published quarter report showing a loss of 101 million USD. This is to be compared with the report for the same period in 2012, which netted a profit of 132 million USD.

Adobe hacked: millions of users affected

A massive hacker attack against Adobe has been revealed which has resulted in that the 2.9 million user credentials, credit cards and source codes being stolen from Adobe servers.

The security manager of Adobe, Brad Arkin, has announced and confirmed that Adobe has recently been the victim of a, so called, sophisticated attack. Accordingly, 2.9 million users have been affected, where the hackers have stolen the user names in clear text, the passwords and credit card information in encrypted forms, and also source codes to some of the most popular Adobe software.

Even though the passwords are stored in encrypted forms, it is not unlikely that the hackers at some point will be able to break the encryption and retrieve both the passwords as well as the credit card numbers of the users. 

Most Android brands cheat in benchmarks

Recent benchmark results by Anandtech show that almost all Android smartphone brands, excluding Google/Motorola, incorporate questionable optimization schemes to score higher in benchmarks!

As have been reported, Samsung was caught cheating through the new Samsung Galaxy Note 3 device. The cheat was elaborate in the sense that it incorporated optimizations targeting the GPU of the device. Now, Anandtech has revealed even more horrifying data, which indicates that almost all Android smartphones vendors incorporate illegal overclocking or optimization means on the CPU level to score higher in benchmarks!

Samsung caught cheating in benchmarks again

The performance of a smartphone is often used in advertisements. The performance is measured using synthetic benchmark applications and it has recently bee revealed that the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is using illegal means to score higher in the benchmarks.

The recently released Apple iPhone 5S is known to have very high performance owing to its new A7 processor. Apple themselves claim that it is twice as fast as compared to iPhone 5, which is mostly confirmed by benchmarks. This apparently does not appeal to Samsung at all, who claims its new Galaxy Note 3 to be the fastest device on the market. However, Anandtech has discovered that the published data by Samsung are obtained through artificial manipulation of the performance in the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

When a benchmark app is executed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, the CPU is overclocked which results in that it scores 23% higher than an iPhone 5S. However, by simply renaming the benchmarks to something else, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will only score 2.3% higher than the iPhone 5S. Clearly, the engineers have implemented a special "benchmark mode".

How to fix broken iMessage in iOS 7

Apple iOS 7 users have reported that iMessage has stopped to work properly. While awaiting an official fix by Apple, fortunately, it is relatively easy to restore the iMessage functionality.

The recently released iOS 7 carries the largest changes made, ever, for the iOS system. Considering the major changes made by iOS 7, it is not overly surprising to find bugs. Already, Apple has released the second point release, iOS 7.0.2, which fixes some security bugs. However, one outstanding bug that plagues users who upgrades to iOS 7 involves iMessage. 

Users claim that following an upgrade, iMessage magically stops to work. The situation is made worse by the fact that the failed iMessage messages are not sent as standard SMS text messages either, resulting in frustration and many dropped text conversations. Fortunately, fixing the iMessage issue is relatively easy while awaiting an official fix by Apple. The only downside with this approach is that the process will involve an authentication step by the phone that may incur international text message charges since the iPhone needs to send an authentication SMS text message to an Apple server. 

Linux cuts costs by 40% for French police

The French police have recently migrated from Windows to Linux, affecting 37000 computers at present and with another 72000 computers coming up. This migration resulted in a cost reduction of 40%.

Whether or not open source platforms can reduce costs or not is often up for debate, and in particular the migration from Windows to Linux is a very delicate topic. While some claim that it is obvious that a switch to an open-source platform would reduce the costs significantly due to the free license forms, others claim that a migration to open source platform always is associated with lots of hidden costs, such as training, re-implementation of processes and reduced support, which in the end could be more expensive than supported proprietary options. There are examples that support both camps but the latest example by the French police department is in favor of the open-source camp.

Large scale Internet Explorer hacker attacks expected

The critical security exploit (CVE-2013-3893) which affects all Internet Explorer versions and allows a hacker to run arbitrary code by anyone visiting an infected website is still not properly fixed by Microsoft. Now, the exploit has been included in a Metasploit module, making it easily accessible by hackers with massive large scale attacks on Internet Explorer expected.

On September 17, 2013, Microsoft confirmed that all Internet Explorer versions were vulnerable to a new security exploit denoted as CVE-2013-3893. This exploit was considered to be critical and allowed hackers to infect a computer and run arbitrary code requiring nothing but the user to visit an infected website. At present, the exploit is only implemented for Internet Explorer 8 and 9, but the vulnerability exists for all Internet Explorer versions starting from IE 6.

Nokia smartphone sales is taking off

The smartphone sales by Nokia have quarter after quarter delivered increasingly disappointing numbers. Now, only one month after Nokia decided to give up its phone division to Microsoft, there are indications that the Nokia smartphones are finally taking off.

Two years ago, Nokia decided to partner up with Microsoft in favor of their own Symbian OS. This essentially meant that overnight, new Nokia smartphones would be operating on Windows Phone operating system instead. At that time, Nokia was in a critical situation with competition pushing it hard from the iOS and Android camps. Nokia hoped that the partnership with Microsoft would allow it to once again become a significant player on the market, after all, it was not too long ago that Nokia was the clear dominating brand in terms of smartphones and cell phones. As the years went, the market reception of the Nokia smartphones based on Windows Phone has been less than ideal and massive losses were reported quarter after quarter. In the end, the smartphone market share became very low, almost negligible with only a few percent. Eventually, on September 3, 2013, Microsoft acquired the whole mobile phone division from Nokia. 

iPhone 5S and 5C have higher margins

The new iPhone 5S and 5C apparently are cheaper to manufacture than the iPhone 5 which should end up in an even higher revenue for Apple.

Apple is one of the most profitable companies ever when considering their products. Now, according to the American analyst Chris Whitmore, Apple has managed to squeeze in even more margin with the newly released iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C models compared to the iPhone 5.

According to Whitmore, while iPhone 5 costed $207 to manufacture, the iPhone 5S has a manufacturing cost of $199 while the iPhone 5C costs $174 (due to the plastic casing). This should result in an even higher expected profit for Apple.

Lightsabers created by scientists

The Star Wars lightsabers have been a dream for many enthusiasts. Now, scientists have taken a step toward the invention of lightsabers by photon bunching within molecules.

In the recent issue of Nature, scientists from Harvard and MIT have demonstrated results of photon bunching within molecules that enable them to behave in such a way as the lightsabers from the Star Wars movies.

Photons usually are particles which interact weakly and in a mass-less manner. However, the scientists have managed to allow the photons to interact strongly with certain molecules through various entanglement pairs and in this way create a photon bunch that exhibit interaction with other matter as if the photons carried mass. In essence, the photons are bound to molecules.