ICANN Approves Plan For New Domain Names

The Internet's governing body on Monday approved a plan to increase the number of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), which could significantly increase peoples' options when it comes to domain names.

At this point, there are 22 gTLDs, including .com, .org, and .net. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), however, have approved a plan that would allow people to apply for new gTLDs, like .pcmag, for example.

"Today's decision will usher in a new Internet age," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board of directors, said in a statement. "We have provided a platform for the next generation of creativity and inspiration."

That creativity won't come cheap, however. Applicants must pay a $185,000 evaluation fee, with $5,000 upfront. They might also be required to pay even more "in certain cases where specialized process steps are applicable," in addition to business startup costs, ICANN said.

ICANN will soon kick off a global campaign publicizing the new gTLD option, and will accept applications between January 12 and April 12. When the application period closes, ICANN will publish a list of all requested gTLDs, at which time people can file objections.

LulzSec, Anonymous Announce Hacking Campaign

Hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec said today they are uniting in a campaign aimed at banks, government agencies, and other high-profile targets, and they are encouraging others to steal and leak classified information.

The "AntiSec" campaign appeared to have its first target earlier today--the Web site of Serious Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom was down. "Tango down - http://t.co/JhcjgO9 - in the name of #AntiSec," the group tweeted after releasing a statement announcing the campaign. The site was down this morning but back up at midday.

"Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation," Lulzsec said in a statement. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments. If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood."

"Oldschool Internet is back. Anarchy is now - spread "AntiSec" whenever and wherever you can. Is saying 'hackers unite' too cheesy? :D" LulzSec tweeted, adding in a follow-up tweet that "DDoS is of course our least powerful and most abundant ammunition. Government hacking is taking place right now behind the scenes."

Sega Hacked: 1.3 Million Users’ Information Compromised

Sega Corp.'s database has been hacked. The multinational video game developing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan has sent an email to users to notify Sega Pass system users that their emails, dates of birth and their passwords were compromised by hackers. The stolen passwords were encrypted.

The email contained a message stating there is no risk financially since payment information was not stolen and the company is investigating the extent of the hacking. So far, 1.3 million customers' information has been comprised.

Sega has recommended users to change their passwords if they use the same password for Sega Pass website and other sites.

The Sega pass website is currently down and all the passwords have been reset.

When users visit the website customers will see this notice "Hi, SEGA Pass is going through some improvements so is currently unavailable for new members to join or existing members to modify their details including resetting passwords. We hope to 

RIM Down Over 21 Percent On Wall Street

Shares in Research in Motion plunged on Wall Street Friday after the BlackBerry maker lowered its outlook for the year and said it would be cutting jobs.

Shares in the Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM sank 21.45 percent, or $7.58, to close at $27.75. RIM shares have lost around 50 percent of their value since the beginning of the year.

Friday's drop came a day after RIM said it expected earnings per share for fiscal 2012 to be between $5.25 and $6.00, sharply less than the $7.50 forecast previously.

RIM, which is facing increased competition from Apple's iPhone and mobile phones running Google's Android software, also announced Thursday it would be cutting jobs this quarter as part of a plan to "streamline operations."

It did not say how many jobs would be eliminated.

The Canadian handset maker posted a net profit of $695 million, or $1.33 per share, in the first quarter of its 2012 fiscal year, compared with $769 million, or $1.38 per share, a year ago.

Revenue grew 16 percent to $4.9 billion, short of the $5.1 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

Apple Delays MacBook Update, Waits For Lion

Apple is sitting on at least one refresh of its Mac notebook line, waiting for the new version of its operating system to be released in July.

That's according to sources quoted by AppleInsider, which says that new MacBook Air models featuring Intel Sandy Bridge processors and the Thunderbolt expansion port have been ready for some time, but Apple doesn't want to release them featuring the old Mac OS X 10.6 operating system. This was released in June 2009.

The Macrumors.com Buyer's Guide, which tracks the intervals by which Apple refreshes its hardware, supports this view. It shows all portable Mac products are reaching the end of their typical sales cycle, with the exception of the MacBook Pro, which was updated earlier this year. The Mac Mini is also due an update.

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is due in July and is more than a simple operating system upgrade. It hooks users into iCloud, Apple's new storage service, which offers benefits including seamlessly storing music and personal files online. iCloud represents a major new direction for Apple, which sees it as a way of tying together its various desktop and mobile platforms, as well as providing an additional method for delivering media to users.

Kindle E-book Store Slammed By Spam "Authors"

Amazon's Kindle e-books store has been hit hard by spam in the last few months, according to Reuters. Hundreds of entities are pulling quasi-useless content found for free or for a small price on the Internet, reformatting it into e-books, and selling it under catchy titles for very little, clogging Amazon with low-value materials that stand to mire the platform and maybe make customers think twice about future e-book purchases.

Many of the books are created with Private Label Rights (PLR) content, which is often milled by content creators on the Internet and then made available for free or a low price. PLR content can then be reformatted or even modified if the buyer wants, and then put up for sale under virtually anyone's name. PLR content is usually of the beginner-how-to or get-rich-quick variety that baits those looking for their elevator to success: make a certain number of dollars in a much smaller number of days, money-making blogging for beginners, how to start an Internet marketing business.

Content like this is posted around the Internet for free or at low prices—one purveyor we found, Jett Digitals, sells the PLR to a light tome called Podcasting for Beginners for $7—and once bought, the buyer is free to do whatever he or she wants with it. In this case, they can simply convert it to a Kindle e-book, submit it to the store, and begin reaping 30 to 70 percent profit from each sale.

Facebook iPad App Reportedly In The Works

Facebook is reportedly prepping an official application for the iPad.

According to a July 16 article in The New York Times, itself quoting unnamed "people briefed on Facebook's plans," the social network is prepping a free application for release in the coming year. The software has been under development for the past year.

"One person who works with Facebook said Mark Zuckerberg, the company's chief executive and founder, has been heavily invested in the process," the article suggested, "overseeing design decisions and the app's unique features."

Facebook has certainly become more aggressive in expanding its functionality, if current reports eventually prove accurate.

In addition to an iPad application, Facebook is reportedly prepping an HTML5-based platform for mobile applications, which could end up directly challenging Apple's App Store.

Mozilla To Add Built-in PDF Viewer To Firefox

Mozilla is working on a project that will add PDF rendering to Firefox using HTML5 and JavaScript, eliminating the need for users to run Adobe's own plug-in.

The PDF reader may be included in Firefox within three months, said Andreas Gal, a Mozilla researcher who on Wednesday unveiled work the company had done quietly for the last month.

If Mozilla follows through on its plans, it would make Firefox the second major browser -- after Google's Chrome -- to offer in-browser PDF rendering.

But while Chrome relies on an API (application programming interface) to craft its own native-code plug-in, Mozilla will exclusively use HTML5 and JavaScript to display Adobe's popular document format.

Gal touted that as more secure.

LulzSec Claims Credit For CIA Site Takedown

The hacking group LulzSec, aka the Lulz Boat, on Wednesday claimed to have rendered the CIA's public website inaccessible.

"Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz," said a tweet on the LulzSec Twitter feed. ("Tango down" is a phrase from the Tom Clancy videogame Rainbow Six, uttered after an enemy's been killed.) For at least part of the day, the CIA website couldn't be reached, or was only sporadically accessible. Some Internet watchers said the site could have been unreachable simply because LulzSec tweets led so many people to try and access the site at once, leading to its becoming slashdotted.

But LulzSec claimed to have used a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. "People are saying our CIA attack was the biggest yet, but it was really a very simple packet flood," said a LulzSec tweet.

That apparent attack--according to news reports, the CIA said it's still investigating--followed the group's requests, earlier in the day, for suggested targets. As part of that campaign, the group also released a phone number, which it rerouted for "phone DDoS" attacks. "Our number literally has anywhere between 5-20 people ringing it every single second. We can forward it anywhere in the world. Suggestions?" said a LulzSec tweet.

Read

Apple Sued Over Its Use Of 'iBook'

A New York book publisher has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming its use of the term "iBook" violates the publisher's trademark, the second trademark infringement suit filed against the tech giant in less than a week.

The suit, filed yesterday by J.T. Colby and Co. in U.S. Southern District Court for New York, claims the trademark was acquired in 2006 and 2007 along with various assets of Byron Preiss, who had published more than 1,000 books under the "ibooks" brand starting in 1999.

Colby's suit acknowledges that Apple has a trademark for "iBook" related to its use on the personal computer the Mac maker sold from 1999 to 2006. However, Apple did not begin to use the term to describe an electronic book or method for delivering electronic books until 2010.

"Apple's use of the mark 'iBooks' to denote the electronic library that can be accessed via its iPad tablet computer and its iPhone is likely to overwhelm the good will of plaintiffs' 'ibooks' and 'ipicturebooks' marks and render them virtually worthless," the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief as well as unspecified monetary damages.

LulzSec Releases Over 62,000 Hacked Passwords

Rogue hacker group LulzSec is at it again, recently boasting on its Twitter that it had hacked the accounts of over 62,000 and provided a dump of emails and passwords free for download.

CRO of F-secure, Mikko H. Hypponen, believes that the emails and passwords were from a database kept by website Writerspace.com, according to the Hacker News. His reasoning: "Why writerspace.com? Well, the most common passwords include these: mystery, bookworm, reader, romance, library, booklover and..writerspace.So basically that's why I believe the latest Lulzsec password leak originates from writerspace.com. I'm guessing it's their user database."

Gizmodo took the database and has made a script for users to input their email address to check it against the release from LulzSec. Unless you were a member of Writerspace, you're probably not affected, but this is a good way to confirm.

Kinect SDK Now Available to All

Microsoft is encouraging academic and enthusiast programmers to experiment with Kinect by downloading the free beta of the device's software development kit. The SDK is compatible with Windows 7 and includes drivers and APIs for the device, allowing those who build applications using C++, C# or Visual Basic in Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 to make use of the device.

What does this mean for gamers, though? Well, for starters, a lot more people will be developing for Kinect, which means we'll see some interesting titles as people try to push the boundaries of what the device is capable of. Given that the SDK includes Windows 7 drivers, too, that likely means we'll see some independent Kinect-compatible PC titles emerging, as well as some of the more interesting implementations of the device finding their way onto your Xbox 360 via Kinect Labs.

The SDK is distributed under a non-commercial license, so any Kinect curios that people produce will be free for now. A commercial license is coming at a later date.

Google Nexus 4G Gets Detailed

There have been all sorts of rumors out there regarding Google's next Nexus phone and we can toss another into the hat today as BGR is reporting that it might just be a monster of a smartphone that is set to hit shelves somewhere around Thanksgiving.

First, this Nexus 4G is apparently going to be running on a next-generation dual-core 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz CPU. No, no Kal-El for this thing. Instead, it'll apparently run an OMAP 4460 or a low powered Snapdragon. In addition, it supposedly has a "monster-sized" screen that has 720p HD resolution and it will apparently come without any of the physical buttons that generally come below the display.

It should also have a 4G LTE radio inside when it arrives which means it's possibly going to be AT&T's first 4G LTE smartphone – which also means that it might not be a Nexus device considering all of them have started on T-Mobile – and it might also come with 1GB of RAM and 1080p HD video capture and playback. As for the cameras, a 5MP rear camera with advanced sensor, and a 1MP front facing camera for video chatting.

The Nexus 4G will also apparently arrive with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and may be the first device to do so. All of this apparently will come in a super thin form factor making this one of the most desirable phones in recent memory, if true.

First Chromebook On Sale In US

The first laptop running Google's Chrome operating system has gone on sale in the United States.

The Samsung machine replaces installed software with browser-based apps which store files online.

Google claims that the technology enables a new way of computing, removing the need for features such as anti-virus software or optical drives.

However, many applications available for Windows, Mac and Linux do not yet exist for Chrome.

The Chromebook is available in WiFi only and WiFi and 3G models for $429 (£266) and $499 (£310) respectively.

It is expected to sell for between £349 and £399 when launched in the UK in August.

Lenovo Preparing Two Andorid Tablets for Summer Launch

The tablet market is growing as the notebook market is slowing. Some analysts think that the tablet market will continue to grow significantly in coming years as more consumers warm up to devices like the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Lenovo has announced that it will be bringing two Android tablets to the U.S. market this summer. Lenovo will also be bringing a new Windows tablet to market later this year. Lenovo's President and COO Rory Read said in an interview that Lenovo would likely launch the first tablet in July with the second likely in August reports the WSJ.

One of the Android tablets will be aimed at consumers while the other will naturally be aimed at enterprise users. The tablets will have similar features according other WSJ with both sporting 10-inch screens and Android Honeycomb. Pricing is expected to be in the $450 to $900 range according to Read. The consumer version of the tablet will be called the IdeaPad. The business version will have a stylus for capturing signatures and will be ThinkPad branded.

Download Product key explorer

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What's new in this version: Version 2.7.5 has added new software product key recovery feature and recovers over 3000 software product keys.

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Google Adding Search By Voice, Pictures

The plain Google search box will soon be able to handle more than taps on a keyboard.
Google is bringing features pioneered on smartphones, like voice and image search, to its flagship product, the company said at a news conference here on Tuesday.
The speech-recognition tool began showing up as a microphone button on the right-hand side of the Google.com search box for some visitors on Tuesday. It will only be available on Google's Chrome Web browser for now, but Google executives say they hope other software makers implement the technology to support the feature.
Like on Android or the Google application for the iPhone, people can click the mic icon on Google.com, and say a phrase or question into their computer microphone.
The speech technology attempts to account for accents and context in order to transcribe the recording into text. This produced mixed results in my testin

Apple Now Selling 'Unlocked' iPhone 4 Models For $649

Apple on Tuesday began selling "unlocked" models of its iPhone 4 -- for the first time allowing U.S. customers to buy the smartphone without committing to a two-year contract with a wireless carrier.

The unlocked iPhones, though, come at a higher price: $649 for a model with 16 gigabytes of memory and $749 for 32GB. By contrast, the equivalent iPhone 4 models sold with Verizon Wireless or AT&T contracts cost $199 and $299. Carriers typically subsidize the phones, then make the money back as subscribers pay monthly service fees.

On its website, Apple said the unlocked phones can be used "on the supported GSM cellular network of your choice," including AT&T. Buyers must supply their own micro-SIM card, which is available from wireless carriers.

In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only other carrier with a GSM network. However, Apple noted on its website, owners of an unlocked iPhone 4 can use "multiple carriers," which can be useful for customers who travel overseas.

AMD APU Ignites New Chip War With Intel

Let the mobile device wars begin. Like AMD and Intel battled for desktop chip dominance in the 1990s and Noughties -- the megahertz and gigahertz wars -- mobile devices are their new territory. But instead of speed, the new marketing mantra is longer battery life, lower power consumption and better graphics capabilities. Following last month's Intel announcements for Ultrabook and "Medfield" processors, today AMD jumped in with Accelerated Processing Units (APUs).

The nomenclature makes me think of some wonky, scifi "B" movie or George Orwellian-like novel. But AMD's APU pitch is something more monumental.

In a statement, Rick Bergman, general manager of AMD Products Group, says the new chip category "represents an inflection point for AMD and is perhaps the industry's biggest architectural change since the invention of the microprocessor. It heralds the arrival of brilliant all-new computing experiences, and enables unprecedented graphics and video performance in notebooks and PCs. Beginning today we are bringing discrete-class graphics to the mainstream."

Android Malware Found In Angry Birds Add-On Apps

Google recently removed at least 10 applications from the Android Market, all of which contained malicious code disguised as add-ons to one of the most popular apps of all time.

Each of the removed apps posed as a cheat or an add-on to Angry Birds, the much-lauded mobile application created by Finnish game development studio Rovio.

A number of the apps in question contained a spyware program called Plankton, which connects to a remote server and uploads phone information like the IMEI number, browser bookmarks and browsing history.

"Market descriptions for these apps included the statement 'brought to you free sponsored by Choopcheec Platform,'" Lookout Security spokesperson Alicia diVittorio told Wired.com. "[They include] a link to an EULA that does seem to accurately describe the behavior observed to date. We do not see these as desirable behaviors and classify it as Spyware."

Lulz Security Raids US Senate & Bethesda

The seemingly unstoppable Lulz Boat has apparently sailed past the digital security perimeters of both the US Senate and Bethesda Softworks. The good news? Lulz is really, really looking forward to Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

"As you should know, The Lulz Boat stores vast amounts of booty; much of this booty we don't release as it's simply too shiny and/or delicious. As of late, certain inferior sailing boats have discovered flaws in Brink (brinkthegame.com), thinking themselves exciting and new. Too late. The Lulz Boat controls this ocean, chumps," the hacker group wrote in an official communiqué.

"Some weeks ago, we smashed into Brink with our heavy artillery Cannons and decided to switch to ninja mode. From our LFI entry point, we acquired command execution via local file inclusion of enemy fleet Apache vessel. We then found that the HTTPD had SSH auth keys, which let our ship SSH into other servers. We then switched to root ammunition rounds. And we rooted... and rooted... and rooted..."

After mapping Brink's internal network and thoroughly pillaging all of their servers, the group silently extracted both source code and database passwords.

Although Lulz public posted the collected data, it refrained from uploading information on approximately 200,000+ Brink users.

Facebook Losing Users In The US

Facebook's global growth has been lower than average for the second month straight, reported to Inside Facebook.

Over the past 12 months, Facebook typically gained 20 million new users per month. In April, Facebook had only 13.9 million new users, and then only 11.8 million people joined in May. Facebook occasionally has had low growth numbers before, but they have never been low for consecutive months, said Inside Facebook.

The United States lost 5.8 million active users in May, the first drop in users in the past year. Canada has also lost a substantial number of active users, about 1.52 million in May, though Inside Facebook notes that the total number of active Canadian users has been fluctuating all year.

Norway, Russia and the United Kingdom have also lost 100,000 or more users, according to the Inside Facebook Gold data

Google Strikes $400 Million Deal For Admeld

Google Inc. on Monday confirmed a deal to buy online-ad company Admeld Inc. as the technology giant bolstered its offerings for selling graphical and interactive ads.

Financial terms weren't disclosed. But people familiar with the matter put the deal value at roughly $400 million.

The acquisition, if it wins regulatory approval, would be Google's sixth-largest to date and is expected to help the company expand its display-advertising efforts. Google hopes that business can grow to rival its core Web-search ad business, which generated nearly $30 billion in revenue last year.

Google began talking to the three-year-old Admeld around January, a person familiar with the matter has said. TechCrunch last week reported Google had bought Admeld for $400 million.

Admeld helps large websites sell advertising and is known as a "supply-side platform" company. It would help Google obtain ad inventory—space on Web pages where ads could appear—from some of the top publishers of online content, including Thomson Reuters Corp. and News Corp. Those media sites let Admeld manage lower-priced inventory that they can't sell themselves, giving them tools to control who buys it and whether it should be sold to lots of advertisers or to a more select group. News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Nintendo Servers Hacked, You're Next Xbox

 

Nintendo reports that a Web server for its U.S. unit was hacked. The attack on Nintendo shows that this new era of hacking isn't going to end any time soon, and should serve as a wakeup call for other companies that were hoping this was purely a Sony issue.

To be fair, the Nintendo incident is nothing compared to the Sony debacle. It's like comparing the United States "invasion" of Grenada, with the United States bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While Sony has been hacked repeatedly for the past month--compromising sensitive information from more than 100 million user accounts in the process, the Nintendo hack appears to have yielded a simple server configuration file, and not exposed any sensitive data.

The current plague of hacks and network takedowns is not limited to game console vendors, nor is it limited to one hacking collective. LulzSec is dominating headlines right now after attacking PBS, the FBI, hacker magazine 2600, and now Nintendo, but there are other groups out there as well--like the notorious Anonymous.

2600 seems to have nailed it on the head when it tweeted, "Hacked websites, corporate infiltration/scandal, IRC wars, new hacker groups making global headlines - the 1990s are back!"

Sraman Biswas
http://sof-arena.blogspot.com

Xbox Live Diamond TV Service Getting E3 Unveil?

On Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. PDT, Microsoft's media briefing will start off the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. Though the company is keeping mum on what's in store for the conference, rumors have a high-definition remake of Halo: Combat Evolved and the Kinect-enabled Gears of War: Exile as being on tap at the event.

Today, another rumor may have prematurely revealed a cornerstone of Microsoft's press conference. Winrumors reports that Microsoft will likely use its presentation to unveil Xbox Live Diamond, the Xbox 360's long-awaited IPTV service. The company apparently is planning a demonstration of the service--code-named "Orapa"--for the event, but it is still in the process of trying to lock down agreements with cable television providers and other involved third parties.

"Microsoft is currently in last minute negotiations to secure the necessary agreements in time," an anonymous source told Winrumors.

Today's rumors come six months after a Reuters report revealed that Microsoft was planning on being a "virtual cable operator" via the Xbox 360. According to that report, the software giant was planning to offer a suite of cable channels through the console for an additional monthly fee on top of Xbox Live Gold.

Office 365 Launches In June, Ballmer Says

Microsoft spokespeople have been coy about when the Office 365 cloud service will launch, saying only that it will come out later in 2011. But CEO Steve Ballmer has revealed that it will launch in June.

Speaking in Delhi, India, to an industry group last week, Ballmer said, "We're pushing hard in the productivity space. We'll launch our Office 365 cloud service, which gives you Lync and Exchange and SharePoint and Office and more as a subscribable service that comes from the cloud. That launches in the month of June."

Ballmer's remarks are available in a transcript on the Microsoft website.

Ballmer also recently announced that Windows 8 will be released in 2012 -- only to see his own employees backpedal from his statement.

We're checking with Microsoft's public relations firm to see if June is the official launch date for Office 365.

The cloud service will replace the current Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), and include access to Exchange, SharePoint, the Lync unified communications suite, and both desktop and Web-based versions of Office tools such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office 365 beta has attracted more than 100,000 customers, and was recently expanded to become a public beta available to anyone.