Tech & Science Archives - Page 113 of 114

Bit.ly Hacked, Users Advised to Change Password

World’s famous URL shortening service, bit.ly gets hacked. In order prevent problems to user accounts, bit.ly has decided to reset all user’s password.

bit.ly

In a blog post, bit.ly said “We have reason to believe that Bitly account credentials have been compromised; specifically, users’ email addresses, encrypted passwords, API keys and OAuth tokens.” They also said that they had no indication at this time that any accounts have been accessed without permission.

To prevent any further issues on user accounts, bit.ly also removed all user’s facebook, twitter account connections. This means that all the users of bit.ly have to reconnect these account once they login with the new password. Users are also requested to reset their API keys and OAuth tokens through the instructions given in their blogpost.

They also said “Although users may see their Facebook and Twitter accounts connected to their Bitly account, it is not possible to publish to these accounts until users reconnect their Facebook and Twitter profiles.”

The company has also provided instructions for users to reset API key and OAuth token:

Log in to your account and click on ‘Your Settings,’ then the ‘Advanced’ tab.
At the bottom of the ‘Advanced’ tab, select ‘Reset’ next to ‘Legacy API key.’
Copy down your new API key and change it in all applications. These can include social publishers, share buttons and mobile apps.
Go to the ‘Profile’ tab and reset your password.
Disconnect and reconnect any applications that use Bitly. You can check which accounts are connected under the ‘Connected Accounts’ tab in ‘Your Settings.’
There are no details about how the security breakthrough has happened but bit.ly’s CEO Mark Josephson said “We have already taken proactive measures to secure all paths that led to the compromise and ensure the security of all account credentials going forward.”

This security compromise doesn’t affect users who just use bit.ly for url shortening, it will affect users who are registered and use features like link stats, traffic etc. The company has said that they have undertaken enough action to prevent any damage to user accounts.

New Server App Migration Tools Relieve IT Pros

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The new server application migration tools built for the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager are all set to put IT pros at ease by providing them some relief from oft painful migration process.

With the recent mobile and big data releases, Microsoft provides a glimpse into the future of its upcoming products.

Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft said, “My expectation is most news to be around Windows Server, Systems Center and perhaps a little Azure.”

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Indeed, several vendors are set to unveil a host of server tools and preview SCCM add-on modules next week.

AppZero, based in Andover, Mass., will unveil AppZero V6.0 at Tech Ed, to help IT professionals migrate server-based applications from Windows Server 2003 R2 to a new version of the server operating system.

Just as Windows XP hit its end of extended support nearly a month ago, Windows Server 2003 R2 will face the same obstacle on July 14, 2015, according to Microsoft’s product life cycle support page.

AppZero V6.0 includes a number of new features that reduce server application migrations to minimal or little downtime. Among the new updates to reduce migration time are the ability to extract files, registry and configuration data and place them on a new server or in the cloud while the source application continues running. The updated tool also now automates the synchronization of the production machine and migration machines to reduce downtime.

The AppZero Integration Pack will enable migrations to be driven by Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manger, service provider or Azure management platform, the company said. The software serves as an add-on to Microsoft’s System Center 2012 Orchestrator, which provides IT administrators the ability to scale the server application migrations.

Phuong Nguyen, senior IT architect for IBM in Houston has been using AppZero’s tool since 2012. His team migrates servers and applications for large clients to the IBM product line.

Nguyen’s deployment of AppZero saves him vast amounts of time when he performs his migration tasks. In one large migration, Nguyen conducted a migration without using AppZero. It took 17 hours to complete. Using AppZero, the migration time dropped dramatically to only 45 minutes, he said.

Imation also will preview a management tool add-on for Microsoft’s SCCM for managing the USB-based Windows to Go devices. Although the tool is initially an on-premise version, the product could eventually have a cloud-based version in the future, according to a company spokesman.

Meanwhile, Perfecto Mobile, a tools automation provider based in Woburn, Mass. will preview its MobileCloud Platform lab management tool running the new Windows Phone 8.1 beta. The testing and automation tool enables developers and organizations to create Windows Phone and other iOS and Android-based smart phone applications in the cloud without having to purchase or host their own devices on-premise.

Most organizations do primary testing with a dozen devices and up to 30 for compatibility testing, said a company spokesperson.

Perfecto Mobile expects to make available the tool supporting the Windows Phone 8.1 in the late first half of 2014 when Microsoft makes Windows Phone 8.1 generally available as well.

In addition, Perfecto Mobile said it received a $20 million investment from FTV Capital and its existing investors today.

BMW-Toyota Jointly Develops a Sports Car

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BMW’s partnership with Toyota has been reported for around 2 years now. More details on this partnership comes out as they bring up a new sports car with new features from partnership of both the sports car manufacturers. The new sports car developed by the partnership of BMW and Toyota will be two seated sports car that will have a powerful capacitor technology which will boost the performance. This news was confirmed on Friday as BMW and Toyota decided to cooperate in fuel cell technology, powertrain electrification and lightweight technologies.

Toyota-FT-1-concept-Detroit-reveal-interior

The President of Toyota Akio Toyoda and the CEO of BMW, Norbert Reithofer signed an agreement at BMW’s Munich headquarters to expand long-term strategic alliance between the two sports car manufacturers. Both Toyota City and Munich have been working with the potential of powerful supercapacitors for years to improve their sports car’s performance and they will finally be used on their upcoming new sports cars with the partnership of both. Toyota’s super powerful 420-hp Yaris Hybrid R concept utilized the system, pairing a 300-hp gasoline engine with electric motors. Their new sports car will also have such systems implemented and it will also have BMW engines and Toyota designed electric motors.

The CEO of BMW, made this statement regarding the alliance between the two automakers: “Toyota and the BMW Group share the same strategic vision of sustainable individual future mobility. Together we have a great opportunity to continue leading our industry through this transformation.” This was followed by statement of Toyota’s President, Akio Toyodo: “Toyota is strong in environment-friendly hybrids and fuel cells. On the other hand, I believe BMW’s strength is in developing sports cars. I am excited to think of the cars that will result from this relationship.”

The partnership between the two automakers started in March when Toyota agreed to cooperate with BMW’s lithium-ion battery research in exchange for a supply of BMW-made diesel engines starting in 2014. This partnership is now confirmed as they have signed an agreement on Friday to collaborate in development of fuel supply system, supercapicitors for their upcoming sports cars.

$20 Android Smartphone Possible from ARM

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With new high end Android smartphones being released everyday, the competition for the best flagship phone with huge specs has reached its height. On the other hand there are very less number of Android smartphones which are low in specs and affordable for everyone. ARM has finally noticed this point and they decided to launch a new Smartphone just for $20 !

ARM $20 SMARTPHONE

The new $20 smartphone is expected to run on Android which will provide a easier usability and high customization. This low-end smarthphone will include single core ARM Cortex A5 processor which is fast enough for normal usage of a smartphone. It supports 2.5G internet data, which is acceptable for a smartphone of such low price.

For countries where smartphones are the main source of traffic for Internet, this invention would prove to be a big boost. The new cheap smartphone will help millions to access Internet who normally were happy with SMS. Some recent reports also says that most users are not interested in buying high end smartphones from Apple, Samsung, HTC etc, This report quickly entered minds of Motorola and they came with a cheap Smartphone running latest version of Android, the Moto G. It was a great success as it was sold in many countries in huge numbers immediately after its launch.

This smartphone running on Android can be predicted to have a few hundred megabytes of RAM. With a single core ARM Cortex A5 processor, we can expect only around 4GB of storage which is quite enough for normal usage of a phone. Moreover, this device is first of its kind, targeting totally different group of people than what most of smartphone brands do. Although there are few low budget Android devices like the Moto G, Android was running only on mid to high range phones. According to the reports, this phone should be a success in implementing Android on every price range of Smartphones.

Reports say that this smartphone will be available in market within few months. This phone will be a success in parts of the world where the smartphone markets aren’t that developed. Anyway, a $20 smartphone with Android can catch anyone’s attention.

Atmospheric CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) Comparatively Higher Than Last Year

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The amount of carbon dioxide continues to increase even after the authorities have forced stricter emission standards for vehicles.

More than 402 ppm (parts per million) levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (a green house gas that modifies climate change) have been recorded through a special monitoring equipment placed atop the Hawaiian mountain.

This is the highest recorded level of atmospheric carbon dioxide ever.

The data was reported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California–San Diego, under the daily record of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/files/2013/05/mlo_record.png

Another high level of about 400 ppm or 0.04%, was recorded in mid-May, 2013. With the new record it is anticipated that the annual CO2 peak will be higher in the mid of May as compared to last year’s figure.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were at 313 ppm when efforts were initially made to record CO2 levels atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano in the year 1958.

The chart that documents the rise of carbon dioxide concentrations in detail is called the Keeling Curve. It is named after the founder of CO2 monitoring program, Scientist Charles David Keeling, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

On April 7, an increase in the level of CO2 was recorded at 402.20 ppm, which is slightly different from the level that was presented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at 402.11 ppm.

There has not been any consensus on the level of CO2 concentrations matching to this year’s record. But some estimates show, that the records match CO2 concentrations of 800,000 to 15 million years ago, based on the analysis conducted on the air bubbles recovered in Antarctica’s ice cores.

Since billions of years, the Earth has experienced higher CO2 levels, caused mainly by environmental factors, that usually include variations in the solar-energy output and planet’s orbit. But it must be noted that at the time there weren’t 7 billion human beings inhabiting the Earth.

U.S. Government Loosens Grip on Internet

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After first incubating it and then overseeing it for a number of decades, the government of the U.S. announced on Friday to would release the final elements of control it had on the Internet.

The U.S. Commerce Department originally handled the core parts of Internet, but has gradually pulled back from those important duties, through a contract that is in place with a nonprofit organization named Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names or ICANN.

On Friday, in a prepared statement, the Commerce Department requested ICANN to convene the parties involved to formalize an approach that is multistakeholder for governance of the Internet.

The basics of that work is involved in running the DNS or Domain Name System of the Internet, which translates Internet Protocol numeric addresses into the more human readable convenient domain names such as xyz.com. In addition, manage the root servers holding those records of DNS for use by other machines. As well as, to oversee the ongoing explosive growth of the new top-level domain names like .cleaning, .social and .berlin.

This has been a wait of a long time, as the process of privatization started in 1997 under then-President Bill Clinton. In an interview two months ago, Fadi Chehade, the CEO of ICANN said the oversight by the U.S. is no longer sustainable.

ICANN has grown and matured, the Department of Commerce committed to handing over the responsibility at a certain point and the recent revelations over the government’s surveillance from the Edward Snowden leaks increased the necessity to hand over control now, said Chehade.

Chehade added that the revelations by Snowden hastened the dialog for a hand over. Many companies that do business internationally were worried due to a lack of a trust factor over the Internet.

Working closer to the hand over, ICANN already set up a meeting on the governance of the Internet for April 23-24 in Brazil. The DOC generally is together with ICANN on using the term multistakeholder.

The stakeholders included the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Regional Internet Registries and the Internet Society.

The Registries oversees the IP address distribution to those that register new domain names.

Smartphone to be Used for Diagnosing Diseases

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A U.S. team is developing a nanotechnology based diagnostic system that will diagnose diseases needing only a smartphone and a lens attachment valued at $20 to read the test results.

While some challenges still must be overcome, the team is hopeful the results will be a diagnostic tool that is affordable and will be used in the medical field.

The new detecting system was created by Jiming Bao a computer and electrical engineering assistant professor and Richer Willson biomolecular and chemical engineering professor in Texas at the University of Houston.

The ACS Photonics journal recently published the data and the two along with other colleagues had written about the biosensing nanotechnology method that is the heart of the new system.

The design of the new system is a device that uses biosensing coupled together with a microscope that is able to read the results.

New nanotechnology features in biosensing and the smartphone that is enhanced through having an affordable lens, could be the microscope, say researchers.

In their recent study, the researchers described how a high throughput technique in biosensing was developed that combines nanoholes optic transmission with silver staining.

In essence, the new device works as do all diagnostic tools, it can detect the result of chemical reactions between a molecule and a pathogen that bonds with it uniquely.

The pathogen might be a bacterium or virus, and the molecule an antibody that is disease fighting. An example of a diagnosis that is ironclad is the reaction that takes place when strep bacterium reacts with an anti-strep antibody that is unique.

The new diagnostic system allows a reaction to take place and then is able to sense a result in a way that it will not be confused with any other.

What is challenging is to devise a system that can work cheaply, easily and quickly: both on the side of biosensing of allowing such reactions and the results to take place uniquely and on the side of interpretation so they are able to be viewed then analyzed.

Much work is still needed but the possibility exists that an inexpensive quick and easy disease diagnostic unit can be developed.

WhatsApp Processing 50 Billion Daily Messages

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The cross-platform service for messaging, WhatsApp, announced on Tuesday it was handling over 50 billion messages each day. The app has become one of the most popular messenger platforms for instant messages for smartphones and amongst the fastest growing app in the market today.

Jan Koum the company’s CEO and co-founder announced the news during a DLD conference on Tuesday in Munich, Germany. The app is currently serving over 430 million users, which is up from the announced 400 million in December of 2013.

The app, said Koum, is available on every mobile platform, including Windows Phone, Blackberry, iOS and Android. It has been listed amongst the top rated apps in the app stores.

Makers of the app WhatsApp have focused constantly on delivering a user experience that is incomparable by integrating Push to Talk messaging, sending messages via video on Windows Phone, maintaining an advertisement free environment and more.

Processing close to 54 billion messages daily is the next milestone that has added to the achievements of WhatsApp.

The company has not been shy about sharing statistics about number of users or daily message with the public. Until April of 2013, the company was processing on average 20 billion daily messages, which jumped up to over 48 billion each day in December of 2013.

With such a dedicated following, the messaging app WhatsApp is regarded by many as more popular than Twitter and Facebook Mobile messenger.

The most interesting company policy is the subscription model. One-year service is $0.99 to keep it free of advertisements and free for anything dealing with the service such as connected Apps or stickers.

The phenomenal amount of messages on WhatsApp had overtaken SMS said one analyst. Message volume growth is maintaining is acceleration, with some believing it has passed Twitter.

Koum told listeners at the conference in Germany that the app has no games, gimmick or ads. The company said Koum only wanted to focus on their messaging. If game playing is what people want, Koum said there were many sites they could play on.

Koum added that there were plenty of sites building their service around advertising.

Spotify Makes Music Free

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Today, free options for listening to music on mobile devices are the most popular for listeners today.

On Wednesday, Spotify, based in Sweden unveiled a free mobile offering that is the first of its kind. The offering allows users of mobile devices to hear any song in its catalog -narrowed down to just one artist, one album or one playlist of singles – without charging a fee as long as the songs are shuffled.

It is a compromise from what we know as on-demand, but it is a huge step toward Daniel Ex’s dream to bring all music across the globe to everyone worldwide, with his company providing the soundtrack for everyone. Ex is the CEO and founder of Spotify.

What is more important, is that is shows that the music industry is finally gravitating from a premise of protection that free subscription listening is not good for the all important sales, typified in the beginning by records, then by CDs and finally iTunes. It does not give total control to users of free subscriptions, but it gives them better user control and it uses Spotify to accomplish it.

The task is getting the whole planet on the correct path to eventually subscribe and eventually pay something for all the music. However, the first and most important task is getting the users on the conveyor belt toward paid consumption.

Spotify officials said that was their vision and that record labels were in agreement.

On Wednesday, CEO Ek said the idea of moving the free service of Spotify outside the home was nagging him for the past year.

He changed his mind due to the habits of listeners changing from the desktop to mobile devices. When smartphones proliferated and new data plans allowed for more streaming, most of the rapid growth, Internet connection listening moved on to devices used by those on the go, regardless if they used them in their home.

The largest provider of music that is Web based in the world, Pandora, says over 80% of their listening hours take place on a connected device.

Basically, as labels began to let fans of their music to listen on computers for free, their listeners had already started plugging their earphones into their tablets and smartphones.

The deals made between rights holders and Spotify did not take that into consideration and making quick adjustments to a music license is not an easy fix.

Demand for Apple Gold iPhone 5S Strong – Sold Out Until October

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Apple appears to have hit a home run with the Gold iPhone 5S when a few minutes after sales began online, customer demand began outstripping supply for Apple’s high-end iPhone in the new gold color.

Apple’s Tim Cook promised the iPhone to be to be “the gold standard of smartphones.”

The initial supply of the phone, which went on sale online just after midnight in the US, slipped to a ship date of 7 to 10 days within 10 minutes, and to October in less than a half-hour. That happened with all three varieties of the phone, with 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB of storage space.

Later in the day, the existing stock of white and gray iPhone 5S models started selling out, too, in the United States. Apple is expected to release first weekend sales figures, which also include preorders, on Monday.

“Gold is a popular choice in many markets, particularly in Asia where Apple has a stated goal of growth,” said Massimiliano Pogliani, CEO of luxury phone company Vertu, “Gold is a colour that is always in demand, whether for jewelry, watches or fashion.”

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