Posts by newsguy

This month sees the 75th anniversary of one of the cornerstones in the IT industry and it's name is neither Apple nor Microsoft. In 1935 the Fuji Tsushinki Manufacturing Corporation was founded in Japan, although you will probably know it better by the name it adopted later: Fujitsu.

Quite apart from the fact that it is nothing short of remarkable for an IT company to be hitting a 75 year milestone anniversary, and without wishing to sound too much like the new Fujitsu marketing manager, this is a birthday worth celebrating thanks to a number of breakthroughs and innovations which most of us have either forgotten about or were never aware of in the first place. From the early days of telephone switching in the 1930s; the mainframe and parallel computing generation of the 1970s, to newer inventions such as palm vein authentication and perhaps most recently the world's first 3D PC, Fujitsu are one of the unsung heroes of the technology business.

Commenting on the 75 anniversary, Fujitsu UK and Ireland CEO, Roger Gilbert, says: "Companies with as long a history as Fujitsu inevitably change in shape and focus over the years. We're entering a new chapter of our history as the world changes in the way that technology is adopted and used by the masses, both in the developed and developing worlds. The unprecedented challenges that organisations are facing in today's economy mean that IT is finally being recognised as a driving force in …

Fake YouTube pages which look very similar to the real thing have been uncovered by security experts at eSoft, and they deliver a deadly payload. According to the eSoft Threat Prevention Team there are at least 135,000 of these fake YouTube pages, sitting on thousands of compromised web servers, and each attempting to install a malware executable should an unwary user be fooled into attempting to play the videos contained on them.

There's nothing new in the methodology here: promise videos related to hot news items such as the BP oil spill for example, and then pop-up the 'you need to download this video codec to play the video' warning which is in fact the trigger for a malware executable download and install.

The fact that such a big group of pages, all hosted on compromised but unsuspecting and otherwise genuine web servers and all attempting to fool the user into thinking they are connecting to a kosher YouTube site is worrying, however.

If you get an email purporting to come from Twitter suggesting that you have forgotten your password, even though you know exactly what it is, you will not be alone. It would appear that around 55,000 people have already received these fake notifications which, as if you haven't guessed, are malicious link-filled spam.

The Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network warns that the spam contains a link to a compromised site which will attempt to download a malicious executable named password.exe that is actually another of those rogue AV applications, this one being identified as Protection Center Safebrowser.

The payload is somewhat more mature than most rogue AV scams in that is will display some of the malware files it installs on the user's desktop, making it obvious that the computer has been infected - and so making the perhaps not so fake after all attack notification more believable.

Still, anyone with a modicum of common sense should be safe enough as they won't click through the links in an email telling them they have forgotten their Twitter password when they have not. The usual advice for those who are a little hard of thinking when it comes to matters of online security applies: always connect directly to the website concerned, or send a new email to customer support, rather than click links in any unsolicited email that arouses suspicion.

Many a gadget freak has claimed 'I would kill for an iPad' over the last few weeks, but as the world officially goes iPad crazy ask your self this: would you die for an iPad? That's the rather serious question being asked as the Chinese factory where the iPad is made comes under increasing scrutiny concerning the number of suicides amongst the workers there.

According to The Morning Star "Bosses at Apple contractor Foxconn admitted that at least 10 of their workers had now committed suicide while another 20 had tried to take their own lives at work" and the Daily Mail reports how a 17 year old girl lies crippled in a hospital bed a couple of miles away from the factory after leaping "from her fourth-floor dormitory rather than take her place on the production line" just 40 days after starting work at what is believed to be the largest factory in the world.

The number of suicides has risen to 12 since the Morning Star covered the story and the Independent claims "The deaths are thought to be related to working conditions at the plant – long hours for poor pay and constant pressure to perform" and The Telegraph reckons "the hysteria at Longhua, where between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep, has grown to such a pitch that workers have twisted Foxconn’s Chinese name so that it now sounds like: Run to your Death."

At the State Opening of Parliament, the Queen has been giving her annual speech on behalf of the UK Government. Written by the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government itself, much of the speech was devoted to the inevitable cost cutting exercises, the 'Big Society' concept and reform in terms of both the electoral system and Parliament itself. However, one thing amongst an otherwise predictably boring speech came, thankfully, near the start, when Her Majesty stated that "my government will support the introduction of high speed broadband access" for the UK.

Unfortunately she did not mention that her government will repeal the awful Digital Economy Bill that was rushed through before the previous administration disappeared up it's own wazoo. But then that's hardly surprising when, according to reports, it has no intention of doing so despite the Liberal Democrats being very vocal in voting against it.

The British Library is already home to 52,000 local, regional, national and international newspaper titles spanning three centuries. Not surprisingly it has been called one of the world’s finest collections of newspapers, and every year it's used by 30,000 researchers in subjects ranging from family history and genealogy to sports statistics, politics and industrial history.

The problem being that this vast resource is held mainly in hard copy and microfilm, necessitating a trip to the north London Colindale site for people wishing to access it. Which is why the British Library’s Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley, has announced a ten year partnership between the Library and online publisher brightsolid (which owns such online brands as Friends Reunited) which aims to deliver the most significant mass digitisation of newspapers the UK has ever seen.

The firm will digitise content from the British Library Newspaper Library, which it will then make available online via a paid-for website as well as integrating it into its family history websites. This resource will be available for free to users on-site at the British Library and copies of all scanned materials will be deposited with the Library to be held in the national collection in perpetuity.

Digitised material will include extensive coverage of local, regional and national press across three and a half centuries. It will focus on specific geographic areas, along with periods such as the census years between 1841 and 1911. Additional categories will be developed looking at key events and …

Symantec today launched a new hosted security as a service solution for small and medium sized business in the form of its 'Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection' offering. Delivering a simple and convenient cloud-based service covering Windows-based laptops, desktops and files servers, the solution aims to protect these endpoint systems using advanced technologies for antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and host intrusion prevention all managed from a single online management console.

Symantec Hosted Endpoint Protection features include:

• Always-on Protection for Endpoints: Automated updates occur transparently over an Internet connection to keep employee systems current and consistent with client policies when employees are in the office or on the road – even when they’re not logged into their corporate VPN.
  
• Administrators can access the administration portal over a supported Web-browser and corporate VPN access is not required to monitor and manage each computer. Administrators receive real-time alerts via SMS or email and can easily perform functions such as initiate a LiveUpdate to refresh system protection levels, view history on systems and change local policy settings.
  
• Adds and manages new computers without requiring on-site management servers. Updates occur automatically and new features are introduced as they become available during the subscription period for no additional fee.
  
• Flexibility provided through a hosted model allows the solution to scale to incorporate new endpoints quickly and efficiently without requiring additional hardware or management software.
  
• Can be quickly deployed to users via standard download, an email invitation or silently pushed to …

Last year security vendors were warning that botnets were not only not dead, but bouncing back in a big way. One suggested that botnets would become autonomous and intelligent, with each node containing inbuilt self-sufficient coding in order to coordinate and extend its own survival, during the course of 2010.

Now we are nearly half way through the year, it seems that prediction was pretty much spot on. Certainly the latest Threatscape report from Fortinet would suggest that botnets are alive and well, with multiple botnets showing a worrying level of high activity.

While Gumblar remained in the No. 1 position in Fortinet’s Top 10 Network Attacks list, the Sasfis botnet ranking was bolstered by two of its executables prevalent in Fortinet’s Antivirus Top 10 listing. Like Bredolab, Sasfis is a botnet loader that reports statistics and retrieves/executes files upon check-in. However, Sasfis differs since it is newer and does not employ encryption (all communications are sent through HTTP unencrypted). Nonetheless, Sasfis continues to spread aggressively and typically loads banking trojans among other malicious files.

Additional key threat activities for the month of April include:

Microsoft Vulnerabilities

The Internet Explorer vulnerability MS.IE.Userdata.Behavior.Code.Execution (CVE-2010-0806) was the second-most detected malicious network activity for the second report in a row. While in its zero-day state, Fortinet observed an attack on this vulnerability that installed the infamous Gh0st RAT spy-trojan, a fully-functioning remote administration tool that also streams Webcam video and audio feeds. Secondly, FortiGuard …

The annual Infosecurity Europe show is set to kick off in London tomorrow, which is good news for lovers of security research as the surveys are starting to flow today. Like the one conducted by the organisers of the event which reveals that banks are not to blame for credit card fraud and identity theft according to the victims of those crimes, retailers are.

The survey of 1000 commuters in London suggests a veritable tidal wave of fraud and ID theft in the UK, with 44 percent admitting they had fallen victim to card fraud and 42 percent said their identity had been stolen.

Apparently, the average amount stolen was £1448 per person with 37 percent of those asked saying they did not get their money back from the bank. Yet despite this, they confessed that it was the shops, the retailers, that were to blame according to 60 percent of those asked with only 12 percent blaming the banks. Funnily enough, 28 percent were actually honest enough to consider that it might actually have been their own fault.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, online transactions proved to be the most dangerous with 27 percent saying they were conned either this way or via email. That said, and not far behind, face-to-face transactions in shops and hotels also managed to con 20 percent of the respondents out of cash and personal data.

Over half of those that were subject to fraud or ID theft said that their …

With the iPad taking off in such a big way that inevitably means for the business market as well as consumer, no matter how much some might argue otherwise. And that surely also means it will only be a matter of time before we get word of the first big data compromise involving the device at some enterprise or other which really ought to know better. So, have you got your iPad data locked down yet?

One security vendor says it has. According to DeviceLock the solution to prevent such data leakage through the iPad comes in the form of the iPhone local synchronisation filtering technology which is already built into it's DeviceLock 6.4.1 product which can control local data transfers between the iPad and endpoint computers.

In other words, the iPad can and should join a long list of other removable storage devices which can have some kind of granular access permissions applied.

"DeviceLock customers already have the enforcement technology in place to protect themselves from users locally copying sensitive data from a Windows endpoint to an iPad and from the loss of control over that data should the iPad user then store or send it to destinations that are even further outside the protected confines of the corporate network" said Ashot Oganesyan, DeviceLock CTO and Founder. "The iPad is positioned as a digital book reader, video player, and gaming platform. But, with its bigger screen, keyboard, and a well-funded application development …

Spotify is fast become the de facto way of listening to music online for millions of in the know users. Rather than buy a copy of a track which is downloaded to a player such as an iPod, Spotify users either pay a monthly fee (for a no advert service) or stream their tracks free of charge in exchange for the odd advert here and there. They don't actually own the track, nor do they download it for offline storage; it's like a digital radio where you are the DJ and control the playlists. Indeed, Spotify has been hailed by many as the answer to music piracy, a method of listening to all the music you could want but without having to pay the kind of money that iTunes demands for a track, which averages out at around 79p here in the UK for example. No piracy worries for the record companies, many of whom have a stake in the Spotify business it should be noted, and no need to take the illegal downloads route for end users. It has over 7 million users, including 300,000 who pay for the commercial ad-free service. So what could possibly go wrong?

Well, according to The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), the organisation which is responsible for the Ivor Novello songwriting awards, rather a lot. Or should that be rather a little? BASCA reckons that as far as songwriters are concerned "the amounts of money that are actually being …

According to the latest poll into password habits conducted by security vendor Symantec, some 26 percent of folk have told their spouse what their passwords are. Perhaps less surprisingly, 12 percent have told their IT admin and 5 percent their boss. However, why 10 percent let their friends and 8 percent their co-workers know is beyond me. Do people not actually understand what a password is for, and if not for keeping access secure and private then why bother in the first place?

Mind you, of the 400 people who took part in the password survey, 23 percent use their web browsers to keep track of multiple passwords, 60 percent don't change them regularly and 3 percent even use the word 'password' as their password and admit as much! Mind you. we've been down the dumbass password road all too often. It seems that people, on the whole, just do not take computer security seriously enough, or seriously at all for that matter.

Kevin Haley from Symantec, comments: "Now, I don’t doubt that 3 per cent of us have accounts where ‘password’ is the password, but people, why on earth would you admit it? Thanks for your honesty, but shame on you for doing it. For the rest of you that are still using middle names, birth dates and pet names, what are you thinking? Security by obscurity? That no one but your friends and family could possibly know your pet’s name? …

According to the often accurate Apple Insider the iPad has sold out. It claims that consumers who want an Apple iPad on the day of launch, that's April the 3rd in the US at least, are out of luck unless they have already pre-ordered. As of Saturday 27th March the iPad is sold out for delivery on the 3rd and the new expect your delivery date has been moved back to April 12th at the soonest.

What this means is that the media hype that Apple so successfully initiated has turned into sales of hundreds of thousands of iPads for the official launch, which by itself will ensure more hype and more sales further down the road. There's even talk now that the iPad could outsell the original iPhone, which managed to shift 1.2 million units during the first three months. Apple just needs to keep its fingers crossed that those style conscious early adopters are happy enough with their WiFi-enabled iPads to keep the overall review and blog consensus positive enough until the second phase of adoption gets going with the release of the 3G models at the end of April.

So, have you pre-ordered and are you in line to be an iPad early adopter or are you waiting for the iPad 3G or maybe even iPad 2.0 before reaching for the credit card? If you are lucky enough to find yourself in possession of an iPad on April 3rd, …

Now that's cool. Nintendo has confirmed via a press release that it is set to release a brand new DS portable video game console, complete with 3D capability but without the need to look like a total dork and wear those silly glasses. Unfortunately though the Nintendo 3DS, how did they come up with that name, will not be released in time for Xmas it would seem. Likely timeframe is 'before the end of March 2011' which is a bit of a shame if you ask me.

Here's what the Nintendo press release, translated from the Japanese so excuse me for any errors, has to say about the 3DS:

Nintendo will launch the Nintendo 3DS during the fiscal year ending March 2011, allowing games to be enjoyed with 3D effects but without the need of any special glasses. The Nintendo 3DS is going to be the new portable game machine that succeeds the Nintendo DS Series, which has cumulative consolidated sales of 125 million units as at the end of December 2009. It will include backward software compatibility, including games for the Nintendo DS and DSi. We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles.

Are there any Nintendo games developers on DaniWeb who, without breaking the NDA, are able to shed some more light on how the console will work with regards to the 3D effects? Engadget is reporting …

Ten percent of people working in the electronics and telecom sector have not read a book for pleasure in the last year. During the same 12 month period, 35 percent had not learnt a new activity or indulged in a new hobby either. According to the Department For Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in the UK, an encouraging 60 percent did think that learning a new skill or taking up a new hobby would make them more confident at work. Photography led the way, with 18 percent wanting to learn that and 11 percent showing an interest in taking up martial arts.

Ben Fletcher, Occupational and Health Psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire says "a mere 8 percent of people working in the electronics and telecommunications sectors say they aren’t interested in learning a new skill, so the big barriers are likely to be around access. As such, new learning opportunities are great news for the millions of people who want to broaden their horizons. People really grow from informal learning, both personally and professionally. This research reveals that we now need to take the next step – do something different and break the habit of inertia that prevents us from getting more from our lives and gives something back to society too."

Last year a BIS consultation found that people were keen to take up learning opportunities if they were made available and easy to find. Following the consultation the Government committed an additional £30 million during …

Forget about PC gaming, the new geek chic is social gaming and according to one new report it's women and divorcees who are leading the way.

The latest Global Web Index has identified that the most addicted social gaming players do not fit the typical geeky teenage boy computer gamer stereotype. instead, social gaming would appear to appeal more to people with large families, women and divorcees.

Certainly social gaming is revolutionising the gaming market by engaging with a more diverse and larger audience, and by so doing it's making something of an impact on the game types that are typically being produced within this genre.

The majority of respondents here in the UK at least, some 54 percent, claimed that playing games was a main reason for them using the Internet. Globally, online games are competing head-on with PC games with 28 percent of users playing online games and 24 percent playing casual games on a social network. The survey also reveals that 27 percent of women are inclined to play online games and social games compared to just 22 percent of men.

The survey showed that:

• Women play more than men (50 percent vs 41 percent)
  
• Divorcees play more than single users (63 percent vs 41 percent)
  
• Large families are much more likely to play, 56 percent of users with three or more children and 50 percent of users with two children play social games while only 43 percent …

A new survey has revealed that while 78 percent of them agree that it is wrong, a quarter of the kids asked admitted that hacking really is child's play.

The survey of more than 1000 children discovered that the boy hacker stereotype no longer holds true, with 47 percent of those who put their hands up to hacking activity being girls.

The most common scene of the crime would appear to be the relatively safe haven of the bedroom with 27 percent saying this was where they hacked from, while 22 percent were hacking in an Internet Cafe, 21 percent using the ICT suite at school and 19 percent a mate's machine.

When it comes to the reason why, the most popular cause of hacking as far as kids were concerned was simply for fun with 46 percent saying this. However, a worrying 21 percent wanted to cause disruption and mischief while 20 percent thought they might make some money from their hacking activity.

Although only a very small number, 5 percent of those asked admitted they were seriously considering making black hat hacking their career.

78 percent of the hacking kids who lived outside of London did so before reaching their 13th birthdays, while London kids were more likely to be older with 44 percent being under 16 but only 16 percent yet to enter their teens.

Facebook was the most popular target for the kid hackers, with more than a quarter admitting …

Happy Birthday to the .com domain, 25 years old today. Yes, it really was way back on the 15th March 1985 that symbolics.com became the very first true dotcom company by registering a .com domain on the Internet. Today there are no less than 80 million registered dotcom websites.

One new study has found that the economic impact of the dotcom domain should not be undervalued, revealing that the domain serves as a platform for some $400 billion in annual economic activity! The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) report suggests that the broader Internet economy drives an astonishing $1.5 trillion in global annual economic activity. To put that into some perspective, that's more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D combined.

Indeed, it could reasonably be said that dotcom is at the centre of pretty much every major Internet trend. According to VeriSign’s Internet Profiling Service there are 11.9 million e-commerce and online business websites, 1.8 million sports-related sites and 4.3 million entertainment-related sites with a .com web address.

The dotcom domain has also become part of the fabric of daily life, and according to a recent Zogby poll some 81 percent of Americans visit five or more .com websites every day. Two-thirds of Americans visit between five and 25 .com websites a day. Over half of the 3,800 survey respondents reported finding important medical information on a .com website and one in five said they …

If it were not bad enough that the Iowa Division of Homeland Security official website was hacked, defaced and forced to close down temporarily it appears that another Iowa state government resource was also compromised a few weeks before. At the end of January the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission suffered a database breach which had the potential to impact upon the data of some 80,000 folk.

While the Homeland Security hack is said, following forensic examination, not to have exposed any sensitive information it does surely expose something of a disregard for security within state government. According to data security specialists Imperva the fact this was such a high profile site, affiliated to the Department of Homeland Security, means it simply should not have been vulnerable to hacker defacement or any other kind of hacker threat.

"Although it's fair to say that no IT resource can ever be 100 per cent protected against all types of attacks, the fact that this hack - and the other two state sites that were also defaced - apparently stems from a misconfigured script or server settings sending out all the wrong messages to businesses and hackers alike" said Amichai Shulman, Imperva's chief technology officer.

"As if this wasn't bad enough, the statements by officials also seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand we have a state spokesperson saying no real damage was done, and on the other we have another set of people trying …

The answer is Baolab Microsystems which has today announced its NanoEMS technology to do just that, construct nanoscale Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) within the structure of a CMOS wafer rather than building on the surface like current techniques. This, says Baolab, means that because it uses less process steps but standard high volume CMOS lines, will reduce the manufacturing costs of a MEMS by up to two thirds.

Using the existing metal layers in a CMOS wafer to form the MEMS structure using standard mask techniques, the NanoEMS process etches the Inter Metal Dielectric (IMD) through the pad openings in the passivation layer using vapour HF (vHF). This etching process uses readily available equipment for volume production, taking less than an hour to complete. As only standard CMOS processes are used, NanoEMS MEMS can be directly integrated with active circuitry as required.

Baolab has successfully created MEMS devices using standard 0.18um 8” volume CMOS wafers with four or more metal layers, and has achieved minimum feature sizes down to 200 nanometres. This is an order of magnitude smaller than is currently possible with conventional MEMS devices, bringing the new NanoEMS MEMS into the realm of nanostructures, with the additional benefits of smaller sizes, lower power consumption and faster devices.

"We have solved the challenge of building MEMS in a completely different way" explained Dave Doyle, Baolab’s CEO. "Existing MEMS technologies are slow, expensive and require specialist equipment. They have to be either built on …

Two headlines grabbed my attention today. The first proclaiming that Linux sucks while the second announced it was possible to boot into a full Linux OS in less than a single solitary second.

Paul Rako reports that one company, an embedded-Linux specialist called MontaVista Software, has gone step further than developing a proper Real-Time Linux implementation by developing a Real-Fast Linux implementation which boots in a second.

Actually, let's be accurate here, it boots in *less* than a second!

Actually, let's be even more accurate here, according to this report MontaVista has not only managed to boot its Real-Time Linux in under a second but can boot a bog standard, conventional, Linux distro in the same time. There's a video demo of the embedded version booting up in double quick time on YouTube which is worth a look if you are intrigued by all this. not even the embedded version of Windows 7 can get this speedy, so how did the Linux lads achieve it?

MontaVista achieved the impressive feat by getting rid of the bloat, and yes you have to admit that Linux is starting to look a little flabby around the middle these days, and paring down the boot loader. A little bit of Direct Memory Access here to move boot tasks into flash or processor memory as required, plus a clever bit of RAM disk usage by loading those parts of the end-user application needed to start …

Call the National Guard. On second thoughts, call someone else. After all, it is the National Guard which has somehow managed to lose an archival data disk containing five years worth of staff records covering some 15,000 personnel.

The US National Guard is now recommending that any current and former members of staff who are potentially impacted by the loss contact a credit reference bureau. US social security numbers are highly valued amongst identity thieves as they are a common method of identification in all sorts of transactions.

Of course, it isn't the first time that National Guard data has gone walkabout. How about back in 2006 when 2.2 million records concerning US military personnel, including 80 percent of the active-duty force at the time, were stolen? Some 430,000 National Guard personnel were amongst those whose data went missing back then, although an in-depth investigation by the powers that be eventually managed to track it down and limit the damage to reputation done. I don't know about the US Military embracing social networking, or the US Army embracing the iPhone for that matter, maybe it ought to start embracing basic security principals such as the importance of data encryption when talking about such sensitive records for example.

"The archival drive reportedly contains the names, addresses and social security number details of at least 15,000 current and former members of staff as at March 2009, and spans back to the start of 2004" Andy …

The long awaited unveiling of the latest Microsoft mobile phone OS is happening as I type in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. Twitter is all excited, as you might imagine, with tech journalists and gadget watchers alike swooning over the flashy new additions which would seem to suggest that Microsoft has finally arrived in right place as far as mobile phones are concerned. However, just as many people would appear to be asking the rather pertinent question: does it matter any more? After all, with BlackBerry, Android and Apple already well entrenched it does seem to be a little late to be getting all excited over the Microsoft offering.

Talking of which, just what is it that Microsoft is offering. Forgive me for being brief, but consider this the clip-notes version with more in-depth analysis coming later at DaniWeb from our staff writer team. There's a 'Live Tiles' interface which is being described as putting super-icons on the home screen which connect to the Internet and pull data from disparate feeds such as email, social networking, calendars and photo sharing services according to Joe Belfiore, the Microsoft executive introducing Windows Mobile 7 Series in Barcelona today.

Then there is the X-Box Live integration, although I am not as yet sure exactly how this will work it would appear that Microsoft is intending there to be a level of integration between X-Box Live games and your mobile phone handset. More interestingly, especially from the 'is Microsoft too late' …

There are many interesting new products that get released to the masses at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but few of them are as cheap as the Vodafone 150. Being dubbed the most affordable ultra low cost handset from Vodafone ever, the 150 is intended for those emerging markets where low cost devices can have the most significant and positive of social impacts, namely India, Turkey and across Africa. The intention being to enable millions of people in these markets to have the opportunity of sharing in the benefits of mobile technology for the very first time.

And how low cost is low cost? In the case of the Vodafone 150 I am told it will "retail unsubsidised at below $15" which is, by any metric, pretty damn low. Of course, low cost handsets are nothing new to the developed markets of the West where more often than not the networks make their money from the contracts which tie customers in for 18 months or more and the handsets come for free. But things are very different in these emerging markets where a different approach is needed. Some might argue that low cost handsets alone are not enough, and Vodafone has taken that on board. It reckons that to maximise the availability of the handsets in areas with sizeable and isolated rural populations, the launches will be supported by an extensive logistics infrastructure, reaching deep rural segments where mobile penetration typically remains low. In India, it is expected …

According to the latest State of Spam and Phishing report from Symantec, a truly astonishing 92% of all adult phishing scams are being conducted across social networking sites. This coincides with a newly identified trend of adult oriented phishing whereby users are being tempted to enter personal credentials in exchange for the promise of free porn. A new trend using a very old premise, it would seem, as I recall the same 'free porn' promise being made over the years with scams ranging from Trojan Porn Diallers to drive by malware delivery. Indeed, the new trend is very similar to those attack vectors of old when you look at the payload: users are directed to a porn site which in turn leads to fake antivirus sites (most often using the pop-up alert trick) which contain malicious code. Most of the phishing sites involved have been created using free web hosting services.

Symantec warns that both scam and phishing categories have doubled as a percentage of all spam in January 2010 compared to December 2009. Even good old 419-Nigerian spam has had something of a resurrection with this particular type of scam accounting for 21% of all spam - the highest level recorded since Symantec started publishing its report.

According to a recent Kaspersky security research report, stolen Twitter accounts are being sold on the black market for as much as $1000 a time. This really should not come as any great surprise given that the rapid evolution of social media mirrors the rapid evolution of cybercrime.

The price of a file of user credentials, or a dump if you want the hacker vernacular, depends greatly on the Internet service where it can be used, says Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer with data security specialist Imperva.

"Just five years ago, the illegal trade in credit card details was a rising problem for the financial services industry, as well as their customers, with platinum and corporate cards being highly prized by the fraudsters" Shulman told us, adding "Today, however, there are reports of Twitter credentials changing hands for up to $1,000 owing to the revenue generation that is possible from a Web 2.0 services account. This confirms our observations that credentials can fetch a high sum according to both the popularity of the application, and the `popularity' of the account in question".

Indeed, with the going rate of a stolen Hotmail account being a paltry $1.50 yet a Gmail account selling for an average of $80, the proof would appear to be in the eating of this particular criminal pudding. "As a service, Hotmail has fallen out of favour of serious Internet users" Shulman explains "while Gmail's all-round flexibility …

Given all the media excitement that Apple can generate with the mere mention of a new 'i' product such as the new iPad, you might think that the iPod would kick television ass in terms of SEO. But hold your horses, according to UK search marketing agency Greenlight, it's the other way around. In the newly published 'Brown Goods Sector Report' (and oh boy does that sound like an exciting read - irony detected, irony detected) Greenlight reveals that televisions were the most searched for entertainment product online at the end of last year.

It reckons that in November 2009 the number of UK consumer searches for brown goods overall exceeded 20 million, that equates to a jump of almost 5 million on the previous monthly figures and an increase of 7 million compared to the September total. In order to gauge audience size and a profile of how UK Google users went about their search for brown goods, Greenlight used industry data to classify 940 keywords of the most popular search terms and totalled the number of times each one was used. The report was based on search volumes for the last quarter, with a focus on November to give a more in-depth analysis.

Accounting for over a third of November’s searches, the entertainment products comprising MP3 players, personal video players, audio and iPod products, together with brand terms such as Logitech and Apple, were the most popular. Combined, they accounted …

I have a lot of passwords to get me onto various online sites and services, but I only need to remember one: the complex and hard to crack one that unlocks my encrypted password store. Not everyone is as paranoid as I am it seems, and many fall neatly into the dumbass category if a recent analysis of 32 million consumer passwords is anything to go by.

A data security company called Imperva undertook a detailed analysis of breached consumer passwords, and the very fact that they ended up in the 32 million breached passwords database suggests that they were not brilliant to start with. However, to climb to the very top of that list by way of being the most 'popular' and hence most commonly cracked is a true measure of dumbassness.

And so, without further ado, are the top ten most commonly used dumbass passwords to be avoided when signing up for social networking or e-commerce sites:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes,” explained Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman. “The data provides a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and an opportunity to evaluate the true strength of passwords as a security mechanism. Never before has there …

Another day, another IE flaw! Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Internet Explorer water (mainly as Microsoft told you it was after releasing yet another patch to fix yet another vulnerability) comes the news that actually, would you believe it, but Internet Explorer still isn't safe.

According to Jorge Luis Alvarez Medina, a security consultant at Core Security Technologies, who will reveal all at the Washington Black Hat conference next month the Microsoft browser is at risk to not one serious hole but rather a set of minor vulnerabilities that can linked together to exploit remote access to your data.

Microsoft has not been available for comment on the matter, although I'm guessing that will change as the brown stuff hits the fan in the coming days. I commented recently on how to activate God Mode for Windows 7 but maybe what we really need is a God Mode for browsing. Ah yes, I have it and it's called using Firefox, or Chrome or pretty much anything other than Internet Explorer right now.

Especially when, according to respected British journalist Jack Schofield of The Guardian, Microsoft apparently knew about the IE vulnerability it has just patched way back in September 2009. Sigh.

The US military is apparently making good use of a secure Facebook-like system for networking which already has hundreds of user groups and thousands of members. Known as "milBook" the system has been embraced by the Department of Defense for the way it can open up safer avenues of communications amongst personnel. Previously, the department lacked a medium for employees to share official and sometimes sensitive information. MilBook provides several options for users who wish to share information with specific individuals. By creating discussion threads, they can exchange ideas among specific, self-created groups on topics such as Army policies.

"The milSuite application allows the professional ‘DOD’ community to share information amongst themselves that is only intended for the internal community" said Justin Filler, deputy director of the MilTech Solutions Office, an Army organization. MilBook, which has reached 18,000 users since its inception in October 2009, is part of a suite of tools known as milSuite that also includes a blog and wiki.

"These technologies help those working on similar projects across ‘DoD’ to connect, share information, incubate new ideas, and help build the ‘DoD's’ body of knowledge and expertise, while generating organizational learning" said Todd Miller, an Army contractor. "People across the DoD can find professional working groups on various programs and efforts and join within seconds" Miller adds, "MilBook not only connects people, it connects those people to military topics so that ideas and information are shared across the Armed Services".

MilBook is also an effective …

The business world might still be struggling to shake off the recession but one sector has been enjoying truly extraordinary growth: the search market. What's more, according to digital metrics specialist comScore, one company has dominated this booming marketplace and unsurprisingly it is called Google.

Of the 131 billion searches conducted around the globe during the month of December, an astonishing 87.8 billion of them (or 66.8 percent of the global search market if you prefer) were made using Google. And not all of them were searching for sex or long lost messages.

Google owned sites enjoyed a 58% increase in search query volume over the past year while Yahoo! was up 13% globally and Chinese search engine Baidu made it into third place with a 7% jump. Microsoft, however, had the greatest gains among the top five search properties, jumping some 70% to 4.1 billion searches, mainly thanks to the success of Bing.

The comScore study also revealed that the United States is the biggest search market worldwide with 22.7 billion searches, which equates to around 17% of all global searches. Despite ongoing Google related problems, China is second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Russia, though, made the biggest gains within the top ten markets with 92% growth to 3.3 billion.

Overall, the total worldwide search market saw enjoyed a 46% increase in the …

For anyone who doubted that the iPhone was to be taken seriously as a games platform, and there have been many, the release today of Grand Theft Auto as an iPhone app should seal the deal that the iPhone is the real thing as far as being a games console is concerned.

OK, it is only the 'Chinatown Wars' version of the game, which has already been out on Nintendo DS and got a pretty luke-warm reception from fans of the full on GTA console game. But, despite the limitations of the platform and the distinctly retro top down look and feel of the thing, it is still GTA on a damn phone! It still manages to look really cool, and play really well. How incredible is that?

Probably not as incredible as the price point. Here in the UK the App Store is asking £5.99 for the game, while in the US it is $9.99 and that's rather important as it means that a proper big boys game has broken the ten bucks barrier. If it's going to stand a chance of making a real impact in terms of sales then a game has to be below ten dollars.

Sure, it may not appeal to your average gamer but perhaps that is not the target market for Rockstar. I reckon they are going for the occasional gamer market as well as (and I know I am stating the …

I ask because according to the latest data, there would seem to be an increasing number of working pirates around these days. The trouble is that they can be hard to spot as they do not tend to go for the Captain Jack look nor sport a long beard, come missing a leg or complete with a parrot. However, according to web security specialist ScanSafe, there has been a 55% increase in employees attempting to download illegal software and MP3s in the workplace over the last three months, so they are obviously out there and quite possibly in your office.

ScanSafe processes data for millions of employees across 100 countries to enable it to gain significant insight into the latest web traffic and malware trends, which is why this corporate piracy increase is so worrying. We all know that the death of piracy is about as likely as the death of porn, and the threat of major lawsuits have little real impact despite some well publicised success stories, but that doesn't mean it should just be accepted in the workplace.

"Employees mistakenly assume they can use the Internet at work in exactly the same way as they use it at home and this is potentially one of the reasons for this steady increase in illegal download attempts over recent months" said Spencer Parker, director of product management at ScanSafe who adds "inappropriate Internet use in the workplace can put the employer at …

Would you back Avatar (the movie) or Modern Warfare 2 (the game) to win a fight for the biggest grossing entertainment blockbuster of the last six months?

Given that Avatar has already stormed up the biggest movie blockbuster list to sit comfortably near the top as the second biggest grossing movie of all time according to The Internet Movie Database with worldwide box office takings of $1.3 billion, you might think that all bets would be off. You might be wrong.

Selling around 15 million copies so far, Modern Warfare 2 actually took an astonishing $550 million in its first five days on sale and has now gone on to break the $1 billion barrier. Although I am having trouble tracking down hard numbers Infinity Ward, the developers of Modern Warfare 2, reckons that in terms of those first week sales the game beat the movie. Indeed, in just a single day (launch day, naturally) Modern Warfare 2 took $310 million. Certainly it eclipses previous record breaking game claims such as that made by Microsoft for Halo 3.

But which is best, in terms of cold sales figures? Sorry Modern Warfare 2 fanboys (of which I am one) but it is not good news. Bear in mind that the cost of a cinema ticket is much less than the cost of the game on any format, and given that Avatar has already grossed more than Modern Warfare 2 in global sales …

Lord knows I could do with shedding a pound or 50, but it never occurred to me that WiFi could help me do that. However, according to a press release that arrived today it would appear to be the case. Some French technology outfit has launched a set of WiFi enabled weight scales which uses an iPhone app that enables users to monitor body weight as well as lean and fat mass (whatever they may be) on their smartphone.

Withings claims that the WiFi Body Scale is a world first and transforms a regular bathroom scale into a connected health monitoring system allowing anyone access to a range of secure online service to automatically record their body weight, lean & fat mass, and calculated body mass index.

"We strive to bring innovation, design and technology to everyday objects through a wireless connection to the internet and we feel the WiFi Body Scale truly delivers on all fronts" said Cedric Hutchings, Withings General Manager.

Uhuh. Trouble is, it is a rather expensive set of scales at UKP £119 and to be honest you can buy an awful lot of cakes for the same money. Seriously though, you could also spend a little extra and buy a Nintendo Wii with the Wii Fit stuff and maybe get into shape using technology (although this is not without some risk itself) rather than just get depressed watching how little weight you are losing by sitting …

Gamers are used to unearthing cheats that will give them ultimate power over everything, but now it seems that Windows 7 users can also activate a God Mode of their own.

Here's a really simple little Windows 7 tweak which activates an already pretty well documented developer shell feature that allows a filesystem folder to be turned into a 'namespace junction' and also brings the All Tasks special shell folder into play. Together it has been dubbed God Mode as it enables you to congregate diverse control panel functionality within a single folder.

To activate God Mode you just create a new folder and call it

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

and then double click the thing. This activates the super special folder which brings you an all new and maybe a tad more convenient control panel view.

If you are a power-tool and Windows tweaking geek, then I'm pretty sure you will love this. While you only get a plain vanilla Explorer list view at least everything you need for Windows 7 control is in one place now rather than being spread all over the shop in those multiple, if much better looking, control panels.

Absolutely no surprise there then: Modern Warfare 2 is the all-format games Christmas Number One according to the ELSPA software charts just published here in the UK. A position, incidentally, it has held for the six weeks, ever since it was released.

The Top Ten, in case you are interested, is as follows:

1. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
2. FIFA 10
3. Wii Fit Plus
4. Wii Sports Resort
5. Assassin's Creed II
6. Mario And Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games
7. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
8. Forza Motorsport 3
9. Mario Kart Wii
10. Just Dance

A little more surprising, it has to be said, is the apparent interest being taken in Modern Warfare 2 by spooks. You might think that spending your leisure time engaging in anti-terrorist shooting activity is something of a busmans' holiday for a spay, and I dare say you are right. But then the interest being taken by GCHQ, a UK Government intelligence organisation with a reputation for being very secret squirrel and works in conjunction with both MI5 and MI6, is more of a professional one.

It would appear that GCHQ has started running an advertising campaign on Xbox Live which targets 18 to 34 year old players of Modern Warfare 2 (as well as Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed II and Left 4 Dead 2). The thinking behind the campaign being that these gamers are likely to possess the same kind of quick thinking and problem solving that GCHQ recruits need. Another important …

The media seems to have been a-buzz this week following the release of the top search terms from 14.6 million searches picked up by parental control service OnlineFamily.Norton - mainly because it 'revealed' that kids are searching for sex online.

I am a parent myself, of young kids, and while of course I was shocked to discover that 7 year olds were looking for porn (and that search term was in position number 4 in the 7 and under age group according to Symantec which operates the service) I certainly would not get my knickers in a twist over finding 13 year olds searching for sex online (also number 4 in the teens group popular search list).

It's interesting to note that both boys and girls were searching for sex, although the boys had sex and porn in positions 4 and 5 respectively whereas the girls moved Taylor Swift up into the 4 slot and sex was at 5.

But is it really such a big deal that 13-18 years olds include sex and porn in their top search terms? No, of course not, kids have always been interested in sex as they go through puberty and the only difference these days to when I was that age is that the Internet makes it a lot easier to go look at naughty pictures.

I had to pay a few pennies to sneak a look at the Playboy magazine an older boy had sneaked into school. What …

Thought that 2009 was the year that botnets died, well think again Batman, it was actually the year they bounced back. Compromised computers were responsible for distributing 83.4% of the 107 billion spam messages sent around the world, every single day, during 2009 according to a new Symantec report.

Indeed, the Symantec MessageLabs Intelligence 2009 report suggests that the shutdown of botnet hosting ISPs such as McColo towards the end of 2008 and Real Host in August this year didn't destroy the botnet threat but rather simply made those behind them re-evaluate and enhance command and control backup strategies so as to be able to recover from damage in hours rather than weeks.

Symantec predicts that botnets will become autonomous intelligent, with each node containing an inbuilt self-sufficient coding in order to coordinate and extend its own survival, during the course of 2010.

Cutwail, Mega-D, Rustock and handful of other botnets already have control of upwards of five million compromised computers. Cutwail alone was responsible for issuing 29% of all spam, that's 8,500 billion individual spam messages, between April and November 2009.

Cutwail also distributed the Bredolab Trojan dropper, disguised in the form of a .ZIP file attachment, designed to give the sender complete control of the target computer which then could be used to deploy other botnet malware, adware or spyware onto the victim’s computer. It is estimated that during the month of October, some 3.6 billion Bredolab malware …

A couple of months ago DaniWeb reported how British singer Lily Allen turned the music copyright debate into a copywrong farce with some ill conceived blogging. Things went quiet soon after the media had swarmed all over Allen and her odd arguments, not least as she closed down her blog complaining of getting too much abuse.

Now, following an interview with the music press it seems that Allen has jumped straight back into the controversy with both feet. This time she appears to be confusing price and value, claiming that she wants her fans to appreciate the value of her work and if that means buying a ripped and burned copy of a CD then that's OK - "as long as the person buying it places some kind of value on my music" there's no problem she said.

As Mike Masnick over at Techdirt observes "Her earlier complaint was that when people file share, they don't provide money back to the artists and the labels. Of course, when counterfeiters are selling on the street, the same thing is true, but suddenly it's okay? At what point does the world realize that Ms. Allen doesn't know what she's talking about?" - well quite!

I can't say I have ever heard of pussy power being used as a driver for advanced chip technology development, but that's precisely what researchers at IBM are claiming. A team of boffins at IBM have been speaking about how they have arrived at something of a milestone breakthrough: a supercomputer that simulates a brain in near real time and has more cerebral cortex capacity than a cat.

The cognitive computing team which is headed up by IBM Research managed to achieve what it says are "significant advances in large-scale cortical simulation" as well as "a new algorithm that synthesizes neurological data" in time for a presentation called 'The cat is out of the bag' at the SC09 supercomputing conference this week.

Together it is being suggested that these advances mean we are getting increasingly close to being able to build not just an advanced computer chip, but a truly cognitive computing chip. That is, in other words, a computer system which can both simulate and emulate the brain’s abilities in terms of sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition.

The IBM Research scientists, together with colleagues from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, performed what is said to be the first "real-time cortical simulation of the brain that exceeds the scale of a cat cortex and contains 1 billion spiking neurons and 10 trillion individual learning synapses". Working with researchers from Stanford University, the IBMers also developed a supercomputing algorithm which can "noninvasively measure and map the …

It has been one of the great blogging success stories, not to mention literary mysteries. But now the true identity of the Diary of a London Call Girl blogger has been revealed, by Belle de Jour herself. The blog, based upon a secret life covering 14 months as a high class escort and prostitute in London, spawned a successful national newspaper column, a best-selling book and even a TV movie.

For a number of years now speculation has been rife as to who Belle de Jour really was, with the media 'outing' everyone from the editor of the Erotic Review (Rowan Pelling) to best selling novelist and author of How To Lose Friends And Alienate people, Toby Young. While the notion of Belle de Jour being a balding man was amusing, the actual revelation of identity has been no less shocking. The woman behind the blog, and who did indeed work as a £300 per hour hooker in London six years ago, is actually now a respected research scientist called Dr Brooke Magnanti.

Dr Magnanti is a developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology specialist, and turned to prostitution in 2003 when she was having money troubles during the final stages of her PhD thesis. The 34 year old told the Sunday Times that she has no regrets and that while she "did have another job at one point, as a computer programmer" she kept up with the prostitution as "it was so much more enjoyable".

So …

What do you use Twitter for? Telling your circle of online friends what you are up to? As an alternative to email? Maybe a little bit of legal celebrity stalking? Perhaps, but if you are an Indian Twitter user the chances are you are treating it primarily as an online news source.

That is the surprising conclusion of a new survey which reveals that the majority of those asked (16%) regularly turn to tweets for their news updates. A trend which really started during the 26/11 attacks when there were nearly 1000 Tweets a minute being posted by eyewitnesses to the horrific events as they unfolded. This helped propel Twitter into the big time in India, which now has the largest number of Twitter users of any country other than US and Germany according to reports.

Of course, Twitter is used to making the news as well as distributing it. With more than 5 billion Tweets already, it is hardly surprising that Twitter is becoming a news medium in its own right.

Now that's what I call an Android phone. Actually, that's what I call an Android phone that might just kick some iPhone ass.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 social networking phone is Android powered and feature rich. How rich? Well, how does 1GB RAM plus 16Gb of flash storage and a stunning 8.1 megapixel camera that comes complete with a geo-tagging function strike you?

That's on top of the 4" (854 x 480, 262,144 color TFT) touch-screen and GPS, and WiFi, and Bluetooth of course. OH, and not forgetting the Qualcomm Snapdragon, a 1GHz system-on-chip that you can also find inside the new Acer Liquid phone.

And, of course, there's the all important Android inside. This time working with the Sony UX layer for social networking. The new UX platform, as I understand it, throws a new UI on top of the Android OS which will integrate and sync a variety of social networking and comms media content. From what I can tell it would appear to be the Sony take on the HTX Sense UI.

There will be UX specific apps coming, although they are in short supply right now. So far you get a unified comms management app called Timescape which supports Twitter and Facebook as well as your email and text message services. Plus there is another called mediascape which integrates media content for playback from sources such as YouTube and PlayNow.

Expect the Xperia X10 …

I got a gloating email today from those awfully clever folk at Wolfram Alpha which informed me that the iPhone app version of the 'Computational Knowledge Engine' popped up on the App Store What's Hot list. What's more, they positively gushed at how they were "pleasantly surprised" to see the app "appear on the store's 'Top Grossing' list on the second day it was available and remain there through the week".

Perhaps whoever wrote that email should have first asked the Wolfram Alpha engine why the app was on the top grossing list. I suspect that drawing on more than 20 years of development, 50,000 plus built-in algorithms and 10 trillion pieces of continually updated and curated data, it might have popped out the following answer: because it costs fifty bucks, stupid.

Sure, it may well let you get "expert-level answers to your specific freeform questions—complete with stunning, dynamically generated visualizations and tables, and richer and deeper information than you imagined possible" right there on your iPhone. It may well come replete with "elegant native iPhone interface that includes a special notation keyboard, customized iPhone output, editable history, and integration with maps and other iPhone services" for good measure.

It may well also be less than half the price of a graphing calculator at $49.99 as one Wolfram Alpha spokesperson has insisted, while missing the point that an iPhone graphing calculator app can be picked up for just a couple of bucks. And missing the …

It's not just phishing scams that Facebook users have to worry about right now,

According to Roger Thompson, the Chief Research Officer with security vendor AVG, hacked Facebook applications are increasingly reaching out to exploit sites based in Russia. As Thompson says, this is different to the normal run of things whereby people are linking to hacked pages innocently enough on social networking sites. "These seem to be actual Facebook applications that have been hacked" Thompson points out, adding that the application developers are "innocent victims too".

AVG researchers first spotted the trend when a fire-fighter simulation game which it assumed was a developer hack, pointing to a Russian site where a scareware scam was being peddled. But when they looked closer, they discovered in the source code for the web pages an injected iframe that did the damage.

What is not obvious at the moment is just where the holes are in the infected Facebook apps which are letting the bad guys inject their code, but Thompson is as sure as he can be that the app developers are just as much victims as anyone else in these matters. So far AVG has uncovered at least 8 Facebook apps which have been compromised, and the full details can be found here along with screenshots of one exploited app and the exploit sites it reaches out to.

Maybe it is time to rethink the way that Facebook approaches app development and reconsider …

Why so much fuss about the rumour that Apple is developing an in house app to bring FM radio to the iPhone? Sure, the fact that (assuming the rumour is true) this will be a native application that can run in the background just like the iPod app does on an iPhone is cool, but do we really need a FM radio on the iPhone? It's a valid enough question. Sure, the new iPod Nano has a radio and it adds a needed function, but the iPhone has apps. And, as any app lover will know, there are plenty of streaming radio apps already out there which bring all the radio functionality you could want, and then some.

Yes, I like the sound of integrating radio and iTunes Store so that you could get more info about a song playing and then go on to purchase it in just a click or two. But to be honest I prefer being able to stream that song through the likes of Last.FM or Spotify rather than having to buy it at all.

Yes, I like the idea of the live pause function, assuming that this carries over from the Nano into the iPhone app that is.

But I'm just not convinced that there is any real need for old technology such as FM radio on a next-generation device like the iPhone. It's almost as bizarre as having a Blu-ray player built into a top end …

Jon Lech Johansen is perhaps best known as DVD Jon, the chap who cracked DVD movie encryption at the tender age of just 15. He may soon have to adopt a new nickname, how about iTunes Jon, as he releases software that takes iTunes out of the iPod music equation.

doubleTwist exists on the foundation that in the same way you don't have a different web browser for every web site that you visit, you shouldn't have to have different software when you use an iPod, a Nokia smartphone, a Sony device and so on. "The typical household today has many such devices" the company website says "there is a need for a simple and powerful software that connects them." Which is where the newly released software comes in, and iTunes goes out the door.

doubleTwist co-founder Monique Farantzos has even gone as far as to describe Apple as the new Microsoft, referring to a dark side that has emerged with apps being blocked from the App Store for example, and the Palm pre not being allowed to sync with iTunes. And so we now have a piece of software that has all the functionality of iTunes, but does not restrict the user to just an iPod or even just to iTunes for that matter. doubleTwist will, so I am informed, allow iPod users to buy their music from the Amazon MP3 store if they prefer. That said, it's the ability to play an iTunes library …

Sky, better known for news and sport television broadcasting, has today announced that it is entering the online music business with an ad-free streaming download service. All of the four million songs accessible by users of the service will be available by way of unlimited online streaming as well as in MP3 format for storage and playback on any compatible device.

Launching on the 19th October, Sky Songs in the UK will start off by providing access to new release and back catalogue songs from EMI. Sony, Universal and Warner along with a host of independent labels for good measure.

Mike Darcey, Sky’s Chief Operating Officer, says "Our music partners bring an outstanding catalogue and unrivalled expertise that complements Sky’s strengths in content distribution. Sky Songs will reach out to consumers who want legitimate digital services offering choice, ease of use and great value. Offering legal access to digital music is a vital step in combating illegal downloading."

That's as maybe, but the service is up against existing online music powerhouses such as Apple's iTunes and the streaming service Spotify in a market which was worth £106 million in the UK last year, that's an increase of 48% from the year before. Not that the CD market should be ruled out either, in terms of competition, at least not just yet. Sure, it is on the decline with income down 8% last year but it still managed to earn £856 million in the UK which is none …

Mobile developers will be pleased to learn that Recursion Software has announced the availability of a C++ Toolkits Symbian bundle. The cross-platform, mobile and embedded app development tools specialist took the opportunity at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment Expo 2009 to announce that C++ libraries for the iPhone and Android platforms would be forthcoming.

The Symbian C++ Toolkit promises to deliver a rich array of libraries, templates, and code samples to help the coder to create high performance applications requiring sophisticated computing and information handling functions while retaining a small program size. It comprises a total of five separate toolkits including Communications and Foundations, Standard and Extended Template Libraries (STL/ETL), Math, plus a collection of more than 500 example programs.

This Symbian implementation is just the latest in a long line of the Recursion code base, a code base that has been compiled more than a million times over the last four years.

Bob DeAnna, CTO, Recursion Software said "Symbian-based handsets from Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Sharp and others represent a vast and vital market. These new tools will allow our many existing customers to extend their market reach by bringing their desktop, server and embedded applications to the many millions of Symbian device users, and will enable Symbian developers to bring their mobile apps to millions more new customers who use the many other platforms we already support. And with our planned releases for other C++ enabled mobile phones, we will make the promise …