Microsoft offering users 100 GB free OneDrive Storage

Microsoft is offering OneDrive users 100 GB of free storage, according to an email I received recently. You don’t just get the free storage for being a user, rather you have to sign up for Bing Rewards and from there use Bing as your search engine while being signed in to your Bing account to earn points to receive the free storage.

A screen shot of the email is above but it reads:

To celebrate the launch of OneDrive, we’ve partnered with Bing to bring you a special offer. Simply join Bing Rewards by signing into Bing once and, after just a week of searching, you can earn enough credits to get 100 GB of additional OneDrive storage for a year. It has never been easier to get free storage. Act now. This limited time offer ends soon.

World’s Leading Businesses are Secure with BlackBerry: Let’s Separate Facts from Fiction

Amidst recent media speculation around BlackBerry and hopeful claims of competitors, we decided to set the record straight by coming up with some facts about our pedigree within the EMM space. The below infographic consolidates key details about our current market position, security certifications, award-winning customer service and investments in our future. If it’s not clear already, we are absolutely committed to providing secure and innovative solutions to our customers and giving them the peace of mind they deserve.

BlackBerry is focused on bringing its secure EMM solution and award-winning service to customers around the world. In response to requests from customers to consolidate their enterprise mobility management (EMM) environment and leverage existing investments, we’re soon launching EZ Pass – a simple, cost effective migration path to BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 with free licenses and Advantage level technical support through January 31, 2015. Learn more at http://el.blackberry.com/ezpass.

Source: Inside BlackBerry Business Blog

MIT researchers bring Javascript to Google Glass

Open Source Wearscript puts Javascript on Google Glass, with many new, and some unexpected, input choices.

Earlier this week, Brandyn White, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, and Scott Greenwald, a PhD candidate at MIT, led a workshop at the MIT Media Lab to showcase an open source project called WearScript, a Javascript environment that runs on Google Glass. The category of wearables is still evolving. Besides activity trackers and smartwatches, the killer wearable app is yet to be discovered because wearables don’t have the lean back or lean forward human-machine interface (HMI) of tablets and smartphones. Wearscript lets developers experiment with new user interface (UI) concepts and input devices to push beyond the HMI limits of wearables.

The overblown reports of Google Glass privacy distract from the really important Google Glass discussion – how Glass micro apps can compress the time between user intent and action. Micro apps are smaller than apps and are ephemeral because they are used in an instant and designed to disappear from the user’s perception once completing their tasks. Because of the Glass wearable form factor, micro apps deviate from the LCD square and touchscreen/keyboard design of smartphone, tablet, and PC apps, and are intended to be hands-free and responsive in the moment. Well-designed Glass apps employ its UI to let the user do something that they could not otherwise do with another device. Glass’s notifications are a good example of this; want to get breaking news or preview important email without interruption from a phone or PC? Tilt your head up slightly and capture it in a glance, but if you want to read the news or give a detailed response to an email – better to pick up a smartphone, tablet or PC. The best consumer-facing Google Glass experiences highlight how apps can leverage this micro app programmable wearable form factor.

Early on during the MIT Media Lab workshop, White demonstrated how Glass’s UI extends beyond its touchpad, winks, and head movements by adding a homemade eye tracker to Glass as an input device. The camera and controller were dissected from a $25 PC video camera and attached to the Glass frame with a 3D-printed mount. A few modifications were made, such as replacing the obtrusively bright LEDs with infrared LEDs, and a cable was added with a little soldering. The whole process takes about 15 minutes for someone with component soldering skills. With this eye tracker and a few lines of Wearscript, the researchers demonstrated a new interface by playing Super Mario on Google Glass with just eye movements.

To this audience of software engineers, wearable enthusiasts, students, and hardware hackers, repurposing an inexpensive device with some hacking and soldering is not unusual. But the impact of the demonstration set the tone for rethinking Glass apps with Wearscript and unconventional Glass input devices.

For more information follow the source link below.

Source: Network World

BlackBerry First To Receive “Full Operational Capability” On U.S. DoD Networks

BlackBerry received a huge win today, as the company announced BlackBerry 10 is the first mobile operating system to have achieved Full Operational Capability on the DoD networks of the United States government.

Below is the entire press release.

BlackBerry First to Receive Coveted “Full Operational Capability” on U.S. Department of Defense Networks

Validation completes DISA’s certification process for BlackBerry 10 mobility management platform

WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – March 27, 2014) – BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ: BBRY)(TSX: BB), a world leader in mobile communications, today announced that BlackBerry® 10 has become the first mobility solution to receive Full Operational Capability (FOC) to run on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) networks from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The designation follows the Company’s Authority to Operate (ATO) certification and enables government users with a BlackBerry 10 smartphone connected with BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10 (BES10) to securely access email, data, apps and other DoD network resources.

BlackBerry was the first Mobile Device Management (MDM) provider to earn ATO and becomes the only vendor with FOC. The granting of FOC completes BlackBerry’s security certification process with the DoD.

“As the first mobile solutions provider to achieve FOC, BlackBerry continues to prove why we are the most trusted enterprise mobility platform,” said John Sims, President of Global Enterprise Services at BlackBerry. “BlackBerry worked side-by-side with DISA to help certify the BlackBerry 10 solution offering the U.S. government an end-to-end mobile infrastructure that does not compromise on security and provides the most productive and collaborative mobile experience.”

FOC allows government employees to realize the full security, productivity, communication and collaboration benefits of the BlackBerry 10 solution. One of the key features now available to DoD customers with a BlackBerry 10 smartphone is BlackBerry® Balance™ technology, which allows users to instantly toggle between work and personal profiles. BlackBerry Balance separates and secures work data from personal content, allowing the user to gain secure access to DoD network resources, along with the full benefits of a consumer experience. BlackBerry 10 smartphones are the only DoD-approved smartphones with this capability.

About BlackBerry

A global leader in mobile communications, BlackBerry® revolutionized the mobile industry when it was introduced in 1999. Today, BlackBerry aims to inspire the success of our millions of customers around the world by continuously pushing the boundaries of mobile experiences. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, BlackBerry operates offices in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. The Company trades under the ticker symbols “BB” on the Toronto Stock Exchange and “BBRY” on the NASDAQ. For more information, visit http://www.blackberry.com.

Forward-looking statements in this news release are made pursuant to the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used herein, words such as “expect”, “anticipate”, “estimate”, “may”, “will”, “should”, “intend”, “believe”, and similar expressions, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by BlackBerry Limited in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that BlackBerry believes are appropriate in the circumstances. Many factors could cause BlackBerry’s actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including those described in the “Risk Factors” section of BlackBerry’s Annual Information Form, which is included in its Annu al Report on Form 40-F (copies of which filings may be obtained at http://www.sedar.com or http://www.sec.gov). These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on BlackBerry’s forward-looking statements. BlackBerry has no intention and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

BlackBerry and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of BlackBerry Limited and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and countries around the world. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services.

iFixit Gives HTC One M8 2/10 For Repairability

With HTC officially announced the HTC One M8 yesterday, we’re sure many of you guys are eager to get your hands on the device. After all what’s not to like? The phone packs some great hardware under the hood and even sports a pretty nice metal body which feels pretty premium.

Those are some factors that people take into consideration when thinking about a new phone, but at the same time there are those who worry about things like durability and repairability. After all no one likes spending a lot of money on repairs if they can help it, right?

Well according to a recent iFixit teardown of the brand new HTC One M8, they have found that the HTC One M8 is pretty damn hard to repair and have given it a 2/10 based on repairability, with 10 obviously being the easiest to repair.

According to their reasoning, this is because it is extremely difficult to open up the phone without risking damage to the rear casing. They also claim that because the battery is adhered to the midframe of the motherboard, it makes it pretty difficult to replace as well. They also cite how the much trouble is to access the display assembly, making common repairs like screen replacements very difficult.

To read more and for the original story follow the source link below.

Source: Ubergizmo

EA Games hackers get Apple ID, Origin passwords and payment info

If you’ve been prompted to enter your Apple ID login, payment and security credentials via an EA Games subdomain recently, change your passwords immediately.

Same goes if you’ve logged in at an EA Origin subdomain within the past week: change your passwords and connected accounts ASAP.

Security auditor Netcraft announced yesterday it has discovered a slick Apple ID phishing scam running smoothly on an EA server, and a second phishing scam posing as an EA Origin login page. EA Origin is a popular games platform with an estimated 9.3 million users.

EA told press it patched the vulnerability later that night – but did not comment on the second compromise posing as an Origin site, also discovered by Netcraft and reported to be still in operation.

About the Apple phishing compromise EA told BBC last night, “We found it, we have isolated it, and we are making sure such attempts are no longer possible.”

Netcraft said EA’s server compromise could have been avoided with security updates on a known issue with EA’s 2008 version of WebCalendar 1.2.0. which was running on the server.

Netcraft said, “It is likely that one of these vulnerabilities was used to compromise the server, as the phishing content is located in the same directory as the WebCalendar application.”

It is unknown how long the phishing operation had been running, or how many Apple accounts were compromised.

For more information and the complete story click the source link below.

Source: ZD Net

Intel To Join The Android Wear Party With New Innovations In Wearables

Intel and wearables. Two names that you best get used to seeing together, as the aforementioned company is diving into the wearables sector in a major way. As part of the broader Android Wear rollout announced this week, Intel has made a point to emphasize its role in the coming explosion of wearables. The company has stated that it’s “excited to be a part of Android Wear,” which will bring a fork of Android to an entire sector that’s poised for huge growth in the years ahead.

Intel isn’t revealing any products just yet, but it — along with Broadcom, Mediatek, and Qualcomm — are going to be powering some of the products that you see emerge over the next while. Watches, head-worn devices, and items we haven’t yet conceived are likely going to be running atop of Google’s Android Wear platform, and Intel hopes to be the circuitry behind some of it. As desktop and laptop sales slow, Intel has a very real need to replace that revenue with new streams.

Breaking into the tablet, phone, and wearable sectors makes complete sense, but it remains to be seen what kind of margins exist for wearables. At any rate, it’s great to see a name like Intel pushing the sector as a whole forward. For any serious innovation to occur, we’re going to need broad, industry-wide recognition of a movement. With wearables, we’re certainly seeing it.

Intel isn’t revealing any products just yet, but it — along with Broadcom, Mediatek, and Qualcomm — are going to be powering some of the products that you see emerge over the next while. Watches, head-worn devices, and items we haven’t yet conceived are likely going to be running atop of Google’s Android Wear platform, and Intel hopes to be the circuitry behind some of it. As desktop and laptop sales slow, Intel has a very real need to replace that revenue with new streams.

Breaking into the tablet, phone, and wearable sectors makes complete sense, but it remains to be seen what kind of margins exist for wearables. At any rate, it’s great to see a name like Intel pushing the sector as a whole forward. For any serious innovation to occur, we’re going to need broad, industry-wide recognition of a movement. With wearables, we’re certainly seeing it.

Source: Hot Hardware

10,000 Linux servers hit by malware serving tsunami of spam and exploits

Two-year-old Windigo may also have infected kernel.org Linux developers.

Researchers have documented an ongoing criminal operation infecting more than 10,000 Unix and Linux servers with malware that sends spam and redirects end users to malicious Web pages.

Windigo, as the attack campaign has been dubbed, has been active since 2011 and has compromised systems belonging to the Linux Foundation’s kernel.org and the developers of the cPanel Web hosting control panel, according to a detailed report published Tuesday by researchers from antivirus provider Eset. During its 36-month run, Windigo has compromised more than 25,000 servers with robust malware that sends more than 35 million spam messages a day and exposes Windows-based Web visitors to drive-by malware attacks. It also feeds people running any type of computer banner ads for porn services.

The Eset researchers, who have been instrumental in uncovering similar campaigns compromising large numbers of servers running the nginx, Lighttpd, and Apache Web servers, said the latest campaign has the potential to inflict significant harm on the Internet at large. They explained:

The number of systems affected by Operation Windigo might seem small when compared with recent malware outbreaks where millions of desktops are infected. It is important to keep in mind that, in this case, each infected system is a server. These usually offer services to numerous users and are equipped with far more resources in terms of bandwidth, storage and computation power than normal personal computers. A denial of service attack or a spam-sending operation using one thousand servers is going to be far more effective than the same operation performed with the same number of desktop computers.

For more information and the complete sorry click the source link below.

Source: Ars Technica  

Sprint poised to become ‘king of data speed’

The TDD spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band that Sprint acquired from Clearwire last summer is “a powerful resource for Sprint to catch up to its competitors” and can enable the United States’ third-largest mobile operator “to provide super high speed data connections,” according to a report from Strategy Analytics.

The report, written by Guang Yang, Strategy Analytics’ senior analyst for wireless networks and platforms, further notes that Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum is key to enabling the operator to become the “king of data speed.”

In February, Sprint along with Nokia Solutions and Networks demonstrated that a single sector of a TD-LTE network can deliver data throughput of 2.6 Gbps. In the test, 120 MHz of Sprint’s 2.5 GHz TDD spectrum was aggregated to achieve what the companies claim is a TD-LTE speed record. Sprint has said it owns around 120 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in 90 percent of the top 100 U.S. markets.

“Sprint plans to deploy 2×20 MHz carrier aggregation in 2014 and 3×20 MHz carrier aggregation by EOY 2015. This should help Sprint to build strong momentum as a future LTE-Advanced competitor,” said Strategy Analytics.

However, the research firm’s report may not have been issued at the most opportune time for Sprint. The FCC has been reviewing the spectrum screen it uses when assessing industry mergers and acquisitions and whether spectrum caps are needed in the upcoming 600 MHz auctions in order to equalize spectrum holdings among U.S. mobile operators.

In both cases, Sprint has contended that its vast holdings of 2.5 GHz BRS and EBS spectrum should be not be compared directly to lower band spectrum held by the nation’s two largest operators, AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless. For example, in February, Sprint proposed the FCC adopt a “weighted wireless broadband spectrum screen” that would accord perceived competitive advantages to spectrum under 1 GHz.

“It should surprise no one that this approach would basically relieve Sprint from almost any meaningful spectrum aggregation constraints while effectively foreclosing AT&T from acquiring additional spectrum it needs to meet customers’ needs,” wrote Joan Marsh, AT&T vice president of federal regulatory, in a blog post last week.

Similarly, in an ex parte filing with the FCC last week, Verizon wrote: “Despite having no factual basis for continuing to exclude the majority of the 2.5 GHz spectrum, Sprint continues to argue for its exclusion in large part because it controls almost all of it. As a result, Sprint has, on average, nearly twice as much spectrum as Verizon Wireless.”

Meanwhile, Strategy Analytics also heralded Sprint’s Spark program, which was launched in October 2013. The tri-band LTE service employs the operator’s FDD LTE network in its 800 MHz and 1.9 GHz spectrum and its TD-LTE network in its 2.5 GHz spectrum, aggregating TD-LTE carriers in the 2.5 GHz band  to deliver 50-60 Mbps download data speeds. Sprint offers the technology in parts of 14 markets today and plans to bring the technology to the top 100 U.S. markets within three years. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has said Sprint Spark could eventually offer real-world speeds of 150-180 Mbps.

According to Strategy Analytics: “The inherent tight interworking between LTE TDD and FDD enables Sprint to implement an integrated FDD/TDD network and to simultaneously provide both network coverage and capacity. LTE FDD at the lower frequency bands can provide nationwide coverage, while LTE TDD at the higher frequency band offers very high data speed throughput.”

In addition to supporting active handovers and session continuity between 800 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2.5 GHz bands, Sprint Spark could also enable more advanced functions, including support for real-time load balancing and traffic steering. “These two features would both increase the capacity of Sprint’s whole network and improve user experience over both FDD and TDD systems,” according to Strategy Analytics.

The research firm also recommended that operators worldwide look to Sprint Spark or the hybrid LTE network deployed in Japan by Sprint’s majority owner SoftBank for reference models “showing how to use TDD spectrum to complement LTE FDD by boosting data speed and capacity.”

Source: Fierce Wireless

Five reasons Microsoft could become a top Android smartphone company

I thought this article brought up some good points and thought I would share it here.

1) Microsoft already makes major profits from Android.
How much? Thanks to its patent agreements, Microsoft may have made as much as $3.4 billion in 2013 from Android sales. If it wasn’t for its Android patents, the analyst firm Nomura thinks Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division (EDD), which covers Xbox, Windows Phone and Skype would actually lose $2-billion dollars a year!

With its forthcoming Nokia acquisition, Microsoft could make ten times that much from its own Android smartphones. Also, unlike its potential Android competitors, Microsoft won’t have to pay its own patent fees. That automatically makes each MS-Android phone more profitable for Microsoft than an equivalent device for say Samsung.

Thinking of the Android phone powerhouse, Samsung owns the Android smartphone market the way Microsoft controls the PC market. Microsoft is one of the few companies with the resources to go toe-to-toe with Samsung. All it needs is to commit to a mobile operating system that people wants.

2) Android already owns the market.
The smartphone OS that everyone wants is Android. IDC’s latest fourth-quarter ranking shows Android has more than 78 percent of the worldwide smartphone market.. Between Android and IOS, the powerful mobile OS pair has 95 percent of the market.

I don’t care how much you may like some Windows Phones, they’re not selling. It’s been over a year now Windows Phone 8 was introduced, and it’s still not making serious inroads on either Android or iOS.

3) MS-Android has unique advantages over its competitors.
Ask anyone who makes Android phones what their biggest marketing problem is and they’ll tell that’s it’s trying to get their devices to stand out from their competitors. So, they add bloatware, which customers usually hate, or they paint on their own custom interface, which really doesn’t look that different from anyone else’s front-end.

What’s a company to do? Well, if you’re Microsoft, it can offer customers, Outlook instead of Gmail; Office 365 over Google Docs; and OneDrive, formerly SkyDrive, in place of Google Drive. Get the idea?

Microsoft has real software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) alternatives to Google’s offerings. While I have no love for Microsoft’s applications, there are hundreds of millions of users who have been using Outlook and Office since they first used a computer. A lot of them would love to use the apps they’ve known since they were kids on a widely-supported platform such as Android.

4) Lower development costs.
I don’t know how much Microsoft is spending on building Windows Phone 9, but it’s got to be north of a hundred million. How much does it cost to build Android? Oh wait, Microsoft doesn’t have to spend a thin dime on creating Android! Google, and other open-source developers, are the ones picking up the tab to build the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

5) More apps, more developers
Android also already has a huge number of developers and existing applications. In fact, the Google Play store already has a million apps. Windows Phone? It probably just crossed over 200,000 apps. The Android developers are out there, it won’t cost them much money or time to bring their apps to MS-Android.

Presto! For far less money, Microsoft cuts its internal development costs and opens its doors to tens of thousands of new developers and hundreds of thousands of new programs.

ZD Net