Samsung Galaxy S III: First Impressions

Finally! The Samsung Galaxy S III has been launched in India, at the Samsung Galaxy S III World Tour event in New Delhi today.

The Galaxy S III, as Samsung's flagship, is the first phone from the Korean giant's stables to be powered by the quad-core Exynos 1.4GHz processor, coupled with 1GB of RAM. The 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display comes with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.

The S III model launched in India is the 16GB version, with the card slot allowing you to expand that by 64GB more. The 8MP camera has burst mode, and offers the suggestion of what it thinks is the “Best Picture”. Samsung say it has zero shutter lag, but we will believe it when we test it.

Amidst all the excitement, we managed to spend some time with the phone, and here is what we feel:
 

• The Galaxy S III feels very classy. All the complaints of it being “plasticky”, well, we don’t believe in them anymore. Okay, the material used is plastic, but it does have a classy, solid and premium feel to it. The phone that we got to check out was the Marble White one. The enamel white finish was extremely good, with a dollop of shine to it.
   
• Excellent to hold and use, and undoubtedly has a premium feel to it. The 4.8-inch display means it falls straight in the “big-screen” category, but we didn’t think it was either too big or uncomfortable to use with the same hand holding it.
   
• The power key as well as the volume rocker are on either side spine. The micro USB port is on the bottom. Flip the phone over, and there is the 8MP camera along with the LED flash, placed towards the upper half. However, this is a lot more comfortable placement (while taking a video, with the camera in landscape mode) than some phones offer, for example, the Sony Xperia S.
   
• Speaking of which, the display is absolutely fantastic. Carrying forward the trend set by the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Note, the S III’s display is extremely vivid. We felt it was crisper as well, when compared to the predecessors. We shall confirm that once we test the S III in detail.
   
• A lot of work has gone into the TouchWiz UI. It is a lot more appealing now, visually. Also, the widgets behave in a different way. You will be able to see in the screenshots (further below) as well as the hands-on video what we are talking about. An addition to this is also the S-Suggest widget, that refreshes to offer you more apps based on your preferences.

What we need to use and test in detail are the features like S-Voice, the burst mode of the camera as well as Smart Stay. With S-Voice, Samsung has an Apple’s Siri-esque voice assistant on the phone. The company says that it works well with Indian accents as well. The demos indicated that it did, but we will test that in greater detail. Smart Stay is the feature that allows you to use the phone and not worry about the display turning off in the middle of reading something important.

Samsung has priced the Galaxy S III at Rs. 43,180. It should be available in stores from today, but that is only for the Marble White version. The Pebble Blue version will be hitting stores in India sometime next week.

Do check out images of the Galaxy S III, with our observations, below:

Smart Stay feature can be enabled or disabled.

Some say it is plasticky, but the finish and feel is premium

The apps menu

How it looks from the front

The S-Suggest widget

The touch sensitive keys have a classy white backlight

Touchwiz has been slightly tweaked- 1

Touchwiz has been slightly tweaked -2

Unlocking the display

Very sleek and slim form factor

Even the app list menu can do the multiple home screen jig!

How widgets react on the home screen

More details about the S III

 

Motion control settings menu

(courtesy:thinkdigit.com)

Hotspot Shield Comes To Android, Keeps Your Mobile Browsing Secure

With mobile phones becoming a bigger and bigger target for would-be data thieves, it's important to make sure your information is safe. On Thursday, Anchorfree released the Android version of Hotspot Shield, giving Android users another tool for protecting themselves.

The app (which is available for download from the Google Play Store) uses a VPN to encrypt a user's browsing session over Wi-Fi. Hotspot Shield for Android will also encrypt other apps as well, theoretically plugging any data leaks that could be occurring due to a poorly written application. Extremely useful for when you're browsing over a public hotspot and aren't sure who could be listening in.

Anchorfree has told me that the app will work on all Android phones running version 2.0 or higher, and that the app also includes built-in compression software to reduce the amount of data you use. The company claim that Hotspot Shield's compression capabilities will allow you to double the amount of web content you can access with your current data plan, but I have yet to test its claims to see if they hold true. Expect a full review of the application in the coming weeks.

If you want to learn more about Anchorfree and its app, you can check out the company's website or download the app yourself from the Play Store. It is a paid service, but you can try it out the free version (that doesn't include the compression capabilities) before deciding whether it's for you or not.

(courtesy:pcworld.com)

Google's World Wonders Project Brings Ancient, Modern Sites Online

Want to take a trip to Stonehenge? How about Versailles?

While many of us can't hop on plane to visit those places, thanks to Google's new World Wonders Project they’re just a mouse click away.

The project allows you to virtually tour 132 historic sites in 18 countries. Sites include Stonehenge, Pompei, Shark Bay in Australia, Yosemite National Park and the palace at Versailles.

From the World Wonders home page, you can choose a virtual tour by location or by theme.

Once you arrive at a site, you can immerse yourself in it. You can "walk" around using Google's Street View technology. Since automobiles weren't allowed in some of the sites in World Wonders, Google had to use cameras mounted on tricycles to create street views of the locales, the company explained in a blog.

In addition to taking a ground-level tour of a site, you can display information about it with a click.

On some sites, you can also look at 3D models of the locale, watch videos about it and see photos of it, some of them gleaned from sources such as Getty Images and Ourplace.

A number of education guides for about a half-dozen of the sites in the project are also offered for students at World Wonders.

World Wonders was developed under the auspices of the Google Cultural Institute, which, in the past, has brought to the Internet such gems as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the archives of Nelson Mandela.

(courtesy:pcworld.com)

Cricket Wireless Brings iPhone to its Prepaid Network

Remember the days when you could only get the iPhone on AT&T? My, how things have changed. Cricket Wireless has announced that it will bring the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S on its prepaid network. This is the first time the iPhone has been offered on a prepaid carrier.

That means you’ll have to shell out a little more for the iPhone since it won’t be subsidized. When the phones go on sale June 22, a 16GB iPhone 4S will cost $500 and an 8GB iPhone 4 will cost $400. Before your jaw drops at those prices, take into consideration how cheap Cricket’s plan is: $55 per month for unlimited voice, SMS and data. Calling the data unlimited is a little misleading, however: you must stay within Cricket’s faire usage policy of 2.3GB of data a month.

Since Cricket’s plan is prepaid, you won’t get slapped with surprise post-paid, usage-based fees as you might on a contract carrier. If the prepaid model appeals to you, but you’ve never been too thrilled with the current prepaid phones out there, this will be good news for you. Just be sure to check where Cricket’s coverage is as it doesn’t cover all of the United States.

(courtesy:pcworld.com)

RIM sinks, but patents, network have value

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, is in steep decline. The company, once the crown jewel of the Canadian technology industry, is now worth 1 percent of Apple's market capitalization. One way for RIM to stop the downward tailspin: It could sell itself to a competitor or financial firm. But who would step up to buy RIM —and why?

Late Tuesday, the company said it expects to post an operating loss for the current quarter, a sign that BlackBerry sales are falling even faster than analysts expected. On Wednesday, the company's stock hit its lowest level since 2003, the year RIM went from making two-way e-mail pagers to smartphones.

The stock has fallen 93 percent since their peak in 2008. Since then, the BlackBerry's dominance as the smartphone for on-the-go business people has been eviscerated by Apple Inc.'s iPhone, and more recently, by phones running Google Inc.'s Android software. Research firm IDC says BlackBerrys now account for 6.4 percent of the global smartphone market, a third of what they had two years ago.

In that time, the company's financial performance has suffered. RIM reported a 25 percent revenue decline in the latest fiscal quarter, to $4.2 billion from $5.6 billion. For the full fiscal year that ended on March 3, it earned $1.2 billion, or $2.22 per share, on revenue of $18.4 billion. That's down from net income of $3.4 billion, or $6.34 a share, on revenue of $19.9 billion in fiscal 2011.

RIM issued the dire warning about its business Tuesday, adding that it will lay off a "significant" number of employees.

Still, the company is defiant. Chief executive, Thorsten Heins, says he can turn things around with the help of fresh smartphone software. Heins joined RIM four years ago and was most recently its chief operating officer. He replaced co-CEOs Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis in January after the company lost tens of billions in market value.

"My charter from the board of directors is very clear: long-term value creation with RIM," Heins told The Associated Press in an interview at the company's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, earlier this month.

Analysts give RIM only a slight chance of coming out of the crisis. To hedge its bets, the company has hired bankers to look at its options. It's not actively looking to sell itself, Heins said, but it wants to be prepared.

"We are prudent because we know the situation is somewhat challenging," Heins said. "So we are just looking at everything that could be an option. That doesn't mean we are pulling on those options. But we need to understand ... what is our field of action that we could take in case we need to?"

As RIM's prospects worsened, last year marked a turning point in the way analysts assess RIMs value. Instead of treating it like a company with a future, they started looking at it as a collection of parts that could be split up and sold separately to the highest bidder.

Michael Walkley at Canaccord Genuity believes most of the company's value lies in the monthly fees it gets from phone companies in exchange for running the systems that deliver email and Web pages to BlackBerrys.

RIM has 78 million users connected to this system, but Walkley estimates that only 20 million are corporate and government users who are likely to stick around because of the communications security RIM provides. The rest are consumers who will jump to competing phones, he believes. That business is worth about $2.75 billion to a competitor, Walkley wrote in a research report Wednesday.

The other major component of RIM's value is its patent portfolio. The company had an early scare in U.S. patent courts in 2006, when it was forced to pay $612.5 million to a small company founded by an inventor who had patents on wireless e-mail delivery. Since then, it's filed for thousands of patents to use as a defense against future suits.

Patents on wireless technologies exploded in value last year, as Apple and Microsoft Corp. started suing makers of phones that run Google's Android software. Countersuits followed. A consortium that included Apple and RIM bought the patents of a defunct Canadian maker of telecommunications gear, Nortel, for $4.5 billion last year. That compares with the $1.13 billion Nortel's once-prominent wireless networks business fetched in 2009.

As a counter-move, Google bolstered its own patent portfolio by buying Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., a U.S. phone maker with only slightly better prospects than RIM, for $12.5 billion.

Where does that leave RIM? Christopher Marlett, the CEO of MDB Capital, said RIM's patents are worth more than $1 billion, and could be worth as much as $4 billion if a bidding war develops between Apple, Google, Microsoft Corp. and perhaps Samsung Electronics Co.

"It's a question of how aggressive they get," Marlett said. His firm is an investment bank that focuses on intellectual property, including patents.

Walkley puts the value of RIM's portfolio at $2.5 billion, excluding the patents RIM bought from Nortel and shares with Apple, Microsoft and other buyers.

RIM has $2.1 billion in cash, but Walkley discounts this completely, since the phone business will likely start using up cash soon, and downsizing will require severance payments. That means the email network and the patents comprise RIM's entire value at $5.25 billion, by his estimate.

That's very close to RIM's current market capitalization, at $5.4 billion, though a buyer could be expected to pay a premium.

The cash cushion also means that RIM is in no imminent danger of going bankrupt. But as the shares decline, RIM is likely to face increasing pressure from shareholders to unlock the company's value through a sale, and to abandon the comeback plan.

A possible middle ground would be to sell the patent portfolio while keeping the rest of the company. Two months ago, AOL, once a pioneering Internet service provider, sold and licensed its patents —which are more modest than RIM's for $1 billion— to Microsoft.

Microsoft is one company that's been suggested as a potential RIM buyer. The software juggernaut is trying to get back into smartphone software, but its Windows Phones haven't been popular so far. Buying RIM could give it a chance to establish itself as a provider of trusted wireless email services, though moving subscribers from BlackBerry to Windows could be challenging.

(courtesy:news.yahoo.com)

Flame virus a new age cyber spy tool

The Flame computer virus that smoldered undetected for years inMiddle Eastern energy facilities confirmed fears that the world has entered a new age of cyber espionage and sabotage.

Internet defenders on Wednesday were tearing into freshly exposed Flame malware (malicious software) that could be adapted to spread to critical infrastructures in countries around the world.

While the components and tactics of Flame were considered old school, the gigantic virus's interchangeable software modules and targeted nature were evidence that malware is a potent weapon in the Internet era.

"We are seeing much more specific types of malware and attacks," said McAfee Labs director of security research David Marcus.

"When you talk about a situation where the attacker knows the victim and tailors the malware for the environment it jumps out," he said. "That speaks to good reconnaissance and an attacker who knows what they are doing."

Gathering intelligence on targets and then crafting viruses to exploit specific networks as well as the habits of people using them is "certainly in vogue" and is an attack style heralded by the Stuxnet malware, Marcus said.

Stuxnet, which was detected in July 2010, targeted computer control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens and commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other critical infrastructure.

Most Stuxnet infections were discovered in Iran, giving rise to speculation it was intended to sabotage nuclear facilities there, especially the Russian-built atomic power plant in the southern city of Bushehr.

Suspicion fell on Israel and the United States, which have accused Iran of seeking to develop a weapons capability under the cover of a civilian nuclear drive. Tehran denies the charges.

"Stuxnet and Duqu belonged to a single chain of attacks, which raised cyberwar-related concerns worldwide," said Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Lab, which uncovered Flame.

"The Flame malware looks to be another phase in this war, and it's important to understand that such cyber weapons can easily be used against any country."

Flame malware was larger than Stuxnet and protected by multiple layers of encryption.

It appears to have been "in the wild" for two years or longer and prime targets so far have been energy facilities in the Middle East.

High concentrations of compromised computers were found in the Palestinian West Bank, Hungary, Iran, and Lebanon. Additional infections have been reported in Austria, Russia, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.

Compromised computers included many being used from home connections, according to security researchers who were looking into whether reports of infections in some places resulted from workers using laptops while traveling.

While Stuxnet was crafted to do real-world damage to machinery, Flame was designed to suck information from computer networks and relay what it learned back to those controlling the virus.

Flame can record keystrokes, capture screen images, and eavesdrop using microphones built into computers.

In an intriguing twist, the malware can also use Bluetooth capabilities in machines to connect with smartphones or tablets, mining contact lists or other information, according to security researchers.

"There is lot of intelligence gathering and espionage-like behavior from the malware," Marcus said. "You can turn that to target any industry you want.

"It looks like the infection spread is specific to Middle East, but malware is indiscriminate in a lot of things so it can jump," he continued.

Marcus advised companies to not only keep network software up to date but to ratchet up security settings because threats such as Flame are carefully crafted to "fly under the radar."

For example, Flame reportedly sneaked back out to the Internet by activating a seemingly innocuous Internet Explorer online browsing session.

Geographically targeted cyber espionage and even modular components in viruses have been around for years, Rik Ferguson of security firm Trend Micro said in his blog at countermeasures.trendmicro.eu.

Flame stands out for being a malware behemoth of nearly 20 megabytes and for its use of Bluetooth capabilities, according to Ferguson, who branded the malware a tool, not a weapon.

"You can't get around the fact that the thing is gigantic," Marcus said. "Someone went to a lot of trouble to really confound researchers. We are going to be ripping this sucker apart for a long time to figure everything it was doing."

(courtesy:news.yahoo.com)

The White House's Next Enemy: Botnets

The Obama administration has picked its next digital target: Botnets, networks of computers that hackers can aim at a single website, overloading it with illegitimate traffic and knocking it offline -- all unbeknownst to the owners of the computers involved.

To fight against botnets, the White House has endorsed a voluntary plan built around principles developed by the Industry Botnet Group, or IBG, a group of telecom non-profit and trade organizations.

Some of the group's recommendations include coordinating anti-botnet efforts across different sectors and countries, single firms sharing lessons learned with other businesses and respecting the privacy of Internet users during anti-botnet operations.

"The issue of botnets is larger than any one industry or country," White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said in a statement. "This is why partnership is so important. The principles the IBG are announcing today draw on expertise from the widest range of players, with leadership coming from the across the private sector, and partnering with the government on items like education, consumer privacy and key safeguards in law enforcement."

Additionally, the "Stop, Think, Connect" campaign, sponsored by several companies including Microsoft, PayPal and Google, also took the opportunity to announce a joint educational effort with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Homeland Security. Called the "Keep a Clean Machine" campaign, the program aims to teach average computer users and businesses how to avoid, detect and get rid of botnets and other malicious code.

The White House also said that the FBI and Secret Service had "stepped up private sector information sharing," which led to the successful elimination of botnet networks. Meanwhile, a financial industry organization announced a plan to share information about botnet attacks with firms outside the financial sector.

Computer security firm McAfee said that nearly five million computers worldwide have taken part in botnet attacks.

(courtesy:news.yahoo.com)