by Tom Krazit August 21, 2009
Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting a little help from a very smart friend. Wolfram Alpha and Bing have reached a licensing deal that allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates, according to a source familiar with the deal. The deal was reported earlier by TechCrunch. Representatives from Microsoft and Wolfram Research declined to comment on the deal. Wolfram Alpha's unique blend of computational input and curated output hasn't taken the world by storm, but it is considered an interesting enough take on the business of Internet search to attract high-profile attention within the industry. Wolfram Alpha doesn't return the usual list of links to pages with search keywords, instead providing answers to questions such as stock prices and complex mathematical formulas--with mixed results. Bing, on the other hand, is enjoying a solid start in the three months since it made its debut as it gains users and will at some point be the default search experience on Yahoo's highly trafficked pages following a long-awaited deal. It's not clear whether Bing results will carry Wolfram's branding (i.e., results "Powered By Wolfram Alpha"), but there will be some sort of presence.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Wal-Mart recalls fiery DVD players
by Matt Hickey August 21, 2009
Exploding iPhones are so earlier this week, people. The new scary consumer electronics product that might explode and kill you and your family is the cheap Durabrand DVD player exclusive to Wal-Mart. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of the device, saying the players can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The players retail for less than $30, are made in China, and are full of shrapnel to flay flesh from bone. OK, that last bit was hyperbolic, but still, any Durabrand DVD player bought from Wal-Mart after 2006 can be returned to the nearest store for a full refund. So far 12 out of approximately 1.5 million units have flamed up, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which adds that the fires have caused property damage but no injuries. While 12 problematic devices don't really add up to epidemic-like numbers, it's still troubling knowing yours could be the 13th. Not that I'm fearmongering or anything.
Read more here -->Link
Exploding iPhones are so earlier this week, people. The new scary consumer electronics product that might explode and kill you and your family is the cheap Durabrand DVD player exclusive to Wal-Mart. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of the device, saying the players can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The players retail for less than $30, are made in China, and are full of shrapnel to flay flesh from bone. OK, that last bit was hyperbolic, but still, any Durabrand DVD player bought from Wal-Mart after 2006 can be returned to the nearest store for a full refund. So far 12 out of approximately 1.5 million units have flamed up, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which adds that the fires have caused property damage but no injuries. While 12 problematic devices don't really add up to epidemic-like numbers, it's still troubling knowing yours could be the 13th. Not that I'm fearmongering or anything.
Read more here -->Link
EU's exploding-iPhone investigation heats up
by Matt Hickey August 18, 2009
I'm on my third iPhone (having upgraded twice), and I've also owned an iPod Touch. I loved them all dearly, largely because they never exploded into flames, burning me and my family alive. Just saying. But it seems that other people might not have been so lucky. Numerous reports say the European Commission is now looking into accounts of exploding iPhones and iPod Touches--and Apple is cooperating, according to The New York Times. Apple said "these are isolated incidents," commission spokeswoman Helen Kearns told reporters in Brussels. "They don't consider that there's a general problem." Kearns said the company is seeking more information on the reported incidents and will do necessary tests. Claims of iPhones exploding have surfaced in Britain and France, with at least one person, a teenager, sustaining an eye injury. In addition, KIRO TV in Seattle has turned up 800 pages of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that include cases of burning or flaming iPods. There have been many well-documented cases of laptop batteries bursting into flames, so it's plausible that iPhones could heat up too, given that they use the same (or similar) battery technology.
Read more here -->Link
I'm on my third iPhone (having upgraded twice), and I've also owned an iPod Touch. I loved them all dearly, largely because they never exploded into flames, burning me and my family alive. Just saying. But it seems that other people might not have been so lucky. Numerous reports say the European Commission is now looking into accounts of exploding iPhones and iPod Touches--and Apple is cooperating, according to The New York Times. Apple said "these are isolated incidents," commission spokeswoman Helen Kearns told reporters in Brussels. "They don't consider that there's a general problem." Kearns said the company is seeking more information on the reported incidents and will do necessary tests. Claims of iPhones exploding have surfaced in Britain and France, with at least one person, a teenager, sustaining an eye injury. In addition, KIRO TV in Seattle has turned up 800 pages of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that include cases of burning or flaming iPods. There have been many well-documented cases of laptop batteries bursting into flames, so it's plausible that iPhones could heat up too, given that they use the same (or similar) battery technology.
Read more here -->Link
Facebook phishing app plague may be getting out of control
By Scott M. Fulton, III August 21, 2009
In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again. The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password. Ferguson first noticed the problem on Monday, with two innocuous seeming apps simply called "Posts" and "Streaming," installed by means of a notification labeled, "sex sex sex and more sex." The trick, he believes, is accomplished by redirecting users to a page hosted by the domain "fucabook.com," which his research has uncovered is being hosted within Amazon's EC2 cloud. That URL might appear in the user's browser window while it's running the built-in JavaScript, but the slight differences in spelling might not stay in the address bar long enough to be noticed. That's because the refresh attribute in the malicious page's meta element is having the browser refresh itself almost immediately, pulling up the real Facebook login page.
Read more here -->Link
In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again. The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password. Ferguson first noticed the problem on Monday, with two innocuous seeming apps simply called "Posts" and "Streaming," installed by means of a notification labeled, "sex sex sex and more sex." The trick, he believes, is accomplished by redirecting users to a page hosted by the domain "fucabook.com," which his research has uncovered is being hosted within Amazon's EC2 cloud. That URL might appear in the user's browser window while it's running the built-in JavaScript, but the slight differences in spelling might not stay in the address bar long enough to be noticed. That's because the refresh attribute in the malicious page's meta element is having the browser refresh itself almost immediately, pulling up the real Facebook login page.
Read more here -->Link
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