Zoran Stosic | IT newspaper

Firefox is headed to iOS, browser restrictions be damned

December 9th, 2014 | Edited by Zoran Stosic | software

Dec
09

After years of vowing not to bring Firefox to the iPhone and iPad, Mozilla is changing its tune—and is presumably willing to work with Apple’s rules.
“We need to be where our users are so we’re going to get Firefox on iOS,” Mozilla Release Manager Lukas Blakk wrote on Twitter. TechCrunch believes he was paraphrasing Jonathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s Vice President for Firefox, who revealed the plans during an internal company event.
Mozilla isn’t a complete stranger to iOS. Four years ago, the organization released Firefox Home, which synced bookmarks and tabs from other devices but was not a full-fledged browser. Mozilla shut down the app in 2012. While Mozilla now lets users sync their tabs and bookmarks with an online login, iOS users have been left out, potentially making Mozilla less attractive as a whole.

In the past, Mozilla has said that it wouldn’t offer Firefox on iOS because Apple doesn’t allow third-parties to use their own browsing engines. Chrome, for instance, is based off the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari, despite having its own engine called Blink for other platforms. Mozilla has bemoaned thisdominance of WebKit as promoting a “monoculture,” in which mobile webmasters only target WebKit to the exclusion of other browsers and open standards.
Unless Mozilla has a trick up its sleeve, it seems the organization will freeze its anti-Webkit crusade as it tries to win back lost users.
The story behind the story: While celebrating Firefox’s 10-year anniversary last month, Mozilla stressed its newfound emphasis on privacy, with new features like a “Forget” button and support for the DuckDuckGo search engine, which doesn’t track users. For Mozilla, bringing similar features to iPhone and iPad users may be worth adopting Webkit, even if it is a loveless embrace.

Source: www.macworld.com

Sony’s e-paper smartwatch prototype has been hiding in plain sight

December 6th, 2014 | Edited by Zoran Stosic | hardware

Dec
06

On Wednesday 26th Oct, word broke that Sony was working on a smartwatch that eschews the typical LCD screen and instead uses a wrap-around e-paper display. But this wasn’t a hush-hush secret project like what you’d expect from Apple: The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony’s Fashion Entertainments group did little to keep its smartwatch prototype under wraps.
According to the Journal, the Fashion Entertainments team showcased the watch—which it calls the FES Watch—in a campaign on the Japanese crowdfunding site Makuake that launched in September. However, since Sony’s name wasn’t on the campaign, it was able to fly under the radar and look like just another crowdfunding campaign.
The story behind the story: Fashion Entertainments is part of a larger group within Sony, called the New Business Creation Department, whose sole goal is “to draw on internal and external insight to provide a catalyst for innovation and to provide the opportunity for new ideas to transition into successful new businesses.” Sony has lost some of its cool and its reputation as an innovator over the years, and these efforts seem to be an attempt to reclaim some of the company’s dulled luster.

Not ready yet…

The FES Watch wouldn’t be the first e-paper smartwatch, but in a market currently dominated by comparatively bulky—albeit more feature-packed—LCD-based devices, the FES Watch prototype looks to be a bold step in a different direction…assuming the company is bold enough to actually release it to a wider audience, that is.
Although contributors to the crowdfunding campaign can expect to get their own FES Watch in May, according to the Journal, a Sony spokesperson stated Thursday that the company “decline[d] to comment on specifics such as the possible commercialization of this project, or any targeted product launch date.”

Source: www.pcworld.com

Report: Microsoft will unveil Windows 10’s new consumer features in January

December 4th, 2014 | Edited by Zoran Stosic | software

Dec
04

Microsoft will take its Windows 10 message of “much better this time, really” straight to the people in January. Late that month, according to The Verge, Microsoft will hold an event to show off the consumer-oriented features in the upcoming major revision of its Windows operating system.
Microsoft has a lot riding on Windows 10, which is currently in preview. Windows 8’s shocking, take-it-or-leave-it changes caused many users to, well, leave Windows 8 (or not upgrade from prior versions). Windows 10, as far as we’ve seen in its beta iterations, is blending Windows 7 and Windows 8 to ease the experience for upgrading users.

We’re excited about the improvements we’ve seen so far in the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Let’s hope the January event includes the triumphant (and delayed) return of the Start menu, as well as innovations like Continuum, which lets Windows adjust its interface dynamically for tablet or keyboard use.

Source: www.pcworld.com

Syrian Electronic Army posts hacking message on several news sites

December 2nd, 2014 | Edited by Zoran Stosic | software

Dec
02

A hacker group called the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) scared visitors to several news websites by posting rogue pop-up messages saying they’d been hacked.
According to reports from users on Twitter the affected sites included those of CNBC, Forbes, the Chicago Tribune, OK magazine, the Evening Standard, PCWorld, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.
Not all visitors to those sites have seen the pop-up messages, which read “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)” and in many cases the incident was reported by mobile users.
SEA does not appear to have actually hacked the affected websites directly, but instead pulled off the attack through Gigya, a customer identity management platform used by a large number of brands. The group posted a screen shot on Twitter from inside the control panel for the Gigya.com domain at GoDaddy, suggesting that they had control over the account.

The hackers managed to change the DNS (Domain Name System) entries for the Gigya domain, pointing it to messages and images hosted on other servers, reported The Independent, one of the organizations whose website was affected. The issue has now been resolved, the publication said.
“A part of our website run by a third-party was compromised earlier today,” The Telegraphsaid via its Twitter account. “We’ve removed the component. No Telegraph user data was affected.
Gigya did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The screen shot posted by SEA on Twitter was accompanied by a message that read: “Happy thanks giving, hope you didn’t miss us! The press: Please don’t pretend #ISIS are civilians.”
The SEA has used similar DNS hijacking techniques to target news and other organizations in the past, the attacks typically carrying a political message. The group has publicly declared their loyalty to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Apple’s $450 million e-books settlement gets final approval

November 29th, 2014 | Edited by Zoran Stosic | software

Nov
29

A federal judge in New York has given final approval to a settlement in which Apple will pay $450 million for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices for ebooks.
Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan called the settlement “fair and reasonable.” It requires Apple to pay $400 million to consumers who bought certain books between 2010 and 2012, as well as $50 million in attorneys’ fees.
Although the settlement is final, Apple only has to pay that amount if it loses its appeal of a 2013 price-fixing ruling. If the appeal is successful, Apple will pay only $50 million to ebook purchasers and $20 million to attorneys.

A hearing on the appeal is scheduled for Dec. 15 in Manhattan. Lawyers for the ebook buyers have said they “strongly believe” that Apple’s appeal won’t be successful.
The iPhone maker was found guilty last year of conspiring with five big publishers to inflate prices for electronically downloaded books. The publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster—had already settled the charges against them for $166 million.
If Apple’s appeal is unsuccessful, there will be $566 million in total to divide among the affected consumers. They include millions of people who bought certain books from the five publishers between April 2010 and May 2012.
There are more details about who qualifies for the settlement here, although the period when buyers could make a claim ended last month. Those who applied could get $6.54 for each New York Times bestseller they bought. It will be less than a dollar if Apple wins its appeal.

Source: www.pcworld.com

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