That Microsoft update is virus

Security company Sophos has warned users against a fake anti-virus attack that masquerades as Microsoft Update.

According to Sophos, criminals are looking for increasingly convincible ways to persuade consumers to download fake antivirus and copying Microsoft's own security seems to be their latest trap.

"We are seeing the criminals behind fake antivirus continuing to customise their social engineering attacks to be more believable to users and presumably more successful," said Chester Wisniewski on the Sophos blog.

"This week they've started to imitate Microsoft Update." According to Sophos, the drive-by page is an exact replica of the real Microsoft Update page, but only appears on Firefox.

"It only comes up when surfing from Firefox on Windows," said Wisniewski. "The real Microsoft Update requires Internet Explorer."

According to Sophos, the attacks are becoming increasingly complex and targeted and it is time users start considering communications from software providers with the same level of suspicion previously reserved for fake bank emails.

"They use high quality graphics and are using information from UserAgent strings that are sent by the browser to customise your malware experience," Wisniewski said.

"Just like visiting your bank, you should only trust security alerts in your browser if you initiated a check with Microsoft, Adobe, Sophos or any other vendor for updates to their software." 

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New PC? Install these programs right away

’Tis the season for a new computer. Whether Santa sneaked a PC under the tree or you’ve decided to install Windows 7 onto an older machine millions of Americans this month will be booting up a fresh start. What better time to get your computer on a healthy diet of lean but powerful software and to throw out the bloated junk food that comes prein stalled on many machines?
Here are some free pro grams that’ll help your new PC chug along for many winters to come. (Disclaimer: While most of the Monitor’s soft ware suggestions cover both PCs and Macs Apple fans will need to sit this article out.) Clean sweep: A lot of new computers come loaded up with software that you’ll likely never use. This clutter often called bloatware or crapware pays its way onto your PC in the hope that you’ll buy full versions later. However the junk can also bog down your computer. Winnowing out these stowaways should be your first move. PCDecrapifier.com has a free download – $5 donation is suggested – that automatically rounds up many of these unwanted programs and deletes them. Now you really have a clean start.
Free protection: To make sure no other gremlins slip aboard consider downloading security software right away. Forpay software often feels safer but there are several perfectly adequate free options. This year Avast surpassed most antivirus guards as one of the Web’s best. Another cyber superhero Malwarebytes helps sniff out spyware and malicious code. Together the two programs are quite a team.
Getting to the fun part faster: Brand new PCs can be equal parts exciting and bother some. Your (let’s hope) more powerful computer opens up new doors for entertaining software. But the clean slate will demand an afternoon – or per haps an entire weekend – of waiting for programs to install. Ninite.com frees up your day with its setit andforgetit queue. The site has handpicked the best free programs – browsers instant messaging apps and security software (including Avast and Malwarebytes). Click which applications you want and Ninite creates a customised package that downloads and installs each of the programs. —
Times of oman

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Hackers hit Twitter and Facebook

Micro-blogging service Twitter and social networking site Facebook have been severely disrupted by hackers.
Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours whilst Facebook's service was "degraded", according to the firms.
The popular sites were subject to so-called denial-of-service attacks on Thursday, the companies believe.
Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks take various forms but often involve a company's servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them. "Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on the company's blog.
The service was restored shortly after the blog post, but the companies have had to continue to fend off the attack.
Facebook said its service was reduced but not taken offline. "No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users," spokeswoman Brandee Barker told the AFP news agency. "We're continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they've come to expect from Facebook."

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Equations to prevent car crashes by INDIANS

A set of algorithms developed by Indian origin researchers will enable robotic cars to communicate with one another and avoid collisions.

Bhibhya Sharma of the University of South Pacific, headquartered in Fiji, who led the research, said that the series of equations would instruct robotic cars when and how to merge lanes, which could lead to fewer accidents and ease traffic congestion.

Flocking is a biologically inspired technique and a strategy commonly used in robotics. "One of the advantages of flocking is that robots can work together and achieve what would take individuals far longer," he said.

He further explained that each car will be controlled by a centralized brain guided by a series of algorithms to control the car. The brains will talk to each other and instruct the cars to merge lanes and move in formation together.

The team demonstrated the technique using computer simulation and is currently testing it in two wheel robots.

Fellow researcher Utesh Chand said that the cars have targets they move towards and maintain and when the cars find themselves in a merging situation, one of them will be given the position of leader, the rest will follow.

The team has written equations for attraction towards the target, enabling cars to stay inside their lanes and avoid crashing into each other. The challenge now is to allow the robot to automatically plan how to avoid crashing with the side of the road and cars travelling close by.

Sharma and Chand presented these findings at the first Rim Mathematical Association (PRIMA) conference in Sydney, said a University of South Pacific release.

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HTC magic(G2) smartphone that will run on google android

India's first smartphone that will run on Google's open source Android operating system was launched by Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC . HTC Magic, popularly called G2 or the second generation Google phone, has Bharti Airtel as its exclusive carrier.
The phone is priced at Rs 30,000 approximately.
The company has tied up with Bharti Airtel to sell the unlocked HTC Magic Android phone. The exclusive deal spans six months, which means a consumer will have to buy the phone from Airtel even if he wants to run it on a different network. Incidentally, HTC has tied up with Vodafone to sell G1 and G2 in most other regions, including the entire Europe.

G2 or HTC Magic is the successor to the first Google Phone, G1. The device is a sleeker version of G1 sans keyboard.
The HTC Magic also known as the Google G2 is sleek, very slim and light weight. HTC G2 is the latest entrant into the android touch screen smartphone line up of HTC. Its got a great 3.2 inch 320480 pixel touchscreen display.

It will feature the cupcake version of the Android software and will have an onscreen keyboard.

size: The vital statistics of the phone is 11.3 x 5.56 x 1.36 cm.

There is a trackball for scrolling screens with Enter button.

Features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mini USB and GPS. in addition ton accelerometer, HTC G2 has one G Sensor.

MP3 player that supports major audio formats like AAC, AAC+, AMR-NB, MP3, WAV and MIDI.
The phone offers Google apps, including search,

Gmail, GTalk and Google calendar.

The Android interface allows users to mark Gmail messages and assign them to a label or delete them.

Google Android is based on the open source platform for mobile devices.

Using these smartphones, a user can download a wide number of utilities and productivity applications from Android App Store, both priced and for free.

Camera: The HTC Magic sports a 3.2 megapixel with Auto Focus.

There's no Flash. HTC G2 supports only video formats like MP4 and 3GP which are slightly less when compared to the current standard of Android mobiles.

The phone's video recording capabilities allows users to post videos directly on You Tube or share videos with friends via email or MMS.

Battery:HTC Magic offers 512 MB ROM and 288 MB RAM. The phone has an expansion slot for microSD. The rechargeable Li-ion battery with 1340 mAh offers talk time of upto 240 minutes and standby time of up to 120 hours.
For Airtel customers, HTC Magic allows free data download of 100 MB per month for a period of 6 months. Airtel customers can also avail several utility-based applications such as Portfolio Manager, Hello Tune Manager, Weather Channel, Mobshare, In-mobile search and City Search on the Adroid phone.

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Flying car on its way by 2011

The flying car is on its way.An American company Terrafugia Transition, based near Boston, is set to unveil the dual-purpose car-cum-plane vehicle called 'The Flying Car' as early as 2011. The two-seater vehicle can let you fly if you wish to avoid the congested city traffic. If you want to drive on the road, just touch the road. The vehicle will fold up its wings in 30 seconds and transform itself into a car. "The Flying Car" can travel up to 725 kilometres in the air at a speed of more than 115 kilometres per hour. Fuelled by gasoline, it has front wheel drive on the road and a propeller for flight. With its wings folded, it can be parked in your ordinary car garage. Its initial cost is expected to be around $200,000 (nearly Rs.1 crore), says the company which has already orders for 60 vehicles. The CEO of the company told Canadian TV (CTV) network here that they have successfully test-flown "The Flying Car" as many as 28 times. The tests have shown that the vehicle can drive, fly and switch from being a plane to a car in just 30 seconds. "It (testing) has been very successful," Carl Dietrich, co-founder and CEO of Terrafugia, told the television network. " We have got a very good handling vehicle and our test pilot said that the flights were just remarkably unremarkable - it just flies like a really nice, little airplane,” he said. He said this miracle vehicle will ease problems for pilots who currently face problems like weather which sometimes doesn't allow them to take off or land. "This vehicle allows a pilot any time, if the weather changes, to divert to the nearest airport, fold up their wings and drive safely under the weather." "The Transition (the name for "The Flying Car" is not designed to replace the automobile. However, it will solve transportation issues for a variety of circumstances,” company vice president Richard Gersh said. Asked whether the vehicle will be mass produced one day, he said: "That is certainly a possibility, but a number of years away." He said the vehicle will be able travel on ordinary roads. "Our depositors represent a wide-cross section in terms of age, interests, and intended use of the vehicle. We have deposits from both experienced pilots and non-pilots who intend to earn their Sport Pilot certificate," said the vice president of Terrafugia. Set up in 2006, Terrafugia is run by trained aeronautical engineers and MBAs from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
credit: times of india

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Samsung Guru E1107 Solar Guru | Solar Mobile Phone Launched in India

Samsung India has launched their new mobile Guru E1107. It is known as Solar Guru, it is world’s first mobile which work throw solar powered. This mobile Lunched in India. Guru E1107 is allows double charging cellular phone in which solar powered charging is enable along with the typical electric charging. In this mobile, the main source of power will be come from the battery charged by electricity, and when battery become low that time the solar power can be used.One hour of solar charging is providing 5-10 minutes of talk time with another mobile.Before this Samsung has already Blue Earth, which uses solar energy for power in the worldwide marketplace.This phone is design for people in country areas, the phone can also offer to 5-10 minutes of talk-time with one-hour of solar charging. Samsung claims that the battery can reach full power with about 40 hours of solar charging.

Priced-Rs 2799

Features

FM radio

MP3 ring tones

Embedded games

1.52-inch display (screen)

1 MB memory

See more information about this mobile visit following website.http://samsungmobile.com/

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Most firms unaware of Web domain changes

Two thirds of businesses are unaware they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, or .net when Internet domains are liberalised next year, according to a survey. The change would let the likes of Nike or Microsoft control their own domain and better exploit their brands, and also counter cyber-squatters who use variations of brands on the 280 or so existing domain extensions."If you have '.nike', for example, you can create real and specific branded Websites, like 'running.nike' or 'runlondon.nike',
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees domain names, is expected to start taking applications for new top-level domains early next year. Future Laboratory, which conducted the research. But the move is not on the radar of a majority of companies, the survey for Gandi.net found. "(Companies) are generally completely unaware of this change coming down the line,". "This change has not yet permeated into the mainstream for businesses or consumers.""However, those businesses which are aware actually see the prospect as being quite exciting,". The price of $185,000 will initially limit applications to the largest corporations and organisations. ICANN is expecting 300-500 applications when it opens its doors in the first quarter of next year, he said. "You'll see the big global corporations getting there early to own more of their online space," he said."(Owning their domain) could secure a higher level of credibility and recognition."Smaller businesses will be able to use more specific extensions to match their business sector or geography such as ".london" or ".paris", he said.The Future Laboratory surveyed 100 e-commerce managers; 50 from high-street companies and 50 from small and medium businesses online.

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adobe

Adobe Systems Inc had moved Acrobat.com out of public beta testing and have decided to charge subscribers to use the online version of its popular PDF reader software Acrobat.
Adobe will charge $14.99 per month for the basic service, which allows Web meetings for up to five participants and online conversion of 10 uploaded documents to PDF per month.

For the premium plus service, which has meeting capacity for up to 20 people and unlimited online creation of PDF files, Adobe will charge $39 per month.

Five million people have signed up to use Acrobat.com since it was launched in June 2008.

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Apple's latest i phone sold out before launch

Apple's latest edition of the iPhone is matching the popularity of its predecessors. the pre-orders of the phone had sold out, and that customers could face a wait of a week or two after launch day on Friday to get their coveted gizmos. Apple announced the launch of the faster, larger capacity and more capable iPhone 3G S June 8 and gave customers the option of pre-ordering them over the Internet. A 16-gigabyte capacity phone costs $199 with a two-year contract, while the 32GB version costs $299. Apple and AT&T have not revealed how many pre-ordered iPhone 3G S handsets were sold, and some industry watchers think the companies will have a hard time matching the iPhone 3G's launch, which sold more than a million units in three days when it launched last year.

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World's First solar-powered mobile phone(Solar Guru)

Samsung launched the world's first solar-powered mobile phone, priced at Rs 2,799 in the Indian market. The handset, 'Solar Guru' (Guru E1107) enables users to charge the battery using solar energy. The handset has the capacity to provide around 5-10 minutes of talk time with one hour of solar charging. This is apart from the normal electric charging.
Features : FM radio, MP3 ring tones, embedded games and torch light.
The handsets would be imported from Korea and will be available in the Indian market from the middle of this month. The company plans to extend the solar-power feature to its other handsets and would use the technology in its high-end phones as well.
Samsung Blue Earth is a a pebble-shaped, solar-powered touchscreen phone, which was showcased by the company at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona. The company claims that the handset is free from harmful substances such as beryllium and phthalates, and is made out of recycled material.

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MIcrosoft new search engine BING

In Chinese, it means a certain answer, or response to a query. It is also short, easy to spell and say and more attractive than ‘Live Search.’ And so Bing was born.
Microsoft unveiled its new search engine called Bing ( www.bing.com) recently in a bid to muscle its way into the Google-dominated world of search.

According to the Microsoft’s research, the results for 50 per cent of the queries do not satisfy users, who end up abandoning or refining their search effort.
In an attempt to make the user’s life simpler, Bing “has been designed to meet the needs of today’s searchers who are using search for purposes beyond ten blue links on a page.The features highlighted have two aims — making search easier and more organised.
For instance, the autosuggest feature that guesses what you are trying to type, or the ‘document preview’ which lets you hover over the search result and see a preview of the site’s content, are features that make the searching process simpler.

Instant answers :
The ‘Best Match’ is an attempt to reduce the number of clicks, by trying to provide the relevant information for your query up front. In case of direct queries, the ‘instant answers’ feature does what its name indicates — say, you are searching for a flight number, the recent flight information will be displayed up front.
‘Quick Tabs’ is a feature that helps make search more organised.
The video search also provides a preview if you hover over a particular result. And instead of navigating from one page to another all results are offered in an ‘infinitely’ scrolling page.
Bing also offers image, news and map-based search.

Helping travellers :
It has also identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas of particular focus. Bing Travel, which has already been launched, offers tools and and features to help travellers make ‘more informed decisions.’ In the Indian context, though it comes up with flight and hotel information relating to the country, the prices are listed in dollars, which seems to indicate that it is not exactly tuned to the local market as of now.

Beta version : Bing now is in its Beta version.

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Apple unveils new iPhone

Apple aims to make hot-selling iPhones even more appealing, premiering a speedier new model complete with a video camera and slashing the price of its predecessor to 99 dollars. Apple vice president of marketing Phil Schiller made the announcements Monday at an annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The new iPhone 3GS, the first model to capture video, will be available on June 19. “The ‘S’ stands for speed, this is the most powerful iPhone ever made by iphone.

Entirely new Features includes, a 16-gigabyte iPhone 3GS would cost 199 dollars while the 32-gigabyte model would cost 299 dollars. The price of an original eight-gigabyte iPhone 3G dropped to 99 dollars from 199 dollars as of Monday. Schiller also said a next-generation iPhone 3.0 operating system will be released worldwide on June 17 as a free upgrade to owners of the smartphones. Apple also reported it has sold more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices, which are essentially iPhones without mobile phone capabilities. Sales of applications for the devices reportedly passed a billion in April.

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Nokia N97, the touchscreen phone

The world's largest cellphone maker Nokia has launched its new top-of-the-range smartphone model N97. New model would go on sale in more than 75 countries in Jun.

The sleek handset pairs a 3.5 inch touchscreen with a QWERTY keyboard.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard is a full 3-row. The smartphone transforms from a

touch slate to a landscape QWERTY device. There's a tilting touchscreen display and

a customisable home screen that can be personalised with widgets

It offers :

1)A strong 32GB memory with microSD for adding 16GB more (making it a staggering 48GB)

2) 5 megapixel camera (with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash), support for

Nokia's N-Gage gaming system and handwriting recognition.

Features : A 3.5mm headset jack, microUSB port used for syncing and charging, Haptic feedback and 1500 mAh battery.

It runs on S60, the latest version of Nokia's Symbian operating system.

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Scientist Barry John Developed a software to change sex

A software has been developed by computer scientist Barry John Theobald at the University of East Anglia in the UK and Iain Matthews, formerly at Carnegie Mellon University and now at Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand. They claim that they can change the sex of a person on a computer by taking a live video feed of a person talking. In fact, according to the scientists, the software can take a live video feed of a person talking and make them look and sound like somebody else. During resaerch , the scientists recorded video of volunteers performing 30 different facial expressions such as frowning, smiling and looking surprised. For each expression, the positions of key facial features, such as the eyes, nose and corners of the lips, were manually labelled. That annotated footage was used to "train" software to recognise the face of each individual featured in the set. Once trained on a person in this way, it can closely track every move of their face in video footage. Those movements can then be transferred onto the face of another "known" person by calculating how the recipient's features need to change to take on each new expression.

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Nokia 6208 classic

Nokia has launched its first Series 40 touch-input device in India.

Features:

A pen input along with an alphanumeric keypad and handwriting recognition features.

A 2.4-inch QVGA display,

3.2 mega-pixel camera with dual LED flash,

8x digital zoom, Stereo MP3 player and FM radio,

64 MB internal user memory (13 MB free) and a 5-way navi-key.

It supports optional microSD cards up to 8GB.

Larger fonts for messaging and browsing as well as viewing pictures and web pages.

It supports tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz).

Accessories : Bluetooth headset, and mini speakers.

Talk time : 3.5 hours and a standby time of 300 hours.

Video playback time :4 hours, video recording time is 2.5 hours

Music playback time : 11 hours.

contacts:2000 can be stored

Material:Stainless steel .

:The music player supports MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+ file formats.

Price: Rs 13,259 approximately.

Color: Titanium Grey colour.

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Hyundai motor india has won five star NCAP rating

Hyundai Motor India ltd said its premium hatchback, the i20, has been awarded the five-star NCAP rating for safety by the European New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP).
The i20's five-star rating is recognition for class leading safety and performance.The i20 five-door model scored exceptionally well on all four parameters of the NCAP safety test which assess newly launched cars on four main criteria of safety -- adult occupancy, child protection, pedestrian protection and safety assist. The i20 received an average score of 80.25 per cent, the highest among the six models assessed under the new NCAP rating scheme.The car is manufactured at the company's manufacturing facility in Sreeperumbedur and is exported to the European Union and other countries and also sold in the domestic market.

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Ovi store,nokia internet services

Ovi Store is Nokia's market for Internet services where users can share photos with friends, buy music and access third-party applications. The countries to first gain access to Nokia Ovi include Australia, Singapore, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ireland and UK

Users can register at store.ovi.com through their Nokia device browsers to download applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services. A user can get to the Ovi Store by going to store.ovi.com on either his PC or Nokia mobile phone. If a user clicks on a piece of content on his PC, the store will send his phone a text message with a link. The user clicks on the link in his phone's messaging programme, which will send him to a WAP site. Now he needs to click download and go through a log-in screen.

for further details visit:

http://ovi.nokia.com/services/discover/intro?lid=TakeTour&lang=en-GB

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Online game on swine flu

A new casual online game on Swine Flu – a pandemic that wrecked havoc across the globe killing hundreds of people in Mexico – Swine Flue Killer.The game is available in its online gaming portal www.onlinerealgames.com .

To play this game, all a gamer needs to do is vaccinate as many patients as possible in time, kill the virus, save patients and become a Swine Flu Killer. To vaccinate a patient, simply click on the patient with the mouse. The more quicker a gamer's movements are while clicking on the patients, the more points he gains.

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Viva land '' Deserving the best"

Within the range of its unique and exclusive client services, Viva today launches a new service - Viva Land, which is one in a long series of innovative, communicative and entertainment services that are the gateway to a more comprehensive range of content services which comprises a variety group of educational, interactive and recreational services via SMS and MMS.

Viva PR & Communications Manager, Hind Al-Nahedh says that the new package of services introduced would meet the needs of clients, 'deserving the best',
Viva's VAS new content launch would enable clients to choose their best service categories, which includes news casts from CNN and BBC and also from Arabic channels such as Al-Jazeera both in Arabic and English, in addition to local and international news bulletins.
It also offered weather, sports, business, entertainment and other reports.
Recitations from the Holy Quran, prayers, hymns
A vast collection of services such as consultancies, prayer timings, daily talk, daily du'aa, programs such as 'In the Realm of Allah' and 'In the Realm of the Prophet',
Quranic interpretations in addition to a wide range of religious additions comprising religion-inspired background displays, mosques, recitations of hymns and verses of the Holy Quran.
It also offeres artistic services for ladies through which women would be able to receive daily tips on the mobile in various spheres of interest. 'Moreover, the launch also included entertainment and amusement services, which comprised movie videos, comic strips, sports footages, documentaries and other many other services, and clients would be able to forward any of these items to family members and friends, which made the launch yet more exclusive and unique.

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