Can Android apps save Google TV?

Google TV, an ambitious project to bring Google's powerful search tools and targeted advertisement to the television screens of America (and eventually the UK), has been something of a commercial dud.

Logitech's Revue set-top box, the first Google TV device to hit the market just short of one year ago has dropped in price by a whopping 60% to try to spur consumer adoption.

In its first quarter earnings call at the end of July, Logitech said Revue sales were "slightly negative" because customers were returning them in droves. The company said it would endure the financial hit from a lower-priced Revue to "remove price as a barrier to broad customer adoption."

Sony, Google TV's other top-tier partner, has slashed its prices for Google TV equipment too, but has a much rosier outlook on the situation.

Part of the optimism for the platform comes from its nascent ability to run Android apps, and consumer tech companies have been jockeying to get a strong TV-based app ecosystem in place for years.

So it's a big deal that Google this week released a preview of the Google TV add-on for the Android SDK, which will let developers port their Android apps over to Google TV.

With the add-on, developers will be able to set up a Google TV emulator (in Linux with KVM only), and build apps with a "10-foot UI" and D-pad navigation scheme.

"These are still early days for Google TV, and this release is another step in providing developer tools for the big screen. While the number of apps available on TV will initially be small, we expect that through this early release of the add-on you'll be able to bring optimized TV apps into the ecosystem more quickly," Google TV Product Manager Ambarish Kenghe said on Monday.

Apple scoops up Jailbreakme.com developer as intern

Allegra had been searching for an internship while taking some time off from studies at Brown University. Up until recently he had continued to develop the website that thousands have used over the past few years to jailbreak their iOS devices. It appears in the end, however, that he felt like he had to move on.

"It's been really, really fun, but it's also been a while and I've been getting bored," he tweeted. "So, the week after next I will be starting an internship with Apple."

Obviously with Allegra working with the company whose products he's tried to hack for the past several years, Jailbreakme.com would likely be discontinued. It's not too much to expect that some of the first things he'd do in Cupertino is help close the holes he's exploited over the years.

It's a huge blow to the jailbreaking community too -- losing what could be considered one of its most effective hackers.

The practice of hiring those that hack you has been going on for years in the industry. Essentially the thinking is this: since they've been spending so much time exploiting your code, you might as well pay them to do it internally so that you'll be able to catch holes in your software before it is publicly released.

Allegra isn't the first hacker hire for Apple: two months ago the company hired Peter Hajas, who developed the jailbroken app MobileNotifier. It was thought that Hajas helped develop the refined notification system which has become a major part of iOS 5.

Trend Micro Titanium 2012 targets encrypted malware

Malware detection has been improved with some interesting new technologies. Perhaps the most useful of these allows Titanium 2012 products to detect applications that have been packed (encrypted), in an effort to bypass your defenses; once the file has been unpacked, it’s then scanned in real time using file-based signatures, which greatly improves the chance of detection.

Elsewhere, a new Fake AV Cleaner focuses on malware that poses as legitimate security software; proactive botnet detection can uncover even previously unknown botnets and other network threats; and a new Social Network Security module visually identifies safe and malicious links in Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.

Some features previously available in the high-end Titanium Maximum Security suite are now also available in the mainstream Titanium Internet Security. Every Titanium suite now includes the System Tuner, for instance, which optimizes your PC by cleaning up the Registry, hard drive and more.

Titanium Internet Security users now get 2GB of online storage space, courtesy of Trend Micro SafeSync (though Titanium Maximum Security provides a 10GB account).

And there are smaller but still welcome additions throughout the package, including the ability to preserve your privacy by cleaning up cookies, Internet histories, and securely deleting confidential files.

Perhaps the most significant addition, though, is the new Mobile Protection feature which is available with Titanium Maximum Security only. This provides further security software for up to three mobile devices: Android, Symbian, iOS or Windows-based gadgets are supported.

As with previous editions, Titanium 2012 is available in three main varieties: Titanium Antivirus Plus 2012 provides the core antivirus engine, and blocks malicious links; Titanium Internet Security 2012 is the mainstream security suite, and adds a spam filter, parental controls, firewall options, identity theft protection and more; and Titanium Maximum Security 2012 adds social networking protection, wireless hotspot authentication, file encryption, mobile protection and more. And if any you’d like to explore any of this further, trial versions of each package are available now.

10 Years On: Windows 95 Remembered

Over 70,000 people tuned in to watch the launch event live via satellite. The Empire State Building in New York City was even lit up with the Windows 95 logo. Fields in England were also painted with the logo so it could be seen from the air. In Poland, journalists were taken in a submarine to experience "a world without Windows."

The launch was a hit. 20 national magazine cover stories, 13,000 newspaper stories, 800 radio news spots and 2,000 television news segments all covered the arrival of Windows 95, which would usher in a new era in computing.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Windows 95 and relive the excitement, we have collected stories from those who where there to experience the events first hand:

"Windows 95 was launched in a big white tent on the suburban Microsoft campus east of Seattle. The tent held about 1,500 people; some 300 were journalists. I sat with a pack of them, all identifiable by their press badges and shopping bags full of free software.

"At the end of the show, the backdrop was yanked away, revealing two bleachers full of the Windows 95 software team. They were in four groups, each of which wore t-shirts of a single color. The whole created the four-paned window that is the Win95 logo. Then -- kaboom! -- the stage split in half, a way-cool thing to happen. We were supposed to exit through the divided stage and into an aisle between the two bleachers.

"As we trooped out, the software developers began to chant. One bleacher yelled, "Windows!"; the other, "95!" "Windows!" "95!" Anyone who has been to a high school football game gets the idea. As the press filed out, it joined the cry: "Windows! 95!" - Charles C. Mann, Inc.

No HD DVD or Blu-ray in 32-bit Vista

Microsoft disclosed at TechEd 2006 in Sydney Thursday that 32-bit versions of Windows Vista would never support high-definition protected content, including HD DVD and Blu-ray movies. The new formats will require 64-bit systems running the x64 edition of Vista.

The news, first reported by Australian tech publication APC Magazine, may come as a surprise to many Windows users looking to take advantage of the high-definition support with their current hardware. For example, Intel's Core Solo and Core Duo chips -- included in many laptops -- are not 64-bit compatible.

Microsoft attempted to downplay the issue, claiming that by the time HD DVD and Blu-ray had widespread adoption, so would 64-bit systems. The problem, however, is that even with 64-bit processors from Intel and AMD arriving on the market, 64-bit drivers are still few and far between.

x64 editions of Windows require drivers that are signed by Microsoft, which means they have undergone extensive testing. The process is costly for manufacturers, and even common hardware devices such as wireless network cards still lack proper drivers. In turn, few manufacturers ship PCs running the 64-bit operating system.

Microsoft says it had to leave unsigned driver support in 32-bit versions of Vista due to application compatibility problems. Consumers would encounter the same errors and non-working hardware with Vista as they do on x64 editions now if the change was made.

This issue is the core reasoning behind Microsoft disabling the high-definition playback functionality. 32-bit versions of Windows allow unsigned code to be run in kernel mode, which means a piece of software could effectively bypass any copy protection on the discs.

Media companies pushed Microsoft on the matter and asked the Redmond company not to enable playback on 32-bit Windows, said senior program manager Steve Riley during a TechEd session. Riley added that the disc formats themselves would work fine, and only commercially produced movies would fail to play.

Remembering Windows XP The Great Operating system... Shutting down For ever..

Remembering Windows XP The Great Operating system... Shutting down For ever..

Ten years ago today, Aug. 24, 2001, in Redmond Washington, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Jim Allchin, then vice president of the platforms group, officially released to manufacturing Windows XP. The RTM marked a huge achievement for Microsoft, which finally had a consumer operating system based on the NT kernel. Windows XP marked the end of the DOS/Windows 9x legacy and the beginning of a new lineage of Microsoft operating systems, continuing the path paved by Windows 2000 some 18 months earlier.

Dark clouds hung over Windows XP, however. In April 2000, US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Microsoft to be broken into separate desktop software and operating systems companies. A year later, an appeals court rescinded the breakup order but returned the case to a new judge. Some kind of penalty awaited Microsoft.

Meanwhile, the United States was griped in recession, following the dot-com collapse and Enron debacle. PC sales plummeted. If Microsoft was looking for about the worst time conceivable to launch Windows XP, this was it. Gartner sales projections for Windows XP were downright glum, for example.

Microsoft's Pride

But on this sunny day, one where stereotypical Seattle rain threatened to ruin festivities, those dark clouds seemed distant. Gates and Allchin gathered with other Microsoft employees, OEM partners and loads of journalists (Bloggers? Forbid! Not in 2001!) -- there was the ceremonial signing of gold code, placed in a briefcase and flown off by helicopter. Gates and Allchin looked hopeful during the RTM event, like proud fathers sending children off to the first day of school.

Timing was not coincidental. Microsoft had drawn a straight line from August 24 to September 24 to October 25 -- the latter two dates, respectively, when the first Windows XP PCs would go on sale and the software would officially launch in a big gala. That's right, new XP PCs preceded the official release by a month.

Microsoft and its partners planned to spend $1 billion promoting Windows XP. There would be multiple launch events around the globe, with the main one in New York City.

But darker clouds loomed unseen. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists flew highjacked jetliners into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and into the US Pentagon. The collective American psyche entered a period of shock and mourning. An economy already ravaged by recession tumbled into despair. Microsoft couldn't respectively or in any way conceivably continue the big Windows XP launch event as planned.

Event organizers wisely chose to keep New York as the launch venue. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani welcomed Microsoft warmly. The city needed something to cheer the gloom, and revenues and tax sales dollars couldn't hurt either. So Giuliani joined Gates on Oct. 25, 2001, to officially launch Windows XP. There was a muted and respectful celebration. Microsoft's most important operating system ever debuted in the midst of uncertainty -- about America's future, the state of its economy and even Microsoft's fate before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

A Reliable, Workhorse

Windows XP wasn't an exceptional operating system so much as a reliable one. Particularly after the release of Service Pack 2, which was more of a new release than an update, XP found its place as the world's workhorse operating system. SP2 appeared in early August 2004, nearly four years after Windows XP RTM.

"Old Reliable" brought tremendous stability to the PC marketplace. No Microsoft operating system stayed in service so long without a replacement. Two-and-a-half years would pass before successor Windows Vista launched, in separate November 2006 and January 2007 events. By then, Windows XP was so widely used, so widely supported by applications, peripherals and other third-party products, Vista struggled to find support from anybody.

Microsoft made architectural changes that required developers to adapt their applications, but few seemed interested. Why should they? Windows XP's install base was enormous -- the OS paid the bills. Windows Vista was a marketing disaster, and for many reasons, but one of the most overlooked is Windows XP's success. The operating system had achieved the so-called "good enough" threshold, which coupled with the stable ecosystem created a competitive barrier for Vista like earlier Windows versions posed to other developers' operating systems. How ironic!

When Windows 7 shipped in September 2009, more than 80 percent of Microsoft's desktop OS install base was on XP. A stunning achievement.

All this started 10 years ago today.

Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 Comparision

Of these, obviously Windows XP has the weakest security, by far, and Windows XP has the biggest marketshare, too. Globally close to half of all computers still run XP.

And today, Windows XP is ten years old.

Ten years is an eternity in this business. So it's no wonder XP's security architecture is not up to date.

As a result, attackers right now would be stupid to spend their time and money targetting any other operating system. That makes no sense as long as they have this huge, easy low hanging fruit.

Obviously XP is going away. As we can see from this chart, Windows 7 will pass XP in the near future and will become the most common operating system.

And when XP's marketshare drops low enough, attackers need to start looking around. Some will focus on Windows 7. Others will look at OS X, Android, iOS and so on.

The attackers have never had it so good. The easiest target is also the most common target. This can't change quick enough.

Do a good deed today. Uninstall an XP.