Predictions for Google’s Android in 2013: Freedom for All!

At the start of 2012 the folks at Google were seeing their beloved Android mobile operating system being used on more iPhone clones than we’d care to discuss – near the turn-over to 2013, big manufacturers like Samsung and HTC have made their own hero lines the likes of which Android has never known. What we saw in 2012 was recognition of the model that has worked for Apple extremely well since all the way back in 2007 – a focus on the ecosystem rather than on the individual specifications of any one device. This will continue in a very big way through 2013 with manufacturers holding up a single torch – like the Motorola RAZR brand – to keep themselves lit up brightly.

Motorola will continue to produce devices exclusive to Verizon with the DROID RAZR name attached: this branding has kept them in the limelight for the past couple of years. Samsung will stick with the Galaxy branding (as they have for more than just a couple of years) and will continue to run with the branding (and with the iPhone mocking) through the foreseeable future with both the Samsung Galaxy IV and the Samsung Galaxy Note III. HTC brought the fire in 2012 with their HTC One series (starting with the hero HTC One X) but didn’t exactly see the massive sales they’d hoped for – because of this, HTC’s strategy for 2013 remains a bit hazy.

LG made two fantastic decisions – or were granted the ability to go through with them, however it ended up going – the first being a team-up with Qualcomm for the Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core processor for their Optimus G smartphone. While they’ve not reported extensive numbers for the sales of this machine quite yet, it’s clear that the ultimate victory was the modified version of the handset in the Google Nexus 4. This machine has most of the features that the Optimus G does, but rounds its corners and makes its Android perfectly pure with a Google-only vanilla flavoring – this means that LG didn’t modify the software for their own, just Google. Because of the feature set and the surprisingly low cost off-contract this device came with (though a T-Mobile version does exist, mind you), it’s been a massive hit (or supply blunder, however you want to see it) compared to the rest of the Nexus devices Google has released in its lineup history.

That machine came with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean+, that being an updated version of the same Android revealed earlier this year – that was also code-named Jelly Bean. This version had a collection of new features that included quick-access to basic settings as well as connectivity that didn’t even exist yet for most users – wireless projection with Miracast.

In 2013 we’ll continue to see the change-over from a specifications race in hardware to a more solid offering in software with brand ecosystems at the heart of the race. Samsung took this battle to heart in 2012 with the Samsung Galaxy S III – see the Chris Davies article by the name of The Galaxy S III is Samsung’s Coming of Age to see what this release was all about. More evidence that the Galaxy Note and S lines are doing stellar: the response to flip covers and TecTiles given away by the OEM for free.

Manufacturers aside, Google will be making at least one big unique push to stand out on their own as a force in mobile. Not just as a creator of Android will Google be pushing, but as a service provider for mobile devices. Google has confirmed their once-axed phone service plans already, and we’ve had Chris Davies’ column making it all too clear, as well: “A Google plan to kill carriers with wi-fi is all too believable”. Google won’t purchase T-Mobile as our good pals at [Android Community] suggest, they’ll continue to tie close bonds between themselves and wi-fi hotspot companies – or something to that effect – that’ll allow their smartphones to function completely independent of the mobile carriers.

See the column “Smart device specs are over: Long live the Ecosystem!” for a good look at 2013.

Making Android smartphones (and tablets) affordable by everyone in the world will continue to be Google’s goal through 2013, rest assured.

Predictions for Google’s Android in 2013: Freedom for All! is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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iOS 6‘s ‘Do Not Disturb‘ Not Shutting Off Automatically on New Year‘s Day

      

         iOS 6 users who use Apple's scheduled 'Do Not Disturb' feature may find that their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch hasn't automatically disabled the feature on New Year's morning. The issue was reported on Whirlpool forums as well as our own MacRumors forums. The 'Do Not Disturb' feature silences calls, alerts and notifications when it is enabled.

 Users may optionally schedule 'Do Not Disturb' to activate between specific hours. This allows you to automatically disable calls and notifications while you sleep.

 It's this scheduling feature that appears to be misbehaving on New Year's Day. MacRumors reader Spacesamurai posted about his experience:I am in Japan so it is 2013, and I am finding that my iOS devices (iPhone 4 and iPad 2) are showing 'Do Not Disturb' even though it is outside of the time I set for them. Not sure if this is related to the new year.

Reloading the devices does not help and the software is up-to-date.Spacesamurai's experience has been echoed by others. Apple has had other bugs in the past related to New Year's day. In years past, Apple has had issues with alarms not going off into the new year. Fortunately, the 'Do Not Disturb' feature does not disable alarms set with Apple's built-in Clock app.

Netbooks to go extinct in 2013

I always thought it was a combination of people wanting or needing new computer and an economy that meant they couldn’t afford normal notebooks that led those who would normally purchase notebooks to the netbook world for a few years. There were a few people out there who purchased the little machines simply because they were tiny and they wanted portability. The netbook also made a nice first computer for younger users.

You could still find few netbooks in 2012, especially earlier in the year but they were nowhere near as popular as they had been in years past. If you’re a fan of the netbook, the little machines are going extinct in 2013. The Guardian reports that Asus announced yesterday that it would not make any more of its Eee netbooks in 2013. During 2012, only Asus and Acer were making netbooks.

Acer also won’t make any more netbooks for 2013. Undoubtedly, there will be a few netbook sales this year as retailers both online and in the real world cut prices to clear remaining inventories. Once the machines Asus and Acer have are constructed are sold, there will be no more. The demise of netbooks is blamed on several factors.

Those factors included an uptick in the economy leading people back to more expensive and more powerful machines such as ultrabooks and traditional laptops. The incredible popularity of tablets such as the iPad and Android offerings are probably the biggest nail in the coffin of the netbook. In 2010 and 2011 netbook sales steadily declined from a high of over 2 million units in Q1 of 2010 to only about 750,000 units sold in Q4 2011.

Story Timeline

·         ASUS Eee PC Flare previews 2012 netbook offerings

·         HP Mini 1104 insists the netbook isn't dead

·         Acer Aspire One 725 netbook packs AMD Fusion

·         Toshiba discontinuing netbooks in the US

[via Guardian]

HCL Learning enters Africa

HCL Learning, the education division of HCL Infosystems, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a South African educational firm Spatial Data Holdings, to launch their products in five African countries including South Africa. Through this agreement the company has already started selling its educational content , tablets anddongles in Africa. The countries are South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia.

"We are mapping content to African educational boards and also modifying them to adapt to dialects and accents prevailing in these countries. The focus of content is primarily on English, Maths and Science," said Rothin Bhattacharyya, EVP Marketing , Strategy and Corporate Development at HCL Infosystems.

While the first wave of institutions driving this initiative in Africa are primarily non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments are soon expected to step in. "Right now, NGOs and relatively expensive schools are taking up such solutions in Africa. We expect government buying to become big next year," said Bhattacharyya.

At the same time, government laptop buying remains a big source of growth in India. "We will be finishing this week our shipping requirements for the Tamil Nadu project worth about Rs 270 crore. In UP, we have been shortlisted for laptop project and have also applied for their tablet initiative. Governments in Punjab, Goa and Assam, among others, also have similar initiatives declared in their manifestoes," said Bhattacharyya.

HCL Learning, started three years ago, had so far been selling its products mainly in a business-to-business (B2B) fashion but now the company is going business-to-consumer (B2C). It plans to sell its tablets and dongles through more than 600 outlets nationwide in the coming few weeks.

"Introducing dongles allows us to reach on all the 50-60 million computing devices present in Indian market. We will be selling our content and services through retail channel as well as through our longstanding relationships with schools," said Bhatacharyya.

Soon, unlock your car with your NFC-enabled smartphone

Keep misplacing your car keys? Just wave your smartphone to unlock the door!
Engineers at South Korean automobile majorHyundai have invented a new system that will allow your smartphone to double as your car keys, and the technology will be made available to buyers within two years.

Rather than using Bluetooth, the system by Hyundai uses wireless Near Field Communication ( NFC), allowing you to lock and unlock the car by waving your phone over a small tag on the car window.

Inside the car, you place the phone on a pad in the centre console that wirelessly charges it while the content is synced and streamed to the car's infotainment system and touchscreen.

The system can also store in-car preferences, including radio stations, seating positions and even mirror adjustment - with multiple profiles able to be saved for different drivers.

The system was demonstrated on a concept version of Hyundai's popular i30 in Germany.

Hyundai said developing the system was part of the carmaker's aim of producing technology for the mainstream consumer, website carsguide.com.au reported.

"The Connectivity Concept showcases Hyundai's philosophy of making tomorrow's technology accessible to a wide range of customers," Hyundai Motor Europe chief operating officer Allan Rushforth said.

"With this technology, Hyundai is able to harness the all-in-one functionality of existing smartphone technology and integrating it into everyday driving in a seamless fashion," Rushforth said.

Industrial sites in Iran under cyber attack

           An internet virus attacked computers at industrial sites in southern Iran, in an apparent extension of a covert cyber war that initially targeted the country's nuclear facilities, an Iranian official said.

Iran, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, has tightened online security since its uranium enrichment centrifuges were hit in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm, which Tehran believes was planted by arch-adversaries Israel or the United States.

The unit tasked with fighting cyber attacks, the Passive Defence Organisation, said a virus had infected several sites in Hormozgan province in recent months but was neutralised.

"Enemies are constantly attacking Iran's industrial units through Internet networks in order to create disruptions," Ali Akbar Akhavan, head of the Hormozgan branch of the organisation, was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students' News Agency on Tuesday.

"This virus has even penetrated some manufacturing industries in Hormozgan province, but with timely measures and the cooperation of skilled hackers in the province, the progress of this virus was halted," Akhavan said.

"As an example, the Bandar Abbas Tavanir Co., a producer of electricity in the province and even adjacent provinces, has been the target of Internet attacks in recent months," he said.

Bandar Abbas is the capital of Hormozgan province on Iran's southern coast and home to an oil refinery and container port.

Israeli officials have threatened military action against Iranian nuclear facilities if Western sanctions on Tehran's banking and oil sectors do not persuade the Islamic Republic to shelve its disputed atomic programme.

Western powers suspect Iran is trying to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran says it is enriching uranium only for civilian energy.

Iranian authorities said in April that a computer virus was detected inside the control systems of Kharg Island - which handles the vast majority of Iran's crude oil exports - but the terminal had remained operational.

Cyber attackers also slowed Iran's Internet and attacked its offshore oil and gas platforms this year, Iranian officials have said.

Some Anti-Malware basics

This is not a blog post for the IT professional, unless you have little idea how anti-malware, reputation, etc. work.  It is a small primer for those who don’t quite get all this anti-malware stuff.At its core anti-malware seems pretty straightforward.  You take something that can be run (usually an “image” or “executable”, but for sake of the audience we’ll just say App) and run a mathematical algorithm over it that produces an (almost) unique identifier for that App.  Generally that unique identifier is called a Hash (because of the technique used).  Anytime you run the same algorithm over the same App you get the same Hash.  Two different Apps with same name will have different Hashes. 

 Two Apps that are identical but have different names will get the same Hash.  If someone modifies an app, even slightly, it will have a different Hash.  So the Hash tells you exactly what you have.Anti-Malware software simply computes the Hash for an App and compares it to a “Black List” of Hashes that have been deemed Malware.  Those updates your anti-Malware software does all the time are to update the Black List of Hashes (or Signatures) of known Malware.   While this technique was sufficient in the early (particularly pre-Internet) days, today the Malware can spread rapidly enough to be endemic before your Anti-Malware vendor adds its Hash to their Black List.  More recently Malware authors have taken to constant updating of the App with slight changes so that each copy has a different Hash, defeating the simple Black List mechanism.

With Black Lists of  shrinking effectiveness Anti-Malware has grown to incorporate more sophisticated techniques for detecting Malware.  The problem with these techniques is that they significantly slow down App execution, so another mechanism was needed to minimize their use.  That is the addition of a White List of App Hashes that are known to be safe to run.  Let’s say you go to run Microsoft Excel.  The White List will contain the Hash of Excel’s main executable, excel.exe, as known to have been distributed by Microsoft.  Anti-Malware just checks the Hash and lets Excel run with no further interference.  If the Hash doesn’t match then either excel.exe has been modified or some other App has an executable called excel.exe.  Either way, it won’t be mistaken for the real Microsoft Excel.

Most Apps you run will either be on the White List or Black List and thus Anti-Malware software either lets them run without further interference or blocks them.  But what happens when an App is not on either list?  That’s when the App will be deeply evaluated either before, or while, it is running.The specific techniques for evaluating unknown Apps are beyond this blog posting but basically cover two broad areas.  The first, known as Generic Signatures, is for the Anti-Malware software to scan the image for known indicators that this is a particular kind of Malware.  

This helps defend against the case where Malware authors simply keep issuing very slight modifications of their Apps as a way to avoid the Black List.  When a new example of the Malware App is found its Hash is sent to the Anti-Malware vendor so it can be added to the Black List (and thus blocked with less performance impact).The second set of techniques are more dynamic, monitoring an App for suspicious behavior.  If suspicion that the App is Malware is high then execution is blocked, but if it is only slightly suspicious then it is allowed to proceed.  Information about the App may then be sent to the Anti-Malware vendor for analysis and a final determination on if it should be added to the Black List or White List.

Since traditionally unidentified Apps that have either no or only mildly suspicious behaviors are allowed to run it is possible for Malware to slip through these evaluation techniques.  To combat this more complete “Reputation” systems are being incorporated into Anti-Malware software as well as Operating Systems.  With Reputation, an App is onlyallowed to run if it is on the White List.  Unknown applications are completely blocked.  The problem with this approach in the past has been that many legitimate applications would be blocked, making systems almost unusable.  Recent advances have made Reputation far more practical, although in rare cases blocking of legitimate Apps will still occur.

Modern Reputation-based systems are more pro-active in adding Apps to the White List.  In particular they can look at the (verifiable) identity of the author of the App and, if they have a reputation for producing safe apps, automatically add any new (or legitimately changed) App to the White List.  Apps that engage in suspicious or clearly harmful behavior can be removed from the White List, blocking their execution.  This will also “damage” the reputation of the App’s author, making it more difficult for their Apps to be added to the White List.  Apps obtained from a tightly controlled “Store” like the Windows Store or Apple’s App Store receive the most direct reputation verification and are always on the White List (unless pulled from the Store). 

 By changing the focus of Anti-Malware from the Black List to the White List Reputation-based systems protect against Malware even before it is identified as such.Other techniques contribute to fighting Malware as well.  URL Filtering uses a Black List/White List technique to keep users from navigating to web sites that are known to distribute Malware or have done so in the past.  Email Filtering removes Malware-infested images from mail, and keeps SPAM (many of whose links take you to Malware distributing websites) out of your Inbox.  Firewalls help block Malware from communicating to the outside world.That’s the simple tutorial.  Hopefully one of the things it does is explain why Reputation is so important.  It’s really the only technique that gets ahead of the Malware authors.