GPS tracking chip for mobile

• A new chip designed for portable wireless devices combines the coverage of two satellite-based navigation services to offer a location tracking time of less than one second.
• The u-blox 5 chip, which Switzerland's U-blox plans to unveil at the 3GSM World Congress event in Barcelona next month.
• The technology has a tracking sensitivity of -160 dBm, which enables indoor coverage.
• With a power consumption of less than 50 mW, the u-blox 5 chip allows GPS-enabled mobile phones and other wireless devices to operate in difficult indoor environments, such as shopping malls and train stations.
• In addition to its satellite-based navigation chip, U-blox will use the 3GSM event to show several other new products, including AssistNow Offline, which stores data in the GPS receiver for up to two weeks.
  
• The technology allows the receiver to compute a position instantly without having to connect to a mobile network at startup to download the data, as is the case with typical GPS services

Source : http://news.yahoo.com

Microsoft Launches Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007

• Today Microsoft going to release Windows Vista™ operating system and Microsoft^® Office 2007.
• These two flagship products will be available in more than 70 countries, in 19 languages (with 99 languages anticipated by the end of the year), and at more than 39,000 retail stores and online.
• With Windows Vista, consumers will be able to experience all kinds of entertainment — from television to video games to music and movies — how and when they want.
• The new versions of Windows and Microsoft Office also deliver advances in family safety by empowering parents to better manage and monitor their children’s PC and Internet activities. With a few simple clicks in the new Windows Vista Parental Controls center, parents can manage and monitor PC and Internet access, and decide what kinds of TV, music and games are appropriate for their children.
• Security is also more robust in the new releases. Features such as Windows Defender help protect consumers against attacks from spyware and malicious Web sites, while other enhancements help safeguard personal information.

Adobe released Photoshop Lightroom 1.0

• Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 software is now available for pre-order and is expected to ship in mid-February 2007.
• Photoshop Lightroom enables professional photographers to import, manage and present large volumes of digital photographs, helping photographers spend more time behind the lens and less time at the computer.
• Adobe is offering Photoshop Lightroom at a special introductory price of US $199 through April 30, 2007 at the Adobe Store. Photoshop Lightroom will later sell for an estimated street price of US $299.
• Photoshop Lightroom includes new functionality added since beta 4.1, with significant changes to the Library and Develop modules complementing improvements to the Slideshow, Print and Web components.
• While in the Library module, new advanced keywording tools help photographers filter through large collections, and an improved import dialogue with more flexible file handling allows more choice when determining file location.

Source: http://www.livingroom.org.au

Updates available for Palm mobile

• Smartphone maker palm improved two Treo devices that run the Palm operating system by adding business-friendly features such as push e-mail for Microsoft Exchange users.
• Palm's adding the kind of features business users want to the Palm OS-based Treo 680 and 700p. They'll now provide automatic wireless delivery of e-mail, calendar, and contact information directly from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or Exchange 2007.
• Palm in the past provided the "push" service, the main attribute of Research In Motion's BlackBerry, only through third-party providers, and it required middleware.

Source : http://news.yahoo.com

Open Source Software For Mobile Devices

• A collaborative effort by mobile device manufacturers and service providers to create a Linux-based software platform .
• The goal of the non-profit LiMo Foundation is to trim development costs and speed the spread of the open source software technology for use with handsets and other mobile devices.
• The firms participating in the launch are: Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com

Microsoft released Photo Info 1.0

• Microsoft launched this week a new Windows Explorer tool for viewing metadata on photos on the web.
• The free Microsoft Photo Info Tool software allows users to change metadata attached to photos within Explorer, saving the user from having to open a separate photo editing program.
• The new Microsoft Photo Info displays file type, image size, ISO, white balance information, among other properties.

Source : http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/

Apple released security patch for QuickTime

• Apple Inc. has patched a vulnerability in its QuickTime media player that could give a hacker control over a computer.
• The problem concerns a buffer overflow that can occur when QuickTime processes a RTSP URL (Real Time Streaming Protocol Uniform Resource Locator), which directs the player to a streaming file and allows a user to play and pause it.
• A hacker could create a malicious RTSP URL embedded in a Web page that would could open a door for other harmful code to run on a machine, Apple said. The patch comes more than three weeks after researchers who are part of the Month of Apple Bugs (MOAB) project published exploit code.
• The patch is available through Apple's download page, or it can be delivered through Apple's Software Update service.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com

IBM will introduce MySpace rivalry

• IBM's Lotus unit will introduce Monday a set of social networking services that functions like a MySpace for office workers and which analysts say marks a renewed challenge to Microsoft.
• Lotus is going back to its roots as a pioneer of business collaboration software with a service called Connections that features the latest ways for users to share information via the Web, while giving businesses controls over who sees what data.
• Lotus Connections offers the business equivalent of Web meeting places like MySpace.com or Facebook, Yahoo's bookmark sharing site del.icio.us and blog search tools like Technorati.com — stitched together in one package.

Source : http://www.usatoday.com

Downloadable Versions of Windows Vista, Office

• Microsoft said it plans for the first time to make its new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite available for downloading by PC users over the Internet.
• Microsoft has for years sold downloadable copies of its home finance software, games, and other apps online, and software vendors including Intuit, Symantec, and others offer many of their products for downloading.
• The company plans to offer Windows and Office for sale on the Web using technology called digital locker, which can safely store the alphanumeric license "keys" that provide customers with rights to use its products, and resume interrupted downloads.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com

LDoms; partitioning feature in Sun Solaris

• Sun Microsystems has updated its Solaris operating system with a feature that lets its newest Sparc-based servers run multiple copies of the Unix variant in separate partitions.
• The feature, called Logical Domains, or LDoms, is in Solaris 11/06.
• the feature catches Sun partway up with Unix server rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
• In addition, Sun plans to announce it will incorporate a feature comparable to LDoms, the open-source Xen hypervisor, in its "Galaxy" line of x86 servers in 2007.

Source : http://news.com.com/

BalancePoint : To manage apps, severs, storage

• Software start-up Akorri officially launched of both the company and a new infrastructure management and monitoring tool aimed at tying applications, server, and storage management together for better control of IT environments.
• The tool named as BalancePoint, is an optimization tool that monitors and provides visibility into performance, availability, and utilization problems that cut across multiple domains.
• BalancePoint can garner information from other tools and from hardware devices, including applications, servers, storage, and the network itself without using software agents.
• The software compiles performance data from these sources to build models for monitoring and predicting how changes in the infrastructure might impact application performance, thereby aiding in capacity-planning decisions and troubleshooting.

Source : http://www.infostor.com

New Fixes from Oracle

• Thursday Oracle Inc. issued its first-ever advanced warning that spells out the number and severity of the patches it plans to release to fix flaws in its flagship database and other software.
• According to the advance notification posted on Oracle's Web site, the quarterly Critical Patch Update, scheduled to roll out Jan. 16, will include 55 patches, including 24 for bugs that can be exploited remotely by attackers.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com

'Uncrackable' Secure Gigabit Quantum-Encryption Scheme

• A quantum cyptography developer has teamed with an Australian cyptography company to create what the partners claim is the world's first 1- to 10-Gbps secure network that combines uncrackable quantum keys with classical encryption.
• Typical bit rates used in today's high-speed networks forming corporate backbones are in the range of 1 to 10 gigabits'per second, but until today id Quantique was not in a position to offer quantum cryptography solutions working at such high bit rates.
• With this new development, quantum cryptography is now compatible with these high-speed data networks.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/

Microsoft Patches 10 Bugs

• Microsoft on Tuesday released four security updates to patch 10 vulnerabilities, seven of them judged "critical." But the company failed to fix multiple flaws in its popular word processor that have been exploited by attackers for more than a month.
• Of the updates, three involve Microsoft's Office suite, while the fourth affects Internet Explorer, the developer's oft-patched Web browser.
• MS07-003, which affects Microsoft Outlook, the e-mail client packaged with Office. The update fixes three flaws, one tagged critical.
• MS07-004 fixes another bug in VML -- Vector Markup Language -- that is an extension of XML that defines Web images in vector graphics format.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com

iPhone: How good with current data transfer rate.

• Cingular's Edge network provides nationwide coverage at average data speeds between 75 Kbps and 135 Kbps, according to Cingular's Web site.
• iPhone's unique Visual Voice Mail was co-developed by Apple and Cingular, This requires hihg data speed to operate.
  
• Similarly the Wi-Fi capability, which can deliver high-speed data access requires high speed data transfer.
  
• Cingular and other GSM-based service providers are working on technologies such as High-Speed Downlink Access (HSDPA) to boost their network data speeds , although they aren't expected to be available in time for the iPhone rollout.

So In the begenning it may not be possible to use all the features of iPhone in low data speed.
Source: http://www.informationweek.com

iPhone Poses Problems for IT

• The sustained applause following its announcement Tuesday and the ubiquitous buzz thereafter gave immediate credibility to Apple's iPhone. But all are not green if we see this in IT perspective.
  
• The iPhone's drawbacks might outnumber the draws for business IT. First and foremost, it's yet one more device and another platform -- the iPhone runs on a slimmer version of Mac OS X.
• One of the main corporate qualms with the iPhone will be its lack of software flexibility. Apple is locking down the device, meaning that only applications Apple approves can be installed.
• Even if Apple opens up, some applications like Siebel don't even run on the Macintosh platform. "The iPhone's ability to penetrate the corporate world is going to be limited because IT is not going to be able to support it and the applications that they're going to need are not going to be available on it.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com

TV to Vista, Palm and HP notebooks

• Users of Sling Media Inc.'s "placeshifting" system, Slingbox, will soon be able to watch their home TVs on Palm Inc. smart phones running Palm OS, consumer laptops from Hewlett-Packard Co. or any PC running Microsoft Corp's Windows Vista operating System.
• Sling Media released a new version of its SlingPlayer software for Palm Inc.'s Treo 700p smartphone.
• Also announced a deal with PC maker HP to distribute the player software on HP notebook computers for consumers.
• Sling announced plans for a Vista version of SlingPlayer, due for release in the second quarter.

Source http://news.yahoo.com

Windows Home Server

• Microsoft's long-anticipated home server software will first appear on a Hewlett-Packard box sometime in the second half of 2007.
• On Sunday, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman announced Windows Home Server during a presentation at CES, the massive trade show in Las Vegas this week. "This is for homes where you've got either multiple PCs or Xboxes, the case where you want to have your storage available at all times to the different devices," said Gates.
• HP will brand it as the HP MediaSmart Server, and it's the Windows Home Server software with their enhancements that will run on top of that.
• HP's MediaSmart Server is to be powered by a 1.8-GHz 64 bit Sempron processor from Advanced Micro Devices, includes four hard drive bays and four USB ports for printer or external storage connections, and comes in a box about 10 inches high by 5.5 wide by 9 deep.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com

Adobe Flaw May Be 'Worst' Bug Of 2007

• The security threat which was unearthed recently, some researchers say has the potential to be the worst of all 2007.
• Late Thursday Adobe posted a security advisory where they mentioned the detail of the bug "A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in versions 7.0.8 and earlier of Adobe Reader and Acrobat 7.0.8 could allow remote attackers to inject arbitrary JavaScript into a browser session".
• In the security advisory Adobe suggested to update Adobe reader to version 8.

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