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Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Apple makes stock award for new chief:
Thursday, 29 December 2011
How Apple could shake up TV: A la carte channels
Apple's Apple TV set-top box.
(Credit: Apple) In a note today to investors, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu asserts that Apple's strength lies less in the hardware innovation it might bring to the TV market than in letting customers subscribe to particular channels or shows of their choosing.
Such a model would run counter to traditional TV packages offered by cable providers that sell channels to subscribers in pre-packaged bundles.
Apple already offers a number of TV programs as subscriptions through its online store, giving buyers a way to purchase both single episodes and entire seasons. The difference, of course, being that customers must wait for the show to be broadcast before it's available to download. (In some cases, shows aren't available until the entire season has aired.) Wu is suggesting that Apple would rather move to live streaming of the programming, just like what customers get through their cable provider.
"This is obviously much more complicated from a licensing standpoint, and in our view, would change the game for television and give AAPL a big leg-up against the competition," Wu wrote in the note picked up by Apple Insider.
This is not the first such suggestion that Apple is planning to adopt a subscription model for video content. A Wall Street Journal story from 2009 suggested Apple was in talks with CBS and Walt Disney to provide TV programming for a monthly fee. The closest that vision came to be was with Apple's season pass feature, which lets customers buy an entire season of a given TV show, even before some of the episodes have aired.
Interest in Apple's prospective television boomed in October with the release of Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Isaacson noted Jobs' work on making an easy-to-use TV set that is integrated with the company's various products and services.
"I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," Jobs was quoted as saying in Isaacson's book. "It would be seamlessly synched with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."
Adding to that, a report yesterday from Taiwanese publication DigiTimes cited sources saying that Apple was already in the process of ordering components for 32-inch and 37-inch TV sets that would be ready for sale in the second half of 2012, suggesting that Apple is relatively far along in the process of bringing the set to market.
In the interim, Apple has made two significant adjustments to its sales of TV shows in the past few months. First, it killed off its TV show rental service, a decision the company attributed to consumer purchasing behavior "overwhelmingly" falling in favor of buying programming outright. It also introduced a new season-completion program that lets buyers pick up the rest of a show's season at a discounted rate if they've already purchased an episode.
Sunday, 25 December 2011
How to master the art of passwords
Passwords are a way of life for nearly everybody who uses any kind of software. No viable alternative is imminent: fingerprint readers, retina scanners, voice identification, and USB tokens all have limitations. Nothing is as simple and inexpensive as an old-fashioned string of keystrokes.
Web services and network managers nearly always require a minimum degree of password difficulty to prevent standard password-cracking techniques from guessing them quickly. We're also cautioned not to reuse the same passphrases on different sites and are routinely blocked from recycling the passwords we've used previously.
Considering the number of times PC users sign into a service or network each day, we may need to remember a half-dozen hard-to-guess passwords, not to mention the various sign-in IDs we use along with the passwords (full name or first initial-last name? Case sensitive? An e-mail address?). Many computer professionals need access to dozens of secure systems, which stretches the limits of anyone's memory.
Your three options are to use a password-management program, to write your passwords down on paper (or record them in an encrypted text file), or to devise a method for memorizing hard-to-guess passphrases. While no single technique is right for everyone, here's why I suggest the memorization approach.
The pros and cons of password managers
For many people, the best way to protect their data and identity is to use a password manager, which either stores your passwords in the cloud or on a local drive--often a USB thumb drive or other portable storage device. The obvious risk is that the vendor's server is hacked or you lose the drive that stores your passwords.
Last May, the LastPass password-management service reported a breach that may have exposed users' passwords, although LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist stated that people who used strong master passwords were not threatened.
LastPass is available as a Firefox add-on and as an extension for Internet Explorer, Chrome, and other browsers. The version for mobile devices costs $1 per month.
Other password managers work without storing your passwords on a Web server. The Tech Support Alert site recently compared several free password-management programs, including LastPass, RoboForm, and KeePass.
The hard-copy approach to password management
If you forgo the password-manager route, your options are to write your passphrases down or to memorize them. Whenever you record your passwords on paper--even if you record only a mnemonic that reminds you of the actual characters--you've made your accounts a little more susceptible to unauthorized access.
That hasn't stopped computer experts from recommending that users jot down their passwords and keep the paper in a secure location. Gunter Ollman, a researcher for security firm Damballa, concludes that recording your passwords on paper is the lesser of several password evils; more risky is using the same password at multiple sites, setting your software to remember passwords, failing to change passwords frequently, using an easy-to-guess password, and reusing past passwords.
Likewise, computer expert Bruce Schneier reiterated on his Schneier on Security blog the advice of Microsoft executive Jesper Johansson to record your passwords on paper to encourage use of strong passwords.
The obvious downside of the paper approach is that someone will find the paper taped to the bottom of your keyboard or tucked into your wallet and access your private data before you're able to take preventive measures. Or you may simply lose the paper and have to do the recover-password-by-e-mail two-step for each network and service you need to access.
The wetware approach to password storage is still the safest
As you might have guessed, Mr. Schneier's 2005 post recommending that you write down your passwords generated quite a few comments to the contrary. Most of the commenters suggested their own technique for remembering strong passwords.
Of course, the bad guys pay close attention to this information and will attempt to incorporate the approaches in their password-cracking efforts. The key is to get creative in altering something you've already memorized, such as song lyrics, family members' first names, or place names from your past.
An alternative method leverages something nearby. For example, there may be a product near your workstation that has a prominent model or serial number, or a book within view of your seat has an ISBN number on the back cover. Rather than using the exact number, add or subtract two or three numbers or letters, so "1158748562" becomes "3370960784," or "BCGA1339" becomes "DEIC3551."
The only problem I've encountered with my own password-mnemonic creation is that some vendors require a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers. I have become resigned to having to go through Apple's "Forgot your password?" e-mail routine about every other week.
This is doubly upsetting because my system uses from 12 to 16 random alphabetic characters (found in no dictionary and following no discernible pattern). As the How Secure Is My Password site indicates, the all-text, all-lower-case password I devised would take much more effort to crack than an eight-character password that meets Apple's requirements.
However, I give props to Apple and other sites that enforce strict password-creation policies, as well as to network managers who do the same. Efforts are underway to address the strong-password conundrum. As CNET contributor Lance Whitney described in post last week, Microsoft is working to improve the password-management capabilities of Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.
Only time will tell whether PC users will ever be able to securely store their sign-in credentials in their systems' software or on a service's Web server. For most people, the safest approach to passwords is to rely only on their own personal gray matter. Let's hope a secure alternative to passwords arrives before our memories give out.
Web services and network managers nearly always require a minimum degree of password difficulty to prevent standard password-cracking techniques from guessing them quickly. We're also cautioned not to reuse the same passphrases on different sites and are routinely blocked from recycling the passwords we've used previously.
Considering the number of times PC users sign into a service or network each day, we may need to remember a half-dozen hard-to-guess passwords, not to mention the various sign-in IDs we use along with the passwords (full name or first initial-last name? Case sensitive? An e-mail address?). Many computer professionals need access to dozens of secure systems, which stretches the limits of anyone's memory.
Your three options are to use a password-management program, to write your passwords down on paper (or record them in an encrypted text file), or to devise a method for memorizing hard-to-guess passphrases. While no single technique is right for everyone, here's why I suggest the memorization approach.
The pros and cons of password managers
For many people, the best way to protect their data and identity is to use a password manager, which either stores your passwords in the cloud or on a local drive--often a USB thumb drive or other portable storage device. The obvious risk is that the vendor's server is hacked or you lose the drive that stores your passwords.
Last May, the LastPass password-management service reported a breach that may have exposed users' passwords, although LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist stated that people who used strong master passwords were not threatened.
LastPass is available as a Firefox add-on and as an extension for Internet Explorer, Chrome, and other browsers. The version for mobile devices costs $1 per month.
Other password managers work without storing your passwords on a Web server. The Tech Support Alert site recently compared several free password-management programs, including LastPass, RoboForm, and KeePass.
The hard-copy approach to password management
If you forgo the password-manager route, your options are to write your passphrases down or to memorize them. Whenever you record your passwords on paper--even if you record only a mnemonic that reminds you of the actual characters--you've made your accounts a little more susceptible to unauthorized access.
That hasn't stopped computer experts from recommending that users jot down their passwords and keep the paper in a secure location. Gunter Ollman, a researcher for security firm Damballa, concludes that recording your passwords on paper is the lesser of several password evils; more risky is using the same password at multiple sites, setting your software to remember passwords, failing to change passwords frequently, using an easy-to-guess password, and reusing past passwords.
Likewise, computer expert Bruce Schneier reiterated on his Schneier on Security blog the advice of Microsoft executive Jesper Johansson to record your passwords on paper to encourage use of strong passwords.
The obvious downside of the paper approach is that someone will find the paper taped to the bottom of your keyboard or tucked into your wallet and access your private data before you're able to take preventive measures. Or you may simply lose the paper and have to do the recover-password-by-e-mail two-step for each network and service you need to access.
The wetware approach to password storage is still the safest
As you might have guessed, Mr. Schneier's 2005 post recommending that you write down your passwords generated quite a few comments to the contrary. Most of the commenters suggested their own technique for remembering strong passwords.
Of course, the bad guys pay close attention to this information and will attempt to incorporate the approaches in their password-cracking efforts. The key is to get creative in altering something you've already memorized, such as song lyrics, family members' first names, or place names from your past.
An alternative method leverages something nearby. For example, there may be a product near your workstation that has a prominent model or serial number, or a book within view of your seat has an ISBN number on the back cover. Rather than using the exact number, add or subtract two or three numbers or letters, so "1158748562" becomes "3370960784," or "BCGA1339" becomes "DEIC3551."
The only problem I've encountered with my own password-mnemonic creation is that some vendors require a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers. I have become resigned to having to go through Apple's "Forgot your password?" e-mail routine about every other week.
This is doubly upsetting because my system uses from 12 to 16 random alphabetic characters (found in no dictionary and following no discernible pattern). As the How Secure Is My Password site indicates, the all-text, all-lower-case password I devised would take much more effort to crack than an eight-character password that meets Apple's requirements.
Check the strength of your passwords at the How Secure Is My Password site, which indicates how difficult your password is to crack, and whether it's on the site's common-password list.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly) Only time will tell whether PC users will ever be able to securely store their sign-in credentials in their systems' software or on a service's Web server. For most people, the safest approach to passwords is to rely only on their own personal gray matter. Let's hope a secure alternative to passwords arrives before our memories give out.
In Japan, seat sensors that can recognize you
(Credit: Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology) Nikkei reports that a team led by professor Shigeomi Koshimizu is working to commercialize the system as a "highly reliable" anti-theft system. The timeline? Two to three years, if an automaker signs on.
It's the car seat of the future. Or perhaps the airplane seat of the future--no need to show your ticket or appeal to a flight attendant to boot someone out of your coveted window seat.
Here's how it works: A sensor beneath the driver's seat measures pressure at 360 points. The pressure at each point, measured on a scale from 0 to 256, is output to a laptop computer.
The researchers are also investigating pressure sensors for feet.
(Credit: Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology) The researchers say it helps reduce the psychological burden that traditional biometrics, such as iris scanners or fingerprint readers, can leave on people.
The researchers also say those technologies can be less accurate because the cleanliness of their sensor surfaces impacts their ability to authenticate properly; i.e. dim lighting or grimy surfaces cause "noise" and contaminate results.
Another application the researchers are investigating: pressure sensors for feet, which can allow or deny access to a room--no key card necessary. (It's like a high-tech version of the gold statue-sandbag swap in the opening scene of the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark.")
The next question, of course, is how much the system can scale. Can it distinguish between a Boeing 747 full of passengers? What about a multifloor office building?
This story originally appeared on ZDNet's SmartPlanet via Wired.
Space post office postmarks letters from orbit
China's Space Post Office isn't quite in orbit, but your mail can be.
(Credit: SmartPlanet.com) Yes, thanks to cuts to NASA's funding, it seems the Chinese have now rocketed ahead of us in the postal space gimmick department. The idea is for space nuts to send e-mails to a computer aboard the Chinese spacecraft Tiangong-1, currently in orbit, which routes the message back to the main Space Post Office to be printed out, stuffed into a commemorative envelope with a special postmark, and sent on to its addressee.
The orbital philatelic experiment is meant to boost business for China's postal service, which has been suffering as people move online. Makes you wonder why the U.S. Postal Service didn't set up shop at Cape Canaveral years ago.
China's Space Post Office is in a secretive part of the capital known as Aerospace City, the center of China's space program. It opened last month with a direct connection to space, a "virtual" branch on the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft 343 kilometers above Earth.
"Any parcels which go on China's spacecraft will be sent from here," a Space Post Office clerk told CNET sister site SmartPlanet, adding that they weren't quite ready to offer space mail service to the public. "We can send mail anywhere in the world but not into space."
I'm sure that on the first day such a service is offered, we'll see plenty of iPhones and iPads shipped into space for no good reason. In the meantime, China's Space Post Office is happy to sell you plenty of souvenirs, sell stamps to the occasional astronaut, or e-mail your wedding vows to space.
It may be all gimmickery to some, but to me, it's one solid step closer to being able to actually get a love letter to Commander Deanna Troi.
Memories of a 'Star Wars' Christmas
(Credit: Darren Hayes. Screenshot by CNET) If you're like me, you can't help but cringe when you hear that first strain of Christmas music wafting out of the speakers at your local drugstore in early November. ("Here we go again," you think.)
By the time Christmas Eve rolls around, you've battled crowds to grab your gifts and been bludgeoned with the latest Christmas cover tunes and advertising tie-ins. At this point, it's tempting to write it all off as nothing but an empty tradition or a moneymaking gimmick.
If you're lucky, though, you somehow manage to stumble on a Christmas story that hands you the holiday anew and makes the "spirit of giving" and "peace on Earth" more than mere platitudes.
Here's a simply produced video from Darren Hayes, half of the duo that made up the late '90s band Savage Garden (and a solo performer in his own right).
Maybe it's the unabashed and unpretentious presentation. Maybe it's because I remember "Star Wars" figurines and toy catalogs so well. I myself was a child in 1977 when the film first came out. Maybe, too, it has to do with the fact that I lost my mother not so very long ago and that Hayes' film reminds me of her sweetness and sacrifices.
Whatever it is, I was moved and unhumbugged by Hayes' modest offering. I thought some of you might be too. Sure, I could view this as yet another piece of Christmas-themed marketing, but I choose not to Scrooge around with that frame of mind.
In a statement to fans on his Web site, Hayes says the film "comes from the heart." It feels that way to me.
Here's his simple little tale. It's a sweet one. Enjoy.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Apple fuel cell patent applications envision 'weeks without refueling'
A drawing from one of Apple's fuel-cell patent applications that shows a fuel cell embedded with a portable electronics device and controlled by its power-management system.
(Credit: Screen capture by Martin LaMonica/CNET) In newly published patent applications today, Apple describes a way for fuel cell power sources to be designed into electronics, such as a laptop, and controlled to optimize their performance without adding a lot of extra weight.
In one patent application titled simply a Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device, Apple says there is "increasing awareness and desire" among consumers to use renewable-energy sources. Fuel cells are compelling technically because of their energy density, or ability to pack a lot of energy into a relatively small package compared to a battery.
"Fuel cells and associated fuels can potentially achieve high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities, which can potentially enable continued operation of portable electronic devices for days or even weeks without refueling," according to the patent application. The challenge has always been keeping electronics portable and cost-effective, Apple said in the application.
Indeed, there have been a number of products developed for charging electronics, but they have yet to really take off. Typically, fuel cells for electronics are designed for portable charging, where a person carries a fuel cartridge, which could be a cylinder the size of a roll of coins, to recharge a phone or music player.
By contrast, Apple envisions fuel cells integrated right into the electronics. Much of one patent application describes a control system for optimizing energy flow from the fuel cell stack, which produces power, from a dedicated communications system.
The second patent application describes how this fuel cell would work in tandem with a rechargeable battery, so the fuel cell could charge the battery and vice versa. "This eliminates the need for a bulky and heavy battery within the fuel cell system, which can significantly reduce the size, weight and cost of the fuel cell system," according to the patent application.
These aren't the first fuel cell patent applications Apple has filed. Patently Apple notes that in October a newly published patent application from Apple was for fuel cell plates that focus more on power generation from within a portable device.
As for the fuel itself, one of Apple's patent applications said that a variety of fuels could provide the source of electric power. Among them are sodium borohydride powder mixed with water. These are still considered experimental and do not appear to be commercially available.
A fuel cell works by passing hydrogen through a membrane, where oxygen from the air mixes with the hydrogen to produce water vapor and electricity. Apple's patent applications describe fuel cells where the hydrogen is derived from solutions that contain sodium borohydride or similar materials.
One of the barriers to portable fuel cell chargers is having a sales channel to purchase and recycle fuel cartridges. Although it makes no mention of its stores in its patent applications, Apple's retail outlets could make fuel cell use far more approachable
Last-minute gift: A $50 iTunes gift card for $40
(Credit: Walmart) I want to wish everyone a safe and exciting holiday, and a happy and healthy new year. Wish I could join all of you for some latkes and eggnog!
What I can do is offer you one last pre-holiday deal--something that arrives almost instantly via e-mail. Wal-Mart is offering a $50 iTunes gift card for $40. No sales tax, and no shipping charge!
It's pretty rare to see deals on iTunes cards, let alone a 20 percent discount. If you're giving this as a gift, you get to look like a big shot while secretly remaining a cheapskate. Mwa ha ha.
iTunes, of course, is home to all manner of media goodies: music, movies, TV shows, apps, e-books, audiobooks, and so on. For iDevice users in particular, it's usually the first stop for all this stuff.
The gift card is delivered via e-mail, usually "within minutes," according to Wal-Mart. Note that if you want to send it to someone else, you'll need to wait until you receive your PIN, then log in to Wal-Mart's e-delivery site.
I don't know if Wal-Mart has limited "stock," but I do know this won't last indefinitely; there was a $25-card-for-$20 deal earlier this week, but it's now expired. As always, if you want in, act fast!
Once again, have a wonderful holiday, and I'll see you next year! (Or possibly a little next week, if you're around.)
Bonus deal: Yesterday's $199 32-inch HDTV was a great deal, but too small a screen for some shoppers. Well, here's an equally great deal on a significantly larger set: Best Buy has the Dynex DX-46L262A12 46-inch HDTV for $399.99 shipped, plus sales tax. (I shudder to think of what I spent on a 46-inch TV just a few years ago.) The only real downside? Just two HDMI inputs. Come on, Dynex, we need at least three.
Bonus deal No. 2: Earlier this month I wrote about the $19/month Android phone from Republic Wireless. There was a string attached--namely, it wasn't really unlimited service--but the company just dropped its usage-threshold stipulation. In other words, you now get truly unlimited voice, texting, and data for $19 per month. Game-changer! I'll have more on the story later today over at Android Atlas.
Samsung Galaxy S, Tab: No Android 4.0 for you
In a blog posting on a Korean promotional site run by Samsung, the company noted that the two devices would not receive the update to Android 4.0, the most up to date version of Google's mobile operating system.
The reason for that, as The Verge explains, centers around Samsung's use of additional software features on those phones, including TouchWiz, widgets, video calling and carrier software pack-ins. These suck up hardware resources to the point of giving users a less than desirable Android experience, Samsung says.
Sure to make things a bit complicated is that the Galaxy S is a close sibling of Samsung's recently-released Galaxy Nexus--at least on paper. That phone ships with Android 4.0, known more readily as Ice Cream Sandwich.
Announced in October, Ice Cream Sandwich adds a number of new features to devices on the platform, the main one being the unification of the OS for both tablets and smartphones, as well as the addition of software-based buttons that replace the ones that have been physical buttons. As with other major releases of Android, it carries with it particular hardware requirements, leaving a number of older devices stuck on certain versions indefinitely.
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