judgecorp writes "The BBC is asking Android users to install an app which will upload information about 3G and 2G coverage, in order to build up a map showing where Britain has signal. The company behind the app, Epitiro, previously worked with the regulator Ofcom to measure 3G speed, and apparently found that O2 is slightly faster."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth tutorial on how he rooted and upgraded his Motorola Cliq XT, one of many Android phones made infamous for not receiving further Android updates beyond 1.5. 'It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with twists and turns I describe here in order to help those who wish to embark on a similar journey,' Yegulalp writes. 'Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it. '"

jfruhlinger writes "Now that Chromebook laptops are finally here, the question is: can you really do serious work with them? The only way to find out is to dive on in, and so Steven Vaughn-Nichols spent a week using a Chromebook for all his daily computing tasks. In the end, he was mostly positive on the experience — but was frustrated by a number of rough edges, including poor documentation and a failure of some components of the system to work together."

An anonymous reader writes "One version of new spectrum legislation poses a threat to unlicensed wireless, which is where technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth operate. Your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies are safe, but the future of the proposed White Spaces broadband also known as Super Wi-Fi, and new unlicensed spectrum is in doubt under the draft bill. And hiding in those unlicensed airwaves could be the next Wi-Fi. 'The draft bill says that in order for unlicensed spectrum to win out over a licensed bidder, an entity or a group of people would have to collectively bid more than a licensed bidder would. This would be akin to having a group of people who want more unlicensed airwaves going up against Verizon or AT&T. As a reminder Verizon spent $9.63 billion on spectrum licenses in the last auction while AT&T spent $6.64 billion. The legislators may have envisioned Google playing a heroic role here and thus enabling the government to make some extra money in a spectrum auction as opposed to just letting such potentially lucrative spectrum become a public radio panacea regulated by the FCC.'"

daria42 writes "A bunch of researchers have been driving around Sydney, Australia, and scanning for unsecured Wi-Fi networks. You'd think that in this day and age, with all that we've learned about security, that Wi-Fi security would be almost universal ... but the truth is that about 2.6 percent don't even have basic password protection. Extrapolating a little, that adds up to 10,000 unsecured Wi-Fi networks across Sydney alone."

suraj.sun writes with this quote from an article at Techdirt: "A woman, who called Verizon to try to find out about the $4.19 she was being charged for six local calls, was told by Verizon reps that the only way it would provide her an itemized bill was to get a lawyer and have the lawyer get a subpoena to force Verizon to disclose the information. Instead, the woman went to court (by herself) and a judge told Verizon (.docx) to hand over the itemized bill info. 'It is a basic matter of fair business practice that a consumer should be able to contact a utility about a charge on a bill and learn what the charge is for and learn that the charge was correctly applied. The only verification that Verizon's witness could offer that a charge like [the customer's] $4.19 measured use charge was accurate and billed correctly was her faith in the accuracy of Verizon's computer system. The only way that Verizon would offer any information about a past charge in response to a consumer inquiry was to require that customer to hire a lawyer and subpoena their own usage information. By no reasonable standard could this be considered reasonable customer service."

GillBates0 writes "CNN has a nice story about how online collaboration swiftly helped form a centrally organized online disaster effort during Wednesday's Mumbai attacks. India accounts for almost one-fifth of the world's cell phone subscribers. At a time when chaos reigned, and voice calls were jammed, a loose collaboration of techies, laymen, and good samaritans quickly collaborated online via social media, Wikipedia, Google docs and other online resources to coordinate blood donors, assistance, rides, and other services to help the victims of the attack."

Barence writes "Your smartphone could place you at the scene of a crime, destroy an alibi or maybe even provide one – which is why one of the first things police now do at the scene of a crime is take away a suspect's cellphone. This look into smartphone forensics reveals how even wiping incriminating data from iPhones isn't enough to get criminals off the hook. 'If you're looking at your email messages and you rotate the phone, there's a snapshot of that message,' said Phil Ridley, a mobile phone analyst with CCL-Forensics. And what people leave on their phones is horrific. 'We were contacted by police who couldn't get a video to work on a handset – it turned out to be a bloke beheading someone in his garage,' claimed another forensics expert."

danomac writes "Apple is testing out new chip suppliers, trying to find a supplier other than Samsung. Apple is currently suing Android phone manufacturers, and Samsung is included in the lawsuit. 'Apple faces several hurdles should it want to make a switch to TSMC, including patents and chip design issues as well as a push by Samsung to retain the business. ... Analysts and other sources had previously said TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, was set to become a supplier of a next-generation processor chip to Apple, likely starting next year. However the chip may not be called the A6, as some reports have indicated, the sources said. TSMC is an obvious candidate to win processor business from Apple as it has budgeted $7.8 billion this year to update technology and add capacity. It also has experience with the architecture of British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc, widely used by Apple to make power-efficient mobile chips."

AmiMoJo writes "Hackers have discovered the root password for Vodafone femtocells, devices that provide the user with a mobile phone signal piggybacked onto their home broadband. The root password was 'newsys.' Once root access is obtained, phones can be forced to connect to the cell and private keys captured, allowing the user to spoof the victim's phone and potentially make calls or send texts on their account, not to mention eavesdrop."

nonprofiteer writes "Earlier this week, a South African security researcher released shoulderPad, an app that's designed to auto-snoop on iPad users' passwords by watching their touchscreen keyboards. When a user types on an iPad's touchscreen, each key glows blue for a fraction of a second after it's struck, a helpful bit of feedback for any virtual keyboard. ShoulderPad's image recognition algorithms, based on Open CV's open source image recognition software, look for that flash of blue. 'At any distance, if the blue is distinguishable, shoulderPad can detect that keystroke,' says Meer."

destinyland writes "Some time in the next 10 weeks, Amazon will release a new Android tablet device, which will compete directly with Apple's iPad, according to the Wall Street Journal. Amazon hopes to leverage the digital content they've already made available online — digital video, music, and ebooks, as well as their new app store for Android devices. The device will ship without a built-in camera, prompting one tablet watcher to report that 'it feels like Amazon is trying to strip it down and bring it in at the lowest cost possible.' Amazon will also release two new versions of the Kindle — one with a touch screen, and one at a lower price." Now if only they'd make it a proper e-reader by including a Pixel Qi (or similar) daylight-readable screen, I'd be sold.

tekgoblin writes "An interesting study was just released by Retrevo which indicates that a startling 34% of iPhone 4 owners are confused to what '4' actually means. iPhone owners who had an iPhone 3G knew that the 3G actually stood for 3G so that is where the confusion has stemmed from. iPhone 4 owners think that the 4 means 4G."

Oooskar writes "SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), a technique invented by NASA, defines the concept of building a 3D-map of the environment and simultaneously computing the position within it. Based on SLAM, Swedish startup 13th Lab has implemented real-time sub-centimeter local 3D-positioning by using only the sensors, most importantly the camera, already present in most mobile devices (demo video). The technology will be made available as a software platform for developers (sign up for beta). A first application demonstrating the technology has just been released for the iPad2. The technology should be available on other devices with similar computational power soon."

An anonymous reader writes "If you're a Windows or Linux user, or simply an Apple user that can't justify the $500 price tag on those beautiful 3TB Time Capsules, why not build your own? With a wireless router, an external USB hard drive, and a little bit of setting up, you can make your own wireless, network-attached backup device for around $200."

An anonymous reader writes "It's been a long time coming, but Apple has finally readjusted the price of apps in Australia to match pricing in the U.S. While they remain more expensive than in the U.S., premium apps have still received a price-cut, with $8.99, $9.99 and $11.99 apps dropping to $8.49, $9.49 and $10.49, respectively. Movies and music, meanwhile, remain unchanged. In recent months, Apple has come under fire from consumer watchdogs, angry customers and even the Australian Government for its local price markups."

coondoggie writes "Can new wireless auto safety systems work in the real world and how will drivers respond? That's what the U.S. Department of Transportation hopes to find out in the next few months as it lets hundreds of drivers in six communities across the country test some of the latest communication devices in controlled situations."

An anonymous reader writes "Last year Apple quietly authorized private-label app stores with its OTA (over-the-air) protocol, and now an Apple spin-off is offering the first hosting service to uses OTA to create alternative app stores for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. One of the first is Cisco's App Fridge (for cool networking apps), but a dozen other Fortune 500 companies have also signed up. And this fall, Apperian promises to add Android apps to its service, enabling one-stop-shopping for private-label apps store hosted in the clouds. So far these store are for employees only, but by 2012 Apperian claims it will be offering alternative app stores for the rest of us."

zacharye writes with this excerpt from BGR: "Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there's a different story to be told. It's a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. ... The three-year roadmap for RIM products focused on refining the technology in phones had already been released, rather than looking at where to add major new componentry or trying to identify or even shape future trends. 'One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,' a former executive said. 'There was no three-year plan at RIM.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Barry Ardolf, a Minnesota hacker prosecutors described as a 'depraved criminal,' has been handed an 18-year prison term for unleashing a vendetta of cyberterror that turned his neighbors' lives into a living nightmare. Ardolf hacked into his next-door neighbors' Wi-Fi network and used it to try and frame them for child pornography, sexual harassment, various kinds of professional misconduct, and to send threatening e-mail to politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden. The bizarre tale began in 2009 when Matt and Bethany Kostolnik moved into the house next door to Ardolf. On their first day at their new home, the Kostolnik's then-4-year-old son wandered near Ardolf's house. While carrying him back next door, Ardolf allegedly kissed the boy on the lips. 'We've just moved next door to a pedophile,' Mrs. Kostolnik told her husband. The couple reported Ardolf to the police, angering their creepy new neighbor (PDF). 'I decided to "get even" by launching computer attacks against him,' said Ardolf, who downloaded Wi-Fi hacking software and spent two weeks cracking the Kostolnik's WEP encryption. Then he used their own Wi-Fi network to create a fake MySpace page for the husband, where he posted a picture of a pubescent girl having sex with two young boys. Ardolf turned down a 2-year plea agreement last year to charges related to the Biden e-mail. After that, the authorities piled on more charges, including identity theft and two kiddie-porn accusations carrying lifetime sex-offender registration requirements."