Tech Archives - Page 9 of 16 - Serious Startups

Not Anonymous This Time: 15 Year Old Austrian Boy Arrested For Hacking 259 Businesses

Austrian officials admit they are still investigating and totaling up the damage however as it stands 15-year-old who goes by the hacker handle ACK!3STX has been arrested, and so far charged with hacking over 259 businesses.

The damage includes stealing data from businesses and publicly posting it, defacing company websites, and of course breaking security infrastructures. There was no specific target. The young hacker hacked everything sports sites, travel sites, tourism sites, adult sites and more, reports ZDNet.

The Austria Federal Criminal Police Office reported that as soon as the boy was questioned he admitted to the attacks. All of the hacking happened between January of 2012 and March of 2012. He said he was bored and wanted to prove himself, and proving himself is exactly what he did. He found a hacker forum that gave points for successful hacks, after three months he was in the top 50 out of 2,000 hackers registered on the forum.

At some point the young man either forgot to use anonymizing software or his anonymizing software failed him and his IP address was traced back to his residence in Lower Austria. From there authorities were able to get a search warrant and track him down.

The investigation is on going and its also been reported that Europol is trying to determine the number of attacks in both Austria and abroad. The hacker’s real name was withheld because of his age.

source: ZD Net
image courtesy of ZDNet via Sebastian Gruber

Apple Fan Boy Alert The Fragrance Of A Macbook Pro Has Been Created

Melbourne Australian artists Gavin Bell, Jarrah De Kuijer and Simon McGlinn have done the unthinkable. They’ve packaged up the fragrance that you can only experience when you open up a brand new MacBook Pro. Ok, truth here we know the smell they are talking about and you can also get it in an original MacBook and a MacBook Air, but for this story we’ll stick with the pro.

Unfortunately for the die-hard Apple fans the fragrance has only been captured for an art exhibit and it hasn’t been bottled for purchase at your local Macy’s or Apple Store counter (at least not yet).

The scent was created using Air Aroma for the DeFacto Standard, Art Exhibition in Australia. The creators say that the scent encompasses the plastic wrap covering the box, the printed cardboard, the smell of the paper and plastic components in the box and the aluminum laptop. What? They left out the foam that packs the MacBook pro all neat in the box, travesty!

The fragrance was built off fragrance samples from suppliers in France who sent over samples of glue, plastic, rubber and paper. They then compared the samples to actually unboxing a MacBook Pro and say they perfected just right.

The exhibit will be on display at West Space in Melbourne Australia from April 20th to May 12th. I’m sure if you’re that big a fan you could find a decent flight rate using Hipmunk.

source: macworld.au

Mini Review: HTC One S for T-Mobile

HTC sent us their latest device for T-Mobile (announcement is coming shortly from NYC) the One S. This device is part of “the new HTC” a return to form by the Taiwanese company after a devastating 4Q 2011. After an onslaught of very similar models across the “high-end” of the Android OS market the brand was becoming diluted. Last year saw (in the US) the launch of Thunderbolt 4G, Evo Shift 4G, Droid Incredible 2, Merge, Sensation 4G, Evo 3D, Status, MyTouch 4G Slide, Rhyme, Hero S, Wildfire S, Amaze 4G, Evo Design 4G, Vivid, and lastly the Rezound. 16 phones, nearly half of which were considered high-end devices. HTC Chief Financial Officer Winston said “We simply dropped the ball on products in the fourth quarter.” Q1 2012 was a huge disappointment as our sister site TheDroidGuy reported two weeks ago.

So, how about the One is it “the one“?

Hardware

Beginning with the first touch I thought, this feels like their mid to low-end devices – SPECTACULAR. I mean that in all sincerity. I loved the quality and construction of both the Status AND the Radar 4G (Windows Phone 7) devices. They were constructed out of solid pieces of aluminum. I was baffled why two of the best devices were made of this amazing metal but not the “halo” devices like Sensation 4G, Amaze 4G, or Evo 3D. The screen is a 4.3″ SuperAMOLED qHD (960×540) resolution*. It comes with Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Sense 4.0 HTC’s custom UI overlay. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, 1GB DDR2, and it operates on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ (42 Mbps) network. It also comes with Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-FI 802.11 b/g/n, and HDMI via MHL connector (not included). The storage is non-expandable 16GB (available space is split into 2.2 GB system and 9.9 GB external partitions). HTC has teamed with Dropbox to provide an additional 25 GB of “free” storage – if you don’t include data usage, that is.

The battery, which you cannot remove, is 1650 mAh. This is significantly smaller than the Motorola Droid Razr 1780 mAh (another device without a removable battery). It remains to be seen if this was a mistake or a HUGE mistake on the part of HTC. I’ve never personally owned a HTC device without owning at least one additional battery for it.

Visual/Audio

One of the top selling points for this reviewer is the new HTC ImageSense which “improves every part of the camera including the lens, the sensor, the software, and integrates a new custom HTC ImageChip. Inside it has an 8MP lens with f/2.0 aperture capture. The Rezound shipped with a f/2.2 aperture (smaller is “better”). The camera can be used to simultaneously shoot both video and still shots which I’ve tested extensively. It works amazingly well and is flawless during video playback.

HTC also focused on the sound output in the One S using Beats By Dre Audio to handle the processing of audio. Unlike the Rezound the One S did not come with Beats headphones. The Beats audio has been made available across the range of listening situations that I have used it for. The Rezound’s Beats output was limited to HTC Music and HTC watch. I was severely disappointed with that experience on the Rezound and appreciate that HTC addressed that issue.

Software

HTC launched the One series with Android’s latest 4.0.3 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) and their custom UI Sense 4.0. I somewhat jokingly and somewhat seriously commented about my feelings regarding (the unofficial) Sense 3.6 leak for the Sensation 4G a few months back in this video (no need to watch, honestly). I won’t lie – I hated it. I still have a very strong dislike of Sense 3.6 but I’ve come to love Sense 4.0.

Sense 4.0 has followed the lead set by ICS yet still maintains a very familiar feel to the Sense that people have grown accustomed to. When you first turn on the device and the home screen loads the ubiquitous HTC Sense Clock widget greets you at the top of the screen. It looks, refreshed, almost different but isn’t. Well, it is ever so slightly different, it is now using the Roboto font (I believe) – if it is not Roboto then it is a different font than it always has been. The full suite of widgets are pre-loaded from HTC.

So far I’ve truly enjoyed the HTC One S in the short time that I have had it. I only received it on Monday so I cannot, in good conscience, give a full review. I will say that this is one of the fastest phones I’ve used to date, both in benchmarks and in real-world use. There have been very few cases of the phone ever stuttering or seeming to be unresponsive, swiping from home screen to home screen is fast and fluent. Music playback is great, I have yet to playback any video, web browsing is quick. It’s impossible to judge battery life in such a short period of time and to do so would be unfair because of the amount of use it gets. I will say that I have been relatively impressed with battery life so far. I used it a lot yesterday and I only needed to put it on charge one time towards the end of the day.

Mini Review thoughts:

Strengths:

Gorgeous design

Weight and Thinness are nearly perfect (clearly personal opinion)

Camera is spectacular (incredible in low-light situations)

Weaknesses:

Non-expandable memory

Non-removable battery

Extremely slippery

*INTERESTINGLY the resolution shows up as 540×888 in my favorite app for system information Elixir 2 – this application has NEVER been wrong before, so I’ve pinged the developer for some insight. Also it is a PenTile display: The use of a SAMOLED screen means that my biggest gripe with the Galaxy Nexus (though less noticeable here, surprisingly) is the use of the pentile matrix for the pixel layout. I’ll do a separate post regarding PenTile displays tomorrow.

PARC Hosting Context Event: The Context Challenge and opportunities

(photo: flickr Ferran Rodenas)

Our good friends at Meshin tweeted about an event happening at PARC (Paolo Alto Research Center) on Thursday revolving around context. Something the folks at Meshin know well. If you’re not familiar with Meshin they are doing some incredible things with semantics and context and revolving it around Evernote. Their Meshin Recall app allows you to organize notes and tag them to your calendar rather than sort them out with hashtags which get easily as messy as not having tags at all.

It’s this context that Meshin uses to relate your notes to something that is fueling this panel discussion with some thought leaders in the context space. If you’re in the Paolo Alto area you may want to attend this great discussion. The event runs from 5:00pm to 6:30 with networking from 6:00-6:30 and will be moderated by social media guru Dave Peck.

More after the break
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And Now Electronic Arts To Lay Off 500

Electronic Arts was just recently voted the worst company in America by the users at consumerist.com. They actually beat out Bank of America and Walmart. Well there woes haven’t stopped there as Monday it was reported that the gaming giant could lay off as many as 500 people.

Startup Grind’s Derek Anderson is reporting that Electronic Arts could lay off between 500-1000 people as soon as this week.

CNet is reporting that this news may not come as surprising considering EA recently had a horrible Q4 which is a crucial time for video game companies. Q4 includes holiday shopping which is supposed to be the best time of the year for video game sales. 2011, not so much for EA as they reported a $205 million dollar loss in Q4 2011.

Q3 2011 was actually worse as EA saw a $340 million dollar loss.

EA was harshly criticized for the lackluster ending of their game Mass Effect 3. Die hard gamers were expecting much more out of the franchise hit. CNet reports that EA was accused of disrespecting gamers for the horrible ending to Mass Effect 3. In fact it was so bad that EA announced that they would release a free “Extended Cut” for those that bought the original version.

To top all this off EA is under-performing with investors as well. Shares of EA stock are down 21.5% to $16.18 In the past five years EA stock has lost 70 percent of it’s value. They aren’t the super sports franchise company we used to know and love.

source: CNet

Austin Named Best City For Small Business For Third Year In A Row

The Business Journals, you know the local tabloid sized weekly business newspapers, have selected Austin Texas as the best city for small business for the third year in a row. Raleigh NC, Oklahoma City OK, Houston Texas and Salt Lake City UT followed behind Austin this year.

Sure Austin is home to two mega festivals every year with South By Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits, but it’s their year round support for local small businesses that has earned Austin this title, yet again. The actual scoring factors by the Business Journals were; growth in population, private sector jobs, per capita concentration of small businesses and the number of small businesses. The Business Journals declared a small business having 100 employees or less.

Austin’s strong number of startups of course contributed to this winning. Website austinstartuplist.com has found over 1400 companies that are in their startup stages and call Austin TX home.

Every year hundreds of startups flock to Austin’s SXSW Interactive festival hoping to get the buzz that Twitter, and Foursquare once garnered. Startups like Zaarly (2011), Highlight and Glancee have pulled traction out of the Austin festival but not the way Foursquare and Twitter have.

Austin is also a hot bed of acquihires the most notable being Facebook’s purchase and relocation of Gowalla from Austin to Paolo Alto.

We’ve spoken with several Austin based startups who sometimes feel like Austin’s startup scene is hot only in March. They’ve got some great companies, startups and events, all that we’ll be covering here at Nibletz as the voice for startups everywhere else. As for not being hot year round, Business Journals obviously thinks they are.

source: Inc

Amazon Now Accepting CD Trade-ins

Amazon has been recycling electronics and giving customers Amazon gift cards for a while now. They recently announced they are going to start taking CDs on trade in. While this news is met with excitement for many, those who use small local CD shops to buy, sell and trade CDs may be a little put off by it.

Personally I’ve traded or sold CDs at the regional chain Edward McKay’s in North Carolina and at the Sound Garden in Baltimore’s Fells Point. Both stores provide more than just money for CD’s you get the eclectic feeling of trading up for CDs that you really want, or want to try. The other advantage to the local store vs Amazon is the fact that most local record shops will give you straight up cash for your CDs rather than a gift card or store credit (if you want it).

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Baltimore Get Ready For TechCocktail’s Mixer Event May 2nd

Last night we brought you the story that Technically Philly is expanding and adding Technically Baltimore this summer. If you can’t wait until the summer to mingle with Baltimore’s tech influencers, entrepreneurs and startups don’t worry TechCocktail has you covered.

TechCocktail is holding another one of their infamous mixers on May 2nd at Mother’s Federal Hill Grille from 6:30pm-9pm on May 2, 2012. If you’re a startup founder, entrepreneur, tech nut or tech enthusiast head out to Mother’s and get your geek on.

If you want to sign up for a free demo spot or just to attend the event head over to techcocktail.com and sign up now.

See you there!

Ford & Yahoo Team Up For Reality Show About Electric Cars

Being on the road in a Prius makes you really appreciate both the hybrid and the full on electric car. While traveling to cover startups in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cameron and I saw charging stations out in front of local government office buildings, which was a breath of fresh air. We also brought you this story earlier this month about a NC startup that is re-inventing the charging station.

With all this talk about electric cars it’s no wonder that Ford has teamed up with Yahoo to release a web-based reality show about electric cars.

The new show called “Plugged In” will chronicle the lives of three two person teams driving the new Ford Focus electric. The teams will compete in scavenger hunt like challenges in 10 major cities including Los Angeles in New York, mostly on the east and west coast where electric cars are gaining popularity and where gas is over $4.00 per gallon and quickly approaching $5.00.

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FCC Chairman Genachowski & Senator Frank Lautenberg Announce New Jersey Apps Challenge

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was in New Jersey with Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on Wednesday to announce the New Jersey Apps Challenge and a new piece of legislation to foster American innovation.

The New Jersey Apps Challenge is of course a mobile apps design contest between three New Jersey universities. Students at Stevens, Rutgers and the New Jersey Institute of Technology are invited to participate in this statewide contest. The contest is open to students, faculty and alumni of the three institutions.

“The New Jersey Apps Challenge” will accept built-from-scratch mobile apps through December 31, 2012. A panel of judges will evaluate entries based on several metrics, including overall utility and potential commercial success. Winners will be selected from each university to meet with the university presidents, and one overall winner will meet with Dennis Crowley, CEO of foursquare, to pitch the winning idea.

“New Jersey’s students and entrepreneurs are on the cutting edge, and the apps challenge will showcase this next generation of New Jersey innovators,” said Senator Lautenberg. “From Thomas Edison to Albert Einstein to Bell Labs, New Jersey has long been the birthplace of new ideas that have transformed our economy and our world. By bringing the brightest minds in business and academia together, we can help ensure that New Jersey continues to build on its rich tradition of innovation.”

Genachowski added: “New Jersey has all the key ingredients to become a great engine of job-creating innovation: talent, world-class research universities, infrastructure, and access to capital. I’m glad that New Jersey leaders like those here today are working to encourage collaboration and entrepreneurship in the apps economy. It’s a low-cost but potentially high-yield way for young people to build their business skills and practice being an entrepreneur without quitting their day jobs or interrupting their education.”

The “America Innovates Act” will help universities and other research institutions grow “proof of concept funds” The legislation will also provide innovators with the business development training they need to take their ideas to market.

Latest Rumor: Mircosoft To Buy RIM?

The interwebs are a buzz today about the latest rumor involving Waterloo Canada based RIM/Blackberry. According to financial website Benzinga.com Microsoft is allegedly about to invest $3.5 billion dollars into the company.

This comes as a surprise and out of left field so of course we take it with a grain of salt. It doesn’t make that much sense either. RIM has been steadily losing market share due to Apple and Android’s stranglehold on the smartphone OS market.

RIM did release a product earlier this month that allows Android, iPhone and RIM to play nice in the next iteration of Blackberry Enterprise Server, which they are calling “Mobile Fusion”. RIM is also expected to release their Blackberry 10 devices which will utilize the QNX platform, the same platform on the Blackberry Playbook.

Microsoft has been desperately trying to gain traction with their Windows Phone 7 products. The first of their Nokia Windows Phone 7 handsets have hit the market however they haven’t made any significant gains in market share.

Perhaps putting the two failing operating systems together would amount to one working, worthwhile system.

NY Startup Birch Box Teams Up With Gossip Girl XO XO

Birchbox is a women owned startup in New York that’s received a lot of traction. They are a monthly subscription club where their club members receive a box every month filled with the latest and greatest in cosmetics and pampering gear.

Subscription based clubs have been great for people with a hustle and bustle lifestyle. Nowadays you can find a subscription club for everything from shoes, to fashion, to cosmetics. We even profiled Chicago based KlutchClub earlier this year, they offer health and wellness products monthly.

Birchbox had two major pieces of news this week. First off they’ve introduced the Birch Box for men which comes complete with colognes, after shaves, and other pampering products that men love (but sometimes don’t like to shop for).

Their other announcement is that they’ve teamed up with the CW hit show “Gossip Girl” for their season finale.

The May Birchbox theme is “Gossip Girl” Birchbox founders Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna have teamed up with Amy Tagliamotti the shows department head for makeup and Jennifer Johnson the shows department head for hair. Tagliamotti and Johnson helped inspire the treats that will be in this months Birchbox.

“We’re all really big fans of Gossip Girl,” Beauchamp told Betabeat.com “The idea was to help the audience basically engage deeper with the show by getting a look into some of the looks from the show.”

Gossip Girl chronicles the lives of the upper east sides debutantes and their soap opera centric lives. “Gossip Girl” is a secretive blogger who posts the gossip that’s happening around the shows main characters. It airs on the CW network and is about to go on their season break.

source: Betabeat

Mike Arrington MG Siegler

Mike Arrington loves dogs

MG Siegler loves Apple products

Google+ Updated With Brand New UI, Profiles Reminiscent Of Facebook Timeline

With a completely new UI update landing for the web client today, we can see that Google is really trying to grab and keep users for their social networking service. Now, UI updates come to services all the time, with re-focus for their apps and so forth. However, Google isn’t necessarily trying to point out something new with this update, just show you what’s been there the whole time. No big new features, no name-changes, just the same Google+ with a different look.

There is no doubt that they are trying put a bigger focus on Google Hangouts, one of the best features Google+ has to offer, and really, one of only things I use it regularly for. The entire right side of the page has been taken up by a chat bar, showing all users that are currently online with an option at the top to “start a Hangout.” This really draws your attention when first getting to the site, much like what Facebook has done with their side-bar.

The profiles have also been redone, and it really just looks like an inverted version of Facebook’s Timeline. Posts are lined up from the bottom in order you posted them like usual on G+, but much of the design layout is very reminiscent of what Facebook has just done with their profiles. They’ve even added the option to add a cover photo, with your profile picture laid neatly on top. They did, at least, put all of this on the right side of the page as opposed to Facebook having it on the left, but it is still very similar.

More after the break

One of the greatest pieces of the new UI is the column on the left displaying all of the places to go on Google+. To me, this really simplifies the whole experience and makes it really easy for new users to figure out what to do. All the necessary things have been added for users to view, such as Home, Profiles, Circles, and of course, Hangouts.

Overall, I really like the new design of G+, and I think it is much easier to use. The emphasis has been placed on the social service’s best features, and showing people why they need to use Google+ is the way they’ll bring in more users.