General Gaming Article |
- Age of Empires Online Review
- Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Review
- BlueStacks Releases Windows App Player for Android Apps
- Big Numbers Aren't Alleviating Pandora's Financial Woes
- The Tech Behind Aquarius: NASA's Most Advanced Climate Satellite
- Google Promoting Google+ Photos Over Picasa
- Hardware As Art: 25 Stunning Component-Powered Projects
- Microsoft Intelligence Report Downplays Prominence of Zero-Day Threats
- Android Market Blocked by China's Great Firewall
- Android App of the Week - Google Docs
| Posted: 11 Oct 2011 03:12 PM PDT So AOE, World of Warcraft, and Farmville walk into a bar…Playing Age of Empires Online is like greeting an old friends for the first time in years, but instead of returning your friendly fist-bump, your pal socks you in the gut. Don't get us wrong: AOEO isn't a bad game, and somewhere benearth its mountain of MMO-influenced bling, the AOE of yore forms the online version's steel-sharp strategic center. Problem is, this isn't so much an instance of old meeting new as it is old and new getting thrown haphazardly into a blender. As a result, some of the game works, and some of it really, really doesn't. Truthfully, AOEO is two games in one. There's the classic Age of Empires RTS that in the innocent days of your youth taught you how to wage bloody, ruthless war, and there's, well, World of Warcraft. AOEO's main hub is a persistent city that gains experience points, has its own talent tree, and is capable of equipping your troops with stat-boosting gear. Meanwhile, crafting takes a questionable page from Farmville's vile book, requiring you to manually micromanage resources after a certain number of real-life hours pass.
But what about the part where you click miniature men and order them to raise their tiny toothpick swords in your name? Well, that's separate from your city. See, hub cities are littered with quest-givers who hand out specific tasks to be completed within RTS matches. Sometimes, you'll be asked to simply command and conquer your way through a regular battle. Other times, though, you might find yourself embroiled in a neck-and-neck camel race. Unfortunately, quests repeat themselves a bit too much, and—despite AOEO's candy-coated veneer—get really damn hard as you progress. Co-op makes that particular pill a bit less bitter, buy you'll definitely run into an "Are you kidding me?" moment or two. The upside: When the tug of war between AOEO's two components reaches a happy medium, it's pure, addictive bliss. Customizing your talent tree and unlocking new units is utterly compulsive—even if the early goings are a bit too bare-bones. The carrot-on-a-stick usage here is masterful; it always feels like you're just a quest or two away from unlocking some cool new thing. However, this also throws multiplayer balance way out of whack. We don't consider ourselves strategic geniuses, but we lost a good many matches because our units were simply worse. On top of that, AOEO's free-to-play nature is a seriously double-edged sword. On one hand, the game's free, but starter civilizations miss out on many units, items, and craftables, not to mention a chunk of the talent tree. Premium civilizations, meanwhile, weight in at $20, and booster pakcs will run you between $5 and $10. Or there's the season pass, which tips the scales at a whopping $100 for six-months' worth of content. Also of note: This is a Games for Windows Live title. By and large, Microsoft's reviled service keeps to itself, but if your internet connection hiccups, say bye-bye to your mid-match progress. No saves, no resume options—nothing. You're simply banished to the login screen, no ifs, ands, or buts. It's a shame, too, because AOEO really has a lot going for it. It's insidiously addictive, jam-packed with content, and—this really can't be stated enough—an Age of Empires game through-and-through. In the end, that's what it all comes down to. As a game, AOEO's mostly great. The army of annoyances surrounding it, though? Not so much. Free-to-play, www.ageofempiresonline.com |
| Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Review Posted: 11 Oct 2011 03:11 PM PDT Spacious and easy to useSitting mean and green (or red, or blue, depending on your fan LED settings), the Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 combines striking looks with state-of-the-art features, all bundled into an affordable $160 package.
The MK-1 is a steel-construction, full-tower chassis, 22.4 inches high by 9.3 inches wide by 22.9 inches deep and weighing 27 pounds. Its plastic front and top panels are lined in mesh, and blue plastic accents adorn the drive trays, optical bezels, and top corners of the case. The MK-1 features four toolless optical drive bays, as well as six toolless hard drive bays with flexible blue plastic drive trays. We were a little bummed that the hard drive cage itself isn't removable. That didn't matter too much, however, as the MK-1 has more than enough room to accept even the lengthiest of graphics cards in its eight PCIe slots without having to move a thing. In fact, we found our test build to be quite easy: Utilizing the rubber-grommeted cable-routing cutouts in the motherboard tray, we were able to wire up a very clean build.
The MK-1 ships with a 20cm top fan, 20cm front fan, and a 14cm exhaust fan, as well as an array of further cooling options, including a 20cm fan-mounting bracket on the side panel and a removable top panel that can accommodate a 24cm radiator or another 20cm fan. The MK-1 also features three water-cooling routing holes in the back of the case. The first two routing holes are remnants from the days of eternal radiators, while the third is a leftover from the days of pass-through USB 3.0 cables. In addition to the three stock fans, the MK-1 features slide-out dust filters (below the case and also behind the front panel) and 1.25-inch feet to elevate the case for better airflow—particularly helpful if you're going to be parking your rig on carpet.
Using our thermal test setup from the August 2011 case roundup, the Chaser MK-1 had a CPU burn average of about 59.5 degrees Celsius, and a GPU burn average of about 83C, which is not stellar, but not terrible, either. Idling, the MK-1 ran a bit hot, with an average temperature of 38.2C. This is actually the warmest idle we've seen in months, but only by a degree. The top panel has an interesting blend of usual and not-so-usual features: The MK-1 sports a reset switch, a power button, audio jacks, two fan control settings (high and low), and a button that lets you cycle through fan LED colors—red, blue, green, and intermittent flashing of all three—the same basic setup from Thermaltake's Level 10 GT. Though it is cool to have the ability to choose your fan colors, we couldn't help but wonder why anyone would choose any color other than blue, as the case features lots of blue accents. The top panel also features two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports (with an internal motherboard header), a single eSATA port, and Thermaltake's now-familiar drop-down SATA dock.
Overall, we're very impressed with the MK-1. It looks über-beastly, especially when you power on the fan LEDs—although it's a bit reminiscent of Cooler Master's HAF series—and is spacious, to boot. Even minor additions, like a headset holder built into the side panel and the aforementioned foot stands and dust filters show us that Thermaltake doesn't always know when to stop adding details. For 160 bucks, you get a big, monstrous-looking case with toolless parts and plenty of options for cooling, making it a solid competitor against the likes of two of our recent favorite cases, the Corsair 650D ($200) and the SilverStone Raven RV03 ($140). $160, www.thermaltakeusa.com |
| BlueStacks Releases Windows App Player for Android Apps Posted: 11 Oct 2011 03:11 PM PDT
The program runs Android apps in full screen with a series of Android soft keys at the bottom, along with an 'x' to close the window. Interestingly, the apps seem to save their state when you exit, so you can jump back in where you left off. BlueStacks is not big on documentation at this early stage, but says that user might have issues getting the apps to run properly on older netbooks. Android apps with a keyboard and mouse will be far from ideal, but it's an intersting idea. The free alpha allows user to instill as many as 26 apps using the Cloud Connect app on a phone. The full version is coming later, and supports as many apps as the user wants. The cost has not been announced. |
| Big Numbers Aren't Alleviating Pandora's Financial Woes Posted: 11 Oct 2011 02:50 PM PDT
Pandora has 23 million active users, but the problem is the ad model in use. Pandora is attempting to blend short audio clips, sidebar ads, and videos into an unholy conglomeration of consumerism. Companies just aren't used to running campaigns like that. It also doesn't help that Pandora lacks ad sales staff in many large markets in the US. Pandora's recent decision to lift the 40 hour listening cap could pay off, with a projected gain of $53 million over the next four years. The company is also investigating integrating the service into cars, which would allow it to steal come revenue away from terrestrial and satellite radio. |
| The Tech Behind Aquarius: NASA's Most Advanced Climate Satellite Posted: 11 Oct 2011 02:43 PM PDT
In NASA's salt-seeking probe, new and old come together to show us the futureThe Fifth Dimension advised us in its massive chart-topper of 1969 that "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius." A time when "Peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars," an era that brings about "the mind's true liberation." And, looking back, we can say with some confidence that many minds certainly experienced at least momentary liberation in the wild and experimental days of the late 1960s. Today, however, there is an all-new age of Aquarius, one that began on June 10, 2011. It was on that day that NASA, in conjunction with Argentina's Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), launched a Delta II rocket from Southern California's Vandenberg Air Force base.
Atop that rocket sat a spacecraft known as "SAC-D" (Satellite for Scientific Applications-D), a vehicle designed to orbit the earth for many years hence. A vehicle veritably festooned with scientific devices—known as "instruments" in the outer space fraternity—each developed to monitor various activities on or above the earth. A vehicle and payload that will ultimately help scientists better understand our world and what we're doing to it, and that many consider a critical step in the gauging of our future. That's all well and good, you say, but where's the Aquarius connection? Well, nestled amongst all those instruments - and the high-tech awesomeness they represent - is perhaps the slickest and most important instrument of all: a device that will observe the surface salinity of our oceans and hopefully pave the way to a firmer grasp of climate change. Dubbed "Aquarius" in honor of the water-bearer constellation, it quickly became the focal point of the mission for many. Inevitably, it was only a matter of time before Aquarius the instrument had also become the erroneous yet popular name of the spacecraft itself. And that, boys and girls, is how SAC-D became known as Aquarius. Until we put a Millennium Falcon up there, it's one of the spiffiest pseudonyms to ever orbit the earth. Convoluted naming conventions aside, the SAC-D spacecraft and its cargo are doing a lot of interesting stuff right now, 408 miles above our heads. We recently had a chance to speak with several men intimately familiar with the Aquarius instrument in particular—Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef, Aquarius Instrument Manager Simon Collins, and Technical Lead for Flight Software Alex Murray—to get a better understanding of the tech behind the headlines. We can confidently say that if you've ever wondered what makes a mission like this tick, you've come to the right place. We Have LiftoffThough launched just a few months ago as part of the SAC-D mission, NASA's Aquarius instrument is no newcomer. Not by a long shot. Indeed, says Lagerloef, "We started in the mid-1990s thinking about this stuff. Aquarius was eventually one of two missions (from an original roster of 18 candidates) that were selected in a 2002 call for proposals."
From the very start, the mission has been linked with the Argentine space agency. For SAC-D, CONAE would provide the satellite—and several additional instruments—while NASA would deliver the primary instrument (Aquarius) and the rocket launch. Like many rocket flights, SAC-D was delayed more than once as scientists and designers put together the final pieces. But in 2009, when NASA shipped the Aquarius to Argentina in June for mounting on the assembled satellite, the proverbial ball really began to roll. The finished product was then shipped back in March of 2011, and in June it was space-bound. As we alluded earlier, Aquarius is but one of several instruments aboard what is very much an international satellite. Other prominent instruments include ROSA (Radio Occultation Sounded for Atmosphere) from the Italian space agency ASI (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana). Essentially a highly sophisticated GPS receiver dedicated to the analysis of climate change, ROSA detects modifications to its signal as it passes through the earth's atmosphere and with that creates atmospheric profiles. From France's CNES (Centre National d'Études Spatiales) comes two instruments—ICARE and SODAD. The former studies the effect of cosmic radiation on electronics, and the latter observes orbital debris and micrometeorites. Five CONAE instruments complete the picture, including radiometry, imaging, and infrared data collection devices. Imagine all of these devices working harmoniously together for years in the blackness of space, controlled remotely and without hands-on input, while the craft they inhabit orbits at constant elevation of 408 miles and completes an orbit every 98 minutes (!), and you begin to see the inherent fragility of such a mission.
Dig a little deeper though and the whole thing seems only more incredible. For one, Alex Murray tells us the core SAC-D spacecraft is…well, not particularly large, at approximately eight feet tall and eight feet wide. Apart from the size—or lack thereof—and all the goodies tagging along for the ride, Murray also points to the cabling as one of the biggest headaches, likening it to the interior of a desktop computer but far, far more complex. Alex, we PC nerds feel your pain. Just consider what it takes down here on Earth simply to watch over the spacecraft and its primary instrument. Mission operations in Cordoba, Argentina, handles observatory operations and control, service platform processing and storage, telemetry and stored data processing, orbit maneuvering, and much more. Tracking stations—a total of six—in such far flung locales as Poker Flats, Alaska; McMurdo, Antarctica; Svalbard, Norway; Wallops, Virginia; Matera, Italy; and Malindi, Kenya ensure SAC-D never disappears from view. Ground stations help keep everything together. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center processes the data it receives from CONAE, and NASA's Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center disseminates that data. We could go on, but we think you get the picture.
Yet despite all the earth lifelines, most of what goes on in the SAC-D and in the Aquarius instrument itself is designed to be autonomous. More than that though, it's designed to be long-lasting. Really long lasting. You see, although the mission is pegged as a three-year stint, Gary Lagerloef tells us that as long as something doesn't break down (even spacecraft are privy to unforeseen mechanical foibles as the rigors of time take their toll), the mission will last a whole lot more. "It's a minimum of three years. We'll have achieved our key objectives in three years, but as has been proven in the past, earth sciences satellites can continue doing their job for ten years or more." Lagerloef points to QuickScat, a satellite launched aboard a U.S. Air Force Titan II launch vehicle in June of 1999 to monitor winds over the world's oceans and in turn help forecast critical stuff like save heights, aviation weather, and last but certainly not least, the development of major storms. QuickScat was thought to have a useful life of two to three years, yet it continued to fully function and relay key data more than a decade later. Ever when its antennae essentially stopped spinning in November of 2009, thus rendering its primary objective defunct, all was not lost. Indeed, QuickScat continues even today to play the role of orbiting Energizer Bunny, albeit in a reduced capacity, cross-calibrating data for other earth sciences spacecraft.
Lions and Tigers and Scatterometers (Oh my!)So, just what is Aquarius, and why is this $287 million device so potentially important? For starters, Simon Collins tells us Aquarius is no teeny-tiny lab instrument. Indeed, it's a somewhat hefty fellow clocking in at 705 pounds. Some of that weight can be attributed to the device's sunshade, which at 8.7 feet in diameter, effectively engulfs the base of the instrument and its reflector (antenna), which deploys from the opposite end. With reflector deployed, Aquarius measures 12 feet in length, taller in fact than the SAC-D spacecraft upon which it hitches a ride.
With a little imagination, one could liken the instrument to a clamshell. The deployed reflector/antenna makes up the top shell, the sunshade the bottom shell, and the primary structure resides in the middle, as the body of the "clam." Unlike a clam, however, Aquarius concerns itself not with the ocean bottom, but instead with its surface. As we mentioned earlier, it exists for a single purpose—to measure the salinity (the concentration of salt) at the uppermost inches of the world's oceans. More accurately, as days turn to months and then years and Aquarius has surveyed each section of ocean multiple times, NASA scientists will use its data to determine the degree to which that salinity has changed. It does this because ocean salinity is a key indicator of ocean circulation, and a more thorough knowledge of ocean circulation will help us better understand the planet's water cycle (essentially how precipitation, evaporation, ice melt, and river runoff move water around the planet). If we can come to grips with that, we'll not only improve predictions of future climate trends and short-term climate events such as El Niño and La Niña, but also gain important insight into climate change. A salinity study of this magnitude has never before been attempted. Though satellites have and are being used to measure sea surface temperature, winds, rainfall, water vapor, and sea level, ocean surface salinity measurements have generally been limited to bits and pieces of data taken from ships, buoys, and a small number of in-atmosphere airborne science campaigns. Aquarius, conversely, is an ocean-scanning mega-machine of such proportions that NASA claims it will collect as many sea surface salinity measurements as the entire 125-year historical record from ships and buoys. And that's just within its first few months of operation. At the forefront of the instrument is something called a "radiometer." To be more specific, a passive microwave radiometer. The Aquarius has three of them in total, each measuring microwave emissions from the sea surface at 1.4GHz in the L-band portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The more salinity that resides in a given bit of ocean, the greater its "emissivity" and the more powerfully the signal is radiated.
Yet there is a fly in the radiometer ointment. If the water in a given oceanic zone is choppy, radiometer readings tend to "scatter," thus rendering gathered data far less effective. But that's where a device called a "scatterometer," one of which has been installed on Aquarius, comes in. By NASA definition, a scatterometer is "a microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning the surface of the earth from an aircraft or a satellite." In the case of Aquarius, the on-board scatterometer takes constant reading of ocean surface roughness in parallel with the radiometers, and in effect, corrects measurements skewed by rogue waves. Pretty slick, huh? If that doesn't impress you, consider this: The trio of Aquarius radiometers (and the scatterometer, which alternates operations with the radiometers so the sensors look at the same piece of ocean simultaneously) completes a full scan of the Earth's entire ocean surface in just seven days. Granted, that has a lot to do with that 98-minute orbit time we referenced earlier, but it's also a function of three highly cooperative radiometers. Operatingin a harmonious "pushbroom" configuration, together they cut a swatch across the world's oceans that's 242 miles in width, with what NASA claims is accuracy equivalent to a pinch of salt in a bucket of water. Some pushbroom. One other thing: according to Lagerloef, the potential malfunction of one, or even two, of Aquarius' radiometers doesn't spell an end to the mission. In such an instance, the unaffected radiometer(s) would simply keep on trucking. But Can It Play Crysis?According to Alex Murray, the spacecraft itself is home to three computers, all of which share architecture they've inherited from earlier Argentine spacecraft. The first handles command and data handling, measures the health of the machine, and communicates with the instruments. The second is dedicated to the attitude control system, essentially keeping the entire assembly pointed in the right direction and in a "sun-synchronous" orbit in which it passes over the same part of the Earth at the same local time each day and whereby the Aquarius sensors are consistently pointed away from the sun to avoid signal contamination from solar L-band energy flux. The third and final SAC-D computer moderates and distributes the power accumulated through the spacecraft's solar panels.
Similarly, the Aquarius instrument itself also features three computing devices—the two smallest and least powerful of which are dedicated to controlling temperature. And yes, temperature is that important. During orbit, Murray tells us, Aquarius is regularly exposed to temps as cold as -70C - most definitely not a good thing for the delicate systems within it. Yet even more potentially harmful are temperature variations, which can play havoc with optimal operation of certain components and the proper calibration of those oh-so-critical radiometers. A ten- or fifteen-degree temperature swing, says Murray, would be "intolerable." The obvious solution? Install a heater. Not the heater from your old Chevy, mind you, but a state of the art "thermal control system" that ensures everything important remains at a nice, even keel. This was not an easy task, as it turned out, considering Aquarius' size, scope, and proposed longevity, and it ultimately forced scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to work overtime designing special computer models beforehand. The reward? An instrument that, like Goldilocks' ill-gotten porridge, is neither too hot nor too cold. The third Aquarius computer is where all the cool stuff happens. This is where the data and the command information flows, and it is, in effect, the brains of the operation. The big surprise, however, to all us space-challenged, earth-dwelling tech-lovers, is that Aquarius' most powerful computer by a country mile…isn't. At least not when compared to even one of today's entry-level desktops. Lagerloef tells us that in Aquarius, "computation demand is not high." Murray goes a few steps further, spelling out for us that Aquarius' chief computer is one of the spares from NASA's long running Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program, an IBM RAD6000—a computer that operates at the 20 MIPs (millions of instructions per second) range. How fast is that? Well, MIP speed alone is not an accurate measure of computer power, though we can say that virtually every new desktop-level CPU released in the last decade rates considerably higher. Intel's Core i7 Extreme, for example, screams along at 150,000 MIPs-plus. Aquarius' main computer also does not have a hard drive. Well, of course not, you say, but surely it must incorporate some high-end, high-capacity solid state drive that would better stand up to the rigors of space. Well…no. Instead it features a whopping 128MB of RAM. Here, the flight software, amongst all the other information that's gather, is stored. Everything Old is New AgainFortunately, the folks at NASA have ensure Aquarius doesn't need a tons of on-board storage. Four times each day (typically twice during the morning and twice in the evening), new data is dumped from the instrument to the Cordoba, Argentina ground station. Still, some may scoff at the seeming antiquity of Aquarius' computing hardware. Yet the truth is that when you're monitoring the salinity of oceans from space, the speed and power of the computing component is secondary to both its reliability and its survivability. Murray puts it succinctly. "When in space, you can't have reboots. You can't have any BSODs." We couldn't agree more.
One threat comes from vibration. Like Bill Haley and his appropriately named Comets, spacecrafts shake, rattle, and roll as they make the transition to space—a terrible spot for typically earthboard electronics and computers. But the far more urgent threat when outside our atmosphere, apart from brutally low temperatures of course, is radiation. And make no mistake—the level of radiation 408 miles up is not only deadly to humans, it's also absolutely toxic to unprotected computing equipment. Essentially, says Murray, high-energy particles such as cosmic rays, so prevalent in outer space, can hit a binary digit (bit) and flip its switch from a 1 to a 0 or from a 0 to a 1. The result? An error. A "glitch." And in a situation where precision is paramount, where errors can cause irreversible mission damage, where hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line, and of course, where hands-on technicians aren't exactly hovering behind the next asteroid, such errors simply cannot be permitted.
Thusly, the Aquarius mission, and indeed all NASA missions, rely exclusively on "radiation hardened" computer components. The exact recipe for radiation hardening generally includes extra transistors that take more energy to switch on and off and unique approaches to the manufacture and installation of insulating layers. The downside? Radiation hardened components are power hungry, tremendously expensive, and slow. Their inherent lack of speed can be attributed, at least partly, to the radiation hardened environment in which the chips sit, but there's also something else at play here—trustworthiness. Basically, if computational demands aren't extremely high—as is the case with Aquarius—and if you have a given computing array that's already survived previous missions, the need to upgrade to a faster, more powerful array is not a prime driving force. And that's one of the main reasons relatively old school single-board computers such as the aforementioned RAD6000 still find favor in the NASA community. Here, the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," seems more than apropos.
And certainly the Aquarius mission thus far is anything but broken. In full operation as of August 25, the instrument, its radiometers, and its scatterometer have already produced complete global maps of ocean salinity. Moreover, says Alex Murray, the "precision of the fineness of the measurements is much better than anticipated." Don't you love it when a plan comes together? |
| Google Promoting Google+ Photos Over Picasa Posted: 11 Oct 2011 02:37 PM PDT
When Google+ dropped, we began hearing rumors that the Picasa name would be put out to pasture, and maybe this is part of that eventual plan. Though, with features like batch editing and Picnik support, it doesn't make sense to just leave Picasa behind. We will grant that the Google+ photos page is compelling in a social sort of way, but it's not a fully-fledged photo management page yet. We anticipate that the features in Picasa will slowly but surely make their way to Google+, but in the meantime, you can still manually reach Picasa. Do you think Google is moving to fast with this social business? |
| Hardware As Art: 25 Stunning Component-Powered Projects Posted: 11 Oct 2011 12:23 PM PDT While our Data as Art gallery went down mighty fine for many Maximum PC readers, we weren't fooling ourselves: this is Maximum PC, the magazine that shows you how to build computers, not Maximum Software. You folks want hardware. And who are we to disappoint? We cast our net far and wide to dredge up 25 of the flat-out coolest examples of people repurposing components from PCs, VCRs, CDs or whatever and prove that, yes Virginia, hardware can be art, too. Where else can you find terrifying robots made out of mice and hard drives? |
| Microsoft Intelligence Report Downplays Prominence of Zero-Day Threats Posted: 11 Oct 2011 11:41 AM PDT
In Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (volume 11), the Redmond software giant found less than 1 percent of exploits in the first half of 2011 were against zero-day vulnerabilities. By comparison, user interaction, typically employing social engineering techniques, accounted for 45 percent of all malware propagation in the same time period. More than a third was spread by abusing the Win32/Autorun feature when connecting external media like a USB flash drive or CD. "We encourage people to consider this information when prioritizing their security practices," said Vinny Gullotto, general manager, Microsoft Malware Protection Center. "SIRv11 provides techniques and guidance to mitigate common infection vectors, and its data helps remind us that we can't forget about the basics. Techniques such as exploiting old vulnerabilities, Win32/Autorun abuse, password cracking and social engineering remain lucrative approaches for criminals." That less than 1 percent figure sounded awfully low to us, especially when you consider that so many antivirus companies are putting a greater emphasis on behavior-based scanning and cloud databases to protect against emerging threats. Webroot in particular just recently launched its SecureAnywhere security software, which exists almost entirely in the cloud. We asked Jacques Erasmus, chief information security officer at Webroot, what he thought about Microsoft's report. "I tend to agree with these numbers if we are talking about true zero-day exploits which are very rarely used to infect large numbers of people. Instead, they're used in targeted attacks; what happens after this is the exploit gets leaked after it's used initially and then hits the mass market until a patch is released," Erasmus told Maximum PC. You can read Microsoft's Security Intelligent Report here. |
| Android Market Blocked by China's Great Firewall Posted: 11 Oct 2011 11:10 AM PDT
The Next Web first reported the blockage, which is verified by heading over to Blocked in China, a website that checks the accessibility of URLs from Beijin, Shenzen, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang Province, and Yunnan Province. As of this writing, all five are registering market.android.com as "Blocked." According to The Register, this all started over the weekend, right after Google announced plans to help the Dalai Lama to virtually visit South Africa. Whether or not this is the reason why China is blocking the Android Market is anyone's guess at this point. Google.com and Gmail.com remain blocked as well. |
| Android App of the Week - Google Docs Posted: 11 Oct 2011 11:05 AM PDT If we were creating our own cloud service mega-corp and had our own mobile platform, one of the first things we'd do is make a fully optimized mobile app for every one of our services. Sadly, we don't own a controlling interest in Google, but the Internet juggernaut is making an effort to integrate all of its cloud services with Android phones and tablets. This week's example is Google Docs. The ability to create, edit, and share documents using a single cloud application is a major draw to many people. Just the ability to access your documents from any web browser is a major benefit to Google Docs, but the Android app has been lacking some features for tablet users, like a capable UI, until recently.
Google Docs makes our App of the Week primarily for the level of access it provides to your Google Docs library. Any documents or spreadsheets you've created or saved can be opened within the Google Docs app or other third-party document apps you have on your Android device. Google Docs will also let you capture an image using your device's camera and upload it as a document. You can easily share documents with other Google accounts or simply attach them to an email.
Google Docs is available as a free download from the Android Marketplace.
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A few months ago, a company called BlueStacks announced it would be developing software that allows user to run Android apps on a PC. To everyone's surprise, BlueStacks has followed through, and the alpha version of the App Player for Windows is available as a 
Music streaming service Pandora has taken heat as of late despite being one of the most downloaded apps on most mobile platforms. The problem is that as time goes on, investors are becoming increasingly skittish regarding Pandora's 
Google made a 
After analyzing data from more than 600 million systems around the globe, Microsoft has determined that zero-day vulnerabilities aren't nearly as worrisome as malware based on traditional techniques, such as social engineering and unpatched security holes. It's not that zero-day threats aren't inherently dangerous, it's just that hardly anyone's exploiting them, at least comparatively.
As if relations between China and Google weren't already tense, it's being reported that the Chinese government has gone and blocked the Android Market in the mainland. There's no love lost between these two giant entities, though why exactly China has chosen to erect a firewall in five major provinces to block users from downloading Android apps is not yet known.
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