Apple

New Scientist is reporting that a massive database culled from the public profiles of 210 million Facebook users has been destroyed before its anticipated — and controversial — release to researchers. Pete Warden, a former Apple engineer, reluctantly deleted the data after Facebook threatened legal action, saying he could not afford to fight a lawsuit. He said Facebook was not aware that such information was available and that the flaw is being patched. ...

Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, was extensively quoted in news stories today as he described how his group found 1,800 software flaws in Office 2010 by running millions of “fuzzing” tests. According to ComputerWorld, “Microsoft was able to find such a large number of bugs in Office 2010 by using not only machines in the company’s labs, but also under-utilitized or idle PCs throughout the company. The concept isn’t new: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home) project may have been the first to popularize the practice, and remains the largest, but it’s also been used to crunch numbers in medical research and to find the world’s largest prime number. ...

iPad apps seems to be getting more faster approved than apple iphone apps, we have seen many iPad apps being released. WordPress official app has been released for iPad today. As there lot more space on iPad for bloggers to write a web blog post through this wordpress app, this app seems to be useful. However it does not have any new features so it is just the iphone app being ported for iPad on apple ipad store, Below are some screenshots with which you can get the idea on how does this app will look like on iPad. ...

Want to know what makes Apple’s iPad tick? Well wait no longer: thanks to the FCC and some analysis from the people over at iFixit, we now know what the internal guts of the iPad look like. The Federal Communications Commission has publicly posted a series of images and documents sent to it by Apple — they are documents ranging from calibration tests to photos of the internal components. Apple requested that these pictures not be posted for 180 days, but clearly that request was denied. ...

There’s at least one company that isn’t scrambling to get an iPad app ready for launch day, and that company is Microsoft. Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company will “wait and see” how iPad sales perform before adapting Microsoft Office 2010 for the device. “We never say never, but we have no current plans [to develop a version of Office for the iPad],” Elop claimed. ...

Google today announced its strategy for delivering services on the iPad, and unveiled a new mobile Gmail interface optimized for bigger touchscreens. Since the iPad lies somewhere between a notebook and a smartphone, the Mountain View search company is taking a hybrid approach, offering some services in their desktop format, some in their mobile format, and some as standalone apps. “We’re particularly excited by how tablet computers create the opportunity for new kinds of user interaction,” Punit Soni, Product Manager for Google Mobile wrote in the official Google blog. “Here on the mobile team, we often talk about how mobile devices are sensor-rich: they can sense touch through their screens, see with a camera, hear through a microphone, and they know where they are with GPS. The same holds true for tablet computers, and we’re just starting to work through how our products can become even better on devices like the iPad.” ...

The most popular social bookmarking site ‘StumbleUpon’ has just released its free app for Apple iPad. iPad is ready to be officially launched tomorrow i.e. April 3, 2010. A collection of few good apps for iPad can now be seen on iTunes App store. StumbleUpon iPad app helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 8 million+ other web surfers with interests similar to you. ...

Games are big on the iPhone — the majority of apps on the App Store are games, and games are regularly among the top-selling paid and free apps. With the iPad, Apple’s new, and larger, touch-screen device, gaming on Apple’s mobile devices is poised to get even bigger (pardon the pun). But even with the touch screen and accelerometer inputs, some games just need more traditional controls, like those offered by joysticks or D-pads, those four-direction paddles on many video game controllers. ...

Apple has issued Security Update 2010-002 (Mac OS X v10.6.3) that fixes 100 enumerated vulnerabilities in: — Mac OS X 10.5 — Mac OS X 10.6 — Mac OS X Server 10.5 — Mac OS X Server 10.6 The 400 MB+ download takes a while, so, be prepared. Info here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4077

Let the iPad hype and excitement begin: Apple’s preparation for the launch of the iPad has kicked into high gear. Today, the tech giant released version 9.1 of iTunes, its vastly popular music, app, and now book-managing software. The new update doesn’t do anything like radically change the iTunes interface. Instead, it is focused on providing support for the iPad, which launches this Saturday. The big addition in this software update is iPad syncing. Thus if and when you plug that glorious iPad of yours into your computer on Saturday, it’ll sync your computer’s music, movies, books, and other media with your tablet device. ...

In the Pwn2Own hacking contest at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada, security researchers and hackers quickly hacked three of the major browsers to take control of the underline operating systems. — A German hacker who goes by the handle “Nils” used a previously unknown vulnerability in Mozilla’s Firefox to gain control of a 64-bit Windows 7 machine. — Peter Vreugdenhil an independent researcher from the Netherlands, used several vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to take control of a machine running a patched 64-bit Windows 7 implementation. ...

Recently, Opera team submitted its Opera mini app to Apple for inclusion in iTunes app store. It may take quite some time for the opera app to be approved. Till then you can see below the official screenshots of Opera Mini running on iPhone.

Yesterday there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland, near the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier, that has led the Icelandic authorities to declare a state of emergency in southern Iceland. People living nearby have been evacuated in case of glacial melt water flooding and the airspace near the now active volcano is effectively closed off. As you have probably already guessed, any event which commands a high level of public interest will be pounced on quickly by the makers of fake antivirus software in order to make a quick buck. This incident is no exception. ...

Charlie Miller, Principal Analyst at Baltimore, Md.-based security firm ISE, has made news in the last two days saying that he found 20 perviously-unknown security vulnerabilities in Apple’s OS X operating system. News stories seem to anticipate that he will reveal them at the CanSec West conference next week in his talk “Babysitting an Army of Monkeys: An Analysis of Fuzzing 4 Products with 5 Lines of Python.” However, Miller tweeted: “To be clear, I’m not revealing 20 apple bugs at #cansec, I’m revealing how I found 20 apple bugs.” ...

Are Mac OS X rogues an emerging threat? For many years discussions of the potential for malware on Macs have ended with the conclusion: “there isn’t much yet, but as soon as Mac gets a big market share the dark side is going to start writing the code.” There are indications that the bad guys are working on it. There have been some blog posts suggesting that the dark side is working hard to create a Mac OS X compatible rogue. SCMagazine is carrying a piece quoting a spokesman for researchers at Intego. Apparently Intego researchers got proof-of-concept code for an OS X rogue from underground sources and determined that it didn’t quite work. However, they concluded that some sophisticated coding was going on: ...