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Microsoft Office app coming to iPad? | Signal Strength – CNET News

February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Microsoft Office Suite may soon come to the Apple iPad, according to a report by The Daily.

On Tuesday, the blog reported that its sources say that an Microsoft app that will include Office programs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will soon be submitted to the Apple App Store. The blog first noted the existence of an iPad version of the Microsoft Office Suite in November.

The Daily said that it’s had some hands-on experience with the new app. The user interface is supposedly similar to the current OneNote app. There is also some resemblance to Metro, the new design language used on Windows Phone and the soon to be released Windows 8 desktop operating system.

The Daily said that Word, Excel and PowerPoint will be supported and users will be able to create and edit these documents locally or online. But the blog said it’s unclear if other Office apps will be supported.

via Microsoft Office app coming to iPad? | Signal Strength – CNET News.

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Tips for Facebook Timeline Apps: Beware What You Share | PCWorld (Kristin Burnham)

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Facebook opened the floodgates to its “new class of apps” this week, unveiling its partnership with more than 60 applications that let users share more about their daily lives.

Facebook TimelineIn September at the F8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Timeline, Facebook’s new profile design, and the forthcoming apps that “let you express who you are through all the things you do,” according to Facebook.

For example, rather than “liking” something as you traditionally would on Facebook, you can now show what you’re doing, such as running, eating and watching, right on your timeline. These new actions are determined by the individual app.

Among the 60 new applications released yesterday are food apps Foodily, which helps you discover recipes and Snooth, a wine recommendation app; fitness app MapMyFitness, in which you log and share your fitness goals and accomplishments; and an app for Pinterest, an up-and-coming social network that creates pin boards for fashion, decorating and more.

via Tips for Facebook Timeline Apps: Beware What You Share | PCWorld.

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Video: Your Android Phone Is Secretly Recording Everything You Do

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

If you have any decently modern Android phone, everything you do is being recorded by hidden software lurking inside. It even circumvents web encryption and grabs everything—including your passwords and Google queries.

Worse: it’s the handset manufacturers and the carriers who—in the name of “making your user experience better”—install this software without any way for you to opt-out. This video, recorded by 25-year-old Android developer Trevor Eckhart, shows how it works. This is bad. Really bad.

Fast forward to 9:00 for the damning sequence.

The spying software is developed by a company called Carrier IQ. In their site, the company says they are “the only embedded analytics company to support millions of devices simultaneously, we give Wireless Carriers and Handset Manufacturers unprecedented insight into their customers’ mobile experience.”

It seems like a good goal and, indeed, most manufacturers and carriers agree: according to Eckhart, the spyware is included in most Android phones out there. Carrier IQ software is also included in Blackberry and Nokia smartphones, so it probably works exactly the same in those smartphones as well. It doesn’t even matter if your telephone was purchased free of carrier contracts. As Eckhart shows in this video, it’s always there.

The problem is that it does a lot more than log anonymous generic data. It grabs everything.

Read More: http://gizmodo.com/5863849/your-android-phone-is-secretly-recording-everything-you-do

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Update: Google ‘messed up,’ yanks Gmail app for iPhone, iPad – Computerworld

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Just minutes after launching its first native Gmail app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Google pulled the program, saying it had “messed up” by issuing a flawed version.

“Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app,” Google said in an updated blog post. It promised a new version “soon,” but did not set a timetable.

Google tweeted much the same. “We have pulled the app to fix the problem. Sorry we messed up,” the Gmail team said on Twitter.

David Girouard, Google’s vice president of apps and the company’s top executive for its enterprise group, issued his own apology on Twitter and Google+.

“Googla culpa!” said Girouard on Twitter. “Sorry, but we pushed a bad version of our iOS app for Gmail. More info shortly – we’re working on it.”

via Update: Google ‘messed up,’ yanks Gmail app for iPhone, iPad – Computerworld.

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Why Siri Is a Google Killer – Forbes

October 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

1. Siri works. Voice recognition has been the next big thing for 15 – 20 years.  We still have these frustrating experiences when we call into check the balance of our bank account and have to shout in the phone 5 times in a row, because the application doesn’t recognize us.  Siri is the best voice rec app ever — and it’s still in “beta.”

2. Siri has personality. Not only does Siri accurately recognize our voices but it has a personality to boot.  It’s that personality which makes the app addictive because we start to feel over time that we truly have a personal assistant who is our friend.

3. Siri is hard to copy. For anyone who doesn’t understand voice applications, it’s easy to think that Siri will be easy to copy. It won’t.  There are 2 parts to making a successful voice app: the voice rec technology which has improved a lot but is basically a commodity and the app itself, which is a combination of art and artificial intelligence.  It’s that 2nd part that’s so tough to replicate and that’s why Apple bought Siri last year.  It’s true Google has experience in the voice rec space and doing some simple voice apps but they do not have the personality and AI of Siri and that will be very difficult to copy — especially for a company that doesn’t sit at the intersection of the humanities and technology.

4. Siri helps own the customer experience for Apple. Dan Frommer and others have been talking about this for a long time.  Siri is a new interface for customers wanting to get information.  It used to be text-based input to their desktops.  Then, it was thumbing it in to their mobile devices. Now, Apple is attempting to make it voice-based.  They previously were attempting to Balkanize your data needs by training for you to do specialist searches for the information within apps on your iPhone.  Now, they’re training you to rely for doing any task by leaning on Siri to do it for you.  At the moment, most of us still rely on Google for getting at the info we want.  But Siri has a foot in the door and it’s trusting that it will win your confidence over time to do basic info gathering.  Siri can be potentially leveraged in other devices that Apple ships in the future like TV to become the primary way you interface with info you need.

5. Siri will vastly improve in the next 2 years based on all the data it’s amassing. This game is about where the puck is going, not where it is today.  Many people only look at Siri as the application as it works today.  Yet, the biggest advantage over any other voice application out there today, and the apps still to be developed, is the massive data Siri is now and will continue to collect in the next 2 years.  We know after the first weekend alone, there were 4 million Siri-enabled devices out there probably collecting 1 – 2 utterances a day worth of data — all being stored in Apple’s massive North Carolina data center.  All that data will allow Siri to get better and better.  Think Siri has awesomely funny answers to your crazy questions now? Just wait two years.  She’ll be even more your friend then, knowing you perhaps better that you know yourself in some situations.

continued @  Why Siri Is a Google Killer – Forbes.

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Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android Devices (EVO 3D, 4G, Thunderbolt, Others) Exposes Phone Numbers, GPS, SMS, Emails Addresses, Much More

October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In recent updates to some of its devices, HTC introduces a suite of logging tools that collected information. Lots of information. LOTS. Whatever the reason was, whether for better understanding problems on users’ devices, easier remote analysis, corporate evilness – it doesn’t matter. If you, as a company, plant these information collectors on a device, you better be DAMN sure the information they collect is secured and only available to privileged services or the user, after opting in.

That is not the case. What Trevor found is only the tip of the iceberg – we are all still digging deeper – but currently any app on affected devices that requests a single android.permission.INTERNET (which is normal for any app that connects to the web or shows ads) can get its hands on:

the list of user accounts, including email addresses and sync status for each

last known network and GPS locations and a limited previous history of locations

phone numbers from the phone log

SMS data, including phone numbers and encoded text (not sure yet if it’s possible to decode it, but very likely)

system logs (both kernel/dmesg and app/logcat), which includes everything your running apps do and is likely to include email addresses, phone numbers, and other private info

Normally, applications get access to only what is allowed by the permissions they request, so when you install a simple, innocent-looking new game from the Market that only asks for the INTERNET permission (to submit scores online, for example), you don’t expect it to read your phone log or list of emails.

But that’s not all. After looking at the huge amount of data (the log file was 3.5MB on my EVO 3D) that is vulnerable to apps exploiting this vulnerability all day, I found the following is also exposed (granted, some of which may be already available to any app via the Android APIs):

active notifications in the notification bar, including notification text

build number, bootloader version, radio version, kernel version

network info, including IP addresses

full memory info

CPU info

file system info and free space on each partition

running processes

current snapshot/stacktrace of not only every running process but every running thread

list of installed apps, including permissions used, user ids, versions, and more

system properties/variables

currently active broadcast listeners and history of past broadcasts received

currently active content providers

battery info and status, including charging/wake lock history

and more

via Massive Security Vulnerability In HTC Android Devices (EVO 3D, 4G, Thunderbolt, Others) Exposes Phone Numbers, GPS, SMS, Emails Addresses, Much More.

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Windows 8 on ARM won’t run x86 apps Microsoft admits – SlashGear

September 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Windows 8 ARM PCs will not, in fact, have full app compatibility with software designed for x86 Windows 7 and 8 computers, Microsoft has confirmed, instead demanding that developers port their titles over to the new architecture. Despite earlier suggestions that seemed to indicate otherwise, Windows president Steven Sinofsky clarified during an analyst Q&A this week that while new apps coded for the Metro UI will work on both x86 and ARM tablets, laptops and other computers, existing software will not.

In doing so, Sinofsky arguably used a little verbal slight of hand to work around a previous – apparently misconstrued – statement. Earlier in the week, the exec said that legacy apps from Windows 7 machines would work on Windows 8, something which many assumed meant both x86 and ARM devices. In fact, Sinofsky pointed out, so far there haven’t been any ARM Windows 7 machines, and we were incorrect to assume he was talking about ARM support.

via Windows 8 on ARM won’t run x86 apps Microsoft admits – SlashGear.

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Android Trojan Malware Records Your Phone Conversations – SlashGear

August 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A new Android malware has hit the scene that will surely cause some paranoia the next time you have a private—or at least you thought was private—phone conversation. According to researchers at CA Security Advisor, a new Android Trojan has been discovered that lodges itself in your phone when you download an infected app and then proceeds to record your phone calls.

The malware mimics legitimate apps, but once installed, it secretly records all of your phone calls in stores them on your handset’s SD card. It also inserts a configuration file with parameters for a remote server, suggesting that malware can also upload recorded conversations to a remote server.

via Android Trojan Malware Records Your Phone Conversations – SlashGear.

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Next Network Monitoring Tool: Your Smartphone – mobility Blog

July 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Monitoring servers and network health are features that have been on smartphones for a while, but it often comes in the form of remote desktop access or mobile Web access, and support for multiple systems has been sketchy. That is changing though. Smartphones are becoming first-class citizens among devices that keep IT staff updated on what is going on with enterprise IT systems.

Derdack is readying a new app for Windows Phone 7 that will connect directly to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager; Windows Server 2008 Server Manager; HP Operations Center; and IBM Tivoli Monitoring. It should be available from the Windows Marketplace in late July.

The Mobile Alert App takes advantage of Windows Phone 7 features like live tiles and push notifications. You can also elect to get some alerts old school via SMS or voice.

The app doesn’t just alert you to an issue, but gives you full details on the incident so you can determine whether or not you need to get up from dinner and deal with it immediately or wait until you show up for work the next morning. Derdack also claims the app integrates with existing help desk systems so incidents should be able to be assigned right from the phone.

Making effective use of the Metro UI in Windows Phone 7, you can quickly see new alerts and which are resolved and unresolved. Once in an alert, you can view detailed information about it.

via Next Network Monitoring Tool: Your Smartphone – mobility Blog.

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Google+: Building a Use Case for the Enterprise | CMSwire

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You knew this was coming. Google’s latest attempt at social networking has everyone talking, but more importantly it has everyone trying to twist and mold it into specific user groups. While Wave didn’t do so hot in anybody’s pool, here’s a look at why Plus — an obvious consumer choice — might make it in the Enterprise space.

Circles

First and foremost, Google is making a heavy play for organization. The Circles feature encourages you to sort the Google+ users you associate with into categories such as Friends, Colleagues, Family and Acquaintances. This allows you to post updates and share information with specified groups only:

Because users can create a Circle for whatever kind of group they wish — a specific project team, for example — it is much easier to control the primary area of Social Business that remains sketch: who has access to which information.

Another key point of Circles is the Internet giant’s aim to create a general-purpose network. A user can connect with any other Google+ member, meaning that, unlike private enterprise social networking platforms such as Yammer, Salesforce and Jive, you can use the app to communicate and collaborate with people outside of your organization— contract employees, for example.

Facebook gives its own users a similar degree of control with the Lists feature. Unfortunately for Zuck, it’s a fairly clunky offering in comparison and operates more like an afterthought than a central function.

Hangouts: A Virtual Water Cooler for Remote Teams

Hangouts is a built-in multi-user video chat tool, and a rumored Skype killer. The differences between the two platforms start right off the bat: rather than ping people in order to initiate a conversation, you literally ‘hang out’ in a room by advertising your presence with your face (your camera stream). If nobody is available to chat, you can let the app run in the background while you work.

When someone in the room speaks, their video stream is highlighted in a large central window while everyone else’s sits in strip of smaller windows just beneath. Meanwhile, a built-in IM feature for chatting, sharing links and so on is available, as well as a YouTube feature which enables users to watch videos together.

As far as the enterprise goes, the handiness of the tool is certainly appealing (because it’s browser based there’s no extra-launching needed) and the approach allows for much more spontaneous collaboration than most other video chat apps on the market.

“Hangout is a Skype killer,” wrote ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett, point blank. “It could also kill WebEx and with a bit of extra tweaking I can see it knocking over Adobe Connect. Those are enterprisey tools that Google has effectively rolled up.”

via Google+: Building a Use Case for the Enterprise.

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