Although Steve Jobs showcased Skype for the iPhone back in March, apparently it was not entirely iOS 4 compatible. A version of the application taking advantage of iOS 4 features, such as multitasking support, will be ready soon.
With every update to the iPhone OS (now called iOS), Apple introduces a number of changes to the software. In order to make sure we give you the best experience possible, we need to carry out some additional tests with the final version of iOS 4.
When we’re confident that the app will live up to your high expectations, we’ll make it available for download.
It will be very interesting to see how Skype ends up utilizing the available iOS 4 multitasking APIs. It would certainly be worthwhile to be able to leave Skype running in the background, allowing the application to respond to incoming calls when applicable. Such a feature may ultimately make the iPod Touch a much more attractive device because it ultimately function like a WiFi based VoIP phone.
Privacy has long been a problem for social networking sites and the internet in general. Well now it looks like private industry is getting prepped to lead a charge in correcting this wrong.
Wall Street Journal’s Pui-Wing Tam and Ben Worthen write:
As privacy snafus mount across companies such as Facebook Inc. and AT&T Inc., venture capitalists have spotted a new market opening and are pumping millions of dollars into privacy-related start-ups.
This new ‘privacy’ sector within social networking couldn’t be more timely. The potential benefits are plainly obvious for all of us who surf the web.
A new movement like this could set precedence and possibly ignite a more significant push for legislation aimed at protecting privacy across the internet.
Think these tech start-ups will succeed?
Google has taken yet another bold step in opening up their services with GoogleCL.
GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.
Not quite sure if GoogleCL streamlines Google services for the novice user, but it certainly brings significant advantages to the intermediate and advanced folks.
Here are some example scripts from Google Code:
Read the full story …
Glenn Greenwald on the rather obvious peculiarities of the PFC Bradley Manning WikiLeaks case:
This Manning detention — whether it was by design or just exploited opportunistically — is being used to depict WikiLeaks as a serious national security threat and associations with it as dangerous and subversive. Just in the last week alone, several people have expressed to me fears that supporting or otherwise enabling WikiLeaks could subject them to liability or worse. There’s no reason to believe that’s true, but given the powers the U.S. Government claims — lawless detentions, renditions, assassinations even of American citizens — that’s the climate of intimidation that has been created. This latest incident is clearly being used to impede WikiLeaks’ vital function of checking powerful factions and imposing transparency, and for that reason alone, this is an extremely serious case that merits substantial scrutiny, along with genuine skepticism to understand what happened.
The case of PFC Bradley Manning just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Not everything is as it seems – smoke and mirrors if you will – which makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Did Manning truly have a crisis of conscience, seemingly leading him to confess to a known, convicted hacker?
Or is the more plausible explanation that PFC Manning was somehow setup by the U.S. Government to potentially fulfill their desire to destroy the reputation of Wikileaks?
In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide “manhunt” for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn’t it easy to see how these screeching media reports — WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat — would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon’s desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration’s unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can’t overstate the caution that’s merited here before assuming one knows what happened.
No matter what the outcome of this turns out to be, it sure is an intriguing read, especially from an information assurance perspective. There was a huge breakdown of policy implementation where Manning worked, ultimately facilitating his ability to voluminously transfer classified documents from highly classified networks to the internet – something expressly forbidden for obvious reasons.
Greenwald’s write-up for Salon is one of the more exhaustive articles questioning the validity of what Wired has reported on to date. It is well worth reading, especially if you care about national security, government transparency and whistle-blowing.
This is the most comprehensive iOS 4 walkthrough I have seen to date:
iOS 4 (previously iPhone OS 4 or iPhone 4.0) continues Apple’s relentless yearly mobile OS update cycle. If 2007 was the mainstreaming of the multitouch user interface, 2008 all about the App Store, and 2009 was filling in the feature list, then iOS 4 promises to be… well, that’s why we’re here.
Back on April 8 at the sneak preview event, Apple promised 7 “tent-pole” features and 100+ general user features overall, along with 1500 major new API for developers. We’re going to walk you through the ones that matter most.
All your questions about iOS 4 should be answered after reading the article, which incidentally is based on the iOS 4 GM that developers have had access to since about day 1 of WWDC. Some minor tweaks may take place between the GM and final release, but overall the operating system should mostly contain everything seen in the walkthrough. (via DF)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project have developed HTTPS Everywhere, a Firefox extension aimed at forcing the browser to use https on certain web sites, thus assuring the privacy offered by browsing securely.
This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted. At the same time, we were also able to encrypt most or all of the browser’s communications with some other sites:
- Google Search
- Wikipedia
- Twitter and Identi.ca
- Facebook
- EFF and Tor
- Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines
- and lots more!
Firefox users can install HTTPS Everywhere by following this link.
If you value your privacy online, or if you would like to ensure the prying eyes of your ISP are unable to spy on your web browsing – whether to perform deep packet analysis for advertising or to see if you are potentially infringing on the copyright cartel’s products – then this is a must-have extension.
This extension will not automagically make your entire web surfing encrypted. HTTPS Everywhere is designed to initiate https sessions for those web sites explicitly configured. For example, TechMiso does not currently offer an https option therefore this extension will not secure your browsing session with our miso soup loving site. Make sure you understand how this extension works before you install.
Too bad HTTPS Everywhere is currently Firefox-only. Considering how popular Google Chrome is these days I certainly hope they plan to develop a Chrome extension.
Earlier this week Apple released OS X 10.6.4, an update largely aimed at fixing security vulnerabilities rather than adding new features. Sophos, an anti-virus vendor, did some digging and noticed Apple esoterically included an update to the built-in anti-malware protection to protect against a backdoor which may allow malicious attackers to obtain remote control over devices running OS X:
Although there is no mention of it that we could find in Apple’s release notes for Mac OS X 10.6.4, or the accompanying security bulletin, Apple has updated XProtect.plist – the rudimentary file that contains elementary signatures of a handful of Mac threats – to detect what they call HellRTS.
HellRTS, which Sophos products have been detecting as OSX/Pinhead-B since April, has been distributed by malicious hackers disguised as iPhoto, the photo application which ships on modern Mac computers.
Will Apple’s lack of transparency perpetuate the myth that OS X is not immune to viruses and other malware? A lot of Mac users, especially newer ones migrating from Windows to OS X, tend to believe the Mac is a more secure environment and free from the threat of malware – a thought that could not be further from the truth. When Apple quietly issues an update to the built-in OS X malware protection one has to wonder why the silence.
It is worth noting that Sophos has a business stake in this market – by Apple communicating a malware threat to their operating system, Sophos, and other anti-virus vendors, would ostensibly see an increase in sales as a result of such an admission. Is that what Apple really wants to do?
Sophos would be a direct beneficiary of Apple stating OS X is vulnerable to these threats, although their annoyance is only worth being taken with a grain of salt. However, Mac users should most definitely be made aware of the potential threats to their operating system so they can choose to take the necessary protection measures they decide are worthwhile.
Not content to offer mere bookmark, preferences and theme synchronization between browsers, Google Chrome has upped the ante by now offering to sync installed extensions as well:
Extension sync has landed in the Google Chrome dev channel build.
It’s not enabled by default, so you won’t see it in your sync options menu unless you activate the feature via a command line switch. –enable-sync-extensions –sync-url=https://clients4.google.com/chrome-sync/dev turns it on.
Sync in and of itself is a pretty standard feature, as most browsers offer some form of synchronization through the use of third-party plug-ins or extensions. However, adding extension sync is pretty killer because there is no need to remember to download, install and configure an extension on multiple computers – do it once and its taken care of everywhere else you use that same browser.
I have been sold on Google Chrome for quite some time now, having migrated away from Firefox on OS X. I find the latter to be bloated, slow and largely unresponsive compared to Chrome, which feels lightweight and speedy. Chrome does everything I need it to do, and just as good, if not better, than Firefox.
Plus Chrome has the one feature I adore the most – a combination search and address bar. No need for the multiple input boxes, one for the address bar and one for search, like what Firefox and IE offer. Chrome does it better. Period.
Have you been curious about the amount of RAM installed in the iPhone 4? Look no further as MacRumours has the answer:
More technically inclined customers, however, still love to know what they have to work with. The original iPhone and iPhone 3G contained 128MB of RAM, while the iPhone 3GS was boosted to 256MB of RAM. Similarly, the iPad contains 256MB of RAM. This discrepancy offers a technical explanation why Apple is not supporting iOS 4 features such as multi-tasking on the original and 3G iPhone — there simply isn’t enough RAM.
We have since heard that the upcoming iPhone 4′s RAM has again been upgraded. This will bring it to a total of 512MB of RAM, twice as much as the 3GS and iPad.
This is great news for those who pre-ordered, or are planing on purchasing, an iPhone 4. The added memory will surely help make the device more responsive. iPhone 3G owners are currently experience excruciating performance degradation due the lack of installed RAM – it only has 128MB – as well as the older, slower processor.
iPhone 3GS users have slightly better experiences, mainly as a result of 256MB RAM and a higher performing processor. The iPad has the same amount of RAM as the iPhone 3GS but uses the Apple A4 chip so it outperforms the 3GS.
The iPhone 4 will blow them all away with the Apple A4 and 512MB RAM combo. This explains why the iMovie App will only be available on the iPhone 4 to begin – it obviously requires the additional RAM to cleanly edit video on the handheld.
As Rich mentioned earlier, WordPress 3.0 was just released by the Automattic crew. Here is a list of the changes to the WordPress template system as well as new tags to be used by theme and plug-in authors:
Custom Post Types plus Custom Taxonomy Improvements
Earlier we could only create Posts or Pages. But now with Custom Post Types, we can create lot more types of posts like Gallery Items, Movie Information Posts etc. which will be independent in style from a normal post. Custom taxonomies which got introduced in WordPress 2.8 got a small upgrade which now allows them to be hierarchial too just like a normal Category.
Its difficult to explain all this in a small post plus there are already awesome tutorials on this.
WordPress 3.0 is a huge release, offering one of the largest feature set upgrades in the history of the platform. The merging of single-user WordPress with WPMU is one of the most exciting, for now WP can run multiple blogs with one installation – something Movable Type has been capable of for years.
The combination of WordPress, BuddyPress and bbPress allows for the easy creation of a pretty wicked social networking site with relative ease.
