Google to Launch Modular Smartphones in 2015

 

Google on Tuesday announced that it will launch a modular smartphone platform in early 2015, letting users pick and change out hardware components just as they do with software apps today.
Project Ara

The modules plug into an Ara exoskeleton, which can together form a complete—and fully customized—smartphone.

Project Ara lead Paul Eremenko told PC World noting that the goal was to ship a $50 so-called “gray phone” that includes a screen, battery, microprocessor and Wi-Fi module. “A grey phone could be shrink-wrapped and something you could buy at your local convenience store,” he said. “Your fire up your grey phone, run the Ara configurator and start purchasing modules in the marketplace.”

 

comment: good or techies but the general public?

 

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First Heartbleed attack reported; taxpayer data stolen

 

the first known report of an attack using the security flaw, Canadian police have arrested a man who allegedly used Heartbleed to steal user data from the government’s tax Web site, according toReuters.

Authorities discovered earlier this week that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) site was hacked into over a six-hour period and the Heartbleed vulnerability was exploited to nab roughly 900 social insurance numbers and possibly other information from Canadian taxpayers.

 

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How to Turn Off Facebook’s Auto-Playing Video Ads

 

• Desktop

• On Facebook, head to the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner and go to Settings > Videos. You can also click here to go straight there.

• Next to the Auto-Play Videos setting, click the “On” box and change it to “Off.”

 

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Android

 

• Open Facebook, open the left sidebar, and tap “App Settings.”

• Check the “Auto-Play Videos on Wi-FI Only” box.

 

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IOS

 

• Go to the iOS Settings app from the home screen, and open up Facebook’s settings.

• Tap the Settings option and under “Video,” switch the “Auto-Play on Wi-Fi Only” option on.

 

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Aussie launch for $2.3bn US tech e-store

 

Electronics e-tailer Newegg announced this week a pilot that makes “several thousand products” available for Australian and United Kingdom customers potentially undercutting local prices for anything from tablets computers to monitors.

 

“Although the initial selection of products available in the UK and Australia represents only a small subset of the Newegg catalogue, we’ll be greatly increasing the selection in the coming months,” said Soren Mills, chief marketing officer for Newegg North America.

 

The Californian company claims it has 25 million registered users. The company had US$2.3 billion in sales last year and was placed 170th in the 2012 Forbes America’s Largest Private Companies list.

 

Pricing and products seem to all over the place at the moment – but this should settle down and hopfully providing access to better prices.

 

To take advantage of the Australian offerings, users choose ‘Australia’ and ‘AUD’ on the top left of the Newegg homepage. A ‘Newegg Global’ option on the left navigation dropdown is then available to view just the products available to international customers.

 

we’ll wait and see……

 

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Dropbox to open first office in Australia

 

Dropbox will open its first Australian office in Sydney, signalling its intent to reach local business users.

 

The company this week announced plans for a Sydney office, the first office for Dropbox in the Asia Pacific region. Dropbox also has offices in San Francisco, Dublin, Austin and New York.

 

The company has already begun listing job advertisements, including roles in IT admin, recruiting, sales and solutions architecture.

 

Seagate ships world’s fastest 6TB drive

 

Seagate Technologies have launched the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 – a storage device the company claims is the fastest 6TB hard drive in the world.

 

“With its robust 7200-RPM performance, ramp load technology, and a humidity sensor, it delivers optimum performance even in the harshest environments”. Seagate said

The hard drive will be integrated into Seagate’s existing business and branded storage products later this spring but is available to select cloud partners and resellers worldwide as of today.

“Unstructured data growth is doubling exponentially and will propel the digital universe to reach 16 Zettabytes of data by as early as 2017. This will cause cloud service providers to look for innovative ways to store more within an existing footprint while lowering operational costs,” said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing.

As of 2013, the World Wide Web is estimated to have reached 4 Zettabytes.

 

The prefix zetta- means times 1021, so there are 21 zeroes in a zetta-anything.

 

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Microsoft slashes Windows XP custom support prices just days before axing public patches

 

one client had spurned a $2 million deal two weeks ago to provide 10,000 XP PCs with custom support. But Microsoft came back days later with an price of just $250,000

The new ceiling is $250,000, according to several sources, although the $200-per-device price remained in place.

 

The general public cannot obtain the same critical XP security updates which will be provided to the large companies and other organizations that negotiate a CSA with Microsoft.