September 30, 2009
Carmakers Support Ban on Texting in Cars
Big automakers said they supported a ban on text messaging and using handheld devices while driving, a safety issue that the government will examine in a conference next week.
Nokia X3
The Nokia X3 is a smart and relatively low-cost music phone that should be in the shops by Christmas.
Nokia Mural / Nokia 6750
Currently exclusive to AT&T in the US, the Nokia Mural (also called the Nokia 6750) is an attractive mid-market clamshell phone.
September 28, 2009
Nokia N900 and Nokia N97 compared
Fresh on the heels of the Nokia N97 and N97 Mini, Nokia have now announced the Nokia N900. Replacing the N810 Internet Tablet, the N900 is a curious beast in that it’s more smartphone than Internet Tablet – you can even…
Nokia N900 Preview Video
The Nokia N900 is one of the most exciting phones to be announced this year, see for yourself with this special Nokia N900 Preview Video.
T-Mobile and Orange to merge in UK
Ailing T-Mobile UK has thrown in its lot with Orange, to create the UK’s biggest mobile carrier. Will this spark of a rush of other mobile phone company mergers in Europe?
September 26, 2009
Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 Preview the best Windows Mobile smartphone yet?
Sony Ericsson are on a roll at the moment with their Xperia range of high-end phones. Hot on the heels of the X5 comes the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 (not sure what happened to the X3 or X4!), the latest…
September 25, 2009
On-the-spot Mobile Phone Scans
The Met is going after mobile phone thieves with officers empowered to stop and search anyone they suspect the smuggling stolen phones, armed with brand new technology. The rather gloriously named”Apollo” systemscans the phone’s International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) code and checks itagainst a database of stolen phones. An effective upgradeof the previous system, a world-weary [...]
Hands-on Nokia N900 review the best Nokia smartphone yet
As promised, here’s my hands-on Nokia N900 review. Is it as good as the specs suggest it should be? Is Nokia’s new Internet Tablet that thinks it’s a phone actually better than the N97, the smartphone that’s not all that…
September 12, 2009
Samsung Rogue, Intensity Released for Verizon
Verizon Wireless, largest U.S. wireless provider, today released the Samsung Rogue and Intensity — two new messaging phones with access to Facebook and Twitter.
September 12, 2009
3G Giant’s Merger Video
Hear the thoughts of Richard Moat, CEO Orange UK and Tom Alexander discuss the T-Mobile and Orange merger.
First Advertiser for 3G Mobile Broadband Dashboard
Yell.com has signed up to become the first advertiser of the 3 UK 3G mobile broadband dashboard.
September 7, 2009
Spotifys mobile apps finally hit the market (but just for Europe)
Spotify, the European music-streaming startup valued at a reported $250 million, released mobile apps on the iPhone and Android platforms today. The mobile apps are only available to premium subscribers, who pay about 10 pounds a month for access to a library of more than six million songs. The app lets you stream any of Spotify’s songs on a Wi-Fi or 3G connection on your phone and it saves playlists for when you can’t reach a connection. Founded in Sweden by 26-year-old Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify’s user interface is like Apple’s iTunes except all the songs are available to stream. The company has three models: free with ads for PC users, a day pass for 99 pence to avoid ads, and 9.99 GBP per month for streaming with no ads, plus the mobile apps. If Spotify is successful, the company would represent a new paradigm in the music business. Instead of pushing music ownership as the ultimate goal, Spotify would push streaming. The idea would be to encourage as many users as possible into paying $10 to 15 a month for an all-you-can-stream deal, or at least develop a large enough user base that advertising could sustain the royalty rates the company has to pay to record labels.As the company has said to us in the past, it wants to be “better than piracy.” Other start-ups have tried variations on the streaming model in the past, but royalties were so high that they jeopardized projects such as Pandora and Imeem. (Pandora also doesn’t let you select track you want to listen to like Spotify.) Another older competitor, Rhapsody, also has an all-you-can-stream model for roughly the same price and is planning to launch on the iPhone soon, but it doesn’t support offline playing. Spotify has secured deals with record labels likeUniversal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI Music and Warner Music Group and uses a peer-to-peer streaming technology that makes its speed a lot faster compared to other rivals.The company has racked up more than six million users across the European countries it’s available in and plans to expand to the U.S. by the end of the year. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing’s charitable foundationrecently took a stake in the company, valuing it at a reported $250 million as it seeks to expand internationally.
Thales nShield Connect offers enterprise-class key management
The Thales nShield Connect 6000 is one of their line of Hardware Security Modules (HSM), which combine FIPS 140-2 level-three security (Federal Information Processing Standard) with key management (Thales acquired nCipher in 2008). Thales typically sends a support engineer to aid in installation of a new system, so we allowed them to send an engineer to install the product into our test bed and help integrate the product with our test platforms, Windows 2008 Server with the Microsoft Certificate Authority, IIS, Exchange and SQL Server 2005 and Ubuntu server 9.04 with Apache 2.2.12. It took the engineer about a day and a half to get the system working with all these applications. One reason installation took that long was that the nShield had FIPS security enabled by default. This is a government standard for security that involves physical tokens (smart cards) that need to be inserted into the appliance’s reader before most actions are taken. During initial configuration we set up nine smart cards, of which one needed to be inserted to continue with protected actions. The number of cards and the number needed for a given action is flexible. This is to ensure that major actions, such as registering a new certificate with a provider (potentially a very expensive operation), has a consensus before the action is taken. One European institution requires that 55 out of 57 cards be inserted to request a new certificate, which given the 1 million Euro price tag, may be justified. On the other hand, many organizations may find this level of protection overkill, and turn off the FIPS security, with access allowed through normal passwords instead. Setting up the nShield to work with a new application involves getting that application to work with one of the supported key management standards, PKCS#11, Microsoft CryptoAPI/CNG, Jave JCE or OpenSSL, or with one of the other supported security protocols. This can often be somewhat complex, as these are not necessarily the native methods for encryption. Even when they are, as with the Microsoft CryptoAPI, there can be numerous steps involved. Thales has 22 published guides to integration with particular products, which even the technician sent to install the product used, because each involved lots of steps. Eight to 12 pages of guidance is typical. The tech was able to go through the steps relatively quickly once the basic configurations and permissions were set, and after he left, I completed a couple of other configurations using the guides, with no special problems. Once applications are connected to the nShield, certificates and keys can be easily managed using policies, making it easy to issue new certificates and revoke or renew certificates. Policies can set how long a key is used before being renewed or revoked. Since all the keys are provided to the applications on demand over a secure, encrypted link, with the keys themselves stored securely in a hardened appliance, keys are not only centrally managed and protected from breaches, but visible to the administrator. Reporting tools make it easy to find keys that are above or below a set number of bits, if an administrator is interested in upgrading the organization to a new recommendation for minimum bits in keys, for instance. Auditing tools also make it simple to trace which administrator has performed which function. Since all the security eggs are in one basket, so to speak, it would be critical in large organizations to have redundant HSMs to ensure availability and resiliency against hardware failure. The process of setting up a failover unit is simple and easy to do, using an active passive system. Data is backed up using highly encrypted backups, and this data can be restored to the hot spare unit in case of disaster. To ensure scalability of the system, Provisioning Servers can be created at different geographic sites to issue certificates or keys on demand. If this is done, the entire system is still easily managed from one console, and the management interface allows for administrative levels with very granular permissions, so that one type of admin might only have access to the information for one site, while another has oversight into the entire organization. The Thales nShield provides a very high level of security, and works with a fairly broad range of operating systems and applications, albeit not as many as the Venafi system. If a high level of security is important, in addition to management of keys and certificates, the nShield is a good choice. Pricing: Thales nShield Connect 6000 starts at $39,000. Pricing includes the first year of maintenance and support. Other HSMs start at $23,500. Return to test
September 5, 2009
Fun Mobile Phone Stuff: A Round-Up of Cell Phone Quizzes
One great way to waste some time online is to read exciting news and information about mobile phones. Another great way to toil away the hours is to take online quizzes. Why not combine two things into one by taking some of these fun/silly/revealing mobile phone quizzes from around the web? There are quizzes that [...]
LG GW520 review: A wholesome Cookie
QWERTY is how the Cookie crumbles and LG are quite keen to build on a winning concept. And they sure didn’t work themselves to the bone. When you’ve got a Best Handset nominee (LG KS360) and a mid-range bestseller (LG KP500)…