Galaxy S2 to be launched in US in the month of August: Finally.

According to a report from TechCrunch.com, Samsung's Mobile boss Shin Jong-Kyun told korean reporters, "we expect to launch Galaxy S2 in US sometime in August." After a 3 month long wait since the "iPhone competitor" first made its debut in the Korean market in the month of August, it is all set to break its ground in the US.

Already a whooping 3 Million Galaxy S2 pieces flew of the shelves with in 55 days of the phone's availability in Market. With a 4.3 inch Super Amoled Display and a dual core Self-Made Exynos 1.2 Gig processor running on Android Ginger Bread, among other gracious features, Sammy's S2 is no doubt the No.1 smart phone in the market today.

The phone is all set to hit the Sprint Shelves first (for leaked specs, here.) but certainly, AT&T and Verizon will soon nab it. It's predecessor Galaxy S was also launched on all the 4 carriers so it only follows that the S II will do the same.

The Galaxy S II touts a dual-core 1.2GHz processor underneath Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, with Samsung’s TouchWiz 4.0 UI slapped on top. The 8-megapixel rear-facing shooter is capable of capturing video in 1080p, and the 2-megapixel front-facing camera should make you look pretty during your Google Video Chats. Plus, the Galaxy S II’s 4.3-inch 480×800 Super AMOLED Plus display has the potential to rival almost any touchscreen out there. Detailed Specs here.

Amazon to launch a Tablet by October End.!

The Amazon's Rumored tablet which will vie with Apple's iPad2 and Sammy's Galaxy Tab 2, among other products is all set for a launch in the month of October according to a report from the Wall Street Journal

The tablet will be one of the three hardware products that are going to come from the Amazon in the upcoming Quarter with which Amazon is all set for a clash in the Tablet Market. 

The other devices are a touch-screen version of the Kindle and an “improved and cheaper adaptation” of the current Kindle, which sells for $139. (Amazon on Wednesday also cut the price of its Kindle 3G, which works off AT&T’s wireless network, from $189 to $139.) Though the report states that the tablet won’t have a camera, no further details were provided.

Such a device might make sense since the market for ereaders seems to be splitting between single-function devices like the Kindle and the iPad. Amazon rival Barnes & Noble is attempting to address both segments of the market with its Nook Color — whose latest iteration includes support for Android 2.2 (Froyo) and Adobe Flash along with an app store with hundreds of apps — and Simple Touch, a $139 device that competes head-to-head with Kindle.

source: Mashable

LulzSec is back in Action.! Hacks daily newspaper "The Sun" Website.!

Looks like the Hacking Corp. LulzSec is back in action and so is TimesOfCommerce.

The infamous hacking group renown for repeatedly bringing down the websites of the Electronic-giant Sony is back in action, this time redirecting the home page of the  Murdoch owned  "The Sun" (sun.co.uk) to a fake story about the death of Mr. Murdoch from over-dosage of drugs  located on the Murdoch-Owned London Times URL http://www.new-times.co.uk/sun. After the amount of requests caused a 404 failure on the Times site, the group then redirected The Sun’s homepage to the @LuzSec Twitter account. (The original page is archived at http://freze.it/pX)

LulzSec confirmed its responsibility for the hack with a couple of tweets promising more attacks, “We have owned Sun/News of the World – that story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz to flow in coming days,,”"The Sun’s homepage now redirects to the Murdoch death story on the recently-owned New Times website. Can you spell success, gentlemen?” and “TheSun.co.uk now redirects to our twitter feed. Hello, everyone that wanted to visit The Sun! How is your day? Good? Good!”

The group also threatened that The Sun hacking went further than surface level, and tweeted out the emails and passwords of what are presumably Sun employees from the @LulzSec account, writing “We are showing you a very small surface; the real damage is currently giving the admins heart attacks.  .” Gizmodo is reporting that one of the employee passwords tweeted out by the Twitter account “Anonymousabu” belongs to the recently-arrested News International chief  Rebekah Brooks.

TechCrunch Europe is also reporting that LulzSec also circumvented a News International attempt to post a statement about The Sun attack. That site isn’t loading at all for me.

Just when you though this News Corp story couldn’t get any worse, it did (Just add LulzSec!). But still, punishing the unscrupulous hacking of a murdered girl’s phone (among other things) with more hacking might not be the most coherent way to get your message across.

The group is now claiming to have taken down News International’s DNS servers, bringing all 1,024 News International sites down.




source: TechCrunch

Google+: Getting an Invite

As we all know Google has launched Google+ as a competitor to Facebook in the social media network and the project is in its field trial mode. Google has selectively rolled out invites to few people who can further invite their friends. But the invitations are limited as of now.

I managed to grab an invite from a friend of mine and you can view my profile here. I have been trying to explore its in and outs since i ever got my invite and trust me this thing is going to be a revolution. Soon theres gonna be G+ everywhere.

The features Circles, Huddles, Hangouts, Sparks are extremely scoring and the entire platform looks faster and spam-free (or may be its too early to judge on that one) compared to the FB. As Mark Zuckerberg said, G+ still doesn't have Farmville on it. Other than that, its good enough to waste time. As we let the timeline decide who is going to lead the social-network era, why no we grab some invitations and hangout on G+.

Leave your Email id here in comments and i will send you invites.

Google's Google+: Yet Another attempt by Google to take on Facebook

Google has made several attempts till now without much success to take on Facebook. On Tuesday, it has come up with one of its biggest attempt. The Google+ project, which is initially available to a group of Google users who will soon be able to invite others, will let people share and discuss status updates, photos and links, much as they do on Facebook.

However the Google+ project will be different in one significant way, which Google hopes will be enough to convince people to use yet another social network. It is meant for sharing with groups — like colleagues, roommates or hiking friends — not with all of one’s friends or the entire Web. It also offers group text messaging and video chat.

“In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world, you get to a ‘Share’ box and you share with the whole world,” said Bradley Horowitz, a vice president for product management at Google, who is leading the company’s social efforts with Vic Gundotra, a senior vice president for engineering. “We have a different model.”

When users visit their Google+ home page, they see three columns and a stream of status updates in the middle that looks remarkably like Facebook. But Google said that besides an easier way to share with select groups, Google+ has several other features that distinguish it from competitors.

                             

It offers group video chats, called Hangouts, that other members of a group can join as it is happening. Users can search a section called Sparks to see articles and videos from across the Web on certain topics, like recipes or ailments, and share them with relevant groups of friends.

And on the Google+ mobile app for Android phones and iPhones, people can chat with groups using a feature called Huddle. Photos and videos shot with cellphones are automatically uploaded to a private album, so Google+ users can quickly view and post them from their phones or later on a computer.

                           

With these services, Google will compete with a host of start-ups, like Path for sharing with small groups, SocialEyes for video chat, Flipboard for articles on certain topics and GroupMe for group texting.

Groupon India's Website Hacked

Groupon's SoSasta.com, an India based shopping and discount website, was hacked last weekend. SoSasta.com offers its services in 11 cities - Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi/NCR, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru - and has mailed customers stating that they were made aware of a security breach. They said the situation was under control but that the users should change their passwords.

As per legal regulations, credit card, debit card and netbanking data is not stored in SoSasta's database and hence that data was not compromised.

The email sent to the customers says:

"Over this weekend, we've been alerted to a security issue potentially affecting subscribers of Sosasta. We wanted to let you know that the issue has been brought under control and your accounts are secure. However, as a precautionary measure, we recommend that you change your SoSasta password immediately, by visiting the SoSasta website (Sign-In using your existing password, then click on Profile followed by Change Password). If you use the same email/password combination at other websites, we recommend you change those passwords as soon as possible, too.

Please be aware that none of your financial information (Credit Card, Debit Card, NetBanking etc) has been compromised since this information is not stored on SoSasta, as per law.

You should know that we are working aggressively to prevent this from happening again. Sosasta takes security and privacy very seriously -- it's important to us to provide you with a safe shopping experience of the highest quality, and we will do everything possible to keep your trust. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience or concern we've caused."

source: ndtv

Sony VAIO Z: The 13-inch ultra slim laptop

               

Sony VAIO Z, the 13-inch ultra slim laptop is revealed by the company officially in Europe today. Turns out that the leaked pics of this gadget seems to be right. It comes with an External GPU for power on demand. interesting isn't it?

Coming to the specs, they reveal a 13-inch ultra-thin notebook that weighs about 1.2KG with a 2.7GHz Intel I-7 processor. 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM and a 1600*900 display and a sheet battery borrowed from the early VAIO S which supports upto 7 hours of computing.

Onboard it features only Intel's HD Graphics 3000 solution but the VAIO Z beats other ultralights with its Power Media Dock, which contributes the power of an AMD Radeon 6650M GPU with 1GB of dedicated memory connected via "the architecture codenamed Light Peak"

Buy it:

Head over to the Sony UK site to configure one yourself -- pricing starts at £1,434 ($2,294) with a Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and no PMD. The dock is a £400 ($640) option with no optical drive included, while upgrading to a 1080p 13.1-inch LCD is a mere £40 extra.

facebook to launch a music dashboard.

Soon: Listen to music via Facebook

Apparently, Facebook, the social networking giant, is planning to capture more time of yours by introducing your favorite element: Music to its features kitty. Facebook is reportedly getting closer with Spotify and other music companies to bring this feature to its users. The feature is expected to hit the audiences by the end of august.

As explained by gigaom's Om Malik, the Music Dashboard will have the following features:

• Music Notifications: here you have notifications that show if your friends have listened to songs recommended by you or on your profile.
• Recommended Songs: You can get a list of songs heard and recommended by your friends. You can also play them back by clicking the play icon.
• Top Songs from friends.
• Top Albums from friends, with cover art.
• Recent listens from your friends.

In the upper-right corner there will be a “happening now” ticker that shows what is happening in your social and musical universe, including songs that your friends are playing. There is some talk that this “Happening Now ticker” would show-up all throughout your music experience and not just on the music dashboard.

Microsoft Windows 8 demo

source: engadget

Mozilla firefox 5 leaked. Scheduled to release on 21st june.

I'm pretty sure its only been a little while since Mozilla Firefox 4 has been launched but looks like someone is on a roll. Mozilla is all set to officially launch the new version of their browser. June 21st is the official launch date but looks like its already up on the ftp server for download.

The quick appearance of the foxy latest browser follows Mozilla's guarantee to boost the turnover of latest versions. You can download the release version of Firefox 5 designed for Windows, Mac as well as Linux from Mozilla's ftp server at this moment.

Insight:

 Firefox 4 brought along a whole bunch of changes including ones to the user interface. A more optimized Javascript engine was put in place and a plethora of features were added that included hardware acceleration, HTML5 WebM support. Firefox 5 in comparison, doesn’t have as many changes. It has a ton of bug fixes and performance tweaks though. There’s support for CSS animations and a feature that stops sites from tracking you. A mobile version of Firefox 5 is also expected soon. Firefox 6 and 7 are slated to be out before the end of the year, as well. If you’re impatient like we are, head over to the Mozilla FTP and download Firefox 5 now.

Asus G74 Gaming Laptop

After their recent pad phone buzz, Asus strikes again. This time with its stunning game laptop. The configuration goes as follows:

• Quad-core Core I7 2630QM processor
• NVidia GetForce G560M graphic card with 3GB video memory
• 12GB DDR3 RAM
• dual 750GB 7200RPM drives
• 1080p display
• Blue-Ray Player
• Backlit keyboard
• USB 3.0

The other version is also available with a 3D display. The two versions are put up for pre-order for prices $1745 and $1979 respectively.

Google trademarks Photovine: Possibly a photo sharing service

Back on 7th june, google filed a USPTO application for the name Photovine. The application cites a service dedicated to the transmission of images over telecommunication networks, wireless networks and internet. Unsurprisingly, the internet giant also purchased the corresponding domain name. So is Google getting ready to add photo sharing service to its recent set of cloud services.? or is it looking to up its social media credits?? And where does picasa fit into all of this ??

source: engadget

Sonypictures.com hacked. 100000+ passwords stolen and posted on web

Hacked. Again. Guess who.?

Oh, Sony -- not again. Lulz Security has broken into SonyPictures.com, where it claims to have stolen the personal information of over 1,000,000 users -- all stored (disgracefully) in plain text format. Lulz claims the heist was performed with a simple SQL injection -- just like we saw the last time around. A portion of the group's exploit is posted online in a RAR file, which contains over 50,000 email / password combos of unfortunate users. We've downloaded this file (at our own risk, mind you) and can verify these sensitive bits are now in the wild, though it remains unclear if what's published matches reality. In addition to user information, the group has blurted out over 20,000 Sony music coupons, and the admin database (including email addresses and passwords) for BMG Belgium employees. Fresh off the heels of the PlayStation Network restoration, we're guessing the fine folks in Sony's IT department are now surviving solely on adrenaline shots.

Google enters the daily-deal business. Launching the Groupon competitor today.!

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has announced that the search giant will launch its Groupon competitor tomorrow, starting with Portland.

The news that Google is getting into the daily deals space is not a surprise. Google attempted and failed to acquire Groupon for $6 billion last year. A few months later, Mashable exclusively learned that Google was developing a Groupon competitor called Google Offers.

At the D9 Conference in Palos Verdes, California, Schmidt and Stephanie Tilenius, Google’s VP of commerce, demonstrated the company’s new product. It’s just like Groupon in that it provides users a daily deal from “thousands of merchant partners.” Google showed off a deal for $10 worth of Floyd’s coffee for $3 on stage.

The big selling point for Google Offers is that it will integrate seamlessly with Google Wallet, the company’s NFC-based payment system launching this summer. Instead of printing out a coupon or barcode, completed offers are saved to a user’s Google Wallet, where they are automatically saved and redeemable. Eventually they will be utilized automatically through NFC.
Google Offers will be available tomorrow in Portland and eventually roll out to New York, San Francisco and other cities during the summer.

Apple to unveil iCloud, iOS 5 on June 6th

Had some doubts that Apple was heading skyward? Those lingering concerns can now be put to rest. Apple has confirmed that it will be announcing iCloud on June 6th, what it's calling an "upcoming cloud services offering." That will be part of the keynote for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, known to the cool kids as WWDC. This is, of course, where everyone has come to expect new iPhones to come to light, but this year we're thinking the focus will be more on software, and indeed Apple's event notice indicates that the big highlights will be Mac OS X Lion and the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5. This is a decidedly non-Apple way to announce something big like iCloud, making us wonder what other surprises Steve Jobs will have for us at the event -- yes, he'll be kicking things off.

source: engadget

Microsoft's announces Web Market to release alongside Mango

Looks like Microsoft forgot to announce their Web-based Market Place in their Live Event (announced Mango update) yesterday. Later, the company confirmed that they are going to launch a Web Market alongside the Mango where in users can login and browse and buy applications (similar to the Android Market i believe). The apps will be transmitted to the buyer through their Regular Notification system.

Users also be able to take advantage of various social networking tie-ins to share apps with their friends, and the Marketplace will hang onto their download history so that one can easily reinstall all of their apps if they switch phones. And yes you can take that as a plenty of Bing integration as well. 

Microsoft says it expects the vast majority of customers to install apps OTA in a single step using its regular notification system. SMS would only be used in instances where that service is not already turned on, and in that case there would still be "no links or added engagement on the phone." Customers can also choose to send themselves an email with a link to the app but, again, it expects most folks to simply let apps install in the background.

Sony Ericsson's Canadian website hacked, 2000+ users data taken

The Japanese electronics giant Sony has reported fresh hacking attacks on a number of its websites.

The company said that personal data of 2,000 consumers was stolen from a Sony Ericsson website in Canada, while details of 8,500 users were leaked on Sony Music Entertainment website in Greece.

The company said e-mails, passwords and phone numbers of users were stolen.

Sony said that no credit card details had been lost.
The company said in a statement that both the websites were externally hosted by third parties and were not connected to its main network.

Last month, account information of more than 100 million customers was compromised in cyber attacks on Sony's networks.

The company's spokesman George Boyd told  that the company's Music Entertainment website in Indonesia and Sony's Thailand website were also hacked, though no data was stolen.

Sony said all four websites had been temporarily shut down.

source: BBC

Teaser Video of the upcoming windows flavor 'Mango': it does look impressive

source: techtree

Microsoft unveils windows phone update 'Mango'

"Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its mobile phone software Tuesday as it seeks to claw back market share from Apple and Google.



The Redmond, Washington-based software powerhouse said the latest version of its Windows Phone operating system, code-named "Mango," offers more than 500 new features.


Mango will be available for free to existing Windows Phone 7 customers and will ship on new phones this fall from Samsung, LG and HTC and new partners Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE.


Microsoft said it is also working on Mango handsets with new partner Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone titan which announced in February that it would begin using Microsoft's software as its smartphone operating system.


Mango comes seven months after the release of the first smartphones running Windows Phone 7, which were well received by analysts but failed to catch on with the public.


"Seven months ago we started our mission to make smartphones smarter and easier for people to do more," said Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications, who presented Mango to reporters at an event in New York.


"With 'Mango,' Windows Phone takes a major step forward in redefining how people communicate and use apps and the Internet, giving you better results with less effort," Lees said.


Mango uses Internet Explorer 9 as the phone's Web browser and attempts to simplify the smartphone experience.


Microsoft said Mango organizes information "around the person or group people want to interact with, not the app they have to use."


It allows users to switch between text, Facebook chat and Windows Live Messenger and integrates Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.


Mango also includes "built-in Facebook check-ins and new face detection software that makes it easier to quickly tag photos and post to the Web," Microsoft said.


Technology research company Gartner said last month that Google's Android mobile operating system will power nearly half of the smartphones worldwide by the end of next year with a 49.2 percent market share.


The market share for Apple's iPhone's was forecast to remain relatively stable at 18.9 percent in 2012.


Microsoft's Windows mobile operating system will account for 5.6 percent of the smartphone market at the end of 2011 but will rise to 10.8 percent in 2012, according to Gartner."


source: bangkokpost

Top 10 Technology News of the Day: 24/05

1. Steve Ballmer at the Company's Japan Development Forum : 'next generation of Windows systems' coming next year. Read here
2. Microsoft to announce their Mango Flavoured Windows OS updates tomorrow. More than 500 new features promised by Balmer. 9 new windows phones also to be announced?  Read on...
3. Yahoo Rolls out New E-mail Service. Removes the Beta tag. Added new social-networking features. Read on...
4. Techtree.com rates 5 most productive applications of iPad. Read on...
5. Yet Another Malicious Spamware circulates on facebook. claims to get rid of spam. Read on...
6. FoxConn says there is no delay in the circulation of iPad due to the explosion. Read on...
7. Researchers create 26 Terabits per second  connection with just a single laser. Read on...
8. Apple to go for a Dual Core GPU in iPhone 5. Ghosh.! Read on...
9. Apple's security myth busted with Mac defender Trojan. Read On...
10. Toyota Announces Social network 'Toyota Friend' for car owners. Read On...