The Technophilez

Apple's famous veil of secrecy appears to have stretched thin in trying to cover thousands and thousands of Wal-Mart stores.

A Wal-Mart employee in Uniondale, N.Y., told The Associated Press on Monday that the store will start selling Apple's iPhone, confirming media reports over the weekend.

The employee, who would not give his name, did not know when the phones would go on sale, and said the store had no merchandise yet. The San Jose Mercury News reported late Friday that store employees in California said the phone would be on sale by the last week of December, and maybe before Christmas.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. would be the second independent retail chain after Best Buy Inc. to sell the phone. The phone is also sold at Apple and AT&T Inc. stores.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anna Taylor said the Bentonville, Ark.-based company had no announcement about iPhone sales. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling had no comment.

From the launch of the second-generation iPhone on July 11 to the end of September, Apple sold 6.9 million units, making it one of the world's most popular phones. The iPhone 3G is sold in two versions, with 8 or 16 gigabytes of memory. In the U.S., the price is $199 or $299, respectively.

Shares of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple jumped $5.72, or 6.1 percent, to close at $99.72 as U.S. market indexes also rose. Wal-Mart shares fell 65 cents, 1.1 percent, to $57.56.

Mozilla Corp. today released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, the first version of its flagship browser to turn on a much faster JavaScript engine and sport a working privacy mode.

Following the first beta by about eight weeks, the newest preview switches on TraceMonkey, the JavaScript engine Mozilla initially touted back in August. Beta 1 included the new engine, but it had been disabled by default; users were required to manually edit the browser's configuration file to turn on the engine.

Also present in Beta 2 is "Private Browsing," the privacy mode that Mozilla decided to add in September, but didn't add to a test build until early last month.

Private Browsing is a reaction to similar additions in other browsers, including Apple Inc.'s Safari, Google Inc.'s Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8. Privacy mode lets users surf without leaving obvious traces of where they've been, which has led to the feature being dubbed "porn mode" in a nod to one of its more obvious uses.

An ancillary change to Private Browsing is a new addition to the "Clear Recent History" dialog box that allows users to selectively erase the last hour, the last two hours, the last four hours, today's or all browsing history. Previously, the wipe was all or nothing.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 includes support for "web worker threads," a developing specification that will let Web-based application developers run background processes to speed up their apps.

One feature trumpeted by Mozilla in Beta 1 has disappeared in the newest version. As Mozilla noted in late November, it pulled a revamped Ctrl-Tab tab-switching feature because it wasn't satisfied with the tool's user interface. The now-absent Ctrl-Tab redesign, which was based on an existing add-on of the same name, showed users thumbnails when they cycled through open tabs, and switched between current and last-viewed tabs rather than simply moving to the next tab on the right.

According to Web metrics company Net Applications Inc., Firefox accounted for 20.8% of all browsers used during November, marking the first time that the open-source browser broke the 20% barrier for an entire month.

Few users are trying Firefox 3.1, however; last month, only 0.05% of all users were running a preview of the new version, Net Applications said.

There will be at least one more beta in the Firefox 3.1 development cycle. Two weeks ago, Mozilla said it had added a third beta to the process, in part to evaluate some of the features introduced today, including TraceMonkey and Private Browsing, and to allow time for programmers to fix the bugs that users report.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from Mozilla's site. Users already running Beta 1 will be notified of the available update in the next 48 hours.

Responding to the article Pual Thurrott wrote on Microsoft’s upcoming phone.  I think we will see a Microsoft phone shortly.  We forget a purchase that Microsoft made earlier this year when they purchased Danger inc., maker of the t-mobile sidekick.  What could Microsoft possibly want with a java based phone system?  I recently watched a video interview on channel 9 with vice president Roz Cho who discusses managing her team of 500+ people in the Bay Area(where danger resides) and Seattle.  She mentions that her team put together a business proposal and got funded and are now working on the product.  She mentions that this team includes the staff/resources of danger that were acquired as part of that business proposal. What else could her team be working on but the new Microsoft phone.  I give you the new Microsoft phone:

A small group of Microsoft Technology Adoption program customers will get their hands on Vista SP2 next week, but a release date for the general public has not yet been set.

Tech Adoption customers will get the second service pack for Windows Vista on October 29, Mike Nash, corporate vice president for Windows product management, wrote in a Friday blog post.

"The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality," Nash wrote. "So we'll track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for the release."

Vista SP2 will contain "previously released fixes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues," according to Nash.

Microsoft has adopted a "single serviceability model" so SP2 will come packaged as a single release covering Windows Vista client and Windows Server 2008.

"This should also minimize deployment and testing complexity for our customers," Nash wrote.

In addition, SP2 also adds: Windows Search 4.0; the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack; the ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows; Windows Connect Now for Wi-Fi configurations; and the ability of the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

Despite these improvements, Nash urges most Vista users to hang tight for the formal SP2 release. "While we will recommend SP2 when it ships, your best bet today is Windows Vista SP1," he said.

Microsoft released SP1 in March. It included compatibility, security, and performance enhancements, but little in the way of features or interface changes that the end user will notice.

Microsoft released an emergency security update more than two weeks ahead of the company’s regular time of the month when update patches are issued, notifying of a vulnerability that could allow worms to run malicious codes on affected by the security hole machines.

The first patch released outside Microsoft’s mainstay update cycle in eighteen months revealed the bug was apt to render attackers to remotely take full control of an infected system.

In addition, the company informed that the vulnerability had arisen from the incapacity of the Windows service server to adequately verify the remote procedure call (RPC) requests for malicious content. RPC is a communication technology that enables a computer program to cause a procedure to execute in another address space (another computer or a shared network), without it being necessary for the programmer to explicitly code the details for this remote interaction. Windows’ server service, in terms of RPC, concerns the sharing of printers, disk and other various resources over a network of systems.

Initially, Microsoft described the bug as being prone to limited attacks, but after attackers managed to exploit the weak link and send a special network pack to systems running the 2000, XP and Server 2003 versions of Windows, the vulnerability was labeled critical to the aforementioned versions.

Nevertheless, it seems that, according to the company, systems that run on Windows Vista and Windows 2008 could only be exploited by authenticated users who have access to the network they target to attack.

The measure counted as the sixth time Microsoft has issued an out-of-band security update since October 2004, when they established to release patches on the second Tuesday of each month. The last time the company gave out an emergency security patch was in April 2007, the update having been aimed at fixing a critical bug in how Windows handled animated cursor files (.ani files).

Only two days after Microsoft released the patch, security researchers identified a new worm named Gimmiv, which exploited the vulnerability in the RPC service.

Moreover, on Friday, a sample of the code hackers could use to further take advantage of the bug was posted on the Internet, on the Milw0rm.com hacker site.

Ben Greenbaum, a senior research manager with Symantec, has revealed that the Gimmiv worm could be used to spread malicious content between systems joined in a local network, since the latter are not generally protected by firewalls. By exploiting Windows’ weakness, Gimmiv could easily go on infecting local networks’ computers one after another.

Afterwards, the worm could load software aimed at stealing passwords on the machine, the experts have also warned.

Symantec has revealed that beginning Thursday evening the number of scans searching for systems that might have been vulnerable to the Gimmiv worm had gone up by 25 percent, which means that further attacks performed by hackers who have modeled the code posted on the Web into easy-to-use exploit tools were expected.

ASUS CEO, Jerry Shen, in an interview with Laptopmag revealed the company's intent of introducing a Windows 7-based EEE PC in mid-2009. Woah! That's yet another Windows 7 bomb after AMD's mention. Shen makes it clear that only some models will support multi-touch function.

After selling four million EEE PCs so far, ASUS expects to sell about a million more till this year end. According to Shen, the screen size of 10-inches differentiates EEE PC from notebooks.

While ASUS plans to roll out touchscreen EEE PCs models, it has no plans to put Vista on its netbooks. A touchscreen tablet is also under consideration but ASUS will share more details on the same in the first quarter of next year. After the EEE Box, ASUS will introduce an iMac-like EeeTop (all-in-one PC) at the end of this month. Even the EEE Stick will be released as a separate accessory priced between $50 and $100, apart from being bundled with EEE PC models.

More Eee PC variants will rolled out in first and second quarter of 2009 at prices ranging from $250 to $700. Apart from that ASUS will announce two more products in January, at CES 2009. Battery life is the most crucial issue and to combat that ASUS is working on a technology called ExpressTest which improves boot-time and battery consumption. However, they're not looking forward to add more dual-core CPUs to EEE systems.

App stores have been around for the iPhone and recently, one was launched for phones with the Android OS. Not the ones to be left behind competition, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) on Tuesday announced that it will offer an online application storefront,in addition to an an on-device application center to make it convenient and easier for BlackBerry users to search for, purchase, or download programs for their handsets.

Until now, BlackBerry applications have been available on websites like Getjar and Handango, but this latest announcement will give BlackBerry users an equivalent of Apple's App Store for the iPhone, or the Android Market for the G1. This was announced at the first BlackBerry Developer Conference in Santa Clara, California.

Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO of RIM, in a statement said "The new BlackBerry application storefront and BlackBerry application centers will further support the growing BlackBerry ecosystem and help bridge consumers with developers and carriers as more and more innovative and interesting applications arrive."

Though these storefronts are planned to be launched in March 2009, developers can start submitting content in December this year and RIM is currently asking for interested developers to signup. As of now, it seems that RIM will vet what goes into the store, in a way similar to what Apple does.

RIM is also in talks with PayPal2 to facilitate transactions and the content creators will be allowed to keep 80% of the revenue generated from their apps. It would be interesting to note that the content creator will get higher than what they get at Apple's App Store, since Apple Inc. gives them 70%. Google on the other hand has said that they will not take any revenue from content creators for apps sold in the Android Market.

Corporations who have deployed BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry Professional Software will retain control of what applications can be downloaded to the BlackBerry smartphones by their employees within the corporate deployments. Whether or not there will be a "kill-switch" remains to be seen, though.

RIM is aggressively pursuing the "prosumer" and casual market with the launch of the app store and by introducing new consumer-friendly devices such as the BlackBerry Curve, Flip and the touch-screen Storm. Lazaridis said in a keynote on Tuesday that RIM's roots and success in the enterprise market is bound to give it an edge over its competitors in the consumer market.

"This platform has been developed, evolved, and perfected in the most demanding markets around the world. The consumer wireless data market is taking off, and that's a great opportunity for all of you," continued Lazardis as he talked to developers.

Dell on Thursday became the latest company to enter the “netbook” market with the launch of a small, stripped-down laptop designed to appeal to customers looking for a low-cost, Internet-ready computer.

The world’s second-biggest personal computer maker said its new Inspiron Mini 9 was geared towards mobile consumers and first-time PC buyers looking for a highly portable machine capable of performing tasks like internet surfing, shopping, and online chat.

The launch comes a few months after Hewlett-Packard, Dell’s biggest rival, entered the market with its own mini-laptop. Asustek Computer, a Taiwanese PC maker, kicked off the market last year with its mini-laptop, the Eee PC.

The move towards smaller, stripped down laptops presents a conundrum for computer makers that have already been struggling with a shift in customer preferences towards lower-cost PCs.

“There has been a big race to the bottom with some of these vendors to see who can sell cheaper,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at Jupiter Media, a market research group.