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Mac OS X 10.6.2 Released

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Apple has released Mac OS X version 10.6.2. The update includes fixes for:

  • “an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account
  • an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
  • Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
  • the reliability of menu extras
  • an issue in Dictionary when using Hebrew as the primary language
  • shutter-click sound effect when taking a screenshot
  • an issue with the four-finger swipe gesture
  • an issue adding images to contacts in Address Book
  • an issue in Front Row that could cause sluggish or slow frame rates while watching videos
  • creation of mobile accounts for Active Directory users
  • reliability and duration of VPN connections
  • general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
  • overall improvements to VoiceOver performance
  • this update addresses video playback and performance issues for iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009) and iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) computers that may occur in some situations while AirPort is turned on”

A complete list of changes can be seen on Apple’s website. If you have not yet been prompted to update, manually run Software Update.

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By Antoniu – November 9, 2009

iPhone Released in China, Lacks Wi-Fi

iphone3gschina.pngThe iPhone 3GS was released today in China, where Apple is partnering with mobile carrier China Unicom, but without Wi-Fi support, reports the Associated Press. The lack of Wi-Fi support is due to a ban on Wi-Fi by the Chinese government in an attempt to promote a competing standard. The ban has since been lifted and Wi-Fi support is expected to be included in the next batch of iPhones, which should be available before the end of the year.

It is likely that this will lead to poor initial sells of the phone, as many consumers will put off buying it until the Wi-Fi enabled models are available. China Unicom must also compete with the much larger China Mobile, which has 508 million accounts compared to China Unicom’s 143 million accounts and has announced that it will be releasing its own smartphone next year. Another obstacle for China Unicom is the prevalence of imported iPhones, which include Wi-Fi support and can be used on China Mobile’s 3G network. China Unicom offers the iPhone for 4,999 yuan ($730) to 6,999 yuan ($1,025), depending on the model, while an unlocked iPhone goes for 5,700 yuan ($835).

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By Antoniu – October 30, 2009

Twitter Lists Now Available to Everyone

Twitter Lists is now available to everyone, allowing all Twitter users to create and view lists. The feature was originally only available to a few select users, then expanded to include around one thousand users and then five percent of users. Over the past few days, the rate at which the feature was rolled out increased dramatically, with 50 percent of users having access to the feature by the end of Thursday. The feature has now been rolled out to all accounts and lists can even be viewed without being logged in.

Twitter’s latest blog post also focuses on the Lists API and ways that developers can integrate lists into their applications or websites, with two examples given. TweetDeck has also announced that it will be integrating Lists into its application and promises to do so in an interesting and innovative way rather than doing an “old run-of-the mill integration”.

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By Antoniu – October 30, 2009

ICANN to Allow Internationalized ccTLDs

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is responsible for the management and introduction of generic top-level domains (.com, .net, .biz, etcetera) and country-code top-level domains (.us, .de, .ru, etcetera), has approved the Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process. The Process will allow countries to apply for country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) made up of characters used their languages’ alphabet. While alternative alphabets have been allowed in subdomains as early as 1998, all ccTLDs were previously required be written using the Latin alphabet.

Russia, for example, will apply for the Cyrillic ccTLD .рф, which will be in addition to its current ccTLD, .ru. Domains registered under .рф will need to be written completely in the Cyrillic alphabet, i.e. россия.рф will be allowed but russia.рф will not, but this will likely vary from ccTLD to ccTLD and depend on the policies of the various registries.

ICANN will begin accepting applications for internationalized ccTLDs on 16 November. Applications must have government and community support, as well as pass a stability evaluation in order to be accepted. ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush described it as “the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago” and Tina Dam, ICANN’s Senior Director for IDNs, revealed that the Fast Track Process is the result of years of work and planning.

ICANN has detailed the Fast Track Process in a 59-page document.

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By Antoniu – October 30, 2009

iTunes 9.0.2 Released: Apple TV 3.0 Support Added, Palm Pre Syncing Disabled Again

Apple has released iTunes 9.0.2, the main purpose of which is to add support for Apple TV version 3.0, which was also released today. It also adds a dark background option to Grid View and improves accessibility support.

The update also prevents the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes, for the third time, reports PreCentral. This is just the latest move in a battle that Palm and Apple have been involved in since July, when iTunes 8.2.1 made it so that the Pre could not sync with iTunes. Palm released an update that circumvented the patch and all was well until September, when iTunes 9.0 once again broke syncing for the Pre. The latest update for the Pre, released earlier this month, reenabled syncing by once again circumventing Apple’s latest patch. Apple has taken this opportunity to update iTunes to include another patch to break Pre syncing.

Palm will likely release an update in the near future to reenable syncing, but it may be quite a while before it does so and in the meantime Pre users will have to decide whether they want to continue using iTunes 9.0.1 or update to 9.0.2 and lose the ability to sync their iTunes library.

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By Antoniu – October 29, 2009

Facebook Revises its Privacy Policy

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Facebook has revised its privacy policy, making the policy easier to comprehend by using plain language and providing examples. The revision also changes some vague wording to make it clearer: for example, “Removed information may persist…for a reasonable period of time” has been changed to read “Removed and deleted information may persist…for up to 90 days”.

With this revision, Facebook also fulfills its commitment to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which made several recommendations for Facebook’s privacy policy following a year-long investigation. The privacy policy has been amended to:

“[include] sections that further explain the privacy setting you can choose to make your content viewable by everyone, the difference between deactivating and deleting your account and the process of memorializing an account once we’ve received a report that the account holder is deceased.”

Facebook has also clarified what its Social Ads are:

“sponsored promotions that include relevant information about you and are shown only to your friends. For example, if you become a fan of a Page for your favorite new movie, your friends may see an ad that includes that information.”

Facebook also explained that it remains dedicated to preserving privacy while also making ads more relevant to users. The statistics that it provides advertisers is anonymized, so that they are not told which specific users clicked on an ad, but they may be told how many of those that did click were female, for example.

Facebook is currently seeking feedback on the updated policy on its Site Governance page. The feedback period will last until 12.00 p.m. PST on 5 November, after which the feedback will be reviewed and Facebook will provide an update detailing what it will be doing next.

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By Antoniu – October 29, 2009

DARPA Announces $40,000 Challenge

darpaballoon.jpgTo celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Internet, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, the stated goal of which is to “explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.”

The challenge will have entrants searching for ten moored, eight-foot, red weather balloons located in fixed locations across the continental United States. The balloons will be located in accessible locations and be visible from nearby roads. The first entrant to submit the latitude and longitude coordinates of all ten balloons will win $40,000.

Registration for the contest on will begin on 1 December on DARPA’s website and the balloons will be launched on 5 December. The contest will end on 14 December.

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By Antoniu – October 29, 2009

Internet Turns 40

40 years ago today, on 29 October 1969, the first two nodes of what became ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet, were connected, with one node residing at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at University of California, Los Angeles and the other at SRI International. The first message was sent over the network from UCLA and was supposed to read “LOGIN”, but instead read “LO”, as the computer crashed before the full message could be written. In the coming years, further work at DARPA, as ARPA was renamed in 1972, resulted in the creation of the TCP/IP protocols. In their documentation of TCP/IP, Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine used the term “Internet” to refer to a global network based on TCP/IP. The first such network came into existence on 1 January 1983, when ARPANET switched to TCP/IP from NCP.

And thus the Internet was born. The coming years saw many services become connected to the Internet, including CompuServe’s e-mail service, Usenet and telnet, with ARPANET becoming just a part of an expanding network. Commercial Internet service providers were also established, giving every one who was willing to pay access to the network.

UCLA is holding a celebration to mark the anniversary, which is being streamed live at ustream.tv/channel/internet-40th-anniversary-ucla.

Easynet Connect, a British ISP, has created a video detailing important events in the Internet’s history:






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By Antoniu – October 29, 2009

Twitter Lists Now Available to 25% of Users

Twitter Lists is now available to 25% of users, according a recent tweet by Nick Kallen, the project lead on Lists, reports TechCrunch. Rather than giving every one access to the feature at once, Twitter is gradually rolling out the feature to some people, working out any new bugs found and then rolling it out to more people. It seems that the process is completely random, as some developers have yet to receive the feature, while some accounts with few followers have instead received it.

Twitter announced Lists at the end of September, when it was testing the feature with a select few users. On 15 October, the group was expanded to include around one thousand people. Then on 22 October, the feature was once again expanded to include five percent of Twitter users. A couple of days ago, the feature was rolled out to twenty-five percent of users.

At the moment, Lists is disabled for all users to allow Twitter to investigate a performance issue, after which it will be reenabled.

Update: Lists has now been reenabled.

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By Antoniu – October 29, 2009

Phishing Scam Spreading via Twitter Direct Messages

A phishing scam is currently being spread via direct messages on Twitter, according to Mashable. The scam uses compromised Twitter accounts to send DMs with the text “Hi, this you on here?” followed by a link. The link points to a webpage that mimics the look of Twitter’s login page and prompts the visitor to enter his Twitter username and password. If the visitor does so, his information is sent to the scammers, who then use the account to send DMs, further propagating the scam.

Phishing scams like this one, that use compromised accounts to send direct messages, are much more effective than scams using @replies because a person is more likely to click on a link that is sent to him by someone he has followed.

If you believe your account may have been compromised, quickly change your password. If your password has already been changed, try to reset it using Twitter’s “Forgot your password?” form. Be very cautious about the links you click on in DMs for the time being and do not click on any links that are accompanied by the aforementioned text.

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By Antoniu – October 28, 2009