Sherbango soup

Mobile security firm Lookout announced today at the Black Hat security conference that millions of Android users had downloaded a wallpaper app that sends user information to a unknown site in China, reported VentureBeat. Concerns about app access to private information were raised last month, but this may be the first instance of Android malware in the wild. Android's enterprise-readiness has been controversial in analyst circles.

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The app, Jackeey Wallpaper, transmits a users' SIM card number, subscriber identification, and, if it's been programmed into the phone, voicemail password to www.imnet.us, a web site owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. It had been reported that the app also collected browsing history and text messages, but Lookout has clarified that this is not correct.

The app asks permission to access users phone calls, but does not disclose that the information would be sent to a third-party. Lookout found the app as part of its App Genome Project, an ambitious project to track the behavior of 300,000 applications.

Lookout may also be announcing other Android security risks at the conference.

Another mobile security company, Smobile Systems warned against this very scenario last month in a report titled Threat Analysis in the Android Market.

Analysts have been split over the enterprise-readiness of Android 2.2. Jack Gold, of J. Gold Associates, has argued that the lack of support for enterprises to manage what apps users install on their Android handsets should be one of many deal-breakers for Android adoption in the enterprise. This would seem to validate his claims.

Perhaps in response to the Smobile report, Google released a kill switch function to remotely delete malicious applications. The company hasn't announced whether Jackeey Wallpaper has been scheduled for termination.

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Oh, the days when mobile phone veteran Motorola was hawking the slim Razr while competitors had bricks. Darn these young whipper-snappers like Apple and their iPhone doo-hickeys. Motorola, maker of the Verizon Droid, now finds itself being outsold by Apple. The Cupertino, Calif. company sold 8.4 million iPhones compared to 8.3 million handsets for the [...]

Is your voice mail password now the property of some Chinese hacker? Millions of Android users who downloaded an innocuous wallpaper app from Google’s Android Market may be nodding their heads ‘yes.’ Turns out, that wallpaper app was sending voice mail passwords and many other bits of personal data to someone in Shenzhen, China, according [...]

Our favorite Mac vivisectors over at iFixit have torn down the Magic Trackpad, cutting it apart for access to its hidden hardware secrets. Unfortunately, there really weren’t many, short of the news that the Magic Trackpad uses the same touchscreen controller trip as the iPhone and the same Bluetooth chip found in the Magic Mouse. It’s [...]

TiPb international, are you getting ready to stand in line for the iPhone 4? Apple’s set to launch in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland on July 30, which for some readers is only a few hours away…

iPhone 4 will be available from Apple Retail Stores, carrier stores, and carrier resellers (from the big boxes to the franchises). We’ve heard some store are opening at the stroke of midnight, others at 7am, others only at regular hours. Be sure to check with the store you’re going to so you aren’t surprised. (If it’s in a mall, check what time the mall opens as well.)

Carrier plans, hardware upgrade pricing, and what-not is, as usual, sparse so be prepared for last minute announcements, customer service reps who haven’t yet been told about them, and carrier computer systems crashing often and hard. In other words, be prepared to be patient and persistent.

iPhone 4 requires a MicroSIM, so you might want to swing by your carrier early, get one, and have it activated on your line — if they’ll let you — now before things get hectic later.

Many countries will also have iPhone 4 available SIM-free and unlocked so if you’re willing to pay the ~$650 to ~$750 unsubsidized price you can just buy one and go. Given previous years where early upgrades were $100 off for a 1 year contract extension, it’s something to think about.

Let us know where you are and what the line’s like, and add your photos to our forum gallery, and if you’re already camping out — good night and good luck!

Standing in line for iPhone 4 international launch? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Listen up, iPhone 4 owners: get thee to a strong AT&T cell. That’s the advice of Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg on Apple’s latest handset. Mossberg said the iPhone 4 works best in areas with “average or strong AT&T coverage”, however, he said the iPhone 3GS is a better choice for users living, working [...]

Adobe today announced it has reached a deal to acquire ECM vendor Day Software. In a telephone interview, Erik Larson Senior Director of Product Management at Adobe, cited Day's technology's scalability and social features and the company's support for open-source software as the primary factors driving the acquisition. According to Day's website, "Day Chief Scientist Roy Fielding was co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, author of the Apache Software license, and creator of the Apache web server." Day has contributed to 12 Apache projects and 25 other open-source projects.

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Day, founded in Basil, Switzerland in 1993, is a somewhat lesser known player in the ECM market - and Gartner predicted last year the company's market position would decline. However, it has an impressive portfolio of clients including GM, Audi, McDonald's. Larson praises the company for its early recognition of the potential of the web and for designing software that was built from the ground-up for scalability and interactivity.

Larson says Day's content management and content repository software will compliment Adobe's enterprise software offerings LiveCycle and Omniture (which it acquired last year) to create a full suite of enterprise technologies.

Larson's vision for the enterprise revolves around "customer experience management," which combines the discipline of user experience design, interaction design, process management, content strategy and customer service into a unified field for web-based customer experience. Larson predicts in the near future, if this isn't the case already, customers will expect to have most of their interactions with companies online - and citizens will have most of their interactions with governments online as well. To this end, Adobe hopes to position LiveCycle, Omniture, and Day's offerings as a customer experience suite to compliment its existing web development technologies.

What the acquisition means, if anything, for Apache remains to be seen. The Apache Software Foundation is of course a very independent entity, but it's hard not to see this acquisition by Adobe as a play to get closer to the world's most popular web server.

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For some time, the iPhone has been saddled with the award for data hog. So much so, data usage has become an excuse by AT&T to explain poor network performance and a recent cap on data usage by iPhone owners. But it turns out the iPhone is second to Verizon’s Droid, a new study released [...]

Despite all the headaches over a rash of worker suicides, Foxconn should be resting easier today. Instead of headlines about overworked iPod assemblers jumping to their death, the electronics factory is being hailed as manufacturing half of the world’s electronics. The company, officially known as Hon Hai Precision Industries, seems to have caught a ride [...]

To further promote HTML5 as the future of web graphics, Apple has swung open the door for extensions to the public. While introduced in June to developers, Safari 5.0.1 now can be downloaded. The Cupertino, Calif. company also opened its Safari Extensions Gallery, joining the ranks of Firefox and other browsers extending the basic browser. Bing, [...]

According to the Daily Mail, Monday’s best-selling ebook was Blonde and Wet: The Complete Story on the UK iBookstore. It wasn’t exactly an exposè about gossamer-haired scuba divers: it was an erotic novel, one of two by author Carl East that populated the top ten list of downloadable iBooks. Another collection called Six Sexy Stories by [...]

We’ve seen a good few next-gen iPod Touch leaks in the past few months, but the most recent rumors pretty strongly indicate that the next updatewill bring a FaceTime camera to the device. What to make, then, of this latest prototype, supposedly found in a Californian “recycling place” and running iOS 3.1.3. It has no front-facing [...]

Newspaper circulation could soon jump wildly, thanks to new standards the industry recommended for itself.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations announced major changes to the way it counts digital readership today that will likely affect media that still rely on print very favorably. The new rules will allow newspapers to count a single subscriber multiple times if he or she pays or registers to access content via a print subscription, web site, mobile reader or e-reader edition, among other changes to the way digital access is counted.

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The changes could massively increase circulation numbers at outlets such as the New York Times, which has multiple mobile readers including a glossy iPad app, requires registration in order to access parts of its web site and plans to start charging for digital content next year.

Circulation was historically measured as the number of print subscriptions plus newsstand sales of newspapers, magazines and other publications, and was the basis for pricing ad space and attracting advertisers. However, this definition of circulation got murky as the Internet drew more readers away from dead-tree editions, making it harder for publishers to explain the size of their readership to advertisers.

The ABC, an organization that verifies circulation numbers of publications on behalf of advertisers, made the changes based on recommendations from a task force made up of its members and representatives from the Newspaper Association of America in order to "study the evolution of newspapers and the rapidly growing channels available to advertisers," who still pay much more for print ads even as more readers demonstrate a preference for digital formats.

Starting in October, publishers can claim another "paid subscription" for every reader who accesses content online at least once every six months, as long as the subscriber has to register to see the content or pays at least 5% of his or her print subscription cost in order to access the digital version. In October 2011, readers must access digital content once per quarter to count as a paid subscription, and in October 2012, readers must access digital content once a week in order to be counted.

The rapidly-scaling standard suggests newspapers are playing catch-up to monetize an audience that started migrating to the web a long time ago. The Internet makes it possible to know more about your readers than ever before - how many you have, what they look at, and who they are - but the old circulation auditing system seems to be struggling to adapt to the needs of advertisers and media in a digital world.

Image courtesy ShironekoEuro

ReadWriteWeb is a syndication partner of The New York Times.

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Intel announced a prototype technology today capable of moving data at 50 Gbps, comparable to sending an entire HD movie in one second - foreshadowing faster, longer data connections that could be revolutionary for consumers and data center users.

The prototype represents an important advance in Intel's research into silicon photonics - using lasers instead of electrons to send data - which the company has been working on for years. Intel hopes to scale up the technology until it reaches speeds close to a terabit per second - fast enough to transfer a copy of the entire contents of a typical laptop in one second, the company said.

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Data transmission speeds over wire-based connections are limited by bandwidth and distance. Intel turned to silicon-based photonic devices in order to transcend these physical limitations and continue to make more powerful chips.

With the new process, electrical signals are translated into light at different-colored wavelengths, which are combined and travel down a single fiber. Then the light is separated back into wavelengths and converted back to electrons. The speeds are so high that processors, memory and other computer components will no longer need to be placed inches from each other, implying vastly different computer designs in the future, the company said.

Image courtesy Intel

"Tomorrow's datacenter or supercomputer may see components spread throughout a building or even an entire campus, communicating with each other at high speed, as opposed to being confined by heavy copper cables with limited capacity and reach," according to Intel's press release.

Such quantitative increases in the power of data transmission could lead to qualitative changes in the way we use computers and the web. From telepresence to large data set distribution and analysis, the use cases are only beginning to be imagined. "At these data rates, one could imagine a wall-sized 3D display for home entertainment and videoconferencing with a resolution so high that the actors or family members appear to be in the room with you," Intel said.

What would you do with that much bandwidth? From telepresence to the distribution and analysis of large data sets, the use cases are only beginning to be imagined. Light-based bandwidth could be a platform for a whole new world of such innovations we didn't even know we wanted, although we may soon find out - the technology may be available as soon as five years from now, Intel said.

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Apple’s Magic Trackpad looks like an optional peripheral for now, but it’s much more than that. It’s several nails in the mouse’s coffin. It may even be a stake through its heart. Apple’s intent for the Magic Trackpad is clear: it’s a replacement for the mouse that brings multitouch gestures to the desktop. As more and [...]

Apple has refreshed its Mac Pro, giving the desktop workhorse up to 12 processing cores for a top speed of 3.33GHz, boosting performance by up to 50 percent. The refresh also provides users the option of four 512GB solid state drives. “The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and configurable Mac we’ve ever made,” said [...]

Apple Tuesday updated its all-in-one iMacs with Intel’s Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors, confirming rumors that the Cupertino, Calif. company would completely replace the Intel Core Duo line of chips powering the desktop machines. The low-end 21.5-inch iMac now sports a 3.06GHz i3 processor for $1,199. The mid-range 21.5-inch iMac is powered by [...]

Have you lusted after those new iMacs with the 27-inch LED screens, but already have a MacBook – or even Mac mini? Well, Apple must have heard your pleas, because Tuesday the Cupertino, Calif. company unveiled a 27-inch LED display compatible with all Macs — for just $999. Along with a 2560×1440 resolution, the Cinema Display [...]

Maybe it was the recent high temps which struck the U.S. East Coast, but a lawsuit now claims Apple’s wildly-popular iPad tablet device just can’t stand the heat. In a complaint filed July 23, lawyers claim the iPad “overheats so quickly under common weather conditions” and “does not live up to the reasonable consumer’s expectations [...]