IBLOG SPACE

Speculation continues for the iPhone 5 as we get closer to its rumored September launch. A new report fromChina Times now pinpoints the next-gen iPhone’s arrival to be in the second week of September. It also adds that an initial order for 4 million units has been placed and that suppliers are already preparing 400,000 trial run units. This news aligns with all previous reports that suggest the same time frame. Although the iPhone 5 was expected to launch sometime in the summer, the introduction of the long awaited and much delayed white iPhone 4 in the spring plus the development of iOS 5, made a later launch date more logical. Perhaps similar to how the recently revamped MacBook Airs waited to be shipped with completed Mac OS X Lion, the new iPhone 5 will wait for iOS 5, which was officially announced during WWDC 2011 for a September launch. Additionally, there’s been rumors of an iPad 3 or an iPad 2 Plus with an improved display and full 1080p HD support to arrive in September along

i So we’ve all seen those commercials lately where the integration of new technology with automobiles lets a person unlock and start his or her spiffy new BMW remotely with a cellphone app. It’s convenient indeed and may also make it more convenient for hackers to hijack your car. According to two security researchers, hackers can do just that via what’s called “war texting.” Don Bailey and Mathew Solnik, employed by iSEC Partners, have found a way to unlock vehicles using remote control and telemetry systems such as the BMW Assist, GM OnStar, Ford Sync, and Hyundai Blue Link. With off-the-shelf parts and a couple hours of tinkering, the duo was able to reverse engineer the communication protocol and pose as the GSM or CDMA mobile network servers via “war texting” or the act of finding open wireless networks. The scariest part of this vulnerability is that it may apply to many other systems that also use telephony as a control network, including traffic control systems, 3G security cam

Today I have a sleek Motorola phone you’ll want to check out. This is the Motorola Triumph and he learned most of his simple edges and design from the Droid X. In a way that is what we have here, a slimmed down, simplified yet nice version of the Droid X. This is the first Motorola Android phone carried by Virgin Mobile and it aims to be the best too. For a no contract phone this is a pretty solid buy for only $299 considering many phones of this level sold for $499 in recent months.

Dan Gillmore, writer, teacher, and Google+ member has been in communication with Google over the past few weeks, asking questions about security and safety of information as it pertains to Google+. As he says in his own words, “I find Google’s responses (and non-responses) disappointing.” As you’ll see below, Google answered some key questions and uncovered a few rocks we’re sure you’ll be interested in seeing under. There’s also a list of questions they did not reply to, and assuming Gillmore actually DID send these questions in and Google DID decline to answer, the implications are immense. One of Gillmore’s first questions is about chat and video chat, and how much Google – or anyone else not in the chat – is able to see. Google replied that the only piece of information or media collected from Hangouts (video chat) were the names of the participants, and then only so that participants could easily add these new friends to their Circles should they so wish. This, and “other usage st

The Netflix price hike for those who want DVD rentals and unlimited streaming just won’t go away. Everywhere I turn, someone I know or an article I read mentions the 60 percent hike, and soon after that, complaints arise. [Image credit: Justin Litton] Look, I’ll be the first to admit that if I had both DVD rentals and unlimited streaming right now, I wouldn’t be too pleased either. Regardless of the amount, it’s never good to see a bill go up. But let’s face it: Netflix is still offering the best deal in the business. For just $15.98 per month, Netflix customers can stream the service’s growing library of content and rent as many DVDs as they want. If those same people decided to only use Netflix’s streaming service and get DVD rentals elsewhere, depending on how many films they plan to rent each month, they could lose out. For instance, let’s say someone decides to save the $7.99 from Netflix’s DVD plan and rent discs from Redbox instead. Assuming that person brings back the DVDs they

Complete with 2nd Generation Intel Core i7 processors, RAID cards and NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards, iBUYPOWER keeps their title as a leading innovator of integrated solutions as they launch this new Professional Series line of workstations. Each of these workstations are fully customizable and tuned to just the right combination of gear to meet your needs as a creative professional. The best possible components, says Darren Su, Executive Vice President of iBUYPOWER, have been chosen in designing this Professional Series so that each industry’s specific needs can be met. Intel’s Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and Hyper Threading Technology are just two features offered with the Intel® Xeon® processors packed inside the workstations for the most power and efficiency in the land. Next 2nd Generation Intel Core i7 processors sit in the system taking multiple demanding programs and applications and run them with ease. With these workstations packed the way they are, make no mistake, you won’t b

Nintendo tried to sweeten the news of its dramatically disappointing financial results, announced earlier today, with a pre-emptive price cut of the 3DS, but the outlook for the company is still grim. Adoption of the 3DS has been underwhelming, with a mere 830,000 sold in the US since its March 2011 launch. The specter of the PS Vita has been name-checked by many already today as one potential reason for consumer reticence, but there’s more to Nintendo’s struggle than Sony’s incoming uber-handheld. Interestingly, Nintendo was flagged up as a company “getting things right” last week, with EA’s CEO John Riccitiello suggesting to IndustryGamers that in the Wii U “Nintendo is bringing out a new platform that brings together some of what we’re learning from new media and new platforms like the iPad and then integrating that with a console. It’s the perfect time for that in the industry.” That may be the view from the developers’ side, but it seems users think differently. Nintendo blamed a

HTC has confirmed to SlashGear that its European version of the EVO 3D will arrive in the UK in September 2011, two months after initially expected. No reason for the smartphone’s delay was available, though it fits in well given UK carrier Vodafone announced earlier this week that it no longer planned to range the glasses-free 3D smartphone. Vodafone’s justification for ditching the EVO 3D was that “due to delays to the launch of the device” the carrier no longer felt it would be competitive against other devices in the pipeline, a perhaps strange argument given that at the time the smartphone was still expected to arrive before the end of this month. When we asked HTC whether the July launch window was still accurate, however, it revealed that was no longer the case: “We can confirm that the HTC EVO 3D will be available to UK customers through Carphone Warehouse from September 2011″ The GSM EVO 3D was announced back in June, with a July release in Europe promosed. The CDMA variant ha

Apple is the top smartphone manufacturer in the US, according to the latest Nielsen statistics, despite iOS not having the biggest share of the OS ecosystem. According to the stat company’s June figures, iOS is running on 28-percent of smartphones, in second place behind Android with 39-percent. However, because multiple OEMs use Android, no single manufacturer has the scale to rival Apple. HTC is the largest Android user, with devices running on the platform comprising 14-percent of the market, followed by Motorola with 11-percent. RIM’s BlackBerry OS – again, with only RIM using it – scores 20-percent on both fronts, while Windows Phone 7 is perhaps the surprise in fourth place, amounting to 7.9-percent (along with its predecessor, Windows Mobile). Of the Windows Phone OEMs, HTC’s multi-device range puts it at the top spot. Symbian’s minor place in the US smartphone segment is clear, with just 2-percent of the market, sharing fifth place with HP webOS. Nielsen doesn’t make any predic

I’m not sure the smartphone market needs a new OS, but in China, a new choice might go over better than it would elsewhere. A Chinese ecommerce company called Alibaba has announced that at the end of the month it will launch a new mobile OS called Aliyun. The new Os is the result of three years of work and 1,200 engineers according to the company. The OS leans heavily on cloud services that Alibaba offers and comes from the AliCloud branch of the company. The core functions of the smartphone, called the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone W700, will use the cloud. Those functions include email, storage backup, and a lot more. The smartphone will be made by Tianyu in China and will have a 3.8-inch screen and use a dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor like most modern Android devices do. The OS will run Android apps and supports HTML 5 and web apps too. There is no word on pricing at this time.