A company in Japan named NICT just unveiled a system dubbed Daedalus that will revolutionize the way companies and even countries can monitor cyber-attacks in full realtime 3D representation.

Mozilla is taking an interesting approach toward improving stability and security in future versions of the Firefox web browser. Starting soon, websites won’t be able to automatically load most plugins unless you click to enable them.

If you visit a site that requires Java, Silverlight, or Adobe Reader, you’ll see a note asking if you want to enable that plugin to run. those plugins won’t just work out of the box — although you will be able to configure Firefox to run plugins automatically if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of clicking a button every time you load a new website.

In other words, while plugins will be disabled by default, users will be able to decide how they want things to work.

There are some good reasons for the new “click to play” approach. Mozilla says that poorly coded plugins are responsible for more browser crashes than anything else. Security holes in plugins can also leave your browser (and your entire computer) vulnerable to malware.

Interestingly, Mozilla has decided that the latest version of Adobe Flash Player can run automatically — presumably because it’s relatively secure… and also a plugin that’s required in order to access an awful lot of web content.

via CNET

Firefox “click to play” means Silverlight, Java, most plugins won’t run automatically is a post from: Liliputing

HP.com

The Barnes & Noble NOOK Simple Touch is an eReader with a 6 inch E Ink display, long battery life, and a list price of $79. But you can get one for “free” if you order an eligible HP laptop or desktop PC and add a NOOK to your cart.

Here are some of the day’s best deals on mobile devices and accessories.

• Buy an eligible HP computer and get a free NOOK Simple Touch - HP
• Samsung Series 3 11.6″ Chromebook + laptop case for $275 – TigerDirect
• Apple iPod Touch 5th gen (32GB) for $249 – ShopRite
• Refurb Lenovo IdeaPad A1 Android 2.3 tablet for $100 after rebate – Newegg
• Pre-owned B&N NOOK (1st gen) 3G + WiFi eReader for $40 - CowBoom
• OCZ 256GB SATA III solid state disk for $150 after rebate – TigerDirect
• Centon 128GB USB 2.0 flash drive (waterprooft) for $60 - TigerDirect
• SanDisk 32GB USB 2.0 flash drive for $18 - Buy.com
• Patriot 15GB Class 4 microSDHC card for $5 after rebate – Newegg

You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.

Deals of the Day (1-30-2013) is a post from: Liliputing

Want to read TV shows or movies on your eReader? StoryBoard is a utility that lets you do that. Yep, you read that right: Storyboard takes a video file and turns it into a PDF featuring still images and text from a movie or TV show.

Here’s  how it works: Storyboard detects scene changes in a video file and grabs a still image of the relevant frame. It also grabs an image every time the subtitles change.

If your video doesn’t already have subtitles, the script can try to identify the movie or TV episode and grab relevant subtitles from the internet.

The end result is a PDF eBook featuring a series of photos with captions for the text. You can then read a TV show as if it were a picture book — which is a pretty good way to zip through an hour-long TV show in a matter of minutes.

You can also read that PDF file on an eReader, smartphone, tablet, or a laptop.

This isn’t the first time we’e seen this sort of trick. Developer Mark Longstaff-Tyrell came up with something similar a while back and called it iPlayer for Kindle.

But developer Mark Olson’s Storyboard is a bit more sophisticated — and it’s an open source project. You can access the source code at Github, or contribute to development of the project if you want to help add support for EPUB, Mobi, or other formats, for instance.

The tool is also available for installation on a Mac or Linux computer. You can find instructions at Olson’s website.

Turn subtitled videos into eBooks with StoryBoard is a post from: Liliputing

BlackBerry 10 launches today, and there are already more than 70 thousand apps available for the platform. That includes mobile apps such as Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Kindle, and Angry Birds.

The company says there are more than a thousand “top” apps already available in the new BlackBerry World… which gives the new platform a bit of a leg up on some competing mobile operating systems which often launch with few apps available.

In fact, Ubuntu Phone OS won’t even have an app store when it launches. Instead the folks at Canonical plan to focus first on the core apps that will come built-in, adding support for a third-party app store down the line.

One of the reasons BlackBerry 10 has such a large amount of apps at launch is that the company made it easy for Android app developers to port their apps to run on BB10. In fact, many Android apps can run virtually unmodified. They just need to be repackaged as Android apps.

During a recent port-a-thon, developers ported 19,000 apps in just one weekend.

That said, there will also be many native apps including media apps, games, business apps, travel, health, and finance apps.

BlackBerry World is also now a place to purchase music and videos in addition to apps — the company says there are movies and TV shows from 8 studios and all the major US music labels.

Whether any of those new apps, or the new operating system and hardware are enough to convince customers to stick with (or switch to) BlackBerry remains to be seen. There are an awful lot of excellent choices in the smartphone space at this point.

Over 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps are available at launch is a post from: Liliputing

The first two smartphones to ship with the BlackBerry 10 OS are a the touchscreen-only BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard.

The BlackBerry Z10 will have a 4.2 inch, 1280 x 768 pixel, 356 ppi display, a 1.5 GHZ Qualcomm Snadpragon S4 Plus dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage and a microSD card slot for extra space.

It has an 8MP rear camera, and a 2MP front-facing camera.

BlackBerry says the Z10 will retail for about $150 with a 3-year contract in Canada. Prices will vary by region, and the phone will be available January 31st in the UK, in early February in Canada and the United Arab Emirates. It should hit the US in March.

Meanwhile, the BlackBerry Q10 has a smaller 3.1 inch, 330ppi display — but it has a dual-core processor, a full physical keyboard beneath the screen, which makes it feel more like a traditional BlackBerry smartphone.

Most modern smartphone makers have left QWERTY keyboards behind — or moved to slide-out keyboards. But continuing to offer a phone with a keyboard is probably a smart move for BlackBerry, since it’s one of the features that’s helped define the company — and dropping it entirely would probably alienated long-time fans (I hear there are still some of those left).

Both phones will run the new BlackBerry 10 software, which is optimized for touch in a way that earlier BlackBerry software never was. The company is emphasizing touch-based gestures including a new “Peek” feature which lets you slide your thumb to preview incoming email messages without exiting you current app — so you can keep playing a video, for instance, while checking your inbox.

The company also put a lot of work into the new on-screen keyboard, which features strong text prediction, among other things, to offer a good typing experience even on a touch-only phone like the BlackBerry Z10. There’s also a new video editor built into BlackBerry 10 called BlackBerry Story Maker.

BlackBerry has a strong reputation for making business-friendly phones, and among other new features in BB10 is something called BlackBerry Balance — which lets users create separate profiles for work and personal use. So you can associate certain apps, data, and other information with your work profile, but maintain your personal contacts, games, and other apps on the same device.

BlackBerry 10 also now offers support for BBM Video and BBM Screen Share, which lets you make video calls using the BlackBerry Messenger service — or share your screen over an internet connection, so you hold a meeting on your phone by making a voice call and letting the person you’re talking to see the same photos, documents, or presentations as you’re looking at on your handset.

BlackBerry introduces the first BB10 phones: The BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 is a post from: Liliputing

Canadian smartphone maker Research in Motion is changing its name… to BlackBerry. You’d probably be forgiven if you thought that was already the company’s name — but along with today’s BlackBerry 10 software platform, the company went ahead and made things official.

BlackBerry 10 is a new operating system based on QNX software. It’s similar to the software already used on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, but BB10 will be available for both phones and tablets.

The first two BB10 phones will include the BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen phone and the Q10 phone with a QWERTY keyboard.

In addition to native BB10 apps, BlackBerry has made it easy for Android app developers to port their apps to BlackBerry, which means that the new platform will launch with support for tens of thousands of apps, as well as with support for BlackBerry services including BlackBerry Messenger and the company’s push email services.

Research in Motion changes name to BlackBerry is a post from: Liliputing

Research in Motion is now selling music, movies, and TV shows in the BlackBerry World store (which used to be called BlackBerry App World). The media sections of the store went live last night in advance of today’s launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system for smartphones and tablets.

At launch, music and videos will only be available for purchase in the US, UK, and Canada. But if you happen to be in one of those regions, the prices seem to be competitive with those you’d find from Apple, Google, Amazon, and others.

Songs sell for about a dollar, albums go for around $10, TV episodes sell for about $1.99 each, and you can rent movies for around $4.99 (or purchase titles at higher prices).

You can preview songs before spending your hard-earned cash on them, or you can watch trailers for movies.

You don’t need a Blackberry device to browse the new BlackBerry World categories. Just visit the store using any web browser to check out the selection of music, movies, and TV shows.

via CrackBerry

Now you can get music, videos from the BlackBerry World store is a post from: Liliputing

Samsung will probably introduce several new tablets a Mobile World Congress in February, including an 8 inch Galaxy Note. But it looks like that may not be the only new tablet the company’s working on.

User agent profiles for at least three new devices recently showed up at the Samsung Mobile website, including one for a tablet with a 2560 x 1600 pixel display.

Google Nexus 10

That shouldn’t be surprising — after all, Samsung manufacturers the Nexus 10 tablet for Google, and that tablet features the same high resolution screen.

It’s not yet clear what other hardware the tablet will have, but it appears to have the model number GT-P8200 and Engadget found benchmark results suggesting it has a 1.7 GHz multi-core processor and Android 4.2 software.

The Google Nexus 10 has a Samsung Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15 dual-core processor, so it’s possible this new tablet could have the same chip… or a more powerful quad-core (or even octa-core) version.

Other new tablets appear to have 1280 x 800 pixel and 1024 x 600 pixel screens, suggesting they’ll be smaller, lower priced devices than the Samsung GT-P8200.

via Notebook Italia and Juggly.cn

Samsung may be prepping a new 2560 x 1600 pixel tablet is a post from: Liliputing

Apple appears to be prepping a next-generation Apple TV box. This week the company pushed a software update for existing Apple TV set-top-boxes which includes support for new hardware. And a new Apple TV showed up at the FCC website this week as well, showing a device that’s a tiny bit smaller than the third-generation model Apple is currently selling.

Update: The Verge reports that Apple confirms the new model is getting a minor spec bump, but says the new Apple TV is the same size as its predecessor.

The Apple TV is a set-top-box designed to let you stream media from iTunes (or from an iPhone or iPad) to your TV. But under the hood, it shares a lot of DNA with an iPhone or iPod touch.

While the latest models sold by Apple feature an Apple A5 processor, the folks at AnandTech did some digging and noticed that the upcoming model appears to have a faster A5X chip and an updated Broadcom wireless card for WiFi and Bluetooth.

The wireless solution is the same one used in the iPhone 5, while the processor is the same one used in the 3rd-generation Apple iPad (the first with a Retina display). It’s a 1 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with quad-core PowerVR SGX543 graphics (the previous model had dual-core graphics).

All told, this sounds like a modest update — while the new model is smaller, you probably won’t really notice the difference between a 98mm Apple TV and a 94mm model. But the improved graphics capabilities could offer a slight performance boost for HD video and 3D graphics. Apple started using the A5X chip when the company started offering iPads with higher-resolution displays, so this could also be a first step toward supporting televisions with higher-than-1080p resolutions.

Next-gen Apple TV gets a minor spec bump is a post from: Liliputing