Apple's iPhone 'lock-out’ patent could end texting while driving

A new automatic system to preventing phone use while driving could ‘change the culture’ of texting addiction, say experts

A campaign thumb-band, which reads 'texting while talking kills'

A new technology proposed by Apple would seek to address the dangerous and ubiquitous problem of drivers who use their phone behind the wheel, according to experts.

A new patent by the technology giant could “change the culture” and help stop driver distraction with an automated system that would disable certain smartphone functions when an iPhone user is driving.

One recently published patent describes a "driver handheld computing device lock-out" system that detects when a user is driving using on-board sensors or pulling information from the car when connected, blocking the use of text messaging or using other smartphone functions from the person driving.

“As a market leader, Apple could have the power to change the culture behind texting and driving, if it works and is intuitive; that would be a very good step,” said Paul Watters, head of motoring policy for the AA. “What we find in our research is that there’s an addiction here, to texting and using smartphones, it’s an addiction that is very hard to break even when in the car — it will take some system to help people break that addiction.”

Boosts likelihood of a crash by 23 times

Texting while driving is a hot-button issue that has been labelled as a “widespread menace” by Brake, the road safety charity, which has been shown to slow driver reaction times by 35% and increase the likelihood of a crash by 23 times for commercial drivers.

It is illegal to use a hand-held phones while driving, even when stopped at lights or in traffic in the UK, with an automatic fixed penalty of three points on the driver’s licence and a fine of £100.

Three in 10 of all drivers admitting sending or reading messages while driving, according to research by Brake and insurance company Direct Line. That number increases to more than four in 10 for drivers aged 18 to 24, while one in eight drivers admitted to using smartphone apps while behind the wheel.

‘Technology has a role to play’

Attempts to disable smartphones or limit distracting features of phones have been made in the past. Several developers have released apps that prevent drivers from texting behind the wheel for Android, but it has not been possible for the iPhone due to Apple’s restrictions on apps and system control.

“Technology has a role to play, but there is no single solution to the problem of distracted driving,” said Ellie Pearson from Brake.

Apple is currently making a large push into software for cars with its CarPlay system, which integrates an iPhone with a car's entertainment and communication tools, including connecting the car’s navigation system using Apple’s mapping app.

The patent for locking down the device was filed in 2008, but has only now been published. Apple could have a system in place that plays well with CarPlay, preventing the driver from texting using the smartphone other than via voice control through the car’s systems.

“Even if you cut off some functionality, it doesn’t necessarily remove the distraction the phone causes for drivers,” warned Watters. “There is no greater safety system than simply turning off the phone while driving.”

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Apple security flaw could allow hackers to beat encryption

A major flaw in Apple Inc (AAPL.O) software for mobile devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company said on Friday, and experts said Mac computers were even more exposed.

If attackers have access to a mobile user's network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook. Governments with access to telecom carrier data could do the same.

"It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I can say," said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.

Apple did not say when or how it learned about the flaw in the way iOS handles sessions in what are known as secure sockets layer or transport layer security, nor did it say whether the flaw was being exploited.

But a statement on its support website was blunt: The software "failed to validate the authenticity of the connection."

Apple released software patches and an update for the current version of iOS for iPhone 4 and later, 5th-generation iPod touches, and iPad 2 and later.

Without the fix, a hacker could impersonate a protected site and sit in the middle as email or financial data goes between the user and the real site, Green said.

After analyzing the patch, several security researchers said the same flaw existed in current versions of Mac OSX, running Apple laptop and desktop computers. No patch is available yet for that operating system, though one is expected soon.

Because spies and hackers will also be studying the patch, they could develop programs to take advantage of the flaw within days or even hours.

The issue is a "fundamental bug in Apple's SSL implementation," said Dmitri Alperovich, chief technology officer at security firm CrowdStrike Inc. Adam Langley, a senior engineer at Google, agreed with CrowdStrike that OS X was at risk.

Apple did not reply to requests for comment. The flaw appears to be in the way that well-understood protocols were implemented, an embarrassing lapse for a company of Apple's stature and technical prowess.

The company was recently stung by leaked intelligence documents claiming that authorities had 100 percent success rate in breaking into iPhones.

Friday's news suggests that enterprising hackers could have had great success as well if they knew of the flaw.

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Samsung to unveil first smartwatches with own Tizen platform

 Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS) is to unveil on Sunday its first wearable smartwatch powered by its Tizen platform in its latest attempt to distance itself from Google Inc (GOOG.O) and enhance its software and services.

Samsung has been jointly developing its mobile platform with Intel Corp (INTC.O), as the dominance of Google's free Android software, which Samsung uses for its Galaxy line of products, continues to grow and is now used in almost 80 percent of the global smartphone market.

The South Korean company is due to unveil two new smartwatches on Sunday, less than six months after it introduced the Galaxy Gear wristwatch, then running on Android, to prove that it is more than just a fast follower in innovation behind rival Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

The Galaxy Gear wristwatch has been criticised for its clunky design and difficult-to-use features.

The launch also underscores Samsung's desire to come up with new products to revive slowing momentum in its mobile business, the tech giant's biggest earnings driver, as sales of high-end smartphones have eased in many advanced markets.

For the new Galaxy Gear 2 and Neo 2, to be unveiled at an annual trade fair in Barcelona on Sunday, Samsung has not significantly upgraded the hardware on offer.

Instead, it has moved a camera to the watch's main body from the strap and added a couple of enhanced software offerings such as remote TV controlling, a fitness features like heart rate monitoring, and a standalone music player function, Samsung said in a statement.

The Neo does not have a camera.

The new devices, which will be followed by Samsung's new flagship smartphone to be announced on Monday, will go on sale globally in April.

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Apple promises fix "very soon" for Macs with failed encryption

Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook speaks about their new Mac Book computers during an Apple event in San Francisco, California October 22, 2013.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) said on Saturday it would issue a software update "very soon" to cut off the ability of spies and hackers to grab email, financial information and other sensitive data from Mac computers.

Confirming researchers' findings late Friday that a major security flaw in iPhones and iPads also appears in notebook and desktop machines running Mac OS X, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told Reuters: "We are aware of this issue and already have a software fix that will be released very soon."

Apple released a fix Friday afternoon for the mobile devices running iOS, and most will update automatically. Once that fix came out, experts dissected it and saw the same fundamental issue in the operating system for Apple's mainstream computers.

That started a race, as intelligence agencies and criminals will try to write programs that take advantage of the flaw on Macs before Apple pushes out the fix for them.

The flaw is so odd in retrospect that researchers faulted Apple for inadequate testing and some speculated that it had been introduced deliberately, either by a rogue engineer or a spy. Former intelligence operatives said that the best "back doors" often look like mistakes.

Muller declined to address the theories.

"It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I can say," said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.

Adam Langley, who deals with similar programming issues as a Google (GOOG.O) engineer, wrote on his personal blog that the flaw might not have shown up without elaborate testing.

"I believe that it's just a mistake and I feel very bad for whomever might have slipped," he wrote.

The problem lies in the way the software recognizes the digital certificates used by banking sites, Google's Gmail service, Facebook (FB.O) and others to establish encrypted connections. A single line in the program and an omitted bracket meant that those certificates were not authenticated at all, so that hackers can impersonate the website being sought and capture all the electronic traffic before passing it along to the real site.

In addition to intercepting data, hackers could insert malicious web links in real emails, winning full control of the target computer.

The intruders do need to have access to the victim's network, either through a relationship with the telecom carrier or through a WiFi wireless setup common in public places. Industry veterans warned users to avoid unsecured WiFi until the software patch is available and installed.

The bug has been present for months, according to researchers who tested earlier versions of Apple's software. No one had publicly reported it before, which means that any knowledge of it was tightly held and that there is a chance it hadn't been used.

But documents leaked by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed agents boasting that they could break into any iPhone, and that hadn't been public knowledge either.

Apple did not say when or how it learned about the flaw in the way iOS and Mac OS handle sessions in what are known as secure sockets layer or transport layer security. Those are shown to users by the website prefix "https" and the symbol of a padlock.

The issue is a "fundamental bug in Apple's SSL implementation," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer at security firm CrowdStrike Inc.

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UberBuds Bluetooth Earbuds Great for Outdoors but Weak Connection

The UberBuds from Musemini sound decent and work better outdoors than most stereo Bluetooth earbuds, but suffer from a poor Bluetooth connection. We tested them out and enjoyed using them, except when the connection intermittently drops out.
We’ve tested a few sets of Bluetooth earbuds and had hopes that the UberBuds would compare well to the others. They come with a tangle-free rubber cord that connects the two ends. They promise to work well for outdoor types who run and sweat or get caught in the rain. They held up even when they got a little moist.

We don’t like the way the Bluetooth 4.0 connection dropped with some interference. While sitting in a fast food restaurant near the drive-through, the earbuds dropped every time a later model car drove by. It seemed strange that a car would interfere. After some thought, we suspected that the vehicle Bluetooth signals got in the way. We waved other devices with Bluetooth near the phone connected to the Uberbuds. Each time the signal dropped slightly. We didn’t experience this with the other Bluetooth earbuds we tested.

Like all earbuds, the UberBuds come with an inline volume up/down and power control. Unfortunately, the plus and minus icons are hard to see on the black rubber material.

If Uberbuds can strengthen the Bluetooth signal, they’d have a winner. The inserts felt comfortable and blocked out a lot of noise and the package comes with optional sizes that fit different size ear canals. The charger connector, called the BudClip, fastens to a couple of metal connectors on the right side earbud. A clamp holds the charger in place. It’s as good a design as the old Magsafe charger on Apple MacBooks.

Finally, the audio sounds pretty good. The wire fits around even a big head.

Musemini sells the UberBuds for $129.99. They come in four color combinations – black/yellow, black/white, red/white and yellow/blue. The package comes with the UberClip for charging, a nice round case that holds the UberBuds, the extra tips and the cable.

Despite the excellent design, tangle-free wire, nice charging system and useful case, we can’t recommend the UberBuds for one reason. The Bluetooth connection drops too easily when there’s interference.
We prefer the excellent and less expensive Plantronics BackBeat Go 2 earbuds or even the set we reviewed from Phiaton.

Tech Skills In High Demand For 2013

Tech world is buzzing with many programming languages, platforms (mobile and PC), protocols and other technologies, that can easily put you in an uneasy spot if you were to select the one which is really important right now.

1.IT Project Management:

                        

IT sector is not only technical but a managerial juggle too. Coding, maintaining infrastructure and designing software are all really important, but they're kind of useless without somebody to see the project through to completion.

IT sector works under immense pressure. Large projects, scarce resources, tight deadlines, quick deliverables, and high client expectations are typical for an IT company. Any project delays can be extremely costly. This is where IT project management comes under limelight. It is basically a process of planning, organizing and delineating responsibility for the completion of organizations' specific information technology (IT) goals.
                        That's why certified project managers can pull in six figure incomes and why 40 percent of IT executives are looking to hire project managers in 2013.

2. HTML5 / CSS:

         HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web and is the core technology of the Internet. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard (created in 1990 and standardized as HTML 4 as of 1997) and, as of December 2012, is a W3C Candidate Recommendation.
           Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. It’s most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including plain XML, SVG and XUL.
                      This simple markup language is literally what the Web is made of, with cascading style sheets (CSS) making everything look nice and JavaScript adding interactive functionality.
                       In fact, as tablets, Smartphones and cloud-hosted services proliferate, the importance of the Web grows along with it. Consumers still need to access their cloud-hosted SaaS services via their Web browser. And studies show that tablet owners still love the Web.
                      After years of relative stagnation, HTML has made big advancements in recent years with HTML5, which is now supported by the latest versions of all major Web browsers. Meanwhile, the design options available via CSS3 and the interactivity provided by JavaScript have pushed the Web even further, blurring the line between Web-based and native apps.
                      Elance and Indeed both rank HTML as one of their most sought-after job skills, while other studies routinely point to it being in strong demand.

3. JavaScript (And Related Technologies):

  JavaScript (JS) is an interpreted computer programming language. It was originally implemented as part of web browsers so that client-side scripts could interact with the user, control the browser, communicate asynchronously, and alter the document content that was displayed. It is what which make things interactive on the web. Lately, there has been a meteoric rise in internet users around the world, all thanks to tablets and Smartphones, and so JavaScript becomes indispensible at this moment.  

Whether it's the ever-popular jQuery framework or the JSON data interchange standard, companies need JavaScript-focused talent like never before. In fact, JSON is the most in-demand skill on CyberCoders.

                   It's worth noting that when people say "HTML5," they're often referring in part to JavaScript. That's because what makes Web apps look and feel so app-like is CSS and JavaScript, not just the plain HTML itself.

                       

4. Java / J2EE:

Java is a general-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented computer programming language that is specifically designed to have few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers "write once, run anywhere" (WORA), meaning that code that runs on one platform does not need to be recompiled to run on another.                  

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is Oracle's enterprise Java computing platform. The platform provides an API and runtime environment for developing and running enterprise software, including network and web services, and other large-scale, multi-tiered, scalable, reliable, and secure network applications.
                      Java and the J2EE development platform are popping up more and more on job hiring boards and they will be high in demand throughout 2013, according to a survey from Dice.
                      Unlike hot new technologies like Android development and HTML5, demand for Java skills has been fairly consistent over time, although it has been on the rise in the last few years.

                    

5. All Things "Cloud":

 

The two hot things that are ruling the cloud now are- SaaS (Software as a service) and PaaS (Platform as a service).

SaaS, sometimes referred to as "on-demand software" supplied by ISVs or "Application-Service-Providers" (ASPs), is a software delivery model in which software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud. SaaS is typically accessed by users using a thin client via a web browser. SaaS has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including Office & Messaging software, DBMS software, Management software, CAD software, Development software, Virtualization, accounting and many more. 

 PaaS is a category of cloud computing service that provides a computing platform and a solution stack as a service. Along with software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it is also a service model of cloud computing. In this model, the consumer creates the software using tools and/or libraries from the provider. The consumer also controls software deployment and configuration settings. The provider provides the networks, servers, storage and other services.

                       According to one survey of IT execs, 25 percent of companies are planning on hiring people with SaaS and related cloud-computing expertise in 2013.  In general, SaaS and virtualization are both buzzwords often cited as being on-the-rise job on employment search sites.             

6. PHP / MySQL:

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP is now installed on more than 244 million websites and 2.1 million web servers.
MySQL is the world's most widely used open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. The SQL phrase stands for Structured Query Language.
The open source scripting language runs on more than 20 million websites and powers high-profile sites we deal with every day, including Facebook, Wikipedia, Wordpress or Drupal. So you can say that it’s all over web.
                       PHP is currently ranked as the most sought-after skill on Elance, with MySQL and Wordpress also cracking the top ten. There are more than a quarter of a million PHP programming gigs listed on Elance, a global online staffing platform, alone.

7. iOS Development:

 

As of September 12, 2012, Apple's App Store contained more than 700,000 iOS applications, which have collectively been downloaded more than 40 billion times. It had a 21 percent share of the Smartphone mobile operating system units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, behind only Google's Android.    It comes as no surprise that iOS developers are sought after. Most sources that track job talent demands iOS development or related skills like Xcode and Objective-C programming very highly.

  iPhone and iPad development have been trendy for a few years now, but things actually got accelerated pretty dramatically in the last two years. After years of slow but steady growth, demand for iOS development skyrocketed over the course of 2011 and 2012, according to data from the job aggregator site, Indeed.

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