Author: Terren

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Researchers display evidence that iOS 4 records all your travels, again (updated)

If you didn’t already think your smartphone knows too much about you, here’s a handy reminder. A duo of UK researchers have uncovered a potentially worrying (and oddly enough, undocumented) feature in iOS 4: it asks your iPhone to record your location constantly, then timestamps that data and records it for posterity. The trouble with this unsolicited location tracking is that the hidden file that holds the data — consolidated.db — is relatively easy to uncover and read, making any desktops you’ve backed your phone up to and the phone itself even bigger privacy dangers than they would usually be. Some extra digging revealed this behavior has been known about for a good while (see Courbis and Alex Levinson links below), though mostly by people involved in computer forensics. Additionally, restoring a backup or migrating to a new device keeps the data logging going, which the researchers point to as evidence that what’s happening isn’t accidental. See a couple of visualizations of the extracted results on video after the break.

[Thanks, Tom]

Update: The original text of this article was updated to reflect that this was already a known issue, albeit in limited circles. The ability to easily visualize the data is new.

Continue reading Researchers display evidence that iOS 4 records all your travels, again (updated)

Researchers display evidence that iOS 4 records all your travels, again (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Guardian  |  sourceiPhone Tracker, O’Reilly Radar  | Email this | Comments

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Exclusive: Chrome notebooks confirmed to be released June/July

To be sold as a subscription.

You may or may not have seen the news about the Google Chrome production notebooks floating around the web today. Ariotech reports that “Google product manager Sundar Pichai said, Google were still fixing some bugs and improving compatibility with devices such as digital cameras…

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YouTube starts transcoding all new uploads to WebM, already has a third of its library ready

Google’s resolve to bring WebM video streaming to the masses doesn’t seem to have been weakened by a general lack of interest from the rest of the tech world, and the company’s announced that each and every new YouTube upload will now be automatically transcoded into a WebM version. Nearly a third of YouTube’s archives have already made the transition to the open source format, though if you think that’s a small proportion, you should probably know that those 30 percent account for 99 percent of all views on the site. Apparently, we all have a narrower set of interests than we like to believe. So, with all popular vids encoded and every incoming one getting the transcoding treatment, all you really need now is a compatible browser — Chrome (naturally), Firefox 4, Opera, or IE9 with a plug-in — and to enroll in YouTube's HTML5 trial linked below to get rolling with WebM playback. Appending "&webm=1" to a search string or a video's URL will also help you ensure you're getting the good stuff.

YouTube starts transcoding all new uploads to WebM, already has a third of its library ready originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 04:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceYouTube Blog, YouTube.com/HTML5  | Email this | Comments

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Toshiba’s 10.1-inch Regza AT300 Honeycomb tablet hits Japan in June

Toshiba’s first Honeycomb tablet, which we first laid hands upon back in January, has finally been priced with an honest to goodness ship date. Unfortunately, this 10.1-incher with 1,280 x 800 pixel display, USB, HDMI, and 5 megapixel rear-facing cam is Japan-only for now, where the Tegra-2 powered Android 3.0 tablet has just made its official debut as the Regza AT300 with a ¥60,000 price (about $723). Look for it to hit the hard streets of Nippon in late June. Now if we could just get a name, date, and price for locations a bit closer to home we’d be all set.

Toshiba’s 10.1-inch Regza AT300 Honeycomb tablet hits Japan in June originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 01:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Engadget Japanese  |  sourceDynabook  | Email this | Comments

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Vince Vaughn sums up Roberto Luongo’s Game 4 effort

(As heard through the glass as Roberto Luongo skated to the bench, having given up six goals on 28 shots in the Vancouver Canucks‘ 7-2 Game 4 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks.)

"I'm gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: Who's the big loser here tonight at the casino? Huh? Roberto, that's who. Roberto's the big loser. Roberto loses! Make me a bicycle, clown! Dorothy Mantooth was a saint!

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna make Gretzky's head bleed for super fan 99 over here. …"

Thanks, Vince. For the record: Fantastic, prideful win for the Blackhawks in Game 4. But we doubt any of the Chicago dailies will publish an accurate headline about it, which would be "Delaying The Inevitable." This is still Vancouver's series, no matter how putrid the effort was Tuesday night.

Photo by Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune. Stick-tap to Frankie Monahan for the image.

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The official map of an NHL rink

NHL fans learned something new this week when Colin Campbell revealed the existence of a “hitting zone” behind the net where, apparently, headshots are legal.

This got me to wondering: what else don’t we know about the NHL rink? So I dug into my old cartography library, and came up with this original map that lays it all out:

It all makes sense now…

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NHL signs $2 billion-deal to stay with NBC, Versus

The NHL is staying on NBC and Versus for the next 10 years with a deal Commissioner Gary Bettman calls the most significant in league history. In a joint announcement Tuesday, the NHL and the NBC Sports Group said the new deal will run through the 2020-21 season.

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BlackBerry PlayBook pried open, gyroscope and other goodies discovered

What’s in a PlayBook? No, literally, what is in that thing? Well, most of the specs were known ahead of today’s release, but there was a bit of confusion about whether RIM’s 7-inch tablet did or didn’t have a gyroscope, which has now been set straight (it does!) by the crew at iFixit. They did their usual study of what it’ll take to repair your own PlayBook should the need ever arise, and gave it a repairability score of 7 out of 10. Replacing the front glass would be a bit of a pain to do, but then that’s the case with most portable devices. The motherboard also got a thorough examination, with all the power management, wireless connectivity, and memory chips getting identified and recorded for posterity. If you want to check iFixit‘s work, feel free to visit UBM Tech Insights as well, who have their own component list and closeup photography of that dual-core TI OMAP4430 system-on-chip. Yes, closeup photography.

BlackBerry PlayBook pried open, gyroscope and other goodies discovered originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceiFixit  | Email this | Comments

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Oracle drops OpenOffice.org

Oracle announced its intentions to discontinue the OpenOffice.org (OOo) suite of software on Friday 15th. The move does not come as a major surprise, following a ‘fork’ of the OpenOffice developers several months ago. The group who left OpenOffice.org development founded a ‘vendor-neutral’ group, known as The Document Foundation. The…

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The royal wedding live on YouTube

Cross-posted on the YouTube Blog.

As the historic day approaches, the much-anticipated wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has people around the world buzzing with excitement.

While millions will be in London for the big day, it’s clear that people around the world have wedding fever. Google search trends show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for “royal wedding” include places like Singapore and the Philippines. In response, we’ve been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We previously announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a “Royals’-eye” view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.

Today, we’re thrilled that the Royal Household has just announced that footage of the entire ceremony will be live-streamed on their official YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.

The live stream will begin at 10:00a BST (9:00a GMT, 2:00a PT, 5:00a ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view afterwards.

You don’t have to wait until the big day to “attend” the wedding, though. A video guest book has just been opened on The Royal Channel for anyone in the YouTube community to upload messages of congratulations, inspiration or well wishes to the happy couple.

More than 50 years ago, the marriage of The Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had over 20 million viewers. This one is already heralded as the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever.

Posted by Rachel Ball, Partner Development Associate