US under cyber attack

Hackers cripple US internet in wide-scale cyberattack

WikiLeaks implied its supporters may be behind the attack and asked them to "stop taking down the US internet".

If you live on the East Coast and had trouble accessing Twitter, Spotify Netflix, Amazon or Reddit Friday morning, you were not alone.

SAN FRANCISCO — Eleven hours after a massive online attack that blocked access to many popular websites, the company under assault has finally restored its service. Dyn, a New Hampshire-based company that monitors and routes Internet traffic, was the victim of a massive attack that began at 7:10 a.m. ET Friday morning. The issue kept some users on the East Coast from accessing Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, PayPal and other sites.

At 6:17 p.m. ET Friday, Dyn updated its website to say it had resolved the large-scale distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) and service had been restored.

DDoS attacks flood servers with so many fake requests for information that they cannot respond to real ones, often crashing under the barrage. It's unclear who orchestrated the attack.

“It’s a very smart attack. We start to mitigate, they react. It keeps on happening every time. We’re learning, though” said Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategy officer said on a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon.

Troubling to security experts was that the attackers relied on Mirai, an easy-to-use program that allows even unskilled hackers to take over online devices and use them to launch DDoS attacks. The software uses malware from phishing emails to first infect a computer or home network, then spreads to everything on it, taking over DVRs, cable set-top boxes, routers and even Internet-connected cameras used by stores and businesses for surveillance.

These devices are in turn used to create a robot network, or botnet, to send the millions of messages that knock the out victims' computer systems. The source code for Mirai was released on the so-called dark web, sites that operate as a sort of online underground for hackers, at the beginning of the month. The release led some security experts to suggest it would soon be widely used by hackers. That appears to have happened in this case.

Dyn is getting “tens of millions” of messages from around the globe sent by seemingly harmless but Internet-connected devices. “It could be your DVR, it could be a CCTV camera, a thermostat. I even saw an Internet-connected toaster on Kickstarter yesterday,"  said York. The complexity and breadth of the multiple attack points make it difficult to fight because it's hard to distinguish legitimate traffic from botnet traffic.
York said one bright spot for the company had been the tremendous outpouring of aid from its customers, competitors and law enforcement. “You guys wouldn’t believe the amount of support we’ve received,” he told reporters.


Effects felt nationwide - Dyn first  posted on its website at 7:10 a.m. ET that it "began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure."
These resolved towards 9:30 a.m. Then more waves began. "It's been a hectic day," said York. The attack comes at a time of heightened public sensitivity and concern that the nation's institutions and infrastructure could face large-scale hacking attacks. The most recent example has been the release of emails stolen from the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which U.S. intelligence sources say was the work of Russia. The topic has come up frequently during the fall's hard-fought presidential campaign.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Department of Homeland Security was “monitoring the situation" but that “at this point, I don’t have any information about who may be responsible for this malicious activity.”

So far Dyn has not been able to ascertain whether the attack is aimed at any specific customer. “We have no reason to believe it is at this point,” said Dave Allen, the company’s general counsel. The attack is “consistent with record-setting sized cyber attacks seen in the last few weeks,” said Carl Herberger, vice president of security at security company Radware.

Disruption - A post on Hacker News first identified the attack and named the sites that were affected. Several sites, including Spotify and GitHub, took to Twitter Friday morning to post status updates once the social network was back online.

US Hacker Attack

Several of the world's best-known websites were inaccessible across parts of the United States on Friday after hackers unleashed a series of attacks on a company that acts as a switchboard for the internet. The attacks affected access to Twitter, Paypal, Spotify and other customers of the infrastructure company in New Hampshire called Dyn, which processes large volumes of internet traffic.

"The attacks came in waves," Al Jazeera's Rob Reynolds, reporting from Los Angeles, said. "First targeting the East Coast of the United States, spreading then to the other parts of the country and even to Western Europe." "The websites that were disrupted were some of the top names in the internet: CNN and the New York Times, AirBnB, Reddit, HBO ... a whole variety of sites were attacked."

"Dyn is kind of a middle man that directs users to different websites and routes traffic from server to server in a complex way," said Reynolds. The attackers used hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices that had previously been infected with a malicious code that allowed them to cause outages.

"This type of attack is known as a distributed denial of service attack [DDoS]," explained our correspondent. "They used affected computers to fire requests at the servers of Dyn simultaneously and essentially overwhelm it."

The US under cyber attack

"The complexity of the attacks is what's making it very challenging for us," Dyn's chief strategy officer, Kyle York, told Reuters news agency. York said that at least some of the malicious traffic was coming from connected devices, including webcams and digital video recorders, that had been infected with control software named Mirai.

Security researchers have previously raised concerns that such connected devices, sometimes referred to as the Internet of Things, lack proper security. The Mirai code was dumped on the internet about a month ago, and criminal groups are now charging to employ it in cyber attacks, said Allison Nixon, director of security research at Flashpoint, which was helping Dyn analyse the attack.

How computers are setting us up

Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster

When a sleepy Marc Dubois walked into the cockpit of his own aeroplane, he was confronted with a scene of confusion. The plane was shaking so violently that it was hard to read the instruments. An alarm was alternating between a chirruping trill and an automated voice: “STALL STALL STALL.” His junior co-pilots were at the controls. In a calm tone, Captain Dubois asked: “What’s happening?”

Co-pilot David Robert’s answer was less calm. “We completely lost control of the aeroplane, and we don’t understand anything! We tried everything!”

The crew were, in fact, in control of the aeroplane. One simple course of action could have ended the crisis they were facing, and they had not tried it. But David Robert was right on one count: he didn’t understand what was happening.

As William Langewiesche, a writer and professional pilot, described in an article for Vanity Fair in October 2014, Air France Flight 447 had begun straightforwardly enough – an on-time take-off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.29pm on 31 May 2009, bound for Paris. With hindsight, the three pilots had their vulnerabilities. Pierre-Cédric Bonin, 32, was young and inexperienced. David Robert, 37, had more experience but he had recently become an Air France manager and no longer flew full-time. Captain Marc Dubois, 58, had experience aplenty but he had been touring Rio with an off-duty flight attendant. It was later reported that he had only had an hour’s sleep.

Fortunately, given these potential fragilities, the crew were in charge of one of the most advanced planes in the world, an Airbus 330, legendarily smooth and easy to fly. Like any other modern aircraft, the A330 has an autopilot to keep the plane flying on a programmed route, but it also has a much more sophisticated automation system called fly-by-wire. A traditional aeroplane gives the pilot direct control of the flaps on the plane – its rudder, elevators and ailerons. This means the pilot has plenty of latitude to make mistakes. Fly-by-wire is smoother and safer. It inserts itself between the pilot, with all his or her faults, and the plane’s mechanics. A tactful translator between human and machine, it observes the pilot tugging on the controls, figures out how the pilot wanted the plane to move and executes that manoeuvre perfectly. It will turn a clumsy movement into a graceful one.
This makes it very hard to crash an A330, and the plane had a superb safety record: there had been no crashes in commercial service in the first 15 years after it was introduced in 1994. But, paradoxically, there is a risk to building a plane that protects pilots so assiduously from even the tiniest error. It means that when something challenging does occur, the pilots will have very little experience to draw on as they try to meet that challenge.

The complication facing Flight 447 did not seem especially daunting: thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, just north of the equator. These were not a major problem, although perhaps Captain Dubois was too relaxed when at 11.02pm, Rio time, he departed the cockpit for a nap, leaving the inexperienced Bonin in charge of the controls.


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster

Samsung is recalling the Galaxy Note 7

Smasung is recalling the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide after reports that the devices can catch fire while charging.

The massive recall of one of Samsung's flagship devices is an embarrassing setback for the world's biggest selling smartphone maker. The Note 7 was unveiled just a month ago, and big rival Apple (AAPL, Tech30) is expected to show off its new smartphone next week.

Samsung (SSNLF) said Friday it had found a problem with the battery in some of the phones and was halting sales in 10 countries, including South Korea and the U.S. It will offer customers a new product for free in the coming weeks to replace the 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s that have been sold.
Samsung said devices in China don't appear to be affected because it used another battery supplier. But it was unclear if models sold in China would nonetheless be recalled.

The company originally said it would take about two weeks to prepare the recall, but later announced Note 7 users in the U.S. can exchange their device for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge, starting next week. It will also refund the cost of Note 7-specific accessories. Samsung is giving Note 7 users a $25 gift card or bill credit for the inconvenience. Read more in http://adf.ly/1dwtPi

11 new Siri features to try in iOS 10, MacOS Sierra, and Apple TV

Major upgrades are coming to Siri. Here are some of the new ways you'll be able to use Siri following the updates.

Siri is a lot more useful in iOS 10, MacOS Sierra and the Apple TV's latest update. The iPhone voice assistant work with and control many non-Apple apps, get improved voice search and will even be baked into your MacBook or iMac. Siri will also have more predictive features, so you get the info you need without having to ask for it first. Here are all the ways you can talk to Siri in iOS 10, MacOS Sierra and Apple TV.

You'll be able to control a lot more apps

In iOS 10, Apple opened Siri to third-party developers, however, so you can control many more apps with your voice. Apple provided us with a list of some of the apps that Siri can control at launch, as well as sample commands. Here are some examples:

Pinterest: Look for pins you've saved, like "Hey Siri, find men's fashion pins on Pinterest." Check out the GIF on the right to see it in action.

Square Cash: "Hey Siri, pay Sharon 10 dollars with Square Cash." That's much faster than thumbing through the Square Cash app, selecting the person to send the money to and setting the dollar amount.

for more info: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/11-new-ways-you-will-be-able-to-use-siri-this-fall

Nintendo NX Console

 

Games: Nintendo NX Can Be a Portable Console 

The next anticipated game console from Nintendo can be a handheld device with one interesting feature: it's controllers will be fully detachable. This information was received by popular among gamers site - eurogamer.net - from number of different sources. It's very surprising. Nintendo NX allows to play two people at once. And when the owner of the handheld will be at home, he can to connect NX to his home TV with big screen and by this way turn it into a powerful home console.

Besides, according to the sources, Nintendo NX will use special game cartridges, which are specifically designed for the system and have 32GB memory on they chips. Let us remind, that Nintendo NX will be powered by Nvidia Tegra mobile processor. Sooo, gaming fans, what do you think about it?

Nintendo’s next-generation NX

Nintendo struck gold with the first Wii console in 2006, introducing affordable, motion-sensing technology. The hardcore gaming community was impressed at the start, or so it seemed, until the novelty wore off and gamers saw that the console would best serve the first-party fanbase and casual players. The follow-up console, Nintendo’s Wii U (2012), tried to push the envelope with a tablet-like controller packing motion-sensing technology.

Unfortunately, hardcore gamers didn’t take the bait despite the cool hardware, possibly due to the console’s all-too-familiar casual name. Now we’re into the second half of 2016, and Nintendo’s hardcore customer base is sipping on hot rumors surrounding its next console, the mysterious “NX.” Some of us thought the big reveal would be during E3 2016 in June, but that didn’t happen. 

Instead, the company may officially introduce the Nintendo NX during the Gamescom event taking place in Cologne, Germany, starting August 17. Looking back, that’s entirely possible, as the Gamecube was officially announced in August 2000 even though the following Wii and Wii U consoles were revealed during E3. So it's not new that Nintendo has confirmed that the NX would launch in March 2017 and still the release date for the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo would release a Pokémon game that utilized a full 3D engline (turned out to be Pokémon X and Y), told you there would be a new type of Pokémon in new said Pokémon game (Fairy), older Pokémon would get new abilities and forms (Mewtew), told you the PS4 would be captible of producing modern day graphics on a DX11 level “like Unreal Engine 4 and Frostbite 2 (Unreal 4 demoed during PS4 release), told you Microsoft would introduce an omni projection unit that would let game enviornments to be projected in a near 360-degree fashion around the user (Ilumiroom), and many more way before there were announced is back to tell the Dual Pixels readership information you crave before it’s announced.Below you will find our source, Geno, disclosing a large sum of information pertaining to the new Nintendo console, dubbed Project NX, it’s first party titles, third party titles, and whats to come after this information dump.

New OLED findings move flexible lighting technology toward commercial feasibility

Figure 9 from a new article in the Journal of Photonics for Energy is a schematic illustration of OLED structures with encapsulation:(a) conventional glass lid and (b) thin-film encapsulation. Credit: Min-Ho Park et al., 10.1117/1.JPE.5.053599

Imagine illuminating your home or business with flat, inexpensive panels that are environmentally friendly, easy on your eyes, and energy-efficient because they create minimal heat.

Now imagine how those panels could be used if they were as flexible as paper or cloth; the technology could be bent into shapes, fit the interior or exterior curves of vehicles, even be incorporated into clothing.

In "Flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for solid-state lighting" a team of researchers at Pohang (Republic of Korea) University of Science and Technology reports on advances in three key areas—flexible electrodes, flexible encapsulation methods, and flexible substrates—that make commercial use of such technology more feasible and closer to implementation. The article appears in the current issue of the Journal of Photonics for Energy, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-oled-flexible-technology-commercial-feasibility.html#jCp

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

Wikipedia and many other favorite websites were intentionally darkened to protest something called SOPA and PIPA?  Made it rather tough to do any research for your Allen School Online course work I imagine.  It did succeed in raising the awareness about these two pieces of legislation being considered in the US House of Representatives and Senate respectively.  Both bills are nominally intended to combat the very real problem of online piracy of intellectual property.

Through illegal downloads of music, movies, artwork and other copyrighted materials, producers of these items lose billions annually.  The opponents of these bills are not pro-piracy, but they point out that the legislation as written, would provide an unchecked power to industry and government to shut down any website that is even accused of hosting pirated materials.  Your mashup of Justin Bieber and Spongebob Squarepants on Youtube?  That’d be plenty enough for a complainant to get Youtube shut down.  Supporters of these bills, the Recording Industry of America and bigtime TV and movie studios suggest that this is not the case.   Here is a quick primer on the bills and the controversy courtesy of CBS News.  Have a look at it and then share with us in the comments your opinion on the matter.  As online denizens, this legislation has an absolute impact on your life.  Learn, form an opinion and be heard!

On January 18, 2012, a series of coordinated protests occurred against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

These followed smaller protests in late 2011. Protests were based on concerns that the bills, intended to provide more robust responses to copyright infringement (colloquially known as piracy) arising outside the United States, contained measures that could possibly infringe online freedom of speech, websites, and Internet communities. Protesters also argued that there were insufficient safeguards in place to protect sites based upon user-generated content.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Google joinsthe SOPA movement
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/google-joins-mass-online-protest-against-sopapipa.php

Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge Stop the US Congress!!!

Corporate supporters of Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA) demand the ability to take down any web site (including craigslist, Wikipedia, or Google) that hurts their profits -- without prior judicial oversight or due process  -- in the name of combating "online piracy."
PIPA and SOPA authors and supporters insist they'd only go after foreign piracy sites, but Internet Engineers understand this is an attempt to impose "Big Brother" controls on our Internet, complete with DNS hijacking and censoring search results. Incredibly, many Congress Members favor this idea.
Try to imagine jack-booted thugs throttling free speech, poisoning the Internet (greatest of American inventions, the very pillar of modern democracy), and devastating one of the our most successful industries. Totalitarian, anti-American, massively-job-killing nonsense.
Tell Congress you OPPOSE Senate 968 "Protect IP Act" (PIPA) and H.R. 3261 "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA):

• Phone your Member of Congress via nifty Progressive Change app
• Contact Senators who are refusing to meet with constituents about PIPA.
• Reverse Robocall pro-PIPA & pro-SOPA MOC + Lobbyists (More at Ars Technica)
• EFF Congressional Emailer - Oppose Internet Blacklisting (PIPA & SOPA)
• ECA Congressional Emailer - Don't Censor Our Internet!
• OpenCongress Congressional Emailer - Oppose SOPA
• Generic Congressional Emailer (You'll need your Zip+4)
• Petition Congress - Protect Innovation, Dump SOPA (Progressive Change )
• Outside the US? Sign Petition Opposing US Censorship of Global Sites (EFF)

Supporters of PIPA and SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)
Opponents of PIPA and SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)
Where does your Member of Congress stand on PIPA and SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera)
PIPA and SOPA Are Too Dangerous To Revise, They Must Be Killed Entirely 
Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass - they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from corporations experts say are attempting to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet -- recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora's jar of "chilling effects" and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences.
Don't believe it? Monster Cable has labeled craigslist a "rogue site," earmarked for blacklisting and full-takedown under PIPA -- resale of stereo cables by CL users reduces Monster 's new cable sales. (reddit).
There is still time to be heard. Congress is starting to backpedal on this job-killing, anti-American nonsense, and the Obama administration has weighed in against these bills as drafted, but SOPA/PIPA cannot be fixed or revised -- they must be killed altogether.
Sen Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep Ron Wyden (D-OR) are championing an alternative to SOPA/PIPA called Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) that addresses foreign sites dedicated to piracy, without disrupting basic Internet protocols, or threatening mainstream US sites like craigslist.
Tim O'Reilly, a publisher who is himself subject to piracy, asks whether piracy is even a problem, and whether there is even a legitimate need for any of these bills.
Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting:

• Growing Chorus of Opposition to PIPA and SOPA
• Open Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet Engineers
• Why SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)
• Piracy not a problem, PIPA and SOPA are unnecessary (Tim O'Reilly on GigaOM)
• PIPA and SOPA News (Google News)
• PIPA Wikipedia entry ::::: SOPA Wikipedia entry
• SOPA FAQ (CNET)

US Congress supports SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT-IP.

An onrush of condemnation and criticism kept the SOPA and PIPA acts from passing earlier this year, but US lawmakers have already authored another authoritarian bill that could give them free reign to creep the Web in the name of cybersecurity.

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties. Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree.


This link will send you to a website where you can lookup who is Supporting SOPA and PIPA/PROTECT-IP in Congress? http://adf.ly/1dwEei

A Media Streamer in Zen Clothing

It's called the Pebble and it looks like a polished rock, but its heritage is pure geek. D-Link's newest media streamer lets you play video, still photos, and music from your home network or connected devices--and it can even show feeds from a networked security camera. It's due out by midyear, with a suggested retail price of $120.

Another Excellent E-Reader

E-readers were one of the hottest categories of the show this year, and the most compelling new model we've seen is the Plastic Logic Que. This 10.7-inch reader sports a capacitive-touch display that lets you gesture through page turns; it also downloads books from Barnes & Noble's e-book store. It will be available in April in a 4GB Wi-Fi version for $649, and an 8GB version with Wi-Fi and 3G for $799.

A Set-Top Box That Pops

Syabas, makers of the Popcorn Hour network video player, recently unveiled the Popbox. This new home media player features 20 media partners, including Blip.TV (for video content), Twitter (for social viewing), and Clicker (for locating premium video from all over the Internet). Lots of these network video players are showing up now, but Popbox seems to have perfected the interface: It's nice to look at, intuitive, and easily searchable, which is more than I can say for some other entrants in this market. Popbox is expected to be available in March for $129

Internet Radio Revived

Internet radio has been around for a few years now, but British company Pure has put an innovative twist on it with the Sensia. With a colorful touch interface, a stylish design, and an endless library of stations from all over the world, the Sensia is one of the most entertaining gadgets I saw at the show.

Revolutionary 2010 Car Tech from Ford

         

There are five-way controls on either side of the steering wheel similar to those found on mobile phones and MP3 players.  Two small color LCD screens are on either side of the speedometer. The left side displays the vehicle functions; the right side displays the entertainment, phone and data controls. An 8-inch touchscreen LCD is at the top of the center stack, a customizable interface allows the driver to choose a display that allows for quick easy access to everything they need with one touch.

Ford has updated its Sync technology and made a new driver interface and dashboard design called myFord Touch where it had its debut at CES 2010.

myFord Touch, marries voice recognition, graphic screens and touch controls on the steering wheel.  The new console will first be available in the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX.  Starting in 2012 it will be available for the Ford Focus.

The Sync technology, from Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Auto platform, is meant to connect your electronic devices to a voice-command system in your car. It also uses interface controls that are familiar to customers, to connect drivers to the vehicle’s functions.

To connect your gadgets the media hub on myFord Touch has two USB ports, an SD slot and RCA audio/visual input jacks. With a USB broadband modem connection the car accesses WiFi.

The SD slot is home for the navigation system data, for  map-based navigation to the graphical turn-by-turn directions that are standard with myFord. By putting the navigation data on an SD card it saves you from having to upgrade the old map information.

The new Ford's MyFord Touch: FAQ

Ford is making waves at the Consumer Electronics Show with MyFord Touch, a re-envisioned dashboard for multimedia, navigation and connections to the Internet. But while it's nice to ogle the technology's features or panic about safety, there are plenty of practical questions to answer.

What is MyFord Touch and how is it different from Ford Sync?
Sync, a joint effort between Microsoft and Ford introduced in 2007, communicates with phones via Bluetooth to provide communication, media playback, navigation and diagnostics. MyFord Touch is a new interface for Sync, essentially redesigning the car's dashboard around it.

What's so great about the that?
Some of the MyFord Touch excitement actually has more to do with Sync itself, which will soon support hands-free control of mobile apps. Features exclusive to MyFord Touch include video playback, photo backgrounds imported via SD card, control over ambient lighting colors and the ability to access the Web by plugging in a 3G/4G modem or parking the car at a Wi-Fi hotspot.

What does it look like?
In my brief hands-on, there was never a time when I couldn't immediately access options for entertainment, navigation and phone connections. There are also buttons on the wheel for controlling these options, and the car's instrument panel has additional screens for easier viewing of MyTouch features. Response time with the touch panel was a bit sluggish, but Ford says this will be improved before release.

What's all this about apps?
Ford has a development application programming interface available now to select developers. These developers can integrate the apps into Ford vehicles and release an update on mobile phone app stores that unlock the functionality. On display at CES were Pandora, Stitcher (a build-your-own talk radio service) and Twitter (Tweets are read back to you by a computerized female voice). These are controllable by voice or with the car's buttons, with more apps to come. Eventually, Ford wants to open app development to a wide network of developers.

What cars will include MyFord Touch?

The first supported vehicles will be the 2011 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX (branded MyLincoln Touch), followed by the 2012 Ford Focus. MyMercury Touch vehicles are also planned.

Will MyFord Touch come standard in these cars?
Yes, but there will be three tiers for the interface. The top tier, being shown at CES, has an 8-inch resistive touch screen, capacitive buttons underneath, plus two additional screens in the instrument panel. The middle tier has has only one screen in the panel, and the bottom tier replaces the 8-inch screen with a 4-inch non-touch screen, accompanied by buttons on either side.

HDTV, 3D TV's & more 2010

The 3D Revolution Is Here. Get Ready for 3D, More LEDs, OLEDS, Pixels, and Web Services.

I don't think it's a false start this time: The 3D-product plans for the coming year represent the initial salvos of the coming 3D revolution. Panasonic's 3D demos were among the most convincing. But the best implementation I saw, unfortunately, is one that won't be coming to market anytime soon: Sony showed its 24.5-inch 3D OLED HDTV as a technology demo only.

http://www.techhive.com/article/186451/hdtv_overview_ces.html

HTC HD2 Coming to T-Mobile US This Spring

The Best Windows Mobile Phone Yet

Since the HTC HD2 launched in Europe and Asia, the blogosphere has been buzzing about whether it would launch stateside. What's so hot about this smartphone? It has a superslim design, a 4.3-inch display, and a powerful 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It is by far the best Windows Mobile phone we've ever seen, and one of the best of the show. The HD2 will land on T-Mobile this spring. http://www.pcworld.com/article/186166/htc_hd2_coming_to_tmobile_us_this_spring.html

Boxee Gets Boxed

D-Link is the first vendor to come out with a dedicated piece of hardware for the lauded Boxee home media management software. The box is oddly shaped, but it won't take up much space when it sits next to a TV. It streams Internet video and connects wirelessly to your computer, so it can play back media files, such as music, photos, and video, on your TV. You get Boxee's cool user interface, as well as a long list of supported file formats; you can play virtually any kind of video on it. The Boxee Box will be available for $199 in the second quarter of this year.