Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Technology newsbucket: iPhone cracks, Nokia slumps, Facebook puzzles and more

Plus HTML5 now, GCHQ's fears, TfL's mysteries and more


Cracked iPhone 3GS screen. Photo by Patrick Hoesly on Flickr. Some rights reserved

A quick burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Clarification over iPhone 4 screen breakage data >> ZDNet
Math is hard, so most companies putting out surveys don't bother to clarify what they're actually measuring. Apparently a US company carried out a "survey" which found more breakage of iPhone 4 "screens" compared to iPhone 3GS glass. But omitted to mention that when it said "screens' it didn't mean just those on the front.

Nokia loses its India plot, market share tanks 20% >> The Economic Times
"Nokia still accounts for more than one-third of all phones that are sold in India, but analysts say it's stranded in the middle of the market. The IDC figures showed that South Korea's Samsung managed to increase its market share to 8.2% and retain the No. 2 position, while Chinese brand G'Five took the third position with a 7% market share, dislodging LG. The research firm said overall mobile handset shipments in India rose to 38.6 million units in the second quarter, up 60% year-on-year ."
So - sales up, but market share down. Decide for yourself if that's good or not.

Pill Gang Used Microsoft's Network in Attack on KrebsOnSecurity.com >> Krebs on Security
It involves Microsoft, pharm pushers, a dodgy Turkish internet registrar, and hacked Linux servers. It's complicated.

Not on Facebook? Facebook still knows you >> BBC dot.Rory
"I set about creating a Facebook profile for a friend who is a university lecturer. My friend - let's call her Belinda - had never used Facebook but gave me her permission to put her on the network.
"I entered her university e-mail address, chose a password, put in a date of birth, and then was quickly taken to a page suggesting a couple of dozen possible friends.
"I rang Belinda and read out the names to her. Three were colleagues, others were present or former students, and some she didn't recognise but assumed they too had been associated with her university. Now at this stage she had received, but not opened, the e-mail from Facebook asking her to authenticate her e-mail address.
"So two things are immediately clear - Facebook knows at least something about you the minute you hand over your e-mail address, and it's possible for someone who knows that address to extract some of that information."

Don't sit around waiting for HMTL5 - it's here >> Mo McRoberts
"From HTML5 for Web Designers, Chapter 1 ("A Brief History of Markup"): ...There won't be a single point in time at which we can declare that the [HTML5 spec] is ready to use. Instead, we can start using parts of the specification as web browsers support these features. Remember, HTML5 isn't a completely new language created from scratch."

GCHQ chief talks of cyber attacks >> Graham Cluley's blog
Yes, he did.

MyTfL: what we have learned >> Placr News
Why did the "official" TfL app appear on the iTunes App Store.. then vanish? "The key guess must be that all data that developers would like to access to make new apps is already polished and ready inside TfL. When we are told that it is not available for release then we must take this with a giant pinch of salt. Another guess must be that this is the equivalent of the 'bureaucrats strike back': the thinking presumably being that one way to stymie these pesky developers is to shoot their fox. With all the data in a pile, lots of public money and a few iPhone developers it must be easy to render independent attempts to create value from the datasets unnecessary and futile.
"Finally, I would also guess that MDV were given this opportunity because they are the ones with most to lose from an open market in apps leveraging open transport data and so they were keen to take on the challenge."

My new standard of cool >> Scott Simpson on Twitter
The tweet from 17 June that inspired (so they say) the marketing team at Windows Phone 7 for their new ads.

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7 sync software for Macs due this year >> Engadget
"As for Hell, there haven't been any reports of recent temperature changes, but we'll keep you posted as we get more information."

Referral Information Loss >> Tim Bray's ongoing
Puzzled by why he couldn't see the referrer data for many of the clicks arriving at his blog, he investigates: "I've now tested a couple of hypotheses, and I'm pretty sure the answer is: Twitter clients. At least, I've verified that for two different Twitter clients, one on Mac and one on Android, when they wake up a browser to follow a link, there's no referer.
"This could be because the URL shorteners are getting in the way. It could be because the API you use to send the default browser after a URL doesn't have a slot for "referer". I could investigate, but I bet someone who's reading this knows."

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/oct/14/technology-links-newsbucket

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