The Technology News

Home
About

Apple spurred police in lost iPhone probe

by admin on May 14, 2010 | 2 Comments

Apple spurred police in lost iPhone probe

Gizmodo has acknowledged buying an iPhone prototype for $5,000 and then returning it to Apple.

Redwood City, California (CNET) — Apple pressed local police to investigate the loss of a next-generation iPhone a day after Gizmodo published photographs, telling investigators that the prototype was so valuable, a price could not be placed on it, according to court documents made public Friday.

In response to arguments made by CNET and other media organizations, a San Mateo judge unsealed documents that provide a detailed glimpse into an April 20 meeting between Apple lawyers and executives, and law enforcement.

They also highlight a madcap dash for evidence that evening that led a police detective to a gas station, a church, and a bush in Redwood City where a thumb drive and a 1GB Lexar Media compact flash card were allegedly hidden.

During the meeting with law enforcement, Apple attorney George Riley told detectives that the publication of evidence of the device by Gizmodo–part of Gawker Media–was immensely damaging.

“People that would have otherwise purchased a currently existing Apple product would wait for the next item to be released, thereby hurting overall sales and negatively effecting Apple’s earnings,” Riley said, according to an affidavit prepared by a police detective made public on Friday.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally contacted Gizmodo editor Brian Lam to request the prototype’s return the day the story was published on April 19, but Lam refused to do so, unless the company provided “confirmation that it is real, from Apple, officially,” according to an e-mail message that was also made public.

“Right now, we have nothing to lose,” Lam wrote. “The thing is, Apple PR has been cold to us lately. It affected my ability to do my job right at iPad launch. So we had to go outside and find our stories like this one, very aggressively.” (Gawker Media had offered to pay anyone who gave it or lent it an Apple prototype.)

Brian Hogan, a 21-year-old Redwood City, Calif., resident, found the phone in a bar. But the affidavit prepared by detective Matthew Broad in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office reveals that an important tip came when Hogan’s roommate, Katherine Martinson, called police on April 21 to let them know that he had examined it.

Hogan told her that Gizmodo had offered him $10,000 for the phone, and showed her a camera box containing $5,000 in $100 bills, according to the affidavit. It says: “Martinson said Hogan also told her that he will receive a cash bonus from Gizmodo.com in July, if and when Apple makes an official product announcement regarding the new iPhone.”

Broad, the San Mateo County detective, began to prepare a request to search the apartment on Farm Hill Blvd. the following day when, he said, he received an urgent phone call just before midnight from Martinson, saying Hogan and their roommate Thomas Warner were removing any evidence about the iPhone from the apartment and leaving in two separate cars. Broad said he tracked Hogan down at his father’s house, also in Redwood City, and learned that Hogan’s computer had been left at a nearby church.

Warner showed up the house at 1 a.m. and was arrested on two outstanding misdemeanor warrants. Warner claimed that a prototype sticker from the iPhone fell out of his wallet at a Chevron station, and later said a 512MB thumb drive and 1GB Lexar compact flash card were under a bush on Harding Avenue, the affidavit says. Police say they recovered all the discarded hardware.

A First Amendment Fight

In a response to a motion from a group of media companies that included CNET, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired.com, Judge Clifford Cretan reversed his earlier ruling and ruled on Friday that circumstances had changed, and now secrecy was no longer necessary.

“It appears appropriate to me at this time to unseal the affidavit,” Cretan said. “I can no longer say there is an overriding interest in sealing.”

On Friday, San Mateo County District Attorney Chris Feasel told the judge that there is no precedent that gives “the court the authority to unseal the search warrant at this time.” Feasel had argued that until charges were filed and there was a criminal defendant, news organizations had no right to access the documents.

Cretan ordered that the affidavit to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home and his April 28 order sealing the affidavit be made available to the public no later than 2 p.m. PDT Friday.

“It’s gratifying that the judge was willing to reconsider his decision and recognize that circumstances have changed,” Roger Myers, the San Francisco attorney who represented the media coalition, said after the ruling was made.

Background

The story began in March, when Gray Powell, a 27-year-old Apple computer engineer, forgot what may be a 4G iPhone phone at a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif., after a night of drinking.

With the help of friends, Hogan allegedly approached multiple tech news sites before finally selling the handset to Gizmodo for $5,000. (Sage Robert Wallower, a 27-year-old University of California at Berkeley student, was allegedly one of those friends who contacted technology sites.)

Prosecutors in the case say they are conducting a felony theft investigation, but no charges have been filed.

On April 23, just hours after CNET reported that Apple had contacted law enforcement officials about the phone and an investigation was under way, police showed up at Chen’s home in Fremont, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco. After breaking down his door, they confiscated three Apple laptops, a Samsung digital camera, a 32GB Apple iPad, a 16GB iPhone, and other electronic gear, according to documents Gizmodo posted.

Apple ranks among the most security-conscious companies, and it has gone to great lengths to prevent leaks about its products. To secure trade secrets, the company has not shied away from high-profile courtroom fights. It filed a lawsuit against Mac enthusiast Web site Think Secret, for example, to unearth information about a leak. A state appeals court ruled in favor of the Web site.

In that case, Apple argued that information published about unreleased products causes it significant harm. “If these trade secrets are revealed, competitors can anticipate and counter Apple’s business strategy, and Apple loses control over the timing and publicity for its product launches,” Apple wrote in a brief.

Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be–but “appropriates such property to his own use”–is guilty of theft. There are no exceptions for journalists. In addition, a second state law says any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year.

Knowing that an item probably belonged to someone else has previously led to convictions. “It is not necessary that the defendant be told directly that the property was stolen. Knowledge may be circumstantial and deductive,” a California appeals court has previously ruled.

“Possession of stolen property, accompanied by an unsatisfactory explanation of the possession or by suspicious circumstances, will justify an inference that the property was received with knowledge it had been stolen.” A California law says lost property valued at $100 or more must be turned over to police.

And here’s another tidbit from the affidavit, explaining Steve Jobs’ involvement:

“Apple General Counsel Bruce] Sewell told me that after Gizmodo.com released its story regarding the iPhone prototype on or about 4/19/2010, Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) contacted the editor of Gizmodo.com, Brian Lam. Jobs requested that Lam return the phone to Apple. Lam responded via the e-mail address…that he would return the iPhone on the condition that Apple provided him with a letter stating the iPhone belonged to Apple.”

Why Apple’s era of secrecy is over

by admin on May 14, 2010 | No Comments

Why Apple’s era of secrecy is over

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore says blogs are not to blame for “the rapid erosion of Apple’s fortress.”

Editor’s Note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He writes a weekly column about social networking and technology for CNN.com.

London, England (CNN) — Apple, long known for its culture of secrecy, is suddenly springing leaks. Big ones.

Photos and a video clip of the next generation iPhone, not expected to launch until next month, appeared this week on a Vietnamese Web site. It’s the second time an iPhone 4G has fallen into the wrong hands following gadget blog Gizmodo’s purchase of a lost prototype in April.

Is Apple’s long era of secrecy finally coming to an end? Yes — and we’re to blame.

The $5000 iPhone

Two major leaks in two months is a situation virtually unheard of at the buttoned-up tech firm. We’re not talking about grainy snapshots either: Both Gizmodo and Vietnamese tech forum Taoviet acquired complete handsets, photographing them, recording video clips and even dismantling them to expose every last inch. Our nerd voyeurism, it seems, knows no bounds.

Leaked iPhones command a high price, too: Gizmodo paid $5,000 for the prized device, while Taoviet reportedly put down $4,000 for the privilege. The former is currently involved in a criminal investigation to determine whether the parties involved broke the law.

Why are gadget blogs prepared to part with thousands of dollars — and risk a visit from law enforcement — to get their hands on the latest tech toy? The simple answer is “page views”. Lots of them. Gizmodo’s exposé on the iPhone 4G has received more than 10 million views, not to mention name recognition from major media outlets — including a piece on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”. A few thousand dollars is a bargain for the biggest technology scoop of the year.

But blogs aren’t to blame for the end of secrecy: We are.

“Infogreed”

Blogs wouldn’t exert their resources on tracking down unreleased Apple products if there wasn’t a high demand for such scoops; there undoubtedly is. Our lust for information — a need to know anything, everything, right now — continues to grow apace, fueled by Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and a bevy of “real-time” web services.

Ignorance is short-lived these days. When we want to know something — anything — a Google search can find the answer in less than a second. Waiting until you get home isn’t necessary either: Just pull up Google or Wikipedia on your smartphone and your “infogreed” (or “infolust”) is immediately satisfied.

A new wave of “real-time” web startups has increased our expectations further: Twitter and Facebook users know exactly what all their friends are doing, all the time. Members of Foursquare and Gowalla receive updates on their friends’ exact locations. Blippy devotees track each others’ credit card purchases in real-time — updates contain both the location of the transaction and the amount.

For those accustomed to such instant gratification, a state of “not knowing” is torturous. We don’t merely want to know every salacious detail about Apple’s new device — we feel we have a right to do so. It’s as if Apple, by attempting to keep its unreleased products under wraps, is denying us the pill that satiates our info-addiction.

An End to Secrecy

It’s not blogs that are to blame for the rapid erosion of Apple’s fortress, then — they’re merely reacting to readers’ wants. Prototype iPhones wouldn’t be changing hands for thousands if technophiles weren’t gorging upon every info-morsel extracted from Apple HQ.

As our appetite for knowledge becomes virtually insatiable, blogs will go to increasingly perilous lengths to score a scoop — even the specter of a criminal investigation is unlikely to shake their resolve. Under such circumstances, secrecy is not only unsustainable, it’s abhorrent. Apple’s ramparts, it seems, may crumble.

But getting what we want may not be what’s best for us: Like fast food, instant gratification may ultimately prove unfulfilling.

Happy 50th birthday to the laser

by admin on May 14, 2010 | No Comments

Happy 50th birthday to the laser

Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Georgia, has been running laser light shows for over 25 years.

(CNN) — It was dismissed by some scientists as “a solution looking for a problem.”

But when the first working laser was rolled out 50 years ago this week — developed at California’s Hughes Research Laboratory — it didn’t take long for the hyperfocused beams of light to find work.

Having fascinated science-fiction fans since the origins of ray guns in the late 1800s, lasers (literally “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”) have become common in modern life.

From talking on the telephone to listening to a CD, laser technology makes a lot of what we do happen.

“Everyone has some sort of connection every single day to lasers — even if most people have no idea what that connection is,” said Mark Bronski, manager of laser production at German-based TRUMPF Inc., the largest manufacturer of industrial lasers in North America.

Regret that bad tattoo from the ’80s? Want to watch a DVD or listen to a compact disc? Tired of your eyeglasses or contacts?

A laser can help.

And, remember those Pink Floyd concerts with mind-altering laser light shows?

In basic terms, a laser is any device that creates a narrow, intense beam of light, then amplifies that beam.

The atoms of a physical substance, usually a crystal, are charged up while mirrors at both ends of the laser reflect the energy back and forth to strengthen it.

The “ruby laser,” so-called because physicist Theodore Maiman used a ruby rod to make it, was first used on May 16, 1960.

Maiman’s first scientific article about the discovery was turned down. While the second was awaiting publication, the laboratory went to the press with the news, prompting scientists who hadn’t seen his complete findings to initially dismiss the discovery as insignificant.

There’s no way to list everything lasers do. (Although, we do suggest another look at the world’s largest laser, currently working to save — not destroy — the Earth).

But here’s a rundown of just a few applications for lasers, and a nod to where laser technology might go next.

Laser surgery

From a high-tech update to the old nip-tuck to eye treatment that can eliminate the need for glasses or contacts, lasers are often used in surgery.

Carbon-dioxide lasers and others are used to remove unwanted tissue — from tumors, warts and tattooed skin — and create incisions that are less intrusive, less painful and leave less scarring than traditional surgery.

Entertainment

At planetarium domes everywhere, starry-eyed fans have enjoyed laser light displays for decades. The shows combine beam effects — which sweep through the air — and screen effects, which create images, patterns and shapes on a wall or other fixed object.

A child explores lasers at Germany's TRUMPF LaserLab, a center designed to inspire interest in the technology.

A child explores lasers at Germany’s TRUMPF LaserLab, a center designed to inspire interest in the technology.

At Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park, near Atlanta, Georgia, more than 20 million people have watched a laser show projected onto the massive granite mound.

Billed as the world’s longest-running laser show, it offers a “dazzling display of neon laser lights featuring characters, stories, graphics and fireworks choreographed to popular musical scores,” according to spokeswoman Jeanine Jones.

For the more active set, there’s laser tag.

Adopted by the U.S. Army in the late ’70s for training, laser tag was offered in crude form in toys around the same time. In 1984, two recreational laser tag centers were opened in Texas.

At most laser-tag venues, teams with laser guns scramble around an indoor course, shooting at each other in the near-dark. Technology varies somewhat, but, generally, laser tag uses infrared signaling to track lasers and determine whether they’ve hit their target — usually a vest worn by the player.

Telecommunications

Most of us probably don’t think of lasers being involved in our telephone conversations or internet use. But they are.

Fiber optics — the ultrathin, glass cables used to carry digital information for phones, computers and cable TV — use laser-generated pulses of light to carry that data at incredibly high speeds.

For computer users, communications companies claim that fiber-optic connections can download music, videos and other files to computers 25 times faster than traditional cable — at least in the places where it’s available.

The fervor over the upcoming Google Fiber project shows that lots of folks are eager to give laser-powered, in-home fiber a try.

CDs and DVDs

Tiny lasers are at work any time you turn on a disc player.

Whether audio or video, these players focus a laser beam on a series of bumps on the disc. The way the different bumps reflect that light determines the sound and images.

Cosmetic surgery, performed here at a clinic in Berlin, Germany, is one of many medical uses for lasers.

And when your CD skips? That’s because the laser can’t read data through a dirty or scratched outer layer — although it’s probably not the laser’s fault that the disc is dirty or scratched in the first place.

So, what’s next?

Scientists in all sorts of fields are experimenting with more uses for lasers.

The U.S. Air Force is pondering an airborne laser defense system, albeit one with a high-flying price tag.

Lasers are also being used in technologies such as holographs, new energy sources and space exploration.

And like personal computers, says Bronski, lasers are shrinking.

“Lasers that used to fill up a small-sized room are now the size of a desk,” he said. “We’ll see that trend continue in the future — things getting smaller while maintaining their outputs or increasing their outputs.”

So, does that mean that handheld lasers could be around the corner? You know — the kind Han Solo says always trump hokey religions and ancient weapons?

“Those technologies might not be so far off,” Bronski said. “At some point, it might be possible to make a much smaller package for these laser devices … like little phasers or whatever.”

Google: Oops, we spied on your Wi-Fi

by admin on May 14, 2010 | No Comments

Google: Oops, we spied on your Wi-Fi

Google admitted in a blog post Friday that it has been snooping on Wi-Fi users as its Street View cars have been riding around neighborhoods throughout the world collecting data for its mapping service.

In a blog post, the company said it has parked its Street View cars and stopped collecting data after it realized that it has been inadvertently collecting data about people’s online activities from unsecured Wi-Fi networks over the past four years. The disclosure could not come at a worse time for Google, following strident criticism over its Google Buzz launch from privacy experts and a growing unease among consumers regarding the amount of data it collects.

Google had apparently told German authorities last month that it had been collecting “publicly broadcast SSID information (the Wi-Fi network name) and MAC addresses (the unique number given to a device like a Wi-Fi router) using Street View cars.” But it said that it did not collect payload data or information sent over the network.

Google now says that information was incorrect.

“It’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products,” Alan Eustace, senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote in the blog post.

Google said that it recently discovered it has accumulated about 600 gigabytes of data transmitted over public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries. The company said that it has not used the data and none of the information has appeared in the company’s search engine or other services.

Google explained that it had been collecting only fragments of payload data since cars were on the move and could only get information when they passed places where an unsecured Wi-Fi network was being used.

“We did not collect information traveling over secure, password-protected Wi-Fi networks,” the company said.

Google explained that the security breach was a mistake. The code that was written to collect the data was part of an experimental Wi-Fi project started in 2006. When a new Wi-Fi project was launched a year later for Street View, engineers included the old code without realizing that it was collecting payload information.

“As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible,” Google said in its blog. “We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it.”

Google is likely to face an enormous backlash over this disclosure. The company’s reputation among privacy experts was already poor following the February launch of Google Buzz, which automatically made one’s most frequent Gmail contacts into Google Buzz followers. The company scrambled to change that system following an outcry from users.

For years, Google’s response to questions about the data it collects and the policies it chooses with respect to that data has been essentially, “trust us.” Google said it would ask a third party to examine its software and make sure it had deleted all the data collected “appropriately.”

“The engineering team at Google works hard to earn your trust–and we are acutely aware that we failed badly here. We are profoundly sorry for this error and are determined to learn all the lessons we can from our mistake,” Eustace said in closing. Don’t be surprised to see lawyers get involved in this mess.

Updated 3:57 p.m.: Google also announced that it planned to offer an encrypted version of Google search next week. Stay tuned for more details on that.

Apple spurred police in iPhone probe

by admin on May 14, 2010 | No Comments

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–Apple pressed local police to investigate the loss of a next-generation iPhone a day after Gizmodo published photographs, telling investigators that the prototype was so valuable, a price could not be placed on it, according to court documents made public Friday.

In response to arguments made by CNET and other media organizations, a San Mateo judge unsealed documents (PDF) that provide a detailed glimpse into an April 20 meeting between Apple lawyers and executives, and law enforcement. They also highlight a madcap dash for evidence that evening that led a police detective to a gas station, a church, and a bush in Redwood City where a thumb drive and a 1GB Lexar Media compact flash card were allegedly hidden.

Summary from San Mateo County detective’s affidavit for the search warrant.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

During the meeting with law enforcement, Apple attorney George Riley told detectives that the publication of evidence of the device by Gizmodo–part of Gawker Media–was immensely damaging. “People that would have otherwise purchased a currently existing Apple product would wait for the next item to be released, thereby hurting overall sales and negatively effecting Apple’s earnings,” Riley said, according to an affidavit prepared by a police detective made public on Friday.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally contacted Gizmodo editor Brian Lam to request the prototype’s return the day the story was published on April 19, but Lam refused to do so, unless the company provided “confirmation that it is real, from Apple, officially,” according to an e-mail message that was also made public.

“Right now, we have nothing to lose,” Lam wrote. “The thing is, Apple PR has been cold to us lately. It affected my ability to do my job right at iPad launch. So we had to go outside and find our stories like this one, very aggressively.” (Gawker Media had offered to pay anyone who gave it or lent it an Apple prototype.)

Gizmodo-iPhoneOrder

Brian Hogan, a 21-year-old Redwood City, Calif., resident, found the phone in a bar. But the affidavit prepared by detective Matthew Broad in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office reveals that an important tip came when Hogan’s roommate, Katherine Martinson, called police on April 21 to let them know that he had examined it.

Hogan told her that Gizmodo had offered him $10,000 for the phone, and showed her a camera box containing $5,000 in $100 bills, according to the affidavit. It says: “Martinson said Hogan also told her that he will receive a cash bonus from Gizmodo.com in July, if and when Apple makes an official product announcement regarding the new iPhone.”

San Mateo County District Attorney Chris Feasel talks to the press Friday after documents relating to a next-gen iPhone that went missing are unsealed.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

Broad, the San Mateo County detective, began to prepare a request to search the apartment on Farm Hill Blvd. the following day when, he said, he received an urgent phone call just before midnight from Martinson, saying Hogan and their roommate Thomas Warner were removing any evidence about the iPhone from the apartment and leaving in two separate cars. Broad said he tracked Hogan down at his father’s house, also in Redwood City, and learned that Hogan’s computer had been left at a nearby church.

Warner showed up the house at 1 a.m. and was arrested on two outstanding misdemeanor warrants. Warner claimed that a prototype sticker from the iPhone fell out of his wallet at a Chevron station, and later said a 512MB thumb drive and 1GB Lexar compact flash card were under a bush on Harding Avenue, the affidavit says. Police say they recovered all the discarded hardware.

Meet Diaspora, the ‘anti-Facebook’

by admin on May 12, 2010 | No Comments

Meet Diaspora, the ‘anti-Facebook’

Sick of the barrage of Facebook privacy scandals?

Don’t trust a multi-billion-dollar corporation with your photos and personal information?

Well, there may be an online social network for you yet.

It’s called Diaspora, and it’s an idea from four New York University students who say in a video pitch that big online companies like Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to have access to, and to some degree “own,” all of the personal data that flows in and out of their social networks.

The site, which is still in development, has been dubbed “the anti-Facebook” by tech blogs.

The solution sounds a little wonky: Diaspora basically enables computers to share updates, photos and videos directly with each other. It eliminates the middleman, i.e. Facebook, Flickr, Google or Twitter, so no one has access to your data but you and your friends.

To set things up this way, each user has to have server space. In Diaspora-speak, these machines are called “seeds.”

But, despite the potential technical confusion, the result, the site’s founders say, is a fully private and secure network, without cutting down on the “sharing” aspect of the internet, which is such a trend at the moment.

“Social networks have only really existed for 10 years,” one of the Diaspora founders says in a video introduction. “We don’t know what’s going to happen to our data. It’s going to exist into the foreseeable future. We need to take control of it.”

“Because once you give it away once it’s no longer yours. You cannot stake claim to it,” another chimes in.

Diaspora’s founders – who look kind of like they jumped out of “Revenge of the Nerds,” and, according to NYTimes.com, consider themselves to be pretty nerdy – posted their idea on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter to get money for the venture. If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s a site where people post information about their projects and ask random members of the internet for funding.

So far, about 900 people have contributed a total of nearly $29,000. That’s more than the $10,000 the Diaspora founders said they needed to start the site.

ReadWriteWeb says that the way Diaspora works may confuse some general users. But, the blog notes, Diaspora may offer a paid service that would be simpler to use. Positioning itself as the anti-Facebook may help, too:

“If Diaspora is realized, it will be up to technology advocates to position the turn-key service in a way that will make it sound simple and appealing to precisely those sorts of mainstream users if it is to ever succeed. Taking shots at Facebook’s privacy issues may be a good course (Take back control with Diaspora!),” the blog writes.

“We would like to see Diaspora come to be, even if it never goes mainstream, because it would finally offer privacy advocates a real alternative to the increasingly data-hungry Facebook.”

Check out Project Diaspora’s website and let us know what you think. Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in 2004 out of his Harvard dorm room; it now has 400 million users worldwide. Is it too late for a challenger? Or do the latest privacy concerns leave it vulnerable?

Cooking dinner? There’s an app for that

by admin on May 12, 2010 | No Comments

Cooking dinner? There’s an app for that

The iPhone seems ready to turn into the hottest kitchen accessory since the food processor.

(CNN) — The last few centuries of kitchen innovation have given us indoor plumbing, refrigeration, microwave ovens and the Slap Chop. But one piece of kitchen equipment hasn’t changed much: the cookbook.

In terms of format, the earliest known cookbook — De Re Coquinaria, written in 4th century Rome – isn’t all that different from Rachael Ray’s latest collection.

But now, everyone seems to be saying print is going the way of the Roman Empire. Compared to the rest of the publishing industry, the cookbook market is holding up relatively well, but the iPhone era may finally bring some innovation into a very old genre. Digital devices are entering the kitchen, and they’re changing the idea of what a cookbook can do.

Cooking 101: Seeking clues in the kitchen

There are more than 85 million iPhone and iPod Touch users around the world; since the iPad was launched in early April, more than a million have been sold. Four billion applications have been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store, and among the most popular are cooking apps.

The iPhone and other portable devices seem ready to turn into the hottest kitchen accessory since the food processor. A lot of that might be because of high-tech digital cookbooks that can do much more than gravy-stained hardcovers ever could: making shopping lists, sharing recipes with friends, helping to use leftovers efficiently, figuring out, instantly, what words like “julienne” mean.

The major players

The award-winning food website epicurious.com, owned by the Condé Nast magazine group, introduced its free iPhone application a year ago. By November, it had been downloaded a million times.

The moment the iPad hit the street, Epicurious had a slick, large-format version of the app ready to go. Its biggest attraction is a curated database of professional recipes: 28,000 of them, from the pages of Bon Appetit magazine and the now-defunct (and much-missed by foodies) Gourmet.

Like the Epicurious website, the application makes this impressive archive easy to handle by providing a bunch of different ways to browse: by ingredient, by season, by occasion. Users can also search by keyword, and filter searches according to what ingredients are on hand. They can also create an interactive shopping list.

Even more popular than Epicurious on the app front is BigOven, which has been downloaded more than 2 million times. The iPhone version is free, but there is a more elaborate Pro app for the iPad for $9.99.

The heart of BigOven is a user-generated collection of more than 170,000 recipes: more than an entire library of cookbooks. Like all crowd-sourced collections, there’s no guarantee they’ll all be good, but users can rate and comment on recipes, which helps zero in on the best in the bunch.

The application also comes with quite a few other bells and whistles: a glossary, a tool to convert recipe measurements to metric and a widget that suggests recipes using forlorn leftovers in the fridge.

For those who want to introduce an element of chance into the kitchen, the website allrecipes.com has its own iPhone app, the Dinner Spinner. While thousands of user-submitted recipes can be searched in a variety of ways, users can also shake their phone to get a random selection of dishes: cookbook as slot machine.

Famous names

Celebrity chefs have just started moving into the app world, releasing versions of their most popular books in digital form. Name-brand cooking apps are likely to become the hot new market.

Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals ($4.99) has gotten great reviews for its spiffy design and entertaining video clips. Just released, the Nigella Lawson Quick Collection ($7.99) has become an instant best-seller. It includes a voice activated feature, so cooks don’t risk getting goop on their pristine touchscreen.

Also getting high marks from foodies is the brand-new iPhone version of Mark Bittman’s incredibly thorough volume How to Cook Everything ($1.99, on sale). While it includes a shopping list tool, perhaps its greatest asset is the fact that home cooks no longer need to lug the hefty, 1,000-plus page volume around.

Media-savvy kitchen stars Martha Stewart (99 cents) and Tyler Florence ($4.99) are also trying to get into the action. Expect more to follow them into the portable world in the coming months.

More cool tools

It’s not just recipe collections that people are downloading. There are a bunch of innovative stand-alone apps designed to make preparing meals more efficient.

FoodScanner (99 cents) is one of several apps that use the iPhone’s camera as a bar code reader. Point the phone at a food package and it will give nutritional information and track daily calorie counts. The free Grocery IQ app (recently taken over by coupons.com) also lets users scan labels, and includes features to organize shopping lists.

Do you put the roast into the oven before or after you start peeling the potatoes? For cooks who need help organizing their time, Mise en Place ($2.99) is a kitchen project management tool. It can break a multicourse meal up into discrete tasks and lays out a schedule so users know what to do when.

If conscientious eaters want to get back in touch with the rhythms of agriculture, they can whip out their iPhone. Locavore, ($2.99) which made it onto Time magazine’s 2009 list of the Top 10 iPhone apps, uses GPS to figure out where the phone is, then lists what’s in season in the area and provides maps to local farmers markets.

But what if all this elaborate food preparation is seeming like too much? Just make a boiled egg. Egger (99 cents) will make sure it’s the best boiled egg it can be: Enter egg size, preferred softness, and get a custom timer.

Or, just Order Pizza .

Can people actually ‘own’ virtual land?

by admin on May 12, 2010 | No Comments

Can people actually ‘own’ virtual land?

It remains unclear what rights, if any, people have to virtual property, like Zed Drebin’s space-themed island in Second Life

He owns a house on the beach, which he’s styled to be part Barbie castle and part medieval lair. In addition, he is the landlord of two island colonies, both of which feature spaceships, amusement parks and all kinds of futuristic buildings. About 80 renters pay to live in themed condos at his getaway resorts.

For all of this, Drebin pays only $390 a month, he said.

But there’s one big flaw in this space-themed paradise: None of it is real. Zed Drebin is an avatar in the virtual world of Second Life. He’s controlled by Arthur, a 44-year-old who lives in New York City, and who didn’t want his full name used for fear it would hurt his business.

Despite the fact that Arthur pays U.S. dollars to “own” virtual land in Second Life, and that his renters also pay him in real money, it’s unclear whether he, or any of Second Life’s “residents,” have lasting rights to these virtual tracts.

That worries him.

“We’ve invested a great deal of money and an even greater amount of time; literally hundreds of people have contributed to creating our regions,” he said.

Now, in a sign that virtual issues increasingly are bleeding into the real world, some “residents” of Second Life are taking virtual property rights to real-world court, citing California consumer protection laws to make their case.

On April 15, four Second Life property owners filed a class-action suit against Linden Lab, the online world’s creator, alleging the company misled players into thinking they owned their virtual lands. People pay real dollars to Linden Lab for access to virtual land.

Video: Couple profits from virtual real estate boom

The civil suit, which does not directly involve Arthur, was filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Plaintiffs invoke consumer-protection laws in California, specifically, because Linden Lab is based in San Francisco.

The complaint says Second Life tried to lure people into the virtual world by promising it would be a unique place where residents actually owned their property. Then the virtual world unfairly changed its rules, the suit says. Linden Lab’s rules now say the land is a service the company controls and can cancel.

Plaintiffs seek at least $5 million in damages.

Linden Lab declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Legal experts said the case highlights the fact that our courts haven’t caught up the increasingly complex interactions that take place in online worlds.

Virtual worlds are somewhat lawless, the experts said.

The only government that controls them is the company that created the world. The only constitution that reigns is that company’s “Terms of Service” agreement, which users must sign digitally before getting access to the service.

“In these worlds, we are somewhere in like the 16th century” in terms of legal systems, said James Grimmelmann, an associate professor New York Law School who focuses on technology and the law.

“I’m quite serious. When this stuff started out we were talking pre-feudal — totally made up on the spot. They made [rules] pretty much in response to individual situations.

“But as this stuff got to be big business, the companies realized they had to start getting regular in administering justice. They couldn’t be too irregular or people would quit.”

iReport: Tell us about your Second Life experiences

In Second Life’s Terms of Service agreement, Linden Lab defines virtual land as a “service” instead of the actual property of the person who pays for it:

“Virtual Land is the graphical representation of three-dimensional virtual world space. When you acquire Virtual Land, you obtain a limited license to access and use certain features of the Service associated with Virtual Land stored on our Servers,” the agreement says.

Some Second Life users don’t see it that way.

The federal complaint says many users were led to believe that they actually owned their virtual plots of land, on which many players build digital homes and shops that they use for business purposes.

Read the full complaint (PDF)

Second Life — a 3-D environment that looks kind of like a video game — has a real economy based on “Linden Dollars,” which can be exchanged for major world currencies on a market system.

Andrea Matwyshyn, an assistant professor of legal and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said real courts have been slow to take up issues associated with these complicated worlds.

“The law is a slow-moving elephant, and technology is a graceful gazelle,” she said. “And it’s a mismatch.”

Matwyshyn said virtual property should be thought of like a “service” instead of something that’s actually owned. But because the issue is so new, the new lawsuit likely will be settled out of court, she said.

That happened with a similar case in 2006, she said.

Grimmelmann, the law professor, said the virtual land does have real value. It makes people feel happy and at home, the same way looking out at a front yard from a real-world porch would, he said.

But he cautioned against over-regulating virtual worlds because that would stem the high levels of creativity they inspire.

To be most fair to players, virtual-world politics need to move the way of the real world by enacting democratic systems so players can create the rules they would like to live by online, he said.

Arthur, the virtual landlord, said he doesn’t make money from his transactions. He runs a nonprofit group in Second Life called United Federation Starfleet, whose goal is to take people on “Star Trek”-themed tours for free, he said.

So he’s not as fearful of losing his digital property rights as some.

He said he knows he could be evicted from his home in Second Life, and he equates his situation to renting a house. But being evicted would be devastating to him, he said, not because he’s trying to make money in Second Life, but because he and other people involved with his space-themed group have put so much time into developing their digital land.

He trusts Second Life’s owners to honor his dedication to the virtual world.

“Our expectation is that we wouldn’t be sold down the river by Linden Labs,” he said.

Gary McGraw on developing secure software (Q&A)

by admin on May 12, 2010 | 1 Comment

Gary McGraw on developing secure software

Gary McGraw, chief technology officer at Cigital and a co-author of the BSIMM study.

(Credit: Cigital)

For more than a decade, Gary McGraw has been pushing companies to write better code so that the software we all rely on for desktop computing, Web surfing, and Internet communications works the way it should. That includes making sure it doesn’t have defects that attackers can exploit to steal data and otherwise wreak havoc.

In 2002, Microsoft got the message, or rather got sick of hearing complaints from its customers about holes in its software that were letting high-profile viruses onto Windows desktops and corporate networks. The company launched its Trustworthy Computing initiative and is now a leader in secure software development and how to do things right, McGraw said.

As chief technology officer at consulting firm Cigital, McGraw decided to analyze Microsoft’s Security Development Lifecycle and to compare that with what other companies do. He and some cohorts got a rare look inside 30 firms, including Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Bank of America, Intel, Sallie Mae, Nokia, and Capital One. While their study, entitled “Building Security in Maturity Model” (BSIMM) and due to be released on Wednesday, ranks the companies according to their secure software development practices, it does not make the rankings public.

With start-ups flocking to the Internet and security problems hitting popular social sites and Web apps, the concern over the lack of secure software has only become heightened.

McGraw talked to CNET about what he has learned through his behind-the-scenes look inside the study participants and what that means for safe Web surfing in the future.

Q: So, tell me about the study.
McGraw: We call it “B-Simm” for short. It’s a study of 30 companies and we looked at their software security initiatives. That is how they try to figure out how to do a better job of building security into their software by training developers, getting the right kinds of tools and, most important, setting up the right kinds of activities.

What did you do for the study?
McGraw: We went out and met in person with the executives in charge of each software security initiative in all 30 firms and we gathered data and built a model that describes the data very carefully. It’s built by observation, which makes it novel from a computer science perspective. A lot of times in computer science people have an idea and then grab dribs and drabs of data to justify the data. In this case we got the data first.

“Consumers have for a long time had an implicit demand for security that hasn’t been made explicit, but I think that’s changing. People are sick of having insecure software and sick of having to have to get antivirus software because of all this broken software on their PCs.” Did you give grades?
McGraw: We observed 109 activities in all the data. We determined whether or not we observed that activity in a particular firm and then kept track of how many times we saw an activity. We ranked the activities and we know which are more popular, which were observed more often in the model.

So give me examples of the types of activities you’re talking about. <
McGraw: Some are pretty simple like training your developers in an introduction to software security development course, or use a static analysis tool to review your code and remove vulnerabilities. Some are pretty complicated. A level 3 activity of the rocket science type would be to form a science team to look for new software vulnerabilities of a type that have never before been seen on planet Earth and eradicate those. There are actually a couple firms that do that. I can’t say who they are. In order to get access to this incredibly rich data in these firms, we had to agree to keep the data on particular firms under wraps. There are 15 activities that were incredibly common and you can think of those as the core of software security activities.

What’s the most important practice?
McGraw: One that was observed 100 percent of the time was having host and network security basics in place before starting to work on software security. Don’t worry about software security if you don’t even have a firewall or network security person on your staff.

Why is all of this important? What does the average consumer have to gain or lose?
McGraw: The real problem from a consumer perspective is if you have a piece of software, there’s no way for you to tell whether or not it’s secure. Most consumers would like to have software that is secure, that can’t be hacked, and they would like to use a browser that wouldn’t allow bad guys to hack them with impunity the way things are now. In some sense, security is invisible property and we’re trying with the study to make security much more visible. But the only way to do that and retain technical accuracy is to talk about the kinds of activities firms are doing when they carry out good software development. There’s a nice history lesson we can draw from. Microsoft got started on the Trustworthy Computing Initiative about a decade ago and they’ve made a lot of progress in the way they approach security. Microsoft shares what they do with the publication of the Software Development Lifecycle and in books executives there have written.

So, how many of those 30 companies are doing a commendable job?
McGraw: A majority of them are doing a reasonable job. There are a lot of firms that aren’t doing anything for software security, and it’s better to be doing a few things than nothing at all. One thing consumers could do is ask for things like BSIMM scores from vendors and see if they will share the information about what they are or aren’t doing. To some extent, the BSIMM has become a de facto standard for measuring software security initiatives. The reason we came up with this measurement tool was so companies could improve their own software security initiatives. So it’s not for consumers. But, I bet every single reader of yours uses software that’s produced by one of these companies.

I don’t see Facebook or Twitter on the list.
McGraw: Sadly, they’re not on here.

How about Mozilla?
McGraw: We’ve talked to the Mozilla guys, but we haven’t carried out a measurement yet.

This is all voluntary, though, right? Why would a company do this if it didn’t have to?
McGraw: I think that companies are coming to realize that consumers expect security. Consumers have for a long time had an implicit demand for security that hasn’t been made explicit, but I think that’s changing. People are sick of having insecure software and sick of having to have to get antivirus software because of all this broken software on their PCs. They would prefer to have the software just built properly. Some companies that realized it a decade ago have been working hard to do a better job.

“One part that has been overemphasized is the role of social engineering and using the victim’s name to get them to click on a link. But the other half is what happens when you get them to click on the link?” What role do the computer users play? For instance, a lot of the attacks these days use social engineering to trick people into trusting a message or Web link they shouldn’t.
McGraw: It’s like crashing your car. A long time ago, before the National Transportation Safety Board got involved in analyzing car crashes, cars were a disaster from a safety perspective. Sometimes the brakes would fail or the wheels would fall off. Now, cars are pretty reasonable from a safety perspective. But they’re really safe if you wear your seat belt. We can not make sure that everything you do on the Internet will be secure just by having more secure software. If you choose to do something incredibly silly it’s going to be problematic from a security perspective. There will always be people doing high-risk activities they shouldn’t do.

Do we need a National Transportation Safety Board equivalent for software and to enforce a type of seat belt law for computer users?
McGraw: Companies in the BSIMM study would argue that we don’t need that yet because they are trying to do the right thing. The BSIMM measurements do make that seem like a reasonable statement. The interesting thing is that in order to have something like the National Transportation Safety Board we would first have to have a way for measuring software security initiatives and the BSIMM is that measurement.

So, can you tell me which are the best companies in terms of secure software development?
McGraw: I can’t tell because I want these companies to continue to share their data with us so we can report what we’re actually seeing out there. The good news is software security as a discipline is growing quickly. I think consumers can and should begin to demand more secure software, to ask for some evidence that software is more secure, and to reward with their dollars those companies that are doing a better job.

So, what about the tradeoff? If I get a really secure product can I still expect full functionality and interoperability?
McGraw: You actually can. A lot of people would argue that there’s a tradeoff between security and functionality. But the fact is, getting rid of your functionality is not what makes you more secure. The problem is if we write software sloppily or design it poorly it will be riddled with defects that will allow an attacker to take advantage of that. You can still have very high functioning software that is nicely secure. If you compare Windows 98 to Windows 7, not only does Windows 7 have way more functionality, but it’s also head and shoulders more secure than Windows 98. That shows companies can create software that is useful, that the people want to buy but which is secure at the same time.

Would good secure software development have prevented targeted attacks like those against Google and the others late last year?
McGraw: To some extent yes, because even spear phishing through social networks often exploits some software flaw. One part that has been overemphasized is the role of social engineering and using the victim’s name to get them to click on a link. But the other half is what happens when you get them to click on the link? You have to have an exploit of some sort that takes advantage of a security problem for those attacks to work. In that way, more secure software is the only way we can make progress in computer security.

RIAA wins big in LimeWire lawsuit

by admin on May 12, 2010 | No Comments

RIAA wins big in LimeWire lawsuit

In a decision that could mean sweeping changes to file sharing in the United States, a federal court has found the company that operates file-sharing service LimeWire liable for copyright infringement, according to court records reviewed by CNET.

(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, for the Southern District of New York, on Tuesday granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry’s claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement.

“The evidence demonstrates that [Lime Wire] optimized LimeWire’s features to ensure that users can download digital recordings, the majority of which are protected by copyright,” Wood said in her 59-page decision. “And that [Lime Wire] assisted users in committing infringement.”

The court decision could represent the biggest threat to online file sharing in years. According to a survey by the NPD Group, LimeWire users account for 58 percent of the people who said they downloaded music from a peer-to-peer service last year. At CNET’s Download.com, the LimeWire software has been downloaded more than 200 million times. In the last week along, the software was downloaded nearly 340,000 times.

Wood’s ruling could at the very least mean a shift in the downloading habits of millions. The logical next step by the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group representing the four largest recording companies, is to get a preliminary injunction and force Lime Wire to cease LimeWire’s file-sharing functionality.

LimeWire responded predictably with strong opposition to the judge’s decision and said it looks forward to a scheduled June 1 status conference with Wood.

“LimeWire remains committed to developing innovative products and services for the end-user and to working with the entire music industry, including the major labels, to achieve this mission,” it said in a statement.

What may spell serious trouble for creators of music and video Web sites in the future is Wood’s decision to hold Gorton personally liable. If the ruling stands, it could set a precedent that might dissuade other entrepreneurs from challenging the entertainment sector’s copyrights when developing new technology.

The RIAA has said it is entitled to the maximum statutory damages, which is $150,000 for each registered work that was infringed. The number of infringing works they could try to claim is likely in the millions.

The RIAA first filed suit against Lime Group in August 2006 and a month later the company filed a countersuit, claiming the top labels engaged in unfair business practices designed to scare away Lime Wire’s users.