Microsoft upgrades Windows Live portal

Microsoft is expanding its Windows Live online services over the next several weeks, including adding social networking features that will make the portal for consumers more Facebook-like, such as new photo-sharing capabilities and links to other Web sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.The move may bring Windows Live into closer competition with Facebook — ironic, given that Microsoft invested $240 million in the popular online service last year. Microsoft said Windows Live has more than 460 million users. With the enhanced Windows Live, users will be able to add third-party sites like LinkedIn, Flickr, Photobucket and Twitter to their profiles through a new “What’s New” feed.
Microsoft is also upgrading the messaging and e-mail services in Windows Live. Windows Live Messenger will offer more personalization capabilities, drag-and-drop photo sharing, a favorites list for the most important contacts, group IM for chatting with up to 20 people simultaneously, and updates from contacts through the What’s New feed. Windows Live Hotmail, which has 375 million active customers, will be faster and offer spam filtering that is 80 percent more effective, according to Microsoft. The system will allow users to bring multiple e-mail accounts together and put multiple e-mail addresses onto one device. The amount of online data storage provided by the service is being increased from 5 gigabytes to 25 gigabytes.
Source: CRN,RLSLOG.NET

AMD ships new quad core CPU: Shanghai

With the launch of its latest quad-core Opteron processor, code-named Shanghai, on Thursday, Advanced Micro Devices is looking to rebuild confidence among customers after problems with its Barcelona chip earlier this year. Running at 75 watts, the Shanghai processors range in speed from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz. The chip also includes improved hyperthreading for faster application performance. Manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, Shanghai chips are more power-efficient than Barcelona, which were manufactured using the 65-nanometer process. New CPU designs allow Shanghai to turn off unused functions or shift processing duties to save power. It also provides more power savings when servers are idle compared to earlier processors.
Shanghai is being aggressively priced for vendors to quickly adopt the chip, Patla said. The chips are 20 percent faster than Barcelona and can be easily plugged into the same socket that support Barcelona chips now. Shanghai-based systems are expected to be immediately available, Patla said. Vendors including Sun, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell and Verari Systems are expected to launch servers with the quad-core chip. Pricing for the Opteron 2000 series chips start at $377 for the 2.3GHz Opteron 2376, running to $989 for the 2.7GHz Opteron 2384. Prices for the Opteron 8000 series begin at $1,165 for 2.3GHz Opteron 8378, up to $2,149 for Opteron 8384, which runs at 2.7GHz. Shanghai chips running at 55 watts and 105 watts will be launched in the first quarter of 2009.
Source: PC World

First Android phone already vulnerable to attacks

Less than a week after the release of Google’s T-Mobile G1 smart phone, security experts detected a serious security flaw in its Android operating system that leaves it wide open for hackers to launch drive-by attacks on users’ devices.The security vulnerability, detected by researchers at Baltimore, Maryland-based Independent Security Evaluators, follows last week’s release of Google’s T-Mobile G1 phone Oct. 22, which is powered by the Android operating system. Researchers at ISE posted an advisory warning users of the potential security threat that would allow their mobile devices to be compromised or exposed if they visited a malicious Web page.
“These phones will currently ship with the vulnerability present and may pose a security risk to their users until and update becomes available,” said Miller in his posting. According to the advisory, Google Android relies on more than 80 different open source packages. And the security error stems from a buffer overflow vulnerability in some of the older, more vulnerable versions of the open source software. Subsequently, an unsuspecting user could be successfully exploited simply by accessing an infected Web page using with a vulnerable operating system, experts say. Once a user in infected, attackers could then obtain access to any personal information accessible from the victim’s browser — including cookies, information entered into Web application and saved passwords — in order to steal a bank account numbers, Social Security information and other sensitive data.

Dell launched new subnotebook: Inspiron Mini 12

On Sunday, the Dell Inspiron Mini 12, a larger version of the Mini 9, makes its debut—in Japan. Dell had reached an exclusive agreement with VIC Camera, Kojima, and SofMap—all Japanese retailers—to make the early announcement overseas. According to Dell, the Inspiron 12 will ship in the United States by mid-November. The Mini 12 is officially the first netbook to house a 12-inch widescreen; the largest so far have been 10-inch models such as the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and the MSI Wind. The screen offers 1,280-by-800 resolution, higher than the typical 1,280-by-600 netbooks. Its shape is like a wedge, measuring 9.0-by-11.8-by-0.92 inches, becoming thicker towards the back. The weight starts at 2.7 pounds, with a 3-cell battery. A 6-cell battery will be available later on and will likely bring the weight over 3 pounds.
Like the S10 and the Wind, the Mini 12’s feature set includes three USB ports, a multicard reader, Ethernet, VGA-Out, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Hard drives aren’t the meager solid state ones offered on the Mini 9; you have a choice of 40GB, 60GB, and 80GB spinning drives. Although it doesn’t have the antenna infrastructure to support WWAN, an empty slot is available for it, like on the Mini 9. In the meantime, the Mini 12 has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. Like the Mini 9, the new Mini uses Intel’s Atom platform: The 1.33-GHz Z520 and the 1.6-GHz Z530 Atom processor are both available come November. The Mini 12 is one of the few systems to run Windows Vista Basic, which will be the only choice for operating systems at this time. The Vista system starts at $550.
Source: Computer World