Vodafone Spain Admits to Having 3,000 Malware Infected HTC Magics

There’s no hiding the fact that when you get something new, the first thing you want to do is open up the box, pop in the battery (if it needs a battery), and then turn that thing on and start going about your business. What you don’t want, is to turn on that said device, and find out that you’ve got some information-jacking malware botnet program running on it. That’s a bad day. That’s exactly what happened to several thousand folks who had recently picked up a Vodafone Spain HTC Magic, the wireless carrier has recently admitted.

The Mariposa botnet agent has officially infected somewhere in the ballpark of 3,000 handsets, the company affirmed to Spanish media on Thursday. The company had met with their Iberian branch, along with representatives from Panda Security, who actually caught the malware infraction right from the start. Vodafone Spain provided an HTC Magic to a representative from the company to test, and that’s when all this trouble first started, back at the beginning of March. While Mariposa is the big name being tossed around right now, it seems that other strains of malware were also found on many of the HTC Magics. How was the information-stealing program finding its way onto the phones? Through the SD cards. A second infection was also confirmed before the announcement earlier this week, when a handset found its way to a security consultant with S21Sec.

Vodafone Spain is now in the works of replacing 3,000 MicroSD cards. Not because they think it’s a precautionary measure, but because they’ve fully admitted that 3,000 devices are more than likely infected. Thankfully, Vodafone itself is investigating the situation, and so far has found that the event is a “localized” one, and not spreading across other Vodafone Europe handsets. This is definitely shocking news, but we’re glad that the wireless carrier is admitting to the problem, and doing what they need to do to fix the situation. Hopefully they can root out the source, and prevent anything like this happening again.

Tendril Vision home energy monitor predicts the future

Will people use energy more thoughtfully if they’re able to monitor it via a familiar device? That’s what nergy management technology provider Tendril reckon; they’ve borrowed style inspiration from a digital clock for their Vision energy monitor, which can not only show real-time usage but predict future patterns.

That means you could wait to put on the tumble dryer until a low-power period was predicted, or Vision could highlight when cheaper energy rates were active. There’s also an accompanying website which shows more in-depth data together with allowing for “personal energy use plans” to be created; presumably they then educate the meter to make better predictions.

Vision measures around 8 x 6 inches and weighs under two pounds, and Tendril believe that with continuous use you could see 10 to 15-percent reductions in energy bills. All well and good, but it remains to be seen how expensive Vision turns out to be, who it’s offered to – Tendril work with energy companies, rather than selling products direct to consumers – and whether single-purpose devices like these can hold peoples’ attention.

Press Release:

Tendril’s “Vision”: A Next Generation In-Home Energy Display That Promotes Customer Action

The Tendril “Vision” to be Unveiled at DistribuTECH
Boulder, Colo. – March 18, 2010 – Tendril, a leading energy management technology provider, will debut its next generation in-home display next week at DistribuTECH, the nation’s leading trade show focused on utility energy distribution and efficiency. The Tendril Vision is a revolutionary device that allows people to link directly with their utility to get meaningful, real-time information about their energy use and cost. The results are greater energy efficiency as well as opportunities for utility customers to reduce their consumption by an average of 10 to 15 percent, according to Tendril CEO Adrian Tuck.

“For the first time, people at home can receive real-time information through a highly intuitive device. It allows them to take an active role in how much energy they use in order to change their behavior and see immediate results,” Tuck said. “Utilities realize that they need to engage directly with their customers in order to drive efficiency and energy reduction. Vision provides the means of immediate communication and action that has been missing in consumers’ homes until now.”

Working with design consultant IDEO to develop Vision, Tendril completed extensive research unique to the utility industry and its consumers. This research involved a thorough examination of human behavior and desires, including how people interact with their surrounding environment, how they want their energy providers to communicate with them in their homes, and effective methods for promoting behavioral change. The team also studied behavior economics in order to understand how a simple, but well-designed device can encourage and enable continuous energy savings.

Among the unique features of the Tendril Vision:

It is anchored in a household appliance similar to a digital clock. This promotes active engagement with utility customers because it provides continuous information via a device that is unobtrusive, intuitive and an accepted part of everyday living.
Vision displays upcoming, real-time events so customers can plan accordingly. For example, Vision will display a visual cue for an upcoming demand response event and peak pricing period. Seeing this, a homeowner could wait to run the dishwasher, turn down the thermostat, or leave the house to run errands in order to save money during that time.
The real-time data display is also accompanied by a web portal service that allows customers to look at detailed information online as well as create, and manage, their own customized energy use plan.
The Tendril Vision is approximately 8 inches by 6 inches and weighs less than two pounds. Vision integrates seamlessly with the Tendril platform, which includes utility applications for Demand Response, Energy Awareness, Load Control, Distributed Generation and Electric Vehicles.

For more information about Vision and the Tendril platform, visit Booth 1803 and 2015 at DistribuTECH March 23 -25, 2010 at the Tampa Convention Center.

Dumbing down: the price of a good UX?

Microsoft has caught some grief this past week over the latest stage of the copy & paste debacle, a meme that began when Apple omitted the functionality from the iPhone (and took two years to add it in) and was resurrected upon the admission that Windows Phone 7 series wouldn’t ship with the ability to snip text from one app and paste it into another. In fact, copy & paste is just one example of Microsoft locking down their new smartphone experience, slicing a great deal of OEM and user customisation out in the process. They’re not the only firm to do so, however; merely the latest to seemingly decide that users want delineated – perhaps even prescriptive – experiences rather than flexibility.

Poster-child, in fact, for this sort of tightly reined UX is the iPhone, and we can only imagine that there’s some snickering going on at Cupertino over their rival’s change of approach. Windows Mobile used to be the go-to guy for flexibility in smartphones: yes, it didn’t look that hot in its native state, but if you wanted to whip up an app that accessed – or merely wanted to play with – the core elements of the device then Microsoft made little attempt to stand in your way. It’s become a hotbed of ROM tinkering and modification, everything from changing LED blink patterns to completely reworked builds that streamline just about every element of the phone; the sort of things Android modders are doing now, their Windows Mobile counterparts were doing for years before.

Another good example is the iPad. As we’ve commented before, listening to the media reception of Apple’s imminent tablet, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the first such device in the world, not the latest touchscreen device in a segment that goes back years. What seems to have commentators – and, judging by pre-sale estimates, would-be owners – excited is the though of what Apple can do to turn “another computer to maintain” into a headache-free appliance. If you already have a main computer – whether desktop or notebook – and maybe a netbook as well, the last thing you want is to add in another machine to look after, take care of with software updates and anti-spyware scans, coddle as anything more than, yes, an oversized iPod touch.

On the other side of the apparent divide are devices like Nokia’s N900, a handset that – out of the box – can border on the frustrating. The N900 lacks the instant-reward of other recent handsets, which bend over backward to offer the extent of their functionality within a finger’s reach. Instead, the Nokia is making a name for itself among those who want to experiment with their mobile devices, loading up non-standard platforms, hooking up unusual hardware and generally carrying across some of that desktop tinkering paradigm to the mobile space.

Of course, you can’t blame manufacturers for wanting to control their user experience. For all the good work HTC and others have done with modifying the Windows Mobile 6.x UI, Microsoft still catch grief from reviewers and owners alike for encouraging UX fragmentation. With Apple storming ahead in the smartphone segment it’s hard to criticise Microsoft for not following their example and locking down some of the areas which have previously turned round and bit them. Meanwhile the so-called flexible – challenging? – devices like the N900 are never expected to be a dramatic sales success.

There’s a common misconception that the tech-aware – the sort of people who read this site and who keep up with cutting-edge developments; the early-adopters, perhaps – are the audience for complex devices, simultaneously blinkered to the demands of the mainstream. It’s a false distinction: everyone is “guilty” of wanting a device that “just works”. Yes, some users might also want an extra degree of flexibility – to modify, tweak or generally step outside of the manufacturer’s expectations of what the device might be useful for – but there’s an assumption nonetheless that the core functionality will be rock solid.

Has that expectation forced devices to dumb-down? Perhaps – it’s certainly one way of ensuring the basics are addressed – but to be fair that seems to be the way many consumers prefer it. An application store packed with titles is all well and good, until one of them goes wrong and wipes out your address book. Developers are having to become cleverer at dealing with more rigid third-party software guidelines; sometimes that’s for good reasons, like sandboxing apps to prevent one crash bringing down the whole system, and sometimes for not so great reasons, like blanket limitations on background processes. There’s dumbed-down and there’s just plain dumb; it remains to be seen whether asking for a stable user experience has in fact left us with less choice overall.

Steampunk computers look older than grandma

I admire people who can take a modern working product like a computer, turn it into a steampunk work of art, and still have the device function properly. If I were to disassemble a computer display, I am sure the thing would never work again.

A few sweet steampunk computers have shown up over on Yanko Design. The things use copious amounts of wood, brass, and old-fashioned decorations to turn that plain PC into a working art piece. I particularly like the sign on what appears to be the tower in the photo above that says “The Apple Company.”

The LCD gets a marble base and the keyboard has keys that appear to be straight off an 1800’s cash register. I wonder how comfortable that keyboard is for typing. The mouse pad is cool as well. The attention to detail on these machines is impressive indeed.

chicBuds Sport Headphones are very colorful

Geeks and geekettes all like music and most of us have a music phone or iPod that we like to listen too on the go or at home. That means most of us want a nice set of headphones. Many women want headphones that look good as well as sound good and a new set of headphones from chicBuds fits the bill.

The headphones are called the DJ Sport Headphones and come in a pink hue bright enough to give the Pink Panther a headache. If the pink just isn’t as bright as you want, the company also makes a multi colored set with day glow colors straight from the 80’s.

The headphones are over-the-head style and sell for $29.99 per pair. They are compatible with the iPhone, iPod, and other music devices using a 3.5mm plug. The headphones fold for storage, have an adjustable headband, and use 44mm drivers. Frequency response is 5Hz to 20Khz.

Windows Phone 7

It only took a matter of hours after Microsoft released the Windows Phone 7 series developer toolkit for someone to rip the full smartphone build from it, and now the software has been hacked a little more. Turns out, there’s plenty more functionality in the emulator ROM than appears at first glance, it’s just that Microsoft have done some work to keep certain elements hidden. Dan Ardelean, however, has modified the BIN responsible for which features are accessible, bypassing Microsoft’s lock-down.

Among the things discovered are a file explorer and a native task manager. Meanwhile over at xda-developers they’ve already discovered mention of cut, copy and paste functionality, which Microsoft have admitted won’t be in the initial release of WP7 but will instead follow on in a later upgrade.

Unfortunately, Dan has since taken down the files necessary to remove the lock, fearing a negative response from Microsoft. Of course, this is also a relatively early build of the platform, and part of the reason the company hid certain functionality might simply be because they’re planning to change if prior to launch: if developers created apps using the system as it stands, they might find their software doesn’t work quite right on shipping Windows Phone 7 series devices.

BlackBerry OS 6.0 screenshots leak?

RIM has been a pretty leaky sieve lately, what with all the news and hardware shots of their apparently upcoming slider device spilling out, but has someone accidentally let BlackBerry OS 6.0 out of the bag? According to BBLeaks you’re looking at two screenshots of RIM’s next-gen OS, and one of their best tipsters reckons they’re legitimate.

Screen resolution is in line with a Storm or Storm2 style touchscreen device, and the buttons certainly look to be sized for finger input. That would also fit in with the BlackBerry slider – codenamed “T” or “Talladega” – which is expected to have a large touchscreen along with its pull-out QWERTY ‘board.

RIM also look to be playing with the idea of using homescreen widgets, which would be a significant departure for the company. The BlackBerry faithful are already poring over the two images to see if they a) look real, and b) look suitably enticing, though comments already heard include the fact that the whole thing looks “too busy” for their liking.

Wrapsol Ultra adhesive film claims to protect devices from a 6-foot fall

Typically, as soon as I buy a new gadget I stat looking for things to keep it safe and scratch free. I have used scratch-resistant films on my iPhone since I got it. A new scratch resistant film called Wrapsol Ultra has been announced that claims to not only protect your iPhone from scratches, but from falls as well.

According to Wrapsol, the new Ultra film protects from falls of up to 6-feet. Shock absorption properties are not something that is normally found in a film. Wrapsol makes films that are pre-cut for the iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, DROID, and Nexus One as well as other devices.

The film applies in three steps with no liquid needed in the application process. The company says that the adhesive helps to remove air bubbles as well for a smooth install. The film starts at $24.99.

Vizit wireless digital photo frame on sale March 23rd

We keep asking digital photo frame manufacturers to put cellular data connections into their displays, only very few of them seem to listen. One prospect on the near horizon is the Vizit from Isabella Products, a 10.4-inch 800 x 600 touchscreen that can be left freestanding or wall-mounted, and which uses an integrated GSM/GPRS quadband modem to receive images emailed, shared from an online gallery or sent from a cameraphone. Having been up for pre-order for a while now, we now know that Vizit will go on sale March 23rd.

The Vizit’s connection is always-on and photos can not only be sent to the display but from it, too. They go through the company’s VizitMe.com online gallery, which can be fed by direct uploads, RSS feeds or MMS messages from cellphones. Only preset numbers and email addresses can send pictures through, so nothing untoward should frighten your grandmother when it pops up on-screen.

In fact, the only really scary thing is likely to be the price. The Vizit frame itself is $279.99, but you’ll also need to plump for a service plan which Isabella Products are yet to define. Because of that, we can’t see too many people picking up the Vizit. It’s obvious we should’ve been more specific: we want a firm to put together a cellular-enabled display with a user-accessible slot for a pre-paid SIM

Vizit wireless digital photo frame on sale March 23rd

We keep asking digital photo frame manufacturers to put cellular data connections into their displays, only very few of them seem to listen. One prospect on the near horizon is the Vizit from Isabella Products, a 10.4-inch 800 x 600 touchscreen that can be left freestanding or wall-mounted, and which uses an integrated GSM/GPRS quadband modem to receive images emailed, shared from an online gallery or sent from a cameraphone. Having been up for pre-order for a while now, we now know that Vizit will go on sale March 23rd.

The Vizit’s connection is always-on and photos can not only be sent to the display but from it, too. They go through the company’s VizitMe.com online gallery, which can be fed by direct uploads, RSS feeds or MMS messages from cellphones. Only preset numbers and email addresses can send pictures through, so nothing untoward should frighten your grandmother when it pops up on-screen.

In fact, the only really scary thing is likely to be the price. The Vizit frame itself is $279.99, but you’ll also need to plump for a service plan which Isabella Products are yet to define. Because of that, we can’t see too many people picking up the Vizit. It’s obvious we should’ve been more specific: we want a firm to put together a cellular-enabled display with a user-accessible slot for a pre-paid SIM