Month: December 2012

Can Your Mobile Device Be Trusted?

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

create.connect.communicate

Are you playing games, checking-in or downloading apps? Beware! Most, if not all, of your data is being collected and access is being granted to areas that you may consider private.

While most people don’t know what happens to their personal data online and some notions of privacy may be shifting, average Internet users still care enormously about digital privacy – Jon Leibowitz, Federal Trade Commission Chairman

In fact, this graphic reveals that:

  • 81% of mobile users think safeguarding their personal information is important
  • 76% of mobile users said they are very selective about who they give their information
  • 92% are concerned about applications collecting their personal information without their consent

As social and mobile technology continue to grow and the amount of information people reveal about themselves increases, consumer privacy has become a major concern. The growth of mobile apps, in particular, has raised concerns about mobile security and…

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iOS to WP8: The First 24 hours

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

More apps will come, all the rest (the good ones) are difficult to implement. And Windows Phone 8 is already there…

FrazierCIO

It has now been over 24 hours since I moved from my iPhone running iOS to the Nokia Lumia 920 running WindowsPhone 8 (WP8).

First the Good:

I love the speed and responsiveness of the touch interface. There is no lag at all whenever I am typing or switching applications. I am becoming a fan of the WP8 “Live Tile” interface, though I was not at first.  I like that I can make each tile small, large, or wide to suit my needs. Just like with Android, I am fan of being able to customize my phone UI. Which you cannot do with the iPhone.

Wireless charging. You get a free “charge pad” when you buy the 920. This allows me to just lay the phone on the pad for it to charge. It is really hard to plug in a cable to charge? No. But it is great to…

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Fonts break after Windows security patch KB2753842

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

UPDATE: The security update is now fixed and everything works fine.

We have seen many problems during the last years with updates and patches but this one is really strange. After the security update KB2753842 was applied on 12/12/12, programs that use the vector “side” of fonts cannot show characters of specific fonts that used to work perfectly. You can see the font in the font list, you can select it but the font doesn’t work. This happens with programs like CorelDraw, Adobe Flash, Expression Design etc. Word, InDesign and programs that use the font as bitmap work fine.

Microsoft identified an exploit with the GetGlyphOutline() API call, made a change and everything collapsed. The 12/12/12 date would leave an entry in computer history… So, we are waiting for a fix on this. If you just remove the security update and reboot, things are back to normal (but we are still open to a possible hack). The problem appears on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server 2003, 2008, R2, 2012 (even Windows 8 RT) and some OpenType or TrueType fonts (not all of them).

Instructions to remove the update:

  1. Click on the “Start” button, click on “Control Panel” and then double-click on the “Add/Remove Programs” icon.
  2. Click the “Show Updates” check box at the top of the window and wait for the list of installed updates to appear.
  3. Click on the update you wish to remove, click the “Remove” button and then restart your computer. The update is now successfully removed from your computer.

Don’t forget to change the automatic updates to manual otherwise it will be reinstalled. As soon as there is a fix for this issue, you can change updating to auto.

http://graphics-unleashed.unleash.com/2012/12/windows-update-kb2753842-will-make-some.html

http://connect.microsoft.com/Expression/feedback/details/774232/microsoft-update-kb2753842-opentype-ps-outline-bug

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1113943?tstart=0

Windows Phone 8 demo

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

A Different Perspective on Tech

Wanting to know more about Windows Phone? Like the idea of live tiles but still wanna try them out before you switch? Have an iPhone or Android device? Microsoft just released the Windows Phone 8 demo site for the aforementioned devices. All you have to do is head on over to wpdemo.com on your phone or scan the barcode that appears on your PC and you will be introduced to many of the new and great features of Windows Phone 8.

Update: Apparently it works on the PC as well

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Facebook And Microsoft Are Working On A Deal, And It Could Change Everything About Advertising

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

SpiceofyourLife

See on Scoop.it – Small Business Development

Facebook may acquire the key product behind Microsoft’s $6 billion aQuantive purchase.

Facebook and Microsoft are working on a deal that, if completed, would put Facebook one huge step closer to launching an ad network that could rival Google’s in size, and change the way advertising is done online forever.

According to several industry sources, Facebook is in negotiations with Microsoft to buy Atlas Solutions, the ad-serving product Microsoft acquired when it bought aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007.

Our sources are outside of Facebook and Microsoft.

Microsoft has been trying to sell Atlas for years, and one of our sources is close to a company that was interested in buying it. In recent days, Microsoft ended negotiations with this company, and said it was moving forward on a deal with Facebook.

Since then, Facebook and Microsoft employees have reached out to other…

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Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

“If this doesn’t work to build sales momentum, however, I’m not sure where else Nokia can find new Lumia opportunities going forward. And in many respects, that’s a shame because the Lumias are a solid line of smartphones that are plagued more by their timing than their actual features and functions.”

Gigaom

Nokia(s nok) introduced two new smartphones on Wednesday, the Lumia 620 and Lumia 920T. These represent the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to handsets: The low-end 620 carries an unsubsidized $249 price tag while the 920T will retail at more than $700 minus any carrier subsidies. Yet, both together represent what may be Nokia’s best chance to gain market share on its peers.

The budget-priced Lumia 620 is aimed at the first-time smartphone buyer and perhaps that’s a good audience to target. Most who have a smartphone have already invested in either iOS or Android apps for their phone, making it a barrier to switch. Some surely will give up their iPhone(s aapl) or Android(s goog) for a Windows Phone(s msft), but so far, relatively few have based on market share and sales figures.

Consider a feature phone owner that hasn’t bought apps tied a…

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Dropbox Launches New Windows 8 App

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

TechMad Infodates

Image

Dropbox has announced at the LeWeb 2012 conference in Paris this week that they are currently developing and will soon be launching a new Dropbox Windows8 application which will be designed to be used with and support Microsoft’s new Modern user interface.

It has been rumoured that Dropbox was considering developing a new Windows 8 app, but until today it had never been officially announced.

Dropbox has now now submitted their new Windows 8 app for approval by Microsoft, and as soon as this is complete the Windows 8 Dropbox app will be available for users to download.

The new Dropbox Windows app will work across the both versions of Windows 8, offering access to files, photos and media files stored in the cloud from the desktop but also on Windows RT devices like the Surface.

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Free textbooks for everybody: piracy or disruption?

Posted on by Andreas Tsouchlaris

Is copying Wikipedia articles and assembling a textbook legal? If you sell it, there are issues. But what happens, if you just give it away? Boundless has created a system (with real people behind it) that creates textbooks for specific subjects with content collected from Wikipedia and other free online sources. It then provides you with an almost perfect textbook with the best price in the world: $0.00!

Educational publishers like Pearson and Cengage have already started the fight but venture capitalists are funding Boundless because they see a disruptive trend. A huge discruption actually when you consider that some of these books cost a couple of hundred dollars. A $6 billion industry in the United States alone…

Publishers today operate using what Mark Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan, calls a “cartel-style” model: students are required to buy specific texts at high prices. Perry has calculated that prices for textbooks have been rising at three times the rate of inflation since the 1980s.

Read the full article at MIT Technology Review: Free Textbooks Spell Disruption for College Publishers