Ipad Revival

Sony is soon to announce that it will be challenging Apple’s new IPad.  The revival product will have all the  capabilities of a netbook, a Sony Reader and a PSP, the company’s handheld gaming device.

Sony will also be making a new smartphone.  The phone will contain Sony Ericsson mobile technology and capable of playing PSP games – to compete against the iPhone. Both devices are expected to work with Sony Online Services, an online store due to launch in March and sell music, movies, books, and other downloadable applications for mobile products.

Both these products will be launch sometime in 2010.

Video TV Phone

By combining three basic technologies, you can now make video phone calls off your television set.  What are these three technologies you ask?  The Internet, Television, and Skype.

Samsung just announced that they will be adding VoIP calling services Skype as an application in their television, allowing phone calls to be made on camera right above the television.  Samsung is not the only company that will be providing this possibility.  Panasonic and LG have already made similar announcemnts.

These new television sets will go for about $1,200 to $2,000.00.

Verizon Added Skype

In a huge move, Verizon announced that it was adding Skype available to its 90 million wireless user.  Those with smartphones and the right data plan can now make unlimited calls to hundreds of millions of Skype user worldwide, beginning next month (March).

These calls will go over Verizon’s network, not using cellphone plan minutes.  Minutes would be deducted to use Skype to call regular phone numbers in the US.

Super Bowl Ratings

Super Bowl game featuring the New Orleans Saints versus the Indianapolis Colts on February 7, 2010 was watched by more than 106 million people.  That means it was the largest watched television event on television surpassing the 1983 finale of MASH television show.

The previous Super Bowl featuring Arizona and Pittsburgh was seen by only 98.7 million people compared to the 105.97 million last night.

iPhone growing or no?

It was reported that iphone now has a market share of about 16.4% of the market.  Depending on who you list to that is either a good thing or a bad thing.  Some argue that Iphone is continuing to grab more market share.  Other believe that their growth is decreasing and slowing down.

In the next few months we will have a better idea where Apple’s Iphone is headed.

Most Popular Passwords

According to a new analysis, one out of five Web users use a simple, easily guessed password like “abc123,” “iloveyou” or even “password” to protect their data.

After examining a list of 32 million passwords that an unknown hacker stole some interesting information was revealed.  About 20% of the people use the same passwords.  That suggests that hackers could easily break into many accounts just by trying the most common passwords.

Some Web sites try to thwart the attackers by freezing an account for a certain period of time if too many incorrect passwords are typed. But experts say that the hackers simply learn to trick the system, by making guesses at an acceptable rate, for instance.

To improve security, some Web sites are forcing users to mix letters, numbers and even symbols in their passwords. Others, like Twitter, prevent people from picking common passwords.

Still, researchers say, social networking and entertainment Web sites often try to make life simpler for their users and are reluctant to put too many controls in place.

Even commercial sites like eBay must weigh the consequences of freezing accounts, since a hacker could, say, try to win an auction by freezing the accounts of other bidders.

Overusing simple passwords is not a new phenomenon. A similar survey examined computer passwords used in the mid-1990s and found that the most popular ones at that time were “12345,” “abc123″ and “password.”

Why do so many people continue to choose easy-to-guess passwords, despite so many warnings about the risks?

Security experts suggest that we are simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of things we have to remember in this digital age.

Here is a list of the top 32 passwords:

1.  123456

2. 12345

3. 123456789

4. password

5. iloveyou

6. princess

7. rockyou

8. 1234567

9. 12345678

10. abc123

11. nicole

12. daniel

13. babygirl

14. monkey

15. jessica

16. lovely

17. michael

18. ashley

19. 654321

20. qwerty

21. iloveu

22. michelle

23. 111111

24. 0

25. tigger

26. password1

27. sunshine

28. chocolate

29. anthony

30. angel

31. FRIENDS

32. soccer

Verizon Lower Prices

The cell phone wars are heating up.  This time for the good of the consumer.  Verizon is lowering its unlimited wireless individual plan from $99 a month to $69.  AT&T is going to follow suit and lower its prices as well.

What remains to be seen is if Sprint will join in.  I care since I have a sprint phone and would love to see their prices reduce for a family plan or individual plan.

The word is that none of the companies plan to lower this family plan rates.  Let see what shakes up in the next few weeks.

What is a tablet?

What exactly a tablet?

Some say a computer just needs a touch-sensitive screen to be a tablet. Others say a person should be able to write on it with a pen. Still others say it’s screen size that’s important — tablets must fit somewhere between phones and laptops. For some, it’s partly the keyboard — a tablet should have one of those.

Break off the keyboard, leaving only a touch-screen device, he said, and the gadget falls into another buzz-worthy category: the slate.

Fox & Time Warner Reach Deal

The threat of Time Warner customers not being able to view Fox channels ended today when the two sides reached an agreement.  The actual terms of the agreement are not know at this time.

The high-stakes game of poker between Fox and Time Warner Cable reached a peak in the last few days, with lawmakers and regulators pleading with both companies to hammer out a deal or face their wrath. While both companies publicly attacked each other, talks continued around the clock among executives hunkered down on Fox’s Century City lot.

In real terms, football fans will be able to watch their BCS football games on Time Warner without having to figure out an alternative way to get those signal with conventional anntenas.  In the long run, it will be interesting to find out how much Time Warner’s cable bills will increase as a result of this new agreement.

Fox was asking for a fee of $1 per month for each subscriber.  Time Warner was only offering $0.25 per customer per month.  We shall know soon.

Blackberry Outage

Last night, BlackBery users in North American expereince one of the longerst BlackBerry outages in recent years.  If you were one of the unlucky people who experienced this outage you were not alone.

Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure.

This was the second outage in with a week.  For a company know for providing a reliable phone, this news is a bite of a concern to me since I depend on my BlackBerry for my business and work emails.  RIM (Research In Development), the company that makes the BlackBerry prides itself on near perfect uptime statistics voes to correct the problem.  Hopefully they get it right.  Because it really sucks when I lose my ability to text, check my emails and surf the web with my phone.