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.

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

Delisting Newscorp Sites

In perhap a brillent move that could potentialy the landscape of the Internet, News Corp has begun disucssion with Miscrosoft and Google to delist their websites from their two search engines.  Websites such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, and Fox News.  What this will do is perhap take a large portion of free content off the web.

It could enable New Corp to charge for access to their content and help it protect such publications like the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers whose readership is deterorating.  If one can’t get the Wall STreet Journal for free on the web, one might actually start buying it again.

Let see how this all shakes out.