Group items tagged

Unlocking an iPhone is now illegal. Any smartphone bought after January 26, 2013 can not be unlocked as it is illegal in the USA at least. Although unlocking an iPhone is illegal jailbreaking is not. At least it is legal to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch but to jailbreak an iPad is illegal. With all this in mind the real winner is the carrier/provider as the consumer cannot jump from company to company with the carriers phone. Only in the states can one go to jail for unlocking a phone but can own an assault rifle!

This article is about how blackberry phones could have a rhythmic touch to unlock them rather than a code or face unlock. I think this is really awesome because a lot of people are blackberry users and it would be fun to have. I have a blackberry so this would want me to have a touch blackberry just so I can have an unlock like they created. This tap unlock detects the location and magnitude of your touch. This relates to the course because the blackberry is the hardware and the actual program to detect the touch is the software. You need to program the actual app for the blackberry devices. 

Alright, there's been a lot of conflicting information floating around regarding Sprint's iPhone 4S and its locked/unlocked status, but a Sprint spokesperson has just offered Macworld her official word. The iPhone will indeed be unlocked at first, but a SIM lock will be "pushed to the devices shortly after launch."

Blackberry phones are in the process of getting a rhythm to unlock your phone with. This type of technology would be useful to those who try to unlock their phones, but many people try to watch what password you put in so they can do it as well if they ever take your phone. However, with this rhythm that may come up it will be harder for those to try to pick up on what you are putting on your phone and it will be much more difficult to imitate it. Also, blackberry will be able to sense the touch so you do not have to make it obvious. I think this is more convenient because people won't guess your password as easily if it is a rhythm. 

Whether you're sliding a bar or pulling a puzzle piece across your smartphone screen, you're performing an action owned by Apple. Apple has full ownerhip of that gesture now. Whether you unlock a device using a gesture on a touch-sensitive display, display an icon telling users they have to unlock the device, design the icon to tell users which direction they have to swipe the icon to unlock the device, or provide visual cues for users that can't remember the unlock gesture, Apple owns it.

This article tells us about how riding a bike in the city will soon be easier than ever courtesy of two wheels and AT&T's wireless network for many big cities across the US. The bicycles will have built-in GPS using AT&T's wireless network to make the basic part of public bicycle renting possible-making sure they don't get stolen or abandoned in some unknown place. Also, smartphone users will be able to use an app to locate Social Bicycle racks nearby, as well as reserve bikes and unlock them from racks. Riders will then be capable to bike around the city and return the Social Bicycle at any rack located in the city. You can also rent a bicycle by using the smartphone app to reserve one. The app will automatically send your personalized pin to the rack, which will unlock the bicycle, checking out the bicycle in your name. It also has a cool feature where you can use the app to track stats like calories burned, emissions reduced, and dollars saved. There isn't any information yet on how much the bike rentals will cost. Social Bicycles will hit more cities at the beginning of 2013.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help protect digital rights, but allowed the Librarian of Congress to make exceptions to the act that would otherwise not follow the act. Today (October 28), four new exemptions to the DMCA were put into effect most notably the legalizing of jailbreaking on iPhones but not iPads. The other exemptions to the DMCA are the requirement of disabled people to own multiple devices in order to access e-books, the illegalizing of unlocking a cell phone purchased after January 2013 at a new carrier without permission from your old carrier, and the legalizing of ripping some content of a DVD only for specific purposes. The new exemptions put into effect could have a serious impact on the technology market. The number of e-book reader sold to disabled customers will decrease drastically since they will have to buy other devices so they can legally read e-books. Apple and app developers would also lose a lot of revenue from the App Store since more users will be motivated to jailbreak their iPhones and get pirated apps instead of actually buying apps since they can do so legally. The new exemptions could cause some providers to lose some money though not a significant amount should the provider refuse to unlock cell phones when consumers go to other countries since in the foreign country, consumers will be paying and using service from a local provider instead of their original provider causing them to miss out on some money. Finally, the DMCA exemptions could cause a decrease in DVD sales not just because they are losing popularity already but also because if someone wants to rip a part of a DVD, they can just borrow it from someone else instead of buying and ripping the needed content. I think these new exemptions are very silly and could end up being more harmful than useful. Making disabled customers buy multiple devices just to access e-books is very discouraging to potential e-book reader customers. I also wonder th

When your friends get into your phone and know your password it can get quite annoying. Now Samsung has an app that allows you to open your phone with facial expressions. You can blink a certain amount of times and smile and then it will open. This amazing because there has never been something like this before. It relates to the course because you need the software and app to get this on your phone. I personally like this because it would be fun to unlock your phone with facial expressions. It makes a social impact because then it will be harder to hack your friends phone. Overall, I think this was a great idea Samsung brought up. 

The smartphone wars are taking a turn for the worse. Last week both apple and Samsung companies made patent infringement lawsuits against each other. Apples lawsuit of 2 billion dollars against Samsung is for use of the slide-to-unlock feature, auto word correction, universal search of the phone, and Internet and background syncing of data. While Samsung's 7 million dollar lawsuit against Apple is for the use of remote video transmission and on digital imaging. I believe that apples case is a little childish compared to Samsung's especially with the part about the slide to unlock future. Samsung's case seems to be about more important matters like using its camera and the remote control patents. I personally would like Samsung to win because I prefer their products and customer service over Apple's.

Apple has now patented the very popular "slide to unlock" feature. This makes every android phone ever made infringe it and apple could sue if they wanted to. 

This article explains and acknowledges this week in Google. Google is improving its technology through their web browser, mobile devices, and in their social network. This is good for Google as a industry to attract more consumers to their products and this is really a step in a right direction for them improving and being recognized as one of the elite brands and companies in all fields of technology. I am happy for the success of Google and I hope they can continue to strive and do their best to satisfy their users with more faster and more efficient products delivering a high performance at every use. Also, I hope Google can continue to add and maintain a significant importance to the development and increase of their products throughout our evolving world of technology. 

This article is rather interesting, because it talks about a patent Apple recently filed. The patent, "Sensing capacitance changes of a housing of an electronic device," - it sounds quite confusing, and the article described what it is.  Basically the patent is talking about the ability for our mobile devices to differentiate between how we hold our device, and react to it. For example, to open up our camera app, we have to unlock the phone and select it, but with this new technology we could simply hold our device with our fingers around its perimeter and have the app open up. Another example is turning on the device, instead of pressing a button we could simply squeeze the device slightly and it will turn on. We might also not need to lock our phones or have passwords if they are configured to recognize only our grip and fingertips. One last interesting feature is the ability to wave our hand over the device and reveal a keyboard that would later disappear when you wave your hand again.  It all sounds terribly interesting until you realize that it's only a patent and Apple hasn't even begun building a prototype. Right now it's an idea that I hope can exist in the near-future, so that accessing certain applications would be a lot easier and faster. Also, if the keyboards become tactile with thin, bendable metal plates that may solve a lot of the complaints about typing on most current tablets and smartphones. 

Early in the afternoon today, a clever developer managed to sneak a Game Boy Advance emulator into an innocent looking app named "Awesome Baby Names". The secret emulator is activated by a series of taps on the touchscreen inside of the app. Once it is activated you can play your classic gba games just like you did in 2005. Apple was quick to catch this security breach as it was only in the App Store for twenty something minutes, but in that time many people including myself managed to download the app. This kind of sneaky activity from developers happens very seldom, but when something is smuggled into the App Store, it is usually very important. As stated in the article, it is a very easy process to unlock the emulator from the app, but getting the games and the BIOS onto the iPhone is the hard part. You must first download a program that lets you access the phone's file directory, then you must find the app's directory and drop the relevant BIOS and game files there. I chose the portable computing tag for this article because it deals with mobile technology and exploiting it to run handheld gaming software. This idea is not knew and has been around for a long time, but the idea of hiding the identity of apps and smuggling them into the App Store is a new idea. Apple is updating their security daily, but clearly couldn't spot this "child naming app" and make it out for the emulator that it was. I chose the privacy and security tag because Apple has a high priority for the security of their ecosystem and operating system, but clever people can still find ways to bypass this and get unidentified files into the operating system. I believe that Apple must keep a close eye on how they approve future apps into the app store because one day we may see cydia disguised as a senseless app make its way into the app store. If this happens, Apple with really have some explaining to do!    

Recently, there have been a lot of passcode exploits, especially on the iPhone and Samsun Galaxy. On the iPhone, it can allow the attacker to access their way into the Phone app, letting them place calls, see/edit contacts, and access photos via the "assign new picture" option. On the Samsung Galaxy, the attacker can flash whatever was open before the phone was locked for a second. This is enough time to launch an app, which can be repeatedly downloaded and completely unlock your phone. The article suggests the user of the phone should download the Apple's Find my iPhone app or Prey, which can track the location of your smartphone if it is ever lost or stolen. This, they say is the best protection for your personal information stored on your phone. These passcode exploits can let one worry and doubt how much protection the lock screen actually provides. The truth is they are no more secure than any other password or PIN, which means they can eventually be cracked. However, it is still suggested to always lock your screen, just in case it is robbed by someone who does not know anything about getting around locked screens. Many companies are aware of the issues and is releasing new techniques, like the iOS 6.1.3. Hopefully, with time, these password problems will not be an issue anymore.

You think your iPhone or Android phone is safe from hackers just because of a passcode lock? Well, the Swedish security firm Micro Systemation just developed a cracking program that is called "XRY" that can hack into any, I repeat, any passcode of any mobile device. It works by first jailbreaking the phone to expose security flaws in the OS, then proceeds to brute-force the default four-digit pin, which only has 10,000 possible combinations to begin with. This all happens in under two minutes. Once the device has been unlocked, they can get any information they want- from logs contacts and even DELETED items.

It's a shame that this only works by jailbreaking the phone... This could have been... Useful.

This article is about the iPhone app "Black SMS."This app will enable you to send private messages to your recipient without having to worry about someone else being able to see it.  When you download the Black SMS app, you attach a password to your message and then type whatever you'd like into the app. Once the message is complete, hit Send and the app will automatically open your SMS app. Paste the message and the recipient (and everyone else) will only see a black text bubble. secret and encrypted black text bubble, that is. The person on the receiving end then copies the black bubble and unlocks the message by pasting it into Black SMS with the password. The only downside of this app is you can't encrypt pictures with it.

Admit it, if you have a smartphone, you're probably glued to it. It goes everywhere with you, and you use it all the time, even in school, where it's a big distraction. In South Korea, the most wired country in the world, some schools are remotely disabling students smartphones in school via an app called iSmartKeeper. With the app, teachers can lock all the phones in the school, only allow emergency calls, only allow texts and calls, disable specific apps, and unlock the phone during breaks. The app also uses geofencing that puts the restrictions on the phones when the students enter the school premises. Parents are also provided with a management app that allows these restrictions to be put in place when their teens are doing their homework. In Seoul, the app has been trialed in 11 schools, and the results were mixed. Many students rooted their phones to avoid the restrictions, and the geofencing sometimes didn't leaving the phones to be locked after the students left school. This app is for Android only due to the popularity of local brands like Samsung, however, iOS users should beware, as an iOS version is coming next month.. I think some advantages are it minimizes distractions and encourages students to be more focused on their studies. However, it may anger many students initially. No word yet if the app will be available outside South Korea.

Just when you thought that the Apple-Samsung dispute was long gone, the two rivaling tech companies will once again appear in court next week in Silicon Valley. As usual, they are accusing each other of ripping off designs and features. Apple is accusing Samsung of infringing on 5 patents including Samsung's popular Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Samsung on the other hand is accusing Apple of stealing ideas to use on Apple's iDevices. According to Apple attorneys, Apple "revolutionized the market in personal computing devices, while Samsung "systematically copied Apple's innovative technology and products. Samsung in defense says that it has been a "pioneer in the mobile business sector since the inception of the mobile device industry, and that Apple copied many of Samsung's innovations on Apple's iDevices. Some things Apple claims that Samsung copied are tap to search technology, and "slide to unlock" the latter in my opinion, is not true. However, each smartphone has many patents, but Apple is only challenging 5 of them. personally I think that Apple and Samsung devices are very different. Sure some features may be similar or identical, but that's just to have competition. Although both of them are innovators, I think that Samsung/Google is innovating more nowadays than Apple.

 THIS IS SO ODD?! Facebook says it will soon allow you to get help from your friends when you get locked out of your Facebook account. According to a post on Facebook's official Security page, you'll be able to designate three to five friends as "Trusted Friends" who will be sent special codes in the event that you're locked out of your Facebook account and unable to access your email.