Google Phone
Your Computer Friends found this article we thought you might be interested in:
Google is gearing up for an all-out assault on the mobile-phone market that will include a new, Google-branded handset and the first comprehensive Google phone service with unlimited free calls.
For the first time, a single company will control everything from the software in users’ phones to the services they use to make calls and surf the web.
The Googlephone promises to be one of the most advanced smartphones, with a large touchscreen display and a processor almost twice as fast as the one powering Apple’s iPhone 3GS. It will probably be the first phone to run a new version of Google’s Android software, codenamed Flan, offering high-speed 3-D gaming said to be as good as that of many handheld consoles.
According to Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Northeast Securities, a financial services firm, the Google-branded phone will be built by a third-party supplier, possibly the Taiwanese phone maker HTC, and will incorporate a processor from Qualcomm.
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- Google unveils Chrome OS operating system
- Google’s new chapter with online library
The real breakthrough, however, will come with the marriage of the Googlephone to Google Voice, the Californian company’s high-tech phone service. Google Voice gives US users a free phone number and allows unlimited free calls to any phone in the country — landline or mobile. International calls start from a couple of cents (just over a penny) a minute. Google Voice also uses sophisticated voice recognition to turn voicemails into emails, can block telemarketing calls automatically and offers free text messaging.
Google sounded its intentions two weeks ago when it purchased a small company called Gizmo5, which had developed technology to connect Google Voice with voice-over-internet (Voip) networks such as Skype. Now Google has the means to offer a complete, end-to-end phone service, with which consumers can make and receive calls between the Googlephone and other phones or computers anywhere in the world, and often for nothing.
“We’ve never had this situation, where a single vendor controls the entire stack, from the operating system right up to Google’s cloud services,” says Kumar. “It changes the competitive and bargaining dynamics like never before.”
Google declined to comment on its plans, however.
One victim of the Google juggernaut could be Skype, the internet phone service. Skype software uses a broadband internet connection to offer free voice and video calls to other Skype users, plus cheap calls to landlines worldwide. If Google can succeed in linking its Google Voice service to Skype and other Voip networks, it can lure users with the offer of free long-distance calling and a “real” phone number.
One of Google’s challenges will be to link the phone to mobile networks so that the company’s services can be offered not just over wi-fi-connected broadband, but also over a 3G link to the internet, resulting in a real call-from-anywhere device.
This could prove a problem, though: few phone networks will appreciate being frozen out of lucrative business such as voice calling and text messaging, and being reduced to a simple data pipeline for Google’s services.
Google could also antagonise the networks by selling its mobile phone directly to customers and inviting them to use their existing Sim cards, whatever network they are on. “Google wants the Googlephone to be carrier-agnostic,” Kumar predicts. This could push the price of the handset to well over £500, because the cost of smartphones is heavily subsidised by networks, which recoup the money by locking customers into their services.
The mobile networks aren’t the only enemies Google risks creating. Other phone makers now using the Android operating system, such as Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, might not take kindly to Google keeping the most up-to-date version of its software for itself.
Although the popularity of Android has grown quickly since its launch last year, it is still installed on less than 4% of the smartphones sold, and there are other free operating systems (Symbian, for instance) to which rival phone makers could switch.
Can Google have its Flan and eat it? We may not have too long a wait before finding out, because Kumar and other experts are predicting that the Googlephone will be launched in the US early next year.
Source: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6924233.ece
I love the new Windows7 split screen, how difficult is it to add a second monitor to my desktop computer?
Having two screens is addictive. Today you can add a second monitor to almost any mid level computer for about $250.00; or you can buy the six screen system for about $2,000.00. Adding a second monitor may require an additional video card to handle the output, but it need not be an expensive card. The video card plus two monitors and some software setting changes are really all it takes to be viewing 40” of your favorite information. Now you can enjoy your stocks on one screen while checking email on another. Business owners can compare their spreadsheet budget against their QuickBooks reports. The options are endless.
And, if you need the reverse answer; you can also have that. Simply connect two desktops to one Monitor, Keyboard & Mouse with a KVM switch. This is a great way to switch between two PCs. We use this system at the shop to hook up multiple customer machines.
Virus – ‘POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK
Here is the issue with this – the sole purpose of this scary email is to collect email address that can later be used to SPAM you. So STOP FORWARDING THE EMAIL!
Please!
When you forward emails you should NEVER include all the email address that came on the email to you. DELETE THEM if you must forward jokes, virus warnings and other emails that have been around the world 9 times.
Here is the email:
YOU NEVER KNOW IF THESE ARE TRUE OR NOT SO I WILL FORWARD JUST IN CASE…. (trick to get you to believe)
| HUGE VIRUS COMING ! PLEASE READ & FORWARD !
Hi All, I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS! You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled ‘POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,’regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc C drive of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address on his/her contact list. That is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it! If you receive a mail called’ POSTCARD,’ even if it is sent to you by a friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept. COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. |
N2Publishing’s First Annual Magnolia Greens Fall Festival – 2009
Parade Photo
A good time was had by most at the First Annual Magnoia Greens Fall Festival.
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- Setup started at 7AM (after working until midnight)
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- DJ Professionals have everyone hopping
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- Raising the tents
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- The Magnolia Greens Social Committee blew up 150 Balloons!
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- Don Jewell, DJ Professionals & Video & Don of Set Up Committe
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- Cape Fear Insurance Association
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- Your Cleaning Girl – Horeshoe Toss
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- Brunswick Urgent Care – Duck Toss
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- New Carolina Chiropractic
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- Face Painting courtsey of Vida Salon and Spa
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- Face Painting – enjoyed at any age!
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- Snappy Tire – Rat Soup
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- Rosco – Mascott of Snappy Tire & Auto
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- Kids At Play – Having Fun at the Fall Festival !
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- Magnoloia Greens Fall Festival brought to you by ATMC Wireless & N2Publishing
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- Steve with N2Publishing cooks for 300 Members & Guests
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- ATMC Wireless – Brunswick County’s Wireless Provider
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- ATMC Girls hard at work
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- Adult Beverages provided by Front Street Brewery
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- The Halloween Parade arrives
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- Children of all Ages dressed up for the Parade
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- A great turnout despite the brief rain showers (& downpours)
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- You should have seen her dance!
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- Tooth Fairy & Jasmine
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- Parade Photo
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- Your Computer Friends – Wheel of Chance
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- Your Computer Friends had a popular booth!
BUY LOCAL!
Your Computer Friends attended the kick off meeting of the Buy Local campaign on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. 70 cents of every dollar spent at a local business stays locally, unlike money spent with National Chain stores. Since all that money stays local, it helps keep our local economy healthy and stable in these tough economic times. For more about the Buy Local initiative see this article by Judy Royal of the Star News:
Acer Recall – Aspire Notebooks may overheat.
Acer has voluntarily recalled certain models of their Aspire series. Affected units are models AS3410, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3910TZ and AS3810TZG. In the affected units the microphone cable may overheat when extreme pressure is applied repeatedly to the left palm rest. The case may melt and the unit may malfunciton.
See the attached link to contact Acer about your product:
http://customercare.acer-euro.com/customercare/AcerUpdate.aspx?CID=SG&LID=ENG&IType=JM31
Laptop Skins are in! Check this out!
I've got my eye on you!
Give your Laptop an Original Look that is all YOU! Stop by and check out the available designs. Only $10.00. Makes a great gift idea!
Trojan steals money from Bank Accounts
Your Computer Friends found this interesting article we wanted to share:
Bank Botnet Serves Fake Info to Thwart Researchers
- By Kim Zetter
- October 6, 2009 |
- 12:49 am |
- Categories: Hacks and Cracks
Researchers tracking a gang of online bank thieves found that the criminals have deployed a devious means to thwart law enforcement and anyone else trying to monitor their activities.
The gang behind the URLZone trojan, which siphons money from online bank accounts and then alters a victim’s online bank statement to hide the fraud, have also devised a method to hide the accounts of mules they use to launder the siphoned funds.
Researchers at RSA’s FraudAction Research Labs say the gang was aware that their malware was being tracked by investigators, so they programmed their command and control server to generate non-mule accounts to make it more difficult for law enforcement and fraud investigators to halt laundering through the real accounts.
The URLZone is a Trojan that has been targeting customers of several top German banks. The victims’ computers are infected with the Trojan after visiting compromised legitimate web sites or rogue sites set up by the hackers.
Once a victim is infected, the malware detects when a user is logged into a bank account, then contacts a control center hosted on a machine in Ukraine to initiate a money transfer from the victim’s account, without the victim’s knowledge. The control center tells the Trojan how much money to wire transfer from the victim’s online bank account and which mule account should receive the transfer.
The money gets transferred to the legitimate bank accounts of unsuspecting money mules who’ve been recruited online for work-at-home gigs, never suspecting that the money they’re allowing to flow through their account is being laundered. The mules then transfer the money to the thieves’ chosen account.
Researchers, hoping to extract a list of mule accounts from the command and control center, infected honeypot computers with the URLZone Trojan. But when the computers contacted the command and control center to collect a mule account, the command center fed them “fake” accounts.
The fraudsters developed a series of tests to check infected computers to determine if they’re “legitimate” URLZone-infected machines. For example, every infected computer is assigned a unique identification code by the Trojan. If the ID is not a valid Trojan ID known by the server, the fake computer gets fed one of 400 non-mule accounts. The non-mule accounts are legitimate bank accounts, just not ones the criminals are using to launder money.
“Interestingly, when generating a non-mule account in order to dupe anti-fraud security researchers,” RSA researchers write on their blog, “the Trojan does not display random names and account numbers. Instead, it displays real bank account details that were previously entered by URLZone victims as the payees of legitimate transactions.”
The RSA researchers call this the “most unique attribute” of the botnet, which “speaks to its operators’ caution against having their criminal pipelines compromised.”
Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/urlzone-trojan/
Registry Cleaners – save your money
At first I thought it will speed up my computer after reading their website. Then I paid and registered. Instead it slowered my computer and I can’t connect to the internet either.
Their customer support is the worest I had even seen. They said it is not their fault, and asked me to download and install again and again. But nothing changed.
For about the same amount of money, we can repair your registry in a way that really makes it better.
How to pick a good computer repair company.
Your Computer Friends saw this article and agree with many of the things in it. We have been in business almost 4 years and have an excellent reputation – and, we take credit cards. Check out the article and our online testimonials.
Welcome
Your Computer Friends is located at:
3816 Oleander Drive
Wilmington, NC 28403
Monday – Friday 9-6 Saturday 10 – 2
Mac & PC Repair On-site, Remote Support & Drop off Services available.
2 Blocks from the Independence Mall at 39th Street
We fix all major brands of desktops and laptops & servers. We offer new sales solutions and off-site encrypted backup services along with all levels of data recovery.
Locally owned and operated.
