HTC will stay committed to Android

If you’re worried about what
Google’ s acquisition of
Motorola will be doing to other
Android device manufacturers ,
you won’ t have anything to
worry about – at least not from
HTC. The company’s CEO , Peter
Chou, recently told the Wall
Street Journal that it will be
maintaining its great
relationship with Google, and
has no plans to drop support
for the operating system . He
confirmed that Google ’ s
acquisition of Motorola would
be beneficial to all Android
manufacturers.
Peter Chou also downplayed
rumors about the company
building its own mobile
operating system , instead it be
will focusing its efforts on
improving the experience that
its Android and Windows
Phone mobile devices provide.
HTC has been doing a good job
with Sense (it seems to be the
only custom Android overlay
that people don’ t hate) and its
Android handsets are pretty
popular. Not to mention the
company’s recent decision to
unlock its phones’ bootloaders
really gave it a boost in the
developer community . It looks
like HTC is still 100 % onboard
with Android , and the Motorola
acquisition doesn’ t change
anything.

Halo Fest: 10 Years of halo

Is broadband the gateway drug for the web or the drug itself?

When Google deploys a fiber -to- the -
home network in Kansas City, Kan.
(and later in Kansas City, Missouri )
its success for the project will not be
measured in dollars but in users.
And in promoting this view of
broadband Google shows a keen
understanding of how broadband
has the potential to disrupt
everything — the value isn ’t in
delivering broadband — it’ s in
delivering services over broadband.
That doesn ’t mean that broadband
isn’ t valuable , but it ’ s also not the
highest value — much like electricity
is valuable , but it ’s the air
conditioning or refrigeration that it
enables that people spend more
money on. Which runs somewhat
counter to the argument put forth
by ISPs , especially those keen to
meter broadband — that the value is
in the access itself . Instead of
viewing broadband as a gateway to
the web, and trying to capitalize on
that by offering faster speeds that
people will eventually pay more for
as Verizon is doing with FiOS, many
ISPs view broadband as something
that’s valuable in and of itself – and
as such it might make sense to
charge people by the byte.
Google believes broadband may
be the alpha, but it ’s not the
omega
So when Matt Dunne, manager of
U. S . community affairs for Google ,
spoke at the Greater Kansas City
Chamber of Commerce 2011
Innovation Conference back in July
and explained how Google feels like
it will be successful when people
convince their neighbors to
subscribe to gigabit services and use
the applications that Google and
others develop for gigabit networks ,
he is buying into the idea that
broadband is just one step in the
value chain, rather than the entire
value chain.
Dunne also said Google plans to
make its pricing and offering for
gigabit networks clear this fall with
the network itself coming online in
the first quarter of next year . We
can expect the pricing and offering
to be more consumer than business
oriented, given how Milo Medin ,
who is in charge of the Google Fiber
project , previously scoffed at other
cities ’ gigabit networks, which
charge hundreds of dollars for
access. This also fits with the idea of
broadband as a gateway drug to
other services.
Dunne also made Google ’ s point of
view abundantly clear in how he
answered questions posed by the
community about how they could
work with Google . The bottom line
is they shouldn’ t really want to.
Dunne tried to convey that Google
wants people to develop applications
for this network that Google will
provide, but that in order to do it ,
they don’ t actually need Google . So
most questions about creating
entrepreneur centers and ways for
folks to “ work with Google ” on
creating apps, were met with what
seemed like the bewildered air of
someone who has the Silicon Valley
mentality of entrepreneurship ,
where you just go out and start
something . Dunne was telling the
people in Kansas , that the tools
were there. They just needed to use
them to actually create something
cool.
If broadband is only a small part in
the value chain , how does a
company recoup the costs?
Again, in this view broadband is a
tool, rather than the solution . I’m
curious how Google ’s model plays
itself out in terms of building and
sustaining a broadband network . If
it can build out the network and sell
access while making money on that
access, it could change the economic
model for providing broadband. If it
manages to build the network and
capitalize on it to sell Google
services and ads to subsidize the
networks, that’s less revolutionary,
but it does offer a competing option
for broadband in both Kansas Cities.
It also provides another economic
model for broadband build out .
One of the best analogies for these
differing views on broadband comes
from the hardware industry.
Hardware vendors often confuse
their boxes with the value, when in
today’s connected world it’ s the
services that matter . Look at how
the Kindle platform has evolved .
This isn ’t a hardware business for
Amazon, so much as it ’ s providing a
service . Can broadband providers
evolve to deliver services their
consumers will pay for in a
competitive environment ? Some like
Verizon, or Comcast are trying with
new services offerings. However, for
every step forward it seems like ISPs
take another step back when they
block competing services or
introduced tiered plans or caps .
But in this conversation with Kansas
City economic leaders Dunne offers a
bit of hope for those almost 1 ,100
other cities who tried for Google ’s
gigabit network and didn ’t get it .
He said Google was in “ active
conversations with other
communities right now ,” to bring
fiber to their areas. However, he
promised the leaders of KC that
because they were the first, they
can expect exclusive access to
Google fiber at least through the
“first couple of quarters of next
year” before a next area is started.
Let’ s see how much change Google
can bring.

LG Optimus Sol official with Ultra AMOLED , 30% longer life

LG Optimus Sol focuses on battery
life
LG late Sunday confirmed the
Optimus Sol . The Android 2. 3
smartphone emphasizes its outdoor
credentials with what it calls an Ultra
AMOLED display . Somewhat like
Samsung ' s Super AMOLED , the 3. 8-
inch screen is twice as reflective of its
light and is much more visible outside
than usual AMOLED, which tends to
wash out in sunlight.
Encouraging the use outdoors is a
new power control system that LG
estimates gets about 20 to 30 percent
more battery life than its earlier
smartphones when all other factors
are equal. As insurance, the phone
has an uncommonly large 1, 500 mAh
battery .
Inside , the phone is on the less
expensive side of the mid- range and
still uses a single- core, second -
generation 1GHz Snapdragon
processor , 512 MB of RAM, and a rear
five - megapixel camera with autofocus ,
but no flash . LG skins the phone with
its usual interface layer and supplies a
2 GB microSD card to get started .
Europeans get the Optimus Sol first, in
mid- September . Central and South
America get it next. The current
version doesn't support North
American 3G bands, although LG is
known to sometimes adapt its phones
later .

Mozilla Brings The Sign In Button To The Browser Level

If you’re on a website that uses
accounts , the sign in button can be
anywhere . Sure , there are some
common best practices , but I can
think of dozens of sites that put them
all over the place . Mozilla is looking to
fix that, by bringing the sign in to the
browser level .
A new experimental extension that
Mozilla has released for Firefox does
exactly this . When it ’s installed , you’ ll
see a new “ Sign In ” button just to the
left of the URL box. Clicking this , pops
open a window that prompts you for
a username and password for the site
you’ re on . It then shows you when
you’ re signed into a site , and gives you
one -click ability to sign out . Easy .
Simple . Nice.
Of course , the site you’re on has to
support this functionality . But Mozilla
has made it easy to do so, as they
outline in their post on the subject .
And the best part is that this can be
used with any type of log in — it can
be a broad one like OpenID , or
specific ones like a blog or even
Facebook , Twitter , etc — again , if
those sites were to implement
something like this .
One important note:
It ’s worth noting that this feature
doesn ’t communicate with any server-
side components , and doesn’t
capture, store or transfer any
personal information . The button is
semantically the same as clicking “ sign
in” on a page : it just tells the page you
want to sign in ( or sign out ) right now .
Essentially , Mozilla is just creating a
common place for the sign in button
to reside within the browser chrome
itself . Though they also note that it will
support cookies if the site turns that
functionality on as well.
While this is open for any site /service
to use , it is also an extension of
another Mozilla project : BrowserID. As
they announced here last month,
their idea for this new web
identification system is similar to
something like OpenID, which has
never quite caught on (Mozilla also
says it ’s more secure and seamless) .
Mozilla is trying to re -think
identification on the web from a high
level .
Beyond BrowserID (which is an open
technology anyway), Mozilla doesn’t
have any real skin in this game . But
some of their competitors could. For
example , Google is in the process of
implementing a signed in
experience for their Chrome
browser . This already works with
Sync , but Google is working on
profiles for Chrome as well. Being
signed in on the browser level also
allows you to be signed in to Google
sites , which is key for something like
Chrome OS .
Meanwhile , Facebook has been
working with RockMelt on a
Facebook signed- in experience for
that browser (which, coincidentally is
also based on Chromium ).
And on a broader level , both Google
and Facebook have been thinking
about this always -signed -in
experience quite a bit. This is
especially important in mobile, where
it can be more annoying to type in
usernames and passwords over and
over again . This, along with the focus
on being a central identity for the web
has led to projects like Facebook’s
Single Sign On .
So while Mozilla may have mostly
noble intentions here, I still suspect
we ’re going to see more along these
lines from their competitors that aren ’t
quite as noble. That’s not to say
they ’re meant to be evil , just done for
more selfish reasons . Google already
has their browser. I’d bet that
Facebook will have one sooner or
later . This could help Mozilla , as they
could end up as the truly open
alternative .

AntiSec hackers post stolen police data as revenge for arrests

AntiSec released data on U.S. law enforcement officers in retaliation for arrests related to hacking attacks.

(Credit: AntiSec)

LAS VEGAS--In retaliation for arrests, the AntiSec hackers say they've released their "largest cache yet" of data stolen from law enforcement agencies in the U.S., including personal information, private e-mails, passwords, training files, data from informants, Social Security Numbers, and stolen credit card information from an online sheriff's store.

The news of the latest attacks comes on the second day of the DefCon hacker conference here, where attendees have been playing a digital hacker version of "Where's Waldo" to try to spot one of the more notorious hackers associated with the group, who goes by the handle "Sabu." Using the Twitter profile @AnonymouSabu, the hacker has been taunting others who are trying to unmask him and teasing about showing up at the conference.

The data dump, dubbed "Shooting Sheriffs Saturday Release," was done to "embarrass, discredit and incriminate police officers across the U.S.," the group said in a statement on Pastebin that estimated that there was more than 10GB of data. A sampling of the domains listed as defaced or otherwise attacked were inaccessible this morning.

A Twitter profile belonging to the hackers also said that the Web site of Italy's largest police association had been attacked. The hackers said the U.S. attack was done in response to the arrest 10 days ago of one of their associates, whose hacker handle is "Topiary."

"We are doing this in solidarity with Topiary and the Anonymous PayPal LOIC defendants as well as all other political prisoners who are facing the gun of the crooked court system...," the hackers said in the statement. "You may bust a few of us, but we greatly outnumber you, and you can never stop us from continuing to destroy your systems and leak your data."

Government and law enforcement agencies have been prime targets for the hackers. "We hope that not only will dropping this info demonstrate the inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement using their own words, as well as result in possibly humiliation, firings, and possible charges against several officers, but that it will also disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorize communities," the statement said.

"We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information," the hackers said. "For too long they have been using and abusing our personal information, spying on us, arresting us, beating us, and thinking that they can get away with oppressing us in secrecy."

The initial compromise was done about two weeks ago on Mountain Home, Arkansas-based Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, which hosts sheriff association sites. Someone who answered the phone for Brooks-Jeffrey this morning said he would ask a representative for comment.

The hackers say they were easily able to get back into the compromised servers after they were taken offline and then put back online by the law enforcement agencies.

"It took less than 24 hours to root BJM's server and copy all their data to our private servers. Soon after, their servers were taken down and a news article came out suggesting they received advance FBI 'credible threat' notice of a 'hacking plot,'" the statement says.

"We were surprised and delighted to see that not only did they relaunch a few sites less than a week later, but that their 'bigger, faster server that offers more security' carried over our backdoors from their original box. This time we were not going to hesitate to pull the trigger: in less than an hour we rooted their new server and defaced all 70+ domains while their root user was still logged in and active."

The hackers used the stolen credit card details to make donations to the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Bradley Manning Support Network, according to the statement. The hackers are strong supporters of whistle-blower site WikiLeaks and Manning, the Army soldier arrested last year for leaking classified data to the site.

Some of the data stolen during the attack, involving Missouri sheriffs, was released a few days ago.

The hackers have been on a rampage for months (see list of recent attacks), and arrests of suspected members of their operations haven't stopped their activities. Ten days ago Scotland Yard arrested a 19-year-old who it identified as Topiary, a key member of the LulzSec hacking group. That arrest came on the heels of arrests of 16 people in the U.S., four in the Netherlands, and a 16-year-old in London as part of a global investigation into denial-of-service attacks on PayPal late last year in support of WikiLeaks, and other attacks.

Happy 20th birthday, World Wide Web!

An illustration from Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal for an organizational system using hyperlinks and a computer network--a system then referred to as the Mesh. The proposal preceded the Web's public debut by a couple of years.

(Credit: W3C)

On August 6, 1991--20 years ago--Tim Berners-Lee posted a summary of a project for organizing information on a computer network using a "web" of hyperlinks: the "WorldWideWeb," or W3. At the same time, the W3 made its debut as a publicly available service on the Internet. Now, as the Web turns 20, those of us here at CNET and sister site CBS News.com are giving it a big thank you for revolutionizing the world as we know it.

There have been some definite downsides to the Web, such as online predation and a reduction in privacy, but the good has far outweighed the bad. Web companies have created millions of jobs across the globe, opened people up to different cultures and ideas, and created a level of transparency in politics that's never quite been achieved before.

Through social, economic, and political actions online, the world has become entirely different than it was two decades ago. News travels faster than ever; every single person with access to the Internet has a voice to vent frustration or foster a following; and social interactions have become more varied and far-reaching.

The Web has changed the way people think and revolutionized the world as we know it in a remarkably short period of time. From clunky modems to smartphones, Web-based technology has come a long way. The only question is how far will it continue to evolve in the next 20 years?

Here's a slideshow of our favorite things to come out of the "W3.