Transcend Introduces 16GB JetFlash V85

Transcend announced the availability of its new high-capacity USB flash drive — the 16GB JetFlash V85 in India. It has a compact zinc-alloy body and it measures 49.5mm long by 15.8mm wide, and is thin enough (7.4mm) to slide in pockets or tight-fitting stacked USB ports. The drive has up to 16GB of storage space so one can easily transfer, store, and share large number of files.

It comes bundled with Transcend’s handy JetFlash elite software package that includes seven useful tools specifically developed to help manage mobile data more efficiently and increase productivity. These functions include: Website AutoLogin, PC-Lock, Favorites, Secret-Zip, E-mail, DataBackup, and Online Update. The drive supports Windows 98SE/2000/Me/XP/Vista, Mac and Linux, and is now available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

The drive is USB 2.0 compliant, which is also compatible with USB 1.0/1.1 Easy Plug and Play operation and requires no external power or battery. It can be used as a key to lock the computer and compress and password-protect files using powerful 256-bit AES Encryption.

The drive enjoys 3 years warranty and is available for Rs. 4,250. It is available through Supertron Electronics and Mediaman Infotech.

First mobile ransom Trojan

Making money is what today’s malware is all about and the first ransom Trojans for smartphones have been found in China. We have already seen similar Trojans on the PC side before which infect your computer, take your data ‘hostage’ or somehow disrupt your computer’s capabilities, and then offer to restore everything back to normal if you pay out the ransom money. Typically, the ransom Trojan first encrypts your hard drive and then sends you a password after you have sent money to the criminals via an online money transfer system.

In the case of Kiazha, the first smartphone ransom Trojan, you get infected by downloading a shareware lookalike program on your phone, which then drops several known older viruses on your phone. Next it sends a message explaining that you can only get the phone fixed by transferring the equivalent of seven dollars to the attackers through an online payment system. Today’s smartphones are so important to many people that they are prepared to pay a ransom to get back their phonebook, calendar and mobile emails, so we might well be seeing much more of this type of malware in the future.

Million Viruses to Bombard by End of 2008, Predicts F-Secure

The amount of new malware has never been higher. F-Secure labs are receiving an average of 25,000 malware samples every day, seven days a week. If this trend continues, the total number of viruses and Trojans will pass the one million mark by the end of 2008.

While there are more viruses being created than ever before, people often actually report seeing less of them. One reason behind this illusion is that malware authors are once again changing their tactics in how to infect our computers. A year or two ago, most malware was spread via e-mail attachments, which resulted in mass outbreaks like Bagle, Mydoom and Warezov. Nowadays sending .EXE attachments in e-mail doesn’t work so well for the criminals because almost every company and organization is filtering out such risky attachments from their e-mail traffic.

The criminals’ new preferred way of spreading malware is by drive-by downloads on the Web. These attacks often still start with an e-mail spam run but the attachment in the e-mail has been replaced by a web link, which takes you to the malicious Website. So instead of getting infected over SMTP, you get infected over HTTP.

Google Brings Offline Access to Docs and Apps

Google is rolling out a much-awaited feature for its hosted applications: the ability for people to use them even when they aren’t connected to the Internet.

The first application to get this offline access will be the word processor, said Ken Norton, Google Docs product manager. “The design goal is to create a seamless experience, with or without an Internet connection,” he said.

Over the next three weeks or so, Google will turn on the feature for all word processor users, giving them the ability to view and edit documents while offline. During the same time period, Google Docs’ spreadsheet will gain offline ability for viewing, but not editing, documents.

Google Docs’ third component, an application to make slide presentations, will remain for now without offline access. However, Google has plans to extend the offline access to it and to other hosted services in the Google Apps suite, of which Docs is part. Apps also includes Gmail, Calendar, Talk and others.

“Offline access of [hosted] apps is the next step in making the Web as a whole a lot more reliable,” Norton said.

Expectation for offline access in Docs and Apps had been building since Google introduced its Gears open-source technology in May of last year. Until now, Google had only built Gears offline functionality for its Reader RSS feed manager.

By allowing Docs and Apps users to work offline, Google is addressing one of the biggest objections to Web-hosted applications. So far, offline access has required that users export their Docs files to third-party file formats, like Microsoft Office.

Gears is a browser plug-in that can store files and data locally, as well as run JavaScript applications without a server connection. It’s this architecture that will allow Docs users to work on their word processing documents if their Internet connection drops or if they’re somewhere without one, such as an airplane.

To access their Docs files offline, users need only install the Gears plug-in and type in the regular Google Docs URL: docs.google.com.

Work done offline will be automatically synchronized with the Google Docs servers when users connect to the Internet.

As an open-source technology, Gears can be used by developers outside of Google.

The offline access will be turned on “in batches” over the coming weeks in consumer Docs accounts and in the administrator consoles of Apps.

Gears is currently supported in Internet Explorer 6 and above and Firefox 1.5 and above for Windows XP and Vista, according to Google. Firefox 1.5 and above is also supported on Mac OS X 10.2 and above and Linux. Gears also runs on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 and above in Internet Explorer 4.01 and above.

McAfee Launches Global S.P.A.M. Experiment

McAfee today announced the launch of its global S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment.

For 30 days, participants from around the world — ranging from homemakers, government executives, and students to retirees — will surf the Web, make online purchases and register for promotions. Participants have been provided with a clean laptop without spam protection and a new email address.  Beginning today, they will blog about their experiences daily at www.cyber,criminals,mcafeespamexperiment.com.

With a proven link between spam and cybercrime, the experiment aims to show the devastating effects of spam.

Cybercriminals use spam to take control of millions of compromised computers around the world.  Spam emails entice individuals at work and at home to handover sensitive information — and even cash — to criminals.

S.P.A.M. Experiment participants are from ten countries spanning the globe, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Track the daily progress of the S.P.A.M. Experiment and read reports from the participants at  www.mcafeespamexperiment.com.

Sahara Launches an 8 Inch Laptop

Sahara Computers launched its latest entry level 8 inch laptop — Sahara- S- NB522434- EB00 in the Indian market.

This latest model, a new addition to Sahara’s Image Book Series, is an entry level product which comes with lots of features. The company claims it to be one of the smallest notebooks with 60 GB hard drive. The 8 inch LCD TFT display screen is bright and sharp. It weighs about 1.1 kg.

The laptop is a Linux based notebook, focused for entry level users, students and frequent travelers, it comes with AMD Geode LX 800 Processor. It has an extended battery life of respectable 4.5 hrs. It is a Wi-Fi enabled notebook and has a PCMCIA slot, card reader which comes with one year carry-in warranty. It is offered with a leather carry bag.

Sahara- S- NB522434- EB00 is available for Rs. 14,999. It is available in India through Sahara Computers’ authorized channel partners and all ITJ stores.

MSI Unveils N9800GTX Series Graphics Card

MSI unveiled its latest N9800GTX series graphics card. The MSI N9800 GTX series graphics card increases the performance bar by enabling full-throttle life-like game play at intense resolutions while providing optimal power management with HybridPower technology.

The three MSI N9800GTX series graphics cards which run in 3-way nVidia SLI mode on the new nVidia nForce 780i and 790i motherboards enable up to 2.8x performance increase over a single GPU. The PureVideo HD engine features scene-optimized color and contrast enhancement.

With the built-in HybridPower technology, MSI N9800GTX Series lets users switch from GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card to your motherboard GeForce GPU when running less graphically-intensive applications for a silent, low power PC experience.

The N9800GTX-T2D512 is priced at Rs. 23,000.

Yahoo India Intros Maps in Local Languages

Yahoo! India introduced a new service for the first time in India – maps in local Indian languages and walking directions.

The service is available now available in 9 local languages, Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi and can be accessed from Yahoo! India maps.

After recently introducing driving directions, Yahoo! India is also offering the option of walking directions. Users can walk to their destinations with a walking route. These directions can be sent to a mobile phone as an SMS. There is also an option to pan and zoom to any point on the map, save it as an image and share it with others.

If a user is visiting a city for the first time and is aware of one prominent landmark, it is still possible to reach the desired destination by using walking directions. Besides providing key landmarks along the route (ATMs, hospitals, etc.), walking directions also provide clarity on every major turn.

Yahoo! India users can search for directions across 179 cities, 4,767 towns, and 226,114 villages. Users can also search for over 3 million points of interest already marked by Internet users from around the web.

Sony Launches World’s Smallest HD Camcorder

Sony has developed what it says is the world’s smallest high-definition video camcorder. The Sony HDR-TG1 measures 32mm by 119mm by 63mm and weighs 300g.

It’s a tall and thin camcorder with a fold-out display – a design along the same lines as Sanyo’s Xacti line of high-def camcorders, but the Sony camcorder is about two-thirds the volume of Sanyo’s latest full high-def model.

Sony plans to put it on sale in Japan later this month and in the US in May.

One of the secrets of its thinness is the lack of a DV tape desk, hard-disk or optical drive. Instead the TG1 records to a Memory Stick Pro Duo or Pro-HG Duo memory card. The camera lays down AVCHD format video at 1,920 by 1,080 resolution (so-called ‘Full HD’). AVCHD is a high-def format developed by Sony and Panasonic that’s designed to provide some compatibility between camcorders and living room disc players and other entertainment hardware.

In the highest quality ‘FH’ mode, which is full HD resolution at 16Mbps, the supplied 4GB card will be able to store 25 minutes of footage. This lengthens to 55 minutes in HQ mode, which records a 1,440 by 1,080 resolution image at 9Mbps. The SP and LP modes record drop the video bit rate – and thus the quality – to 7Mbps and 5Mbps, respectively and result in 65 minutes and 85 minutes of recording time.

As with other card-based cameras, higher capacity cards mean more recording time.

In addition to video the camcorder can also take 4-megapixel resolution still images. Like some of Sony’s still cameras the TG1 has face detection and can track up to eight people in the shot.

Other features include an optical 10X zoom, 2.7-inch widescreen touch panel LCD monitor and HDMI connector.

It will be available in the US in May and will cost about $900.

MySpace Music to Offer Downloadable Music

News Corp’s MySpace has long been a haven for independent and commercial musicians alike to talk with fans and to spread the word about new music. Now the Web site is starting up a new download service called “MySpace Music” with some of the biggest names in commercial music.

MySpace Music is being launched in partnership with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, and will offer digital music downloads, ad-supported audio and video streaming, a mobile storefront and sponsorship opportunities, according to a statement released by the companies on Thursday. The companies plan to launch MySpace Music’s new features iteratively in the coming months.

Right now, MySpace’s music site serves as a way for artists to connect with listeners and, through an embedded music player, let them preview forthcoming or currently released albums and singles. But when it comes to actually buying content, users are pushed off to digital music download services or links to retailers and e-tailers. With this announcement, MySpace is working with major music publishers to leverage itself as an e-commerce site to complete with the likes of Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon.com’s MP3 Store.

MySpace Music plans to sell music without Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions. Mobile phone users will also be able to listen to and buy music through Jamba, a News Corp-owned service that sells ringtones, wall papers and other contents for cell phones. MySpace Music will also enable artist to sell merchandise like t-shirts and concert tickets.