Firefox Silent Updates are a Security Risk?

As a way to speed up the process of updating Firefox, Mozilla engineers are mulling over a silent update feature, which one security expert argues is a bad idea. Currently, when Firefox detects an available update, it lets you know and if you agree to install it, the browser launches its updater program. That program downloads the update, applies it to Firefox, and restarts the browser. While all that is happening, you're twiddling your thumbs watching a progress bar on your computer screen. To skirt the lag time in the current updating process, the Firefox team is considering a "silent" alternative. Instead of performing an update in the foreground, updates would be downloaded in the background and installed on a copy of the browser in a new directory. The first time that you launch Firefox after an update has been completed, your old version of Firefox is swapped out for the new version. "While many IT security systems will have to be reconfigured to allow background updates to Firefox--which is not a good thing in the first place--there is danger that hackers could subvert the update system to allow them back-door access to the users' computer." Silent updating may be more convenient to consumers, the security expert noted, but it will also invite hacker exploitation of the process.

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Sony Tablet S Now Available in India

The Sony Tablet S is the first tablet by Sony to release in India. The company made an announcement about this tablet in August. The tablet houses a dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 NVIDIA Tegra2 processor and runs Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). The 9.4-inch capacitive touchscreen has a resolution of 1280x800. For your connectivity needs you have 3G, EDGE/GPRS and Wi-Fi with DLNA support. The rear camera is a 5MP AF with 720p video recording capabilities. It has 16GB internal memory and supports microSD cards up to 32GB. The other USP's include a universal IR remote that allows you to control your TV, Blu-ray disk player, etc. and you can play original PlayStation games. Sony's online services such as Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited are also present. Sony has only released the 16GB Wi-Fi version of tablet S and it is priced at Rs. 29,990.

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3G roaming services to halt soon?

The Department of Telecom (DoT) plans to ask mobile phone companies to terminate 3G-roaming agreements, a move that will prevent telcos from providing high-speed data facilities on a pan-India basis and deprive customers from accessing them in areas where their operators don't have permits. Operators such as Bharti, Idea, Vodafone and Aircel have signed up 3G customers across the country riding on bilateral roaming agreements that allow these firms to use each other's airwaves and offer high-end data services even in regions where they do not have third-generation spectrum. This has resulted in, for instance, a Bharti customer in Kolkata being able to access 3G services even though the company does not have a licence for West Bengal. This is different from 2G roaming agreements where a telco cannot offer services in a region for it does not hold a licence. While telcos say the licensing terms allow for 3G roaming pacts, sector regulator TRAI and the DoT say these alliances violate licence rules. A senior DoT official said his department planned to issue notices terminating these agreements after getting the law ministry's clearance. This will restrict Bharti, Vodafone, Idea and Aircel to providing 3G services such as high-speed internet, video calls and interactive gaming in only those circles where they won airwaves in last year's auctions. But the ban will not impact Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications and S Tel as they have not entered into roaming pacts. But the proposed ban will not impact customers who are travelling outside their home networks. They will continue to enjoy 3G services as the ban will apply to 'intra-circle' roaming deals and not 'inter-circle' pacts. At present, India has 10-12 million 3G subscribers but it is not known how many of them are using these services through the roaming pacts.

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Nokia Lumia Phones Launched in India

Nokia has announced the launch of its top end Lumia 800 and budget oriented Lumia 710 phones. These devices are Nokia's first Windows Phone powered devices, and will be available in India by mid-December. The Finnish Mobile giant has not yet announced the pricing for both these devices. Both the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 devices run on a 1.4-GHz processor. Also both phones also support HD video playback. The Nokia Lumia 800 comes in a uni-body design, sports a 3.7-inch AMOLED display and weighs around 142 g. It will also have 512 MB of RAM, 16GB of internal user memory, and will feature an 8 MP camera with 28 mm wide angle lens. The Nokia Lumia 710, while featuring the same processor as its costlier cousin, the Lumia 800, has a plastic construction. It also features a WVGA LCD display, a 5 MP camera, 8 GB of internal user memory and weighs around 125.5 g. Nokia has bundled apps such as Nokia Drive, Nokia Music, into both the devices. It remains to be seen how well these Windows phone powered devices will do in a smartphone market that is pretty much dominated by Apple and Google.

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Airtel, Tata Communications to pay Rs 50 cr penalty

The Telecom Ministry is understood to have imposed a penalty of Rs 50 crore each on Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications for providing international private lease circuits to foreign company SingTel in violation of ILD licence terms and conditions. Department of Telecom (DoT) said notices in this regard have been sent to respective companies for violating the terms and conditions of International Long Distance (ILD) licence.

This is in contrast with the Ministry's earlier stance. DoT had pulled up SingTel for violating ILD licence norms by acquiring and billing customers in India without a licence between 2005 and 2009, and had given a clean chit to Bharti Airtel and Tatas which had provided international private lease circuits to the foreign firm.

As per the licensing norms, Indian ILD operators are authorised to provide Indian circuits to a foreign carrier so that they are able to provide end-to-end services to their customers in their territories. The committee found, from submissions made Bharti, that the company had raised the invoice to SingTel at its Singapore address for the portion of circuit provided by Bharti Airtel. Airtel paid the applicable licence fee on the revenue earned by providing the Indian half circuit. While Tata Communications Ltd (erstwhile VSNL) had said in its reply that SingTel has not submitted any document showing that the customer was acquired outside India and Tatas have not felt any need to check this because as per the agreement, SingTel can acquire customers only in its own licenced territory and not in India. Tatas have, however, taken immediate corrective steps and took confirmation from all foreign carriers that they are neither contracting nor billing the customers in India under such agreements.

The committee had also observed that Tatas too have paid the licence fee on revenues earned by them for providing half leased circuits to Singapore Telecommunications Limited and observed that the Tata Communications Ltd is not liable to pay any penalty in response to the show cause notice issued by the DoT.

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Mozilla Developers To Test New Phone OS This Year

Mozilla developers hope to start testing phones running its new mobile operating system this quarter, with product demos slated for the first quarter next year and "productization" set for before June 2012, according to a road map on the project's website. In July, Mozilla announced the project called Boot to Gecko (B2G), describing it as an operating system for mobile devices that would run applications primarily on the Web. Developers hope B2G will help solve a problem that has long plagued the mobile industry: Developers must rewrite apps for each operating system. The goal of B2G is to create a framework that would let applications run from the Web on any operating system, provided the OS supports B2G's technology. By the end of this year, the developers hope to have basic functions built and integrated including the accelerometer, camera, messaging, telephony and power management, according to the road map recently posted on the site. Mozilla also hopes to have developed the user interface for the phone, which it calls Gaia. Mockups of the UI indicate that it looks relatively similar to the iPhone and Android interfaces. During the first quarter of 2012 the developers hope to have more sophisticated apps and functions ready, such as an app store. They say it's a stretch but they might complete the Bluetooth, USB and NFC functions by then. They are also working on an e-book reader, media player and Web browser. Mozilla didn't respond to questions regarding additional details of progress and declined a request to interview the lead developer of the project. Three Mozilla developers are working on the project part time, according to the website, and others are also voluntarily contributing. B2G is using pieces of Android, the operating system based on Linux and developed by Google. Mozilla has worked on a number of mobile projects in the past that have gained little traction. As far back as 2004 it started building a mobile browser called Minimo, which at one point attracted investment from Nokia, but the project fizzled. It then began work on a browser called Fennec, which it released last year for Android and is now available for iPhone. It's not clear how many people use the browser, since most smartphone operating systems now come with their own browsers.

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HP Announces Slate 2 Windows 7 Tablet

Hewlett-Packard announced the new Slate 2 tablet with the Windows 7 OS. The Slate 2 tablet has an 8.9-inch capacitive touch display and is an update to the company's first tablet, the Slate 500, which was released last year. Targeted at businesses, the Slate 2 includes faster hardware including Intel's Atom Z670 processor. HP was able to drop the tablet's starting price to USD699 (Rs. 34,600 approx.) by making a configuration available with just 32GB storage. That version also includes Wi-Fi and Windows 7 Home Premium. The Slate 2 will become available worldwide in November. This is the first tablet announced by HP after the company said it would keep its Personal Systems Group, which deals in smartphones, tablets and PCs. HP was offering the Slate 500 tablet when it said it would sell or spin off PSG, and subsequently killed the TouchPad tablets and Palm smartphones with WebOS. The Slate 2 also has security and management features so system administrators can remotely manage the device. Data on the tablet can be remotely wiped in case of theft, and HP is bundling Absolute Software's Computrace Pro, which helps track lost tablets. The tablet's chip also includes Trusted Platform Management, a hardware-based cryptography and authentication technology. Also offered is a tool for system administrators to deploy a standardized software image across hundreds of tablets. The tablet has Intel's latest mobile processor, the single-core Atom Z670, which runs at a clock speed of 1.5GHz. The Z670 has accelerators to decode 1080p video, and Intel has said the chip can work with Android 3.0, which is code-named Honeycomb. HP declined to say if the tablet would be offered with Android 3.0. HP will compete with Dell, which last week announced the Windows 7-based Latitude ST tablet, and Cisco, which offers the Android-based Cius tablet. Apple's iPad is the top enterprise tablet today, and is being used to access email, calendars, the Web and corporate documents.

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Opera Mini 6.5 and Mobile 11.5 launched

The next major release of the Opera browser for mobile devices is out. The Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 browser were released to the public, yesterday. The browser was launched for the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian and Symbian S60 devices. The new browser allows users to keep track of the data consumption and expenses. Opera claims that the new browser will allow users to save up to 90 percent of their data charges. The feature is accessible from under the Help menu, where users can see their temporary data usage and the overall data usage. The interface also allows for easy adding of favorite sites to your bookmarks and Speed Dial list. The key difference between the browsers is that the Turbo compression is always turned on in the Opera Mini browser and users have the option to turn it off in Opera Mobile. The browsers are free for download at http://m.opera.com. In the case of iOS and Android devices, you can find the apps in their respective app market sections.

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