Apple’s New iPhone 5

Apple’s new smartphone is unleashed. Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, at a press event in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Wednesday. Apple has made significant changes to the iPhone 5, which Apple is quite proud of. “We’ve updated every aspect of iPhone 5,” Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said at the event. The device goes on sale September 21 and here are some of the major changes from previous versions.

iPhone 5 provides a larger, 4-inch screen while utilizing a longer body, which also will provide another row of apps (because you can never have enough apps). This will also mean all apps will need to be updated to take advantage of the larger screen size, those apps that are built for the oler versions will still work, but will have black borders in the extra space.

The iPhone 5 is thinner and lighter than older versions. The body is built entirely of glass and aluminum, and measures 7.6 mm thick and weighs 112 grams. The iPhone 5’s screen delivers a 326 PPI, 1136×640-pixel Retina display and provides a considerably sharper display than the previous apple phones. The iPhone 5 also features Apple’s latest processor, the A6 chip. The processor is two times faster than the A5 chip and is considerably smaller. That means better graphics performance in addition to iOS improvements and better gaming. Battery life is designed to last just as long even with the improved performance. Apple says that you should be able to get eight hours of talk time, eight hours browsing and 10 hours of video playback with the iPhone 5.

The new iPhone 5 still uses the 8-megapixel sensor, but it is signifintly smaller than the camera in the iPhone 4S. There are also some great improvements, including a dynamic low-light mode, a better image-sensor processor, spatial noise reduction and a smart filter that can recognize where uniform color and texture should be within a shot. Despite the improvements, Apple claims the camera is 40 percent faster at taking photos.

Apple is now using three microphones to improve voice recognition and noise reduction. Apple also improved the iPhone 5’s speaker. The iPhone 5 will come with new Apple EarPods that the company claims are more durable, have a more natural fit, and boast impressive acoustic quality.

One of the more frustrating change will probably be the elimination of the 30-pin dock connector. The iPhone 5 has a smaller, 8-pin dock connector, which Apple has named Lightning. Apple’s belief is that the world is relying more on wireless than hard connections. Apple has worked with several manufacturers to create compatible accessories, but for those who do want to stick with their old accessories, Apple has made an adapter plug.

In the U.S., the phone will be offered via AT&T, Verizon and Sprint on Sept. 21. The iPhone 5 will come in three storage sizes: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, and will cost $200, $300, and $400, respectively, with a two-year contract. For those who want Apple’s latest creation in their hands on launch day, you can start pre-ordering the phone a week in advance, starting on Sept. 14.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Marketing & Blogs

One of the challenges I have had to face with E-Marketing is how to build a message that people want to read. We know that the length of the message should be limited and the images should be catchy but is the reader really getting anything out of the message itself?

One of the methods I have found to be successful is using a blog in conjunction with E-Marketing. Based on personal experience I saw a substantial increase in the number of page views on the blog after launching an E-Marketing campaign that pointed the reader to the blog. In my research, I found that most people view a blog as informational, whereas the corporate web site is viewed to sell you something. People tend to let their guard down a little bit as they see the blog as informational; and less of a sales pitch.

This allows you to accomplish your first objective, get the reader to execute the call to action. If the call to action is to have them view the blog and read the article and learn more about the company then this becomes a great tandem to be successful.

Of course the real objective is not accomplished unless you can convert the reader into a sales prospect. So the Blog needs to have carefully placed touch points to promote your products. The E-Marketing to the Blog will increase brand awareness but it does not guarantee that the reader will take the next call to action.

So how you do go about this? First do not try to write blog articles that are entirely about your product, company or any other hard sales approach. The articles should be relevant to your industry so that the right audience can take away valuable information if they read the blog. You should have a soft pitch at the end of the article and you should have carefully orchestrated ads on the Blog (just like they would see if you had Google ads on the site).

The key here is to remember that people buy because they have a need; the need is different for each company in both requirements and timing. If you can build a readership base of your blog with valuable information that keeps readers coming back on their own, the end result will be that the prospect will contact you when his need becomes strong enough to make your product a top priority. Acquire enough readers and you will have a steady stream of hot prospects!

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Can The Internet Be Silenced?

Worldwide, suppression of free speech is growing and nowhere is that trend more evident than on the World Wide Web. The man who created the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, felt compelled to mention this trend while unveiling the newest report on how governments manage the online lives of their constituents. The bottom line, Berners-Lee said, is that there is no kill switch for Internet freedom.

There is no off switch for the Internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who's widely acknowledged as the father of the Web, said in London when launching the World Wide Web Index report for 2012.

Growing suppression of free speech, both online and offline, is the major challenge to the Web's future, Berners-Lee stated. Countries in the Middle East as well as China, have continually attempted to suppress free speech, but information seems to find ways to get in and out of these countries.

Even the United States has attempted to insert an Internet kill switch, but this was dropped after strong opposition from a wide spectrum of society here, including consumer advocates and privacy groups. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who pushed for the kill switch provision to be included in the Protecting Cybersecurity as a National Asset Act, said in a TV interview that the US government should follow the lead of China in this area.

Several Western democracies that scored high on the Web Index either monitor citizens' access to the Internet or restrict it in some way. They include the UK and Australia, which scored 93.83 and 88.44 on the index, respectively. The US scored 97. The Index assesses the use, utility and impact of the Web around the world. It looked at 61 countries With Sweden ranking number one followed by the US and the UK. respectively.

Ultimately, the web provides access to content and information that just cannot be stopped, as long as there are social sites, information will continue to permeate throughout the world. In the end we as the people control the flow of content, there has been a substantial shift in the power of information as the web has been adopted by more countries and despite certain governments best efforts, there is just no way to silence our voices.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Java 7 Patch Contains Critical Vulnerability

According to security researchers from Security Explorations, the Java 7 security update released Thursday contains a vulnerability that can be exploited to escape the Java sandbox and execute arbitrary code on the underlying system.

Security Explorations sent a report about the vulnerability to Oracle on Friday together with a proof-of-concept exploit, Adam Gowdiak, the security company's founder and CEO said Friday via email. The company doesn't plan to release any technical details about the vulnerability publicly until Oracle addresses it, Gowdiak said.

According to Gowdiak, Security Explorations privately reported 29 vulnerabilities in Java 7 to Oracle back in April, including the two that are now actively exploited by attackers.  The new vulnerability discovered by Security Explorations in Java 7 Update 7 can be combined with some of the vulnerabilities left unpatched by Oracle to achieve a full JVM sandbox bypass again.

"Once we found that our complete Java sandbox bypass codes stopped working after the update was applied, we looked again at POC codes and started to think about the possible ways of how to fully break the latest Java update again," Gowdiak said. "A new idea came, it was verified and it turned out that this was it."

Based on the experience of Security Explorations researchers with hunting for Java vulnerabilities so far, Java 6 has better security than Java 7. "Java 7 was surprisingly much easier for us to break," Gowdiak said. "For Java 6, we didn't manage to achieve a full sandbox compromise, except for the issue discovered in Apple Quicktime for Java software."

The most recent security problems with Java are far from unique. Security firm Sophos, for example, blames underlying Java vulnerability for attacks by the Flashback malware last April that infected one out of five Macs.

The risks do not outweigh the rewards, security expert Dominique Karg, the founder and chief hacking officer of AlienVault, a security software company said. “I'd say 90 percent of users don't need Java anymore, I consider myself a ‘power user’ and the last and only time I realized I had Java installed on my Mac was when I had to update it.”

Most security researchers have said it before: If you don't need Java, uninstall it from your system. 

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Was The FBI Hacked?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is claiming that a statement made by members of AntiSec this weekend that they hacked the laptop of an FBI special agent and acquired a file containing 12 million Apple device IDs and associated personal information is completely false. The FBI also claims that is does not or ever did possess a file containing the data the hackers claim they stole.

In a statement released on Tuesday September 4th, the FBI said, “The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

However, this weekend, the hacker group AntiSec released an encrypted file that contained 1 million of the 12 million Apple device IDs and device names that the group said was obtained from an FBI computer they hacked. The hackers claim the original file contained 12 million IDs, including personal information, but they chose to releas only 1 million (minus the personal data) in an encrypted file and published it on torrent sites.

The hackers state in their post that they released the Apple UDIDs so that people would know that the FBI may be tracking their devices and also because, “we think it’s the right moment to release this knowing that Apple is looking for alternatives for those UDID currently … but well, in this case it’s too late for those concerned owners on the list.” Apple has been called out numerous times for hard-coding the IDs in devices, since they can be misused by application developers and others to identify a user, when combined with other personal information, and track them. Last April, Apple began rejecting applications that track their UDIDs.

In case you are concerned that your UDID has been leaked, the Next Web has developed a tool for users to check if their Apple UDID is among those that the hackers released over the weekend. For years I have had to listen to MAC users tell me how they do not get viruses and that the PC is a bad knock off of Apple's design, and I am not totally in disagreement here, but all technology has design flaws and given time and desire, someone will find a way to exploit it. This once again comes down to how the company will react and modify their behavior to protect consumes and enterprises.

While we may see this issue as being exclusively related to the consumer who buys the Apple product, more and more enterprises are permitting employees to their bring your own devices to use at the company, this equipment will find its way on to the enterprise network and can potentially compromise corporate data.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Malware Attacks Explode In 2012

According to The third edition of the FireEye Advanced Threat Report, “Compared to the second half of 2011, the number of infections per company rose by 225% in the first half of 2012. If you compare the first six months of 2011 with the first six months of 2012, the increase seen is even larger at 392%.”

The following is a summary of the key findings that the report found:

• Organizations are seeing a massive increase in advanced malware that is bypassing their traditional security defenses.

• The patterns of attack volumes vary substantially among different industries, with organizations in healthcare and energy/utilities seeing particularly high growth rates.

• The dangers posed by email-based attacks are growing ever more severe, with both link- and attachment-based malware presenting significant risks.

• In their efforts to evade traditional security defenses, cybercriminals are increasingly employing limited-use domains in their spear phishing emails.

• The variety of malicious email attachments is growing more diverse, with an increasing range of files evading traditional security defenses.

The reality is that hackers are becoming more innovative than the intrusion software consumers and enterprises run to protect themselves. To make matters worse the anti-virus software has become almost as intrusive as the viruses. I have one Laptop that is less than two years old running Windows 8 (with no issues) and Norton Anti-Virus provided by Comcast. I had to shut off the E-mail Anti-Virus module because it was literally bringing the machine to a crawl.

If the protection software becomes too over bearing, it will kill productivity, so ideally the threat protection should occur prior to the mail infrastructure, but this will mean new appliances and new methods to detect an ever changing hacking model.

The report found that hackers have increased the number of "throwaway" domains used in phishing E-mails in order to evade technologies that rely on domain reputation analysis and URL blacklists. The number of domains used fewer than ten times rose 45 percent from the second half of 2011. "The domains are so infrequently used that they fly under the radar of URL blacklists and reputation analysis and remain largely ignored and unknown," the report says. For those readers looking for more information on phishing attacks, check out PCWorld’s article 4 Security Tips Spurred by Recent Phishing Attacks on Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

The bottom line is that phishing attacks have become part of the Internet culture, playing it safe is and questioning anything that seems too good to be true or does not make sense is a great way to stay ahead of the hackers.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.