MeroPalo

In the annual report Pentagon presents to Congress, it has again accused China of hacking the establishments of the United States in an attempt to gain industrial and defense secrets.

According to the report, China strives to build up its technology base by borrowing tech of the United States. Moreover, China seems to be trying to understand how the American government feels about it internally. This is hardly surprising taking into account the hundreds of billions of dollars the United States owes to China. Maybe they just want to make sure the US isn’t a deadbeat who will skip town and stick Canada with the bill.

Despite the fact that the United States has previously accused China of hacking, this is the first time the Pentagon has made such a direct allegation. Its report claims that the country is using its computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the America’s diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors which support the national defense programs of the country.

In the meantime, media reports point out that despite defense contractors top the Pentagon’s list of concerns, China tends hacking tech firms and media like the New York Times.

By:
SaM

It seems that Apple’s attempts to take control of its accessories market by switching from a 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector have failed. As you know, Apple hacked off a lot of its accessory partners after revealing that iPhone 5 wouldn’t have the 30 pin connector. In other words, if users upgraded they would have to spend money on new accessories. Of course, consumers were not so happy to hear that.

After the hardware giant announced this news, industry experts suggested that the change would cause problems for Apple, and now they have been vindicated. The warnings were that the peripheral market’s commitment to the device’s 30-pin connector was a huge competitive advantage for the manufacturer, because being the single device able to attach directly to external speakers, clocks, stands and chargers added an extra helping of utility for its devices.

However, today Apple’s aggressive shift to Lightning for its devices chased a lot of manufacturers to find more open means of connecting devices. This normally means choosing phone produced by Apple’s rivals.

For example, Logitech and Geneva Lab don’t use Apple connectors in their devices any longer. Instead, they are more interested in Bluetooth, and so iHome does – one of the largest manufacturers of iPhone clock radios and other Apple audio accessories. iHome also introduced more Bluetooth technology, because it allows electronic accessories to easily connect to a lot of different devices.

Apple didn’t give a sign it is bothered, at least officially. Its representatives pointed out that Bluetooth devices would connect to iOS just as easily as to Android devices, for instance. The suggestions are that this move was a spectacular own goal – the matter is that Apple had an iron grip on the digital accessories market and today it is starting to slip. Indeed, you can see how the industry is moving to wireless connectors anyway, so Apple devices have the technology to benefit from that. However, the matter is that until now the company dominated hard-wired connections, while Wi-Fi isn’t an area where it has complete control. Although Apple could have easily milked the market until everyone switched to Wi-Fi, it just forced the industry to change.

By:
SaM

The software giant has completed the transition from Hotmail to the new Outlook.com. As a result, the latter now boasts over 400 million accounts overall. The representatives of the company point out that the new Outlook email application has a number of different features from Hotmail. For example, it offers two-factor authentication, an updated calendar and app, as well as integration with cloud service called Skydrive and Skype.

Experts admit that most Hotmail users won’t notice any difference, so you can continue using your account as long as you want. You can also claim an Outlook email address whenever you like. Microsoft mentioned that Hotmail had over 300 million active accounts before its closure. Thus, upgrading had meant communicating with millions of people, upgrading all the mailboxes and also making sure that everyone’s details like mail, calendar, contacts, folders, and personal preferences were all preserved during the upgrade. This process was done live and as fast as in 6 weeks.

Industry observers remind that Hotmail was one of the first Internet-based email services, created by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in July 1996 as “HoTMaiL”. Three years later Microsoft acquired the Internet email service for about $400 million to rebrand it as “MSN Hotmail”. Finally, Outlook.com was launched three months ago, based around the company’s Metro design language. Apparently, the service closely mimics the interface of Microsoft Outlook. Now we can officially say goodbye to Hotmail, which already doesn’t exist.

By:
SaM