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  • Voip-Pal.com Claims First Patented Method of VoIP Communications Interception


    The war of governments against terrorism is now becoming a reality as companies work on developing VoIP communications intercept technologies. Voip-Pal.com is having a head start in this field with its Lawful Intercept. The corporation asserts that it owns the first patented method of VoIP communications interception in the US.

    Voip-Pal.com Inc applied for a patent for its Lawful Intercept technology (U.S. Patent No. 8,422,507) in 2007, which was two years before the filing of Microsoft Corporation for a patent for its Legal Intercept (US Patent Application 20110153809). In 2011 the USPTO rejected Microsoft's Legal Intercept and Voip-Pal's Lawful Intercept was given priority in spite of the substantial similarities of both patent applications due to its earlier filing date. In January, 2013 Lawful Intercept was allowed and in April it was issued as a patent.

    There has been rapid growth of the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) industry as the traditional landline subscriptions suffer a decline. In 2012 the revenues collected in the industry were $63 billion and at present the growth is a double digit. It is expected that by 2015, the mobile VoIP subscribers will have reached 410 million. The implication of this on the traditional wiretapping is that it's being rendered obsolete and law enforcement agencies have to look for alternative ways of intercepting VoIP communication.

  • Blackberry Officially Launches 9720 Smartphone with Curve-era Specs


    Business has not been as usual at BlackBerry for a long time but the company continues to trudge on with constant new releases. The most recent of these releases is the heavily-leaked BlackBerry 9720, which has just been officially launched. Packed with popular social apps, this super social smartphone comes with a HHGA touchscreen and a premium look. It takes the specs of a starter smartphone to the next level.

    A re-engineered and distinctly curve-like thumbpad dominates the 2.8-inch 480×360 display, and 512 MB of RAM plus 5 megapixel camera complete the package. Photo sharing has been made easier with some tweaks to the OS that deliver an onscreen button (this is far from being called revolutionary). There is also a dedicated BBM key featured to take the user directly to the messaging app.

    The phone comes with the typical BlackBerry keyboard, optimal typing being a given thanks to its distinct keys. Easy navigation is facilitated by the 2.8-inch touchscreen and trackpad. With the BB 7.1 OS powering it, BlackBerry 9720 has brought an updated interface that enables you to unlock it or access the camera by swiping.

    The handset will be released in Latin America, Europe, and Asia in the coming weeks.

  • Upstarts Threatening Giant Oracle's Future Dominance over Database Market


    Database giant Oracle is under attack, and like chip goliath Intel ignored emerging ARM's RISC chips in mobile devices for too long and legacy incumbents such as server-vendors HP and Dell lagged behind as the commodity servers market shifted, it may not notice the ground shifting beneath its feet until it's too late.

    The size of Oracle's database is so huge that even as it's used to facing competition from niche technologies it may be blind to the termites nibbling at its foundations. A marauding hoard of small firms has cropped up to provide low-cost or free databases to the current and future customers of Oracle.

    There has already been migration of more than one hundred companies from Oracle but with a market cap of $152 billion and earnings in the last quarter being $10.9 billion, this is insignificant for now. Given a couple of years of firms adopting the new databases though, the shift will become apparent.

    The current rooster of Oracle customers comprises some of the largest companies in every industry and a large portion of the public sector. However, longtime Oracle customers are looking to cheaper alternative to the notoriously pricey licensing of Ellison & Co. and upcoming companies are unfamiliar with the technology the giant uses. This is the root of the giant's foreseeable problems.

  • LG's 55-inch Super-Thin Curved OLED TV Hits Best Buy at $14,999


    Back at CES, LG was more than happy to tease that curved OLED HDTV. And now the company has announced its OLED HDTV is bringing revolutionary display technology to the U.S. market through its exclusive launch partner Best Buy. The super-thin curved screens, model 55EA9800, are available through Magnolia Stores inside Best Buy for just shy of 15 grand.

    The ground-breaking, ultra-thin curved design of the 55-inch LG Curved OLED TV, alongside a next-generation display technology, delivers an experience that sets the benchmark for TV design and home entertainment in the industry. LG has used its proprietary WRGB technology to create the perfect color output and its exclusive Color Refiner for tonal enhancement, producing images that are astoundingly vivid and realistic. The new TV weighs less than 38 pounds (17.2 kilograms) and the edge of the screen is 0.17 inches (4.3 millimeters).

    The Richfield, Minnesota store of retail giant Best Buy had already stocked the 55-inch set at the time of announcement. In the coming weeks, it will roll out in select Best Buys across New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. This new premium TV goes for $14,999.

  • Vulnerabilities Discovered in Code Library for Encrypted VoIP Calls

    At the onset of July, a code library for encrypted VoIP calls was found to have security flaws. Security firm Azimuth Security researchers discovered serious vulnerabilities in the open-source library ZRTPCPP, which is used by several applications to offer encrypted phone calls. PGP creator Phil Zimmermann designed ZRTPCPP specifically for the implementation of the ZRTP cryptographic key agreement protocol for VoIP communications.

    The Azimuth Security researchers say these flaws could be leveraged to perform denial-of-service attacks or arbitrary code execution. Apps that no longer get updates could also contain the vulnerabilities ad infinitum. Though not the first time security bugs are found in a code library, the ZRTPCPP problems serve as a somber reminder that security bugs can have widespread repercussions in a popular library.

    The apps that were affected by this security flaw include Twinkle, CSipSimple, SilentCircle, and LinPhone. This also includes anything that uses GNU ccRTP with ZRTP enabled. Luckily, the problems in the ZRTPCPP library were fixed almost instantly. SilentCircle was also quick to take action, updating all its apps on both the App Store and Google Play.

  • Nokia Lumia 625 Coming Early September, Features LTE and 4.7-inch Screen


    The leaked news of Nokia Lumia 625 turned out to be true. The 4.7-inch-screened Windows Phone will be released to O2, Vodafone, Phones4U, EE, and Carphone Warehouse early in September for £200 in the UK. Continental Europeans will get it for 220 Euros. It joins a growing series that saw Lumia 620 launched earlier in the year.

    Lumia 625 has retained the resolution of its predecessor of 800 x 480 but the processing power has been bumped up to dual-core Snapdragon S4. Even though it has a hulking LCD screen, its 0.36 inches (9.15mm) make it much thinner than Lumia 920. The camera is a 5-megapixel module featuring Lumia 925's Smart Camera app and the animated gif-making Cinemagraph. The storage is average with 8GB of internal memory, and behind the removable back is a microSD slot.

    Being a Nokia smartphone, Lumia 625 comes with plenty of HSPA radio gadgetry, as well as LTE. The customization options include green, black, orange, and yellow cases, though Lumia 620's turquoise shade is missing.

  • Stream Nation Takes Private Video Streaming Global and with No Playback Limits


    Stream Nation     users in the US, UK, and elsewhere now have access to private video sharing that has no limit to the file size or length of video clip streamed to another browser, quite unlike Dropbox and Flickr Pro.

    Cloud storage platforms have vast differences in their specializations and Stream Nation focuses on private video streaming. Jonathan Benassaya, the service founder and co-founder of Deezer, says the concept was born out of the desire to share vacation videos with his family.

    The only hold-ups expected are that an uploader application has to be installed for storage of the photos and videos unless they are being brought over from Dropbox or another web platform. You may find this process a bit slow as a 90MB clip grabbed from Dropbox may take up to 20 minutes to be encoded. Also, videos can only be shared with registered Stream Nation users. Furthermore, anything exceeding 2GB has a price that can only be avoided when you stoop low enough to invite all your Google contacts, in which case you get a bonus 8GB.

    So this may not be exactly what someone who needs unlimited space might want, but it can come in handy if your family and friends are savvy enough to know how to respond to a Dropbox link.

  • iOS 7 Beta 4 Featuring Long List of Bug Fixes and Improvements

    The beta version of the upcoming iOS 7 release contains several improvements and bug fixes, and is set to be deployed only on dedicated iOS 7 beta software development devices.

    Apple Inc is constantly hitting the market with its innovations and updates and it has done it again with the iOS 7. It's only a few days after the massive security overhaul of the developer center and three weeks following the last beta release, and now the company has made iOS 7 beta 4 available for downloads.

    The biggest update since the original SDK's debut, Cupertino's upcoming release has already hit the airwaves featuring an extremely long list of improvements and fixes. Registered developers are receiving alerts of the update on their handsets but not the entire list of changes. To check everything out and prep yourself for the new experience, you can hit up the company's website.

  • Tracklander: the Must-Have App for Adventure Seekers

    App developers seem to have already made apps for all kinds of people. Some of these apps become an instant hit and rock the entire industry for months while others create a short-lived stir and then fade into oblivion. Tracklander is the app that's tailor-made for iPhone users with a bit of wanderlust, and it appears to be holding its own in a marketplace brimming with all sorts of apps for active travelers and adventurers.

    If you were to get a couple of days off work to relax, trekking or a road trip would be a perfect choice of recreational activity. However, a week is hardly enough time to properly plan a track. With Tracklander on your phone your entire trip planning will be taken care of and without blowing your budget. You are spared the hassle of using GPS, looking for tracks, and the like when preparing for the trip, as well as the prohibitive expenses of hiring a local guide.

    Tracklander has re-invented travel apps by offering a digital platform based on a new concept of "independent but guided" adventurers. It comes packed with a full range of unique tracks that are customizable depending on the user's preferred terrain difficulty and time at hand. Therefore, your iPhone becomes your easy yet absolutely safe guide.

    The app features a trackbook with numerous tracks in all sorts of destinations around the world for travelers to choose from; there are asphalt roads, off-road routes, mountain treks, and cities. Among these tracks are those suitable for SUV, 4X4, road car, trekking, cycling, and MTB, as well as trail, enduro, and road motorcycles. Each track has add-ons that Tracklander has included to create unique challenges graded from 1 to 5, shortcuts back to the main track if lost, escapes, days, and treats such as a waterfall, palm grove, vineyards, and beaches. Helpful features of the trackbook include photos of every upcoming junction, navigation help and area map, cultural info, and safety info.

    Thanks to Tracklander's ingenious technology, the app will work offline without the roaming hassles and frustrations of finding 3G deep in forests or atop mountains. It is able to produce its own offline maps by using Tracklander's graphical models, NASA's topographical contours lines, and OpenStreetMap. These maps are downloaded once when the iPhone user is downloading the track. You say bye bye to data connection fees when travelling abroad.

    See Tracklander in action:

    The tracks selected are the best adventure tracks in any given area. At the time Tracklander was hitting the App Store there were 33,973 miles of roads and tracks, 1,335 miles of cycle routes, and 667 miles of treks offered, which are equivalent to going around a quarter of the world, travelling from Copenhagen to Barcelona, and crossing Spain respectively.  The brave at heart can use the tracks for Morocco, Andalusia, Tuscany, and Transpirenaica while the rest can pick city-based track versions in Barcelona, Florence, and Lisbon. Even with this diversity, language is not a problem as the app supports English, Catalan, Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

    The app also has the Trip Planner, a featured functionality that enables social networking and sharing of experiences via blogs. You get to invite other Tracklander travelers and organize the trips.

    The app comes free. A number of both city and countryside tracks are also available for free. The rest of the track features vary in price depending on the area chosen and difficulty level. Generally it will cost you €2.99 for a half or full day's travel; €9.99 from one to two days; and €34.99 from six to ten days.

    Get Tracklander from the App Store. 

  • Google Upgrades Platform Cloud and Joins Microsoft and Amazon's Cloud Level


    Google has upgraded its platform cloud to include a dedicated memcache, rendering the company's technology characteristically akin to the floating silos operated by Microsoft and Amazon. The open source object caching system, Memcache, is a dedicated serviced for storage of key-value data from multiple servers in pooled RAM. Its adoption by Google App Engine (GAE) comes packaged in the 1.8.2 release of the platform cloud.

    Alongside the dedicated Memcache is support for Git Push-to-Deploy, which allows developers to use the Git code management service. Google has also introduced updates relating to App Engine Modules, which enable developers to break large applications into modular components capable of sharing services. These updates also include Eclipse and PHP support.

    Dedicated memcache will bring developers performance and capacity guarantees for $0.12 cents per gigabyte per hour. They will be able to purchase in-memory data caching capacity leading to more data being cached, and with a higher cache hit rate the applications will be faster and Datastore costs reduced. This is according to a blog post Google cloud product manager Chris Ramsdale wrote.

    Google's service will be competing with Microsofts's Windows Azure Caching with memcache protocol support and Amazon's Amazon ElastiCache. Websites that use Memcache are Craigslist, Twitter, and Wikipedia.