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O2 data breach potentially shares your cellphone number with the world (Updated)
There's an alarming rumor circulating that suggests that UK network O2 forwards your phone number to any website visited on a smartphone. Lewis Peckover built a site that displays the header data sent to sites you visit, finding a network-specific field called "x-up-calling-line-id" which displayed his number. Angry users who tested the site have flooded the company's official Twitter, which is currently responding with: "Security is our top most priority, we're investigating this at the moment & will come back with more info as soon as we can." The Next Web confirmed that Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone numbers are unaffected by the issue, but GiffGaff and Tesco Mobile (both MVNOs that operate on the same network) do. TNW's sources say it's most likely an internal testing setup, while Mr. Peckover suggests it's because the network transparently proxies HTTP traffic, using the number as a UID. Update: We received confirmation from O2, who said that it was "investigating with internal teams and it's our top priority." Slashgear and Think Broadband were unable to replicate the problem, but in our tests (pictured) it was sharing our data with the site. Update 2: Consumer magazine Which? contacted UK privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office which offered the following: "Keeping people's personal information secure is a fundamental principle that sits at the heart of the Data Protection Act and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. When people visit a website via their mobile phone they would not expect their number to be made available to that website. We will now speak to O2 to remind them of their data breach notification obligations, and to better understand what has happened, before we decide how to proceed." We'll let you draw your own conclusions from that one, but it's not shaping up to be a good day for the company (or its users). Update 3: Our tests have stopped working now, as it looks like the network is hurriedly trying to close the hole, but we've had no official word that it's over just yet. Update 4: O2 has issued a full statement and Q&A which we've embedded after the jump. Long story short, it's fixed the issue -- caused by accidental routine maintenance. 3G / WAP users will have shared your number with any site you visited since January 10th. The network has promised it will co-operate fully with the ICO and has reported itself to Ofcom.
Nokia's promised dual-SIM handsets arrive, look strangely familiar
Well, that didn't take long. When Stephen Elop said a new dual-SIM handset would ship by the end of June, apparently he meant to say, "Right away!" Nokia has announced the first shipments of its C2-00 -- the same dual-SIM candybar we've known about for a year -- throughout India, China, and various developing regions for €45. On this C2, one of the SIM slots is accessible from the outside of the phone, making it convenient for those carrying more than two cards. Additionally, the company revealed the X1-01, a dual-SIM (and still very loud) variant of the X1-00 with a specially tuned speaker that's said not to distort too badly -- even when the volume is turned to 11. It sells for €34 and lasts 43 days on standby. Both devices feature dual-standby, which allows calls and messages to be received on both numbers without needing to switch back and forth between them. Of course, this leaves us awaiting the arrival of Nokia's dual-SIM touchscreen phone, the C2-06, but this will suffice for today. Game on, Mr. Elop.
RIM teams with DeviceAnywhere for testing of BlackBerry applications
Palm already did the deed by partnering with DeviceAnywhere in opening its Virtual Developer Lab, and now it looks as if RIM's doing the same for its BlackBerry lineup. The Waterloo-based handset maker has joined hands with the aforementioned testing outfit in order to let "outside developers test their applications on a single system that represents 100 BlackBerry models running on 16 networks." We're also told that RIM is currently working with 100,000 developers to "create applications for such uses as gaming and navigation that link customers more tightly to their devices," which shouldn't come as any surprise given the pressure from Apple and Google. There's no word on when the virtual dev facility will open its doors, but we'd bank on it being sometime between "now" and "real soon."
NHK's 15k RPM optical disc recording system utilizes Blu-ray technology
Pulling out the 15k RPM card this late in the game would usually be frowned upon, but in the case of NHK, its latest development to spin at 15,000 revolutions per minute has nothing to do with a hard disk drive. Researchers at Nippon Hoso Kyokai are working with engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) to create an "optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray disc technology that can spin as fast as 15,000 RPM" without worry of a disc experiencing a complete meltdown and shattering within the drive. The first iteration was reportedly demonstrated just last week, and could purportedly be used to record 250Mbps HDTV streams; furthermore, researchers have seemingly dodged the disintegration issue by "making a flexible disc that is just 0.1-millimeters thick." The disc was co-developed with Ricoh and is "essentially the recording layer from a Blu-ray Disc without the 1.1-millimeter plastic substrate that is used to give the disc rigidity," thus, a "thick stabilizing plate has been added into the drive" to keep volatility at a minimum. NHK reportedly claimed that this newfangled approach was similar to that seen in the Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc, but unfortunately, it wasn't able to hand out any hard numbers as to when we'd see this stuff in action.[Image courtesy of DigitalArts]
Cocoa Blogs, by Scott Stevenson
I have to admit right up front that I'm not as familiar with the Mac dev community as I'd like to be. I don't know a lick about developing, and I get a bit intimidated as I know it's one of those trades that has a completely different set of constraints and connotations to manage; there's nothing like trying to swim in the big kid's pool while still wearing floaties. Though, for the record: that's just an analogy; I don't wear floaties when swimming in real life. I got rid of those months ago.That said, I'd like to pass along Cocoa Blogs, a new venture from Scott Stevenson, whose name I only know from its mention on a number of Mac developers' blogs I've stumbled across from time to time. As you might glean from the title, Scott waxes on Cocoa, one of Apple's major (and dare I say preferable?) programming environment for Mac OS X, as well as the world of development and its community. He also wrangles a number of Cocoa developer resources and notable blogs for skills both advanced and new.While much of the language in Scott's code-oriented posts and links might as well be Latin to me (and no, you don't get points for noting that up to 80% of English is Latin-based), this looks like a great new resource for Cocoa developers in all walks of life.[via Gus Mueller]
Adobe's John Nack explains lack of PPC support in Soundbooth
Some corners of the Mac web aren't too happy about Adobe's choice to not support the PowerPC chip with their latest beta offering, Soundbooth. We've received a few comments on our original post, and Macintouch has a few posts from readers who are, let's say, 'somewhat upset.' To help bring some sense to the table, Adobe's John Nack (the product manager of Photoshop, mind you) has stepped in to lay down the company's decision on his blog. Long story short, John explains that support isn't being 'removed' from the product - while it's been dubbed as 'Audition Elements' by some, it's a brand new baby for both Mac OS X and Windows. In this context, Adobe made the choice of streamlining development (supporting one chipset) which favors focusing on things like features and performance, rather than trying to get a team of audio engineers who are used to working with Intel-based chips to start jugging a second architecture (PowerPC) which Adobe believes Apple is treating as "dead to us."I think this is a really difficult position for Adobe to be in, and given the circumstances, I understand their decision. While the PowerPC architecture is by no means 'dead' just yet, it's getting up from the dinner table and making its way for the coat closet (don't forget, there's plenty of conversation and lingering while putting one's coat on and rounding up all the kids). Readers at Macintouch have cited that a fair portion of the Mac audio industry are still using PowerPC based rigs and probably will for quite some time, and I think that might also have been a significant factor in the decision: Soundbooth isn't competing with Pro Tools and professional workflows, it's a mid-range app (at least from what I understand). I am certainly no software engineer, and I know equally little about the intricacies of audio software, but if a company with Adobe's girth says that now is a bad time to start building PowerPC support into a brand new product - I'll listen. From the non-developer sidelines, it sounds like it's a lot easier for code ninjas who already had a PowerPC app to unite forces with Intel support (thanks in part to Apple's UB efforts), as opposed to getting Intel backgrounds (remember: Adobe's audio guys are coming over from Windows development on this one) to shake hands with PowerPC. In the grander scheme of Adobe matters, however, they haven't shown this "abandoning" attitude in any of their other existing products, such as the entire Creative Suite (in fact Nack reminds us PPC hasn't gone anywhere in CS3), and even Lightroom Photoshop Lightroom, another recent beta offering for the pro photography crowd, is in fact a Universal Binary. I think Soundbooth was simply caught in the crossfire of this chip architecture migration, and Adobe had to make a hard decision that was ultimately tipped by looking ahead at the Mac platform, and realizing exactly where Soundbooth is going to sit on the ladder of Mac OS X-based audio editing.
Hands-on with Motorola MOTOFONE F3
Who knew going back to segmented displays on handsets was such a good idea? No, seriously -- check out the picture, it looks pretty nifty in the flesh. Mobile Burn was equally impressed in their up-close-and-personal look at Moto's MOTOFONE F3, their newest low-cost handset for emerging markets, saying that the screen actually reminded them a lot of an Etch-a-Sketch. With a large text readout and voice prompting, they were equally impressed with the phone's foolproof simplicity, suggesting this might be a great device for the very young and old in, uh, emerged markets as well. We'll reserve final judgment for when we can get our hands on an F3 ourselves, but we'd like to cautiously offer Moto congratulations for getting us unusually worked up over an extremely simple phone.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Jobs to spend more time at Apple
Steve Jobs told shareholders this week that, in light of Disney's acquisition of Pixar, he would actually be spending more time at Apple, in part because he'll be relinquishing his CEO position at Pixar in a couple of weeks once the merger finishes. Many have been speculating that Mr. Jobs would be spending more time at Disney, but he publicly responded "that couldn't be further from the truth... It'll require less of my time than Pixar did."This should be good news for anyone concerned about Mr. Jobs' continued involvement with Apple.[via Wired]
