iPhone 3G overtakes the RAZR as best-selling domestic handset!

Joshua Topolsky of engadget writes:

"According to a report from NPD, sales of cellphones have shifted in a manner which should shock and stun even a casual observer. Apparently for the first time in years, Motorola's ubiquitous RAZR has been overtaken in consumer sales... by the iPhone 3G. This is a watershed moment for handset sales in the US, marking not only a shift away from the dominant market leader, but a turn towards more complex, full-featured devices. The news comes hot on the heels of NPD's previous findings, which still placed the RAZR in the top spot -- though with ever-decreasing numbers. In that same report, the iPhone found itself in second place, but it appears that flagging interest in the inescapable dumbphone coupled with the recent iPhone PR blitz have put Apple's moneymaker into the top position. The news is also buoyed by recent reports that Apple has overtaken RIM as the number two smartphone vendor, and a J.D. Power study which found affection for the device waxing in the extreme. Overall, however, handset sales fell 15 percent year-over-year, and LG managed to snag the top brand position, with two models in the top five. Still, if there already wasn't a clear indication of the market moving towards both smartphones and touchscreen devices, this should give everyone a clearer picture of both the public's wants, and the power of Cupertino's ad-men."

See the full press release by clicking on this link.

Astronauts head for extreme home makeover in space

The international space station is about to get all the comforts of a modern, high-end, "green" home: a fancy recycling water filter, a new fridge, extra bedrooms, workout equipment and the essential half-bath.

It will be a home makeover in the extreme. The space station will go from a three-bedroom, one-bath house with kitchenette to a five-bedroom, two-bath house with two kitchenettes and the latest gizmos NASA has to offer.

To be more precise, astronauts will be installing an extra toilet, more sleeping compartments with individual thermostats and laptop hookups, and an exercise machine capable of some 30 routines.

They also will be delivering the essentials of NASA's first attempt at a closed-loop environmental system in orbit, where almost everything gets recycled. Already, the power on the space station is generated from solar panels.

Most significant is the water recovery system - it will turn urine and condensation into fresh drinking water. The system is essential if NASA is to increase the size of the space station crew from three to six. That switch is supposed to occur by the middle of next year.

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Forensic Tool Detects Pornography In The Workplace

Pornography in the workplace can pose a serious problem for employers because a significant amount of material is downloaded by employees during business hours. The viewing of porn at work can result in lost time, creativity, productivity, and employer profitability. More importantly, it can help create a hostile work environment and can be...

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Review: Lenovo Ideapad S10 Netbook

Every sign we've seen thus far leads us to believe that netbooks are going to be very popular this holiday shopping season. With good reason, too – they fill a void which has existed since the dawn of mobile computing. Truly cost efficient, rugged, little notebook computers with enough processing power and screen resolution to get basic tasks done – nothing more, nothing less. Given that pocketbooks are hurting in the current economic climate, these new low-cost mobile systems become that much more attractive, besides being a downright exciting product category.

Many of the large-scale PC vendors have already developed, or are developing a netbook product for the end of the year. Dell’s Inspirion Mini 9, along with the Asus Eee PC and MSI’s new Wind netbooks appear to be some of the more popular models. As this year comes to a close, the pace of netbooks hitting the market has certainly accelerated, and we expect that to continue for the next month or so. One of the more exciting netbook models that came to market just recently is Lenovo’s IdeaPad S series.

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Battered, but not broken: understanding the WPA crack

Glenn Fleishman writes that WiFi security takes a hit with the disclosure of an effective exploit for small packets encrypted with the TKIP flavor of WiFi Protected Access. The technique is fiendishly clever; the security solution, simple: switch to AES-only in WPA2.

Academic researchers have found an exploitable hole in a popular form of wireless networking encryption. The hole is in a part of 802.11i that forms the basis of WiFi Protected Access (WPA), so it could affect routers worldwide. German graduate student Erik Tews will present a paper at next week's PacSec in Tokyo coauthored with fellow student and aircrack-ng team member Martin Beck that reveals how remnants of WPA's predecessor allow them to slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client.

In an interview from Germany, where he is a PhD candidate studying encryption at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Tews explained that an existing attack on Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) was modified to provide a slim vector for sending arbitrary data to networks that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). (Tews' collaborator Beck is a student at the Technical University of Dresden; Tews credits Beck with the discovery, after which they jointly developed the paper that Tews will present at PacSec.)

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Largest Wind Farm in World Halted By Credit Crisis

The credit crunch is not just hurting the banks and the real estate market. Even the billionaire and wind energy enthusiast, T. Boone Pickens is having trouble financing his high profile 4000 MW wind farm. The proposed Texas wind farm has a hefty $10 and $12 billion price tag.

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Apple’s iPhone suffers great debacle in Russia

Picture from iLounge.

The current sales of Apple’s iPhone 3G in Russia are insufficient in comparison with the previously announced plans. Only 30,000 devices were sold in Russia in 30 days since its official launch in the country. Experts say that the situation is not going to change for the better during the upcoming months. To crown it all, Apple plans to cut the production of its 3G phones by 40%.

The poor sales of Apple’s revolutionary device in Russia can be explained with the late appearance of the phone on the Russian market, the onerous terms of the contracts that come with the device, the absence of fully developed 3G and Wi-Fi networks in Russia, the lack of iTunes support and so on.

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