Now, enjoy great reads on mobile
| Wednesday, 27 February 2008 | |
Now, enjoy great reads on mobile
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| Wednesday, 27 February 2008 | |
![]() |
| Wednesday, 27 February 2008 | |
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Citibank is already experimenting with mobile payments. In one trial, the bank has partnered with MasterCard, AT&T and Nokia to put chips in Nokia phones that allow customers to make debit and credit card purchases by waving the phone at special point-of-sale devices at certain stores. In another pilot, Citi has partnered with Obopay to allow customers to send and receive money using any mobile phone.
That sounds pretty cool, but banks will still need to reassure customers that such transactions are safe. When Javelin polled consumers about whether they might try mobile banking, fully one-third said it sounded "too risky." Seven out of 10 worried that their personal information could be more easily obtained if their phone were lost or stolen, while 62% worried that their account could be compromised by hackers, spyware and viruses.
As I said earlier, there's currently not much risk, because:
Right now, most malware and hacking attacks on mobile phones are more in the "nuisance" category than the real threat category. A bad guy might lock up your phone, plant a picture of a skull and crossbones on your screen or trick you into calling expensive 900 numbers.
That was pretty much the level of tomfoolery Web surfers encountered before e-commerce really took off, Egan warned. Once financial transactions soared, phishing, pharming and other far more sophisticated threats took over. He expects the same progression as more people adopt mobile banking and do more with it.
"Thieves always follow the money," Egan said. "Thieves followed the money to the desktop (computer) and they'll follow the money here."
Egan worries that banks will be too slow-moving to react to the evolving risks. Already, he said, many are overly confident that their recent efforts to boost online banking security will translate easily into knowing how to thwart mobile threats.
For now, here's what you need to know if you want to try out your bank's mobile capabilities:
Like the idea of using your phone to check your balance, pay a bill or even replace a debit or credit card? Banks do, too.
Something weird happened when I asked banks and other promoters of mobile banking about how secure it really is to use your cell phone to check balances, transfer funds, pay bills and perform other financial transactions.
Without exception, they mentioned how quickly people tend to notice a missing cell phone -- some said 18 minutes, some said 38 minutes. That, they said, narrowed the window in which an evildoer could access a mobile-enabled account.
I don't know about you, but it always makes me a bit nervous when the linchpin of a bank's security system is, well, me.
At this point, of course, there's not much a bad guy could do with my mobile-bank connection. As the banks like to say, he'd see about the same amount of information he'd get from picking up an ATM receipt.
He might see the balances in my checking and savings accounts; perhaps he maliciously could move money from one to the other or pay a bill for me. My bank account numbers aren't visible and I don't keep my user ID or password stored on the phone.
But mobile banking won't stay simple for long, and I'm not the only one who's disturbed by the banks' "don't worry your little head" attitude about mobile-banking security.
"There are too many people saying there's not a problem," said Bob Egan, chief analyst for research firm Tower Group and a man with 30 years' experience in information technology. "It's exactly the same thing I heard about e-commerce on the Web" when that was in its nascent stages.
To catch you up: After years of talking about the possibilities of using cell phones for banking, it's finally taking off.
Six of the 10 largest U.S. banks have introduced some kind of mobile-banking technology, according to information technology research firm Celent. By summer 2008, all the big banks are expected to have a mobile-banking option.
| Bank | Mobile technology | Launch date |
|---|---|---|
|
Bank of America |
Mobile browser |
March 2007 |
|
Citibank |
Downloadable application |
April 2007 |
|
Chase |
Text messaging |
Sept. 2007 |
|
SunTrust |
Preloaded application |
Winter 2007 |
|
Wachovia |
Mobile browser |
June 2005 |
|
Preloaded application |
Winter 2007 |
|
|
Wells Fargo |
Mobile browser |
July 2007 |
|
Text messaging |
In pilot phase |
|
|
Source: Celent |
Mobile banking is still in its toddler stage, of course. Only 3% of the 45 million or so households that currently use online banking have tried mobile banking, but Celent expects that to grow to 30% by 2010.
Consumers already seem interested in the possibilities. When Javelin Strategy & Research asked people what banking functions they might like to perform with a cell phone, 71% of respondents said checking balances, 41% said monitoring recent transactions and 25% said paying bills.
"I like being able to check my balance [in a store checkout line] before I use my debit card," said Celent banking senior analyst Red Gillen, who, like me, accesses his bank account using his Treo.
Such anywhere, anytime access can cut down on the possibility of a bounced-transaction fee by giving customers the options of forgoing purchases or quickly transferring money into their checking accounts.
Banks can deliver mobile banking in three basic ways:
In banking circles, preloaded or downloadable applications are considered the "sexiest" technology, Celent's Gillen said, with a better user interface and more possibilities for future expansion of banking services (I'll talk about that in a bit). But most banks, he said, will eventually employ a combination of all three technologies.
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In this story: Virus changes subject and copy on each infection |
SANTA CLARA, California (CNN) -- A new strain of computer virus written in the same computer programming language as the "Love Bug" virus has struck several U.S.-based multinational companies, according to computer experts.
The new strain is called "VBS/NewLove.a," by McAfee, an anti-virus firm. At one company, 5,000 computers were infected, according to Dave Perry, spokesman at the anti-virus software company Trend Micro Inc. in Cupertino, California.
The virus apparently began spreading on Thursday. Some virus experts say it could be more dangerous than the "Love Bug" virus, if it becomes widespread.
Early Friday, anti-virus experts were watching to see whether companies in Asia are affected.
Some computer experts advise home and individual Microsoft Outlook users not to open forwarded messages containing attachments.
Eddy Hsia, director of engineering for McAfee, in Santa Clara, California, told CNN that his company had issued a "high threat" warning about the virus.
He said VBS/NewLove.a "could easily cause rampant damage" and would not necessarily be detected by the same anti-virus devices that caught "Love Bug."
Hsia said McAfee updated its detection equipment on Thursday, within two hours of detecting the new virus, and he urged companies to update their virus scanners as soon as possible.
He said new attachments to an e-mail -- the way in which the virus arrives -- should not be opened, especially if they are from people who have not been heard from for a while.
Hsia said it is too early to detect the source of the new strain.
The VBS/NewLove.a virus, or worm, spreads when a user opens an attachment in Microsoft Outlook e-mail. The subject line of an infected e-mail starts with "FW:" and includes the name of a randomly chosen attachment from a previous e-mail on an infected computer.
The infected e-mail has an attachment with the same name, but ending in ".vbs." VBS stands for VisualBasic, the programming language in which it is written. "Love Bug," too, was written in VisualBasic.
Like "Love Bug" the virus can send itself to everybody in the user's address book. In that case, it can destroy most of the files on the hard drive, rendering the computer useless until the operating system is reinstalled.
The worm not only changes its message subject each time it infects, but each copy of the message is different from every other copy.
This is achieved, according to ICSA.net, part of the GartnerGroup of Companies based in Stamford, Connecticut, because "the worm uses a space-algorithm to pad comment lines in the VBS (Visual Basic Script) code, causing copies of the worm to lack identity with their progeny and siblings."
ICSA advises corporations and organizations to disable e-mail gateways until 3-mail containing .vbs attachments can be effectively filtered and quarantined.
Home and individual users of Microsoft Outlook should not open forwarded messages containing attachments of any type, ICSA says.
With regard to recovering deleted files, ICSA says it will be very difficult. The infected files are overwritten by the virus and are recoverable only by restoration from backup.
Anti-virus companies are hoping that increased awareness prompted by the "Love Bug" will temper the spread of the new strain.
"Any time a virus hits a week after another virus its potency is diminished," said Perry. "People tend to be a little more cautious."
The "Love Bug" virus -- a strain different from the new and potentially even more destructive worm -- spawned at least 25 copycats with varying levels of destructiveness. Computer Economics, a Carlsbad, California-based research company, estimated that "Love Bug" and its variants caused $6.7 billion of damage.
The virus forced many businesses and government agencies -- from the Pentagon to Britain's Parliament to major companies such as Ford and Lucent -- to take down computer networks for protection and repair.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
(CNN) -- While a new and potentially more destructive computer virus uses the same replication scheme as the "ILOVEYOU" virus, the new bug's ambitious destruction program may curb its spread and eventually cause it to fizz out on its own, according to one computer expert.
Mikko Hypponen, director of virus research at anti-virus company F-Secure in Finland, said that while this virus -- dubbed "NewLove" -- can make a computer unbootable, it is not nearly as stealthy as "ILOVEYOU." The new computer worm is much less widespread than previous outbreaks and has built-in problems that will eventually make the virus expire on its own. A worm is a virus that is self-replicating.
"Unlike the original 'ILOVEYOU' virus, this one appears to have started, at least in significant part, in the United States rather than spreading from Asia to Europe to the United States," said Michael Vatis of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.
U.S. federal sources said they would not rule out that the same people involved in launching the "ILOVEYOU" virus a few weeks ago may have been involved in this one.
Officials said apparently no U.S. government computers have been affected. Warnings were disseminated before the start of business Friday. "Hopefully, that will minimize the effects," said one federal government source.. "But it's too early to say what the impact has been or will be."
Despite its name, "NewLove" is not very similar to "ILOVEYOU," also known as Love Letter or Love Bug. The two are written in the same computer language, and Hypponen said the e-mail replication loop -- how the virus sends itself out to everyone in the user's Outlook address book -- is the same. Despite that, they are two different viruses.
"Otherwise, it's totally new code. But there's a common idea," Hypponen said.
Like the Love Letter virus, it only affects users of the Microsoft Windows 98 or 2000 operating systems, or Windows 95 users also running Internet Explorer 5.0. The virus also needs Microsoft's Outlook mail program to proliferate. The consumer version, Outlook Express, is not affected.
Rather than the same subject line each time, "NewLove" is polymorphic. Each time, it takes the name of a recently accessed file on the user's machine and uses that name, along with "FW:". This can work much better than "ILOVEYOU," because users can't be on the lookout for a specific subject line. Instead, the subject line may be a file name that is trusted -- especially among co-workers.
"It's really quite clever," Hypponen said. "It uses realistic file names and sends those to people you know. It's social engineering, just like we saw with Love Letter."
After replicating itself, the virus begins obliterating files. While Love Letter destroyed only JPEG image files, NewLove targets every single file on a user's hard drive. The worm will go through all local drives and all subdirectories. For each file, the worm creates a new file using the same name with the additional extension ".vbs" and deletes the original file. The new file is empty, effectively destroying all data on the machine. Then it does the same to networked hard drives, common in a company atmosphere.
The virus only does this to files for which the user has "write" permission, and files that are not currently in use. Still, it immediately makes the computer crash and become unbootable.
As frightening as that may be for users, it is also NewLove's downfall, Hypponen said.
"It's too destructive to become widespread," he said. "When you get hit by Love Letter, you may not notice it. The next time you hear about it is when someone calls you up and complains. But with NewLove, you open the attachment and immediately your machine crashes and won't boot again.
"It's never going to go around like Love Letter," he said, "because it's so obvious."
After being urged for more than one year to make Outlook less risky, the company is expected to offer a software patch next week.
"They've really done a 180 on this," said Chris Le Tocq of the Gartner Group. "The new fix that they have in Beta right now for Outlook completely removes programmability except as manually authorized in each case by the user.
"And this will break, frankly, a large number of corporate applications, but for the general user this is the right thing to do," he added.
Another quirk in the code can also limit how far NewLove gets around. Each time the virus replicates, it adds junk lines to its code. This, Hypponen said, is to keep the file size changing and make it more difficult to detect. However, NewLove only keeps adding junk lines to itself; it never takes them away. So every time it replicates, it grows.
Once the file size gets huge, slowdown and company limits on attachment size would stop the virus in its tracks.
"Eventually, it'll become 10 megs, 100 megs, 1 gig," Hypponen said. "It'll kill itself off. It becomes too fat."
Hypponen's predictions have so far been borne out by the lack of infection reports.
"We haven't received a single direct report of being infected," he said. "We've received secondhand reports from partners in the industry, but the total (companies infected) are 10 or 11." Those reports have been in Israel, central Europe and the United States.
But at each company, many computers could be affected and all data lost. At one firm, 5,000 computers were infected, according to Dave Perry, a spokesman at the anti-virus software company Trend Micro Inc. in Cupertino, California.
But now, Trend Micro is downplaying the total outbreak, saying it's not nearly as bad as expectations.
"It has hit a handful of companies," said spokeswoman Kristin Zoega, "but it's definitely not as widespread as Love Letter was."
As of late Thursday night, another anti-virus company, Symantec, reported three to nine companies had been hit. This is not even a drop in the bucket compared to Love Letter, which crippled mail servers and destroyed image files at tens of thousands of networks around the world just several weeks ago.
Love Letter spawned at least 25 copycats with varying levels of destructiveness. Computer Economics, a Carlsbad, California-based research company, estimated that the virus and its variants caused $6.7 billion of damage.
Hypponen expects variants on this virus, too. "Perhaps one that won't increase its size so much," he predicts.
Existing anti-virus updates against Love Letter are unlikely to affect this new virus. Hypponen suggests instead that users uninstall Windows Scripting Host, the program that allows VisualBasic scripts to run. Hypponen has detailed instructions on how to do this on F-Secure's Web site.
He said that "99.5 percent of users have no need for Windows Scripting Host. But a whole bunch of virus writers use it. I rest my case."
contributed to this report.
Find places, get maps and directions on your phone wherever you are.
MapQuest Mobile offers U.S. and Canadian coverage from the world's leading online map provider. Instantly find your way with interactive color maps, step-by-step instructions, reverse directions and recall of recent addresses.
NEW Features Just Released!!
The newest enhancements to MapQuest Mobile include:
MapQuest's Points of Interest
Find over 15 million Points of Interest including restaurants, hotels, or theaters from the MapQuest.com database.
Multipoint Routing
Select multi-points along your route and receive step-by-step directions.
Find places, get maps and step-by-step directions for Canada!
Click to Call a Business directly from MapQuest Mobile (availability limited to certain carriers).
Access Recent Locations and Multi-Routes
Access your most recent places and multi-routes
Save Locations and Multi-Routes to Favorites
Save your places and multi-routes to your Favorites folder
Pedestrian Navigation
Get directions for walking routes.
Choose Advanced Routing Options
Optimize your route by choosing the shortest time or distance and/or avoid tolls.
MapQuest Mobile typically costs $3.99 per month and is available on most cell phone carriers. See if it's available for your phone.
MapQuest Mobile was created in partnership with Zingy, one of the best-known publishers of consumer applications for mobile phones.
Save frequently visited destinations in "My Places" menu
U.S. only. AOL Mobile services may require a wireless data plan and charges from your wireless carrier may apply. Not all AOL Mobile services are available on all wireless carriers or on all wireless devices. Check with your wireless carrier to confirm that product use is consistent with your carrier's Terms of Service.
MapQuest Mobile - Get It Now
Does my wireless provider offer MapQuest Mobile?
MapQuest currently partners with the following wireless providers. Each of the providers below offer access to MapQuest Mobile using the indicated phones.
Alltell
• Audiovox CDM8410
• Audiovox CDM8910
• Kyocera KX16
• Kyocera KX414
• Kyocera KX434
• Kyocera KX440
• Kyocera KX1
• Kyocera KX5
• Kyocera 3250
• Kyocera SE44
• LG AX5000
• LG LX5450
• LG LX5550
• LG UX245
• LG UX390
• LG VX4270
• LG VX4700
• LG VX3200
• Motorola E815
• Motorola T720
• Motorola V262
• Motorola V265
• Motorola V3C
• Motorola V3M
• Motorola V710
• Nokia 6255
• Nokia 6265i
• Samsung N330
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select Axcess Apps
2. Find Axcess Apps, and select the Axcess Shop and then select Start
3. Then choose the Tools - Search
4. Select MapQuest
5. Finally, enjoy!
CellularSouth
• Audiovox CDM8410
• Kyocera KX1
• Audiovox CDM8615
• Kyocera KX2
• LG VX6100
• Audiovox CDM8600
• Audiovox CDM8900
• Audiovox CDM8910
• Kyocera SE47 a.k.a Slider
• Motorola T720
• Motorola V262
• Motorola V710
• Nokia 6255
• Nokia 6256i
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select BREW
2. Then choose INFORMATION
3. Select MapQuest Mobile
4. Enjoy!
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select BREW
2. Then choose INFORMATION
3. Select MapQuest Mobile
4. Enjoy!
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select mMode
2. Select Browse Websites
3. Then choose the What's Nearby category
4. Select MapQuest
5. Finally, enjoy!
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select 'MediaNet'
2. On the MediaNet screen, select 'Weather & Travel' or 'Maps & Directories'
5. Enjoy.
Download Instructions:
1. Click on the 'Cricket Clicks' or 'BREW' icon on your phone
2. Click on the shopping cart
3. Select Information
4. Select 'MapQuest Mobile'.
5. Enjoy.
MetroPCS (@Metro)
• Audiovox CDM-8900
• Kyocera KX433
• Kyocera SE47 (aka Slider)
• Samsung A610
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select '@Metro'
2. Then select '@Info'.
3. Select 'MapQuest Mobile'.
4. Enjoy.
Sprint (PCS Vision / Applications)
• LG 5225
• LG 5350
• LG LX325
• LG LX535
• LG VI125
• Nokia 3155
• Samsung A500
• Samsung A600
• Samsung A620
• Samsung A660
• Samsung A680
• Samsung A700
• Samsung A740
• Samsung A760
• Samsung A880
• Samsung A900
• Samsung A920
• Nokia 3205
• Samsung N400
• Sanyo 2300
• Sanyo 4900
• Sanyo 4920
• Sanyo 4930
• Sanyo 5300
• Sanyo 5400
• Sanyo 5500
• Sanyo 5600
• Sanyo 7200
• Sanyo 7300
• Sanyo 7400
• Sanyo 8100
• Sanyo 8200
• Sanyo 8300
• Sanyo MM7500
• Sanyo MM9000
• Nokia 6225
Download Instructions:
1. From your phone's main menu, select Downloads
2. Select Applications
3. Then choose Get New
4. Select the Travel category
5. Download MapQuest Mobile
6. Finally, enjoy!
Download Instructions:
1. 'MapQuest Mobile' can be found in your phone's T-Zone menu.
2. For more information, please contact T-Mobile.
Download Instructions:
1. Select Menu
2. Find the Download Shop then select Start
3. Then choose Find People, Places and Things category
4. Select Mapquest Mobile
5. Finally, enjoy!
Download Instructions:
1. Find the Get It Now icon on your phone
2. Select the Shopping Cart icon
3. Choose Get Going
4. Choose Travel
5. Then choose Mapquest Mobile
6. Finally, enjoy!
Premium Downloadable Applications
Spoken Turn-by-Turn Directions with MapQuest® Navigator
GPS navigation for your cell phone for about as much as you spend on your daily coffee! MapQuest Navigator 5.0 turns your GPS-enabled wireless smartphone into a fully featured voice-guided navigation device with Real-Time Traffic and AOL CityGuide ratings built right in! For a Limited Time, Get MapQuest Navigator 5.0 for only $4.99 per month!
Get Maps and Directions with MapQuest® Mobile
Need to know where you're meeting your friends? Changing plans on the fly? MapQuest® Mobile can get you where you need to go. Get step-by-step directions on your phone on the go; faster and more robust than mobile page viewing. It's like taking the MapQuest® experience with you on the road. Get It Now
Free* MapQuest® Services
Pocket-sized Maps and Directions with MapQuest® For Mobile Web
MapQuest® for Mobile Web is a free* wireless version of MapQuest that you can access anytime, anywhere through your cell phone or other web-enabled device. Formatted especially for mobile web browsers, MapQuest for Mobile Web makes it easy to discover where you are, where you're going and what's waiting for you along the way - even when you're away from your computer.
Here's How to Get It
You can access MapQuest® for Mobile Web two easy ways. While on the go, just type www.MapQuest.com into your mobile browser. Or, when planning your trip on MapQuest.com from your desktop, just send your route to your mobile phone via the 'Send to Cell' link within your MapQuest® results.
* MapQuest® provides this service free of charge; however, your carrier may charge data fees to access the mobile web or for text messages.
U.S. only. AOL Mobile services may require a wireless data plan and charges from your wireless carrier may apply. Not all AOL Mobile services are available on all wireless carriers or on all wireless devices. Check with your wireless carrier to confirm that product use is consistent with your carrier's Terms of Service.

function createPageView(pageId,catId) { cmSetProduction(); cmCreatePageviewTag(pageId,catId,"","","","","","",""); }
12.1 megapixels: The Kodak EasyShare V1233 captures photo-quality, 300dpi images up to 10” x 13.4”, and good-quality 200dpi images up to 15” x 20”. This sharp resolution brings out rich detail and lets you enlarge even small portions of your photos.p>
Zoom: Optical zoom magnifies subjects without sacrificing resolution. This 3x optical zoom goes from a slight wide-angle view to a telephoto view that brings distant objects closer (35mm equivalent: 37mm-111mm). The 5x digital zoom picks up where optical zoom leaves off, stretching pixels to make the image look bigger.
2.5" LCD display: Compose perfect shots, and then share them, on the large 2.5” high resolution indoor/outdoor color display.
Face detection: This camera locates faces within the frame and automatically optimizes settings for great shots of friends and family.
Digital image stabilizer/high ISO: With its range of up to ISO 3200, this camera lets you shoot in difficult conditions. This high ISO means that the image sensor can handle shorter exposures to light, allowing faster shutter speeds that can prevent blurred images due to camera shake or moving subjects.
Scene modes: Choose your mode, and this camera automatically adjusts settings such as shutter speed, flash and focus to adapt to the situation. This camera features eight different scene modes, including snow, beach, children and more.
Perfect Touch technology: Make your pictures as vivid as the moment you took them, right on camera. Perfect Touch technology brightens pictures, clearing up dark shadows to reveal more smiles and helping you to relive your memories in richer detail.
Picture enhancement: Easily create great shots with features such as on-camera cropping, blurry picture alert, and digital red-eye reduction. Combine up to three shots into one large picture with on-camera panorama stitch mode. Use on-camera cropping to highlight the most important part of the image.
EasyShare software: The V1233 comes with Kodak EasyShare software, which makes it easy to view, organize and share pictures with friends and family.
HD movie mode: When a picture isn’t enough, shoot in fantastic HD 720p video, with sound, at 30 frames per second. Advanced MPEG-4 compression lets you capture more video with less memory.
Rechargeable battery: Charge the battery again and again—without even removing it from the camera.
Memory: This digital camera comes with 32MB of internal memory. Get the most out of your camera by adding a 512MB or larger SD/SDHC memory card. How much memory do you need?
Luna Blitzkap™ is a QR reader that works with any Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 or Windows Mobile 6 device. The reader can read QR codes and then, depending on the code, offer the user the option of saving the text, calling a phone number, connecting to a website, sending an SMS Message or Emails and storing contact information.
Create your own QR Codes with their QRender application.
Leveraging the flexible Windows Mobile-based development platform, Luna designed the solution to provide businesses with a cutting-edge marketing tool that provides consumers with fast and direct access to digital content, setting a new standard for interactivity and convenience. Luna is working closely with major mobile operators in Canada and the U.S. to deliver the Luna QR solution to North American users.
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