Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Coping with Alerts

One of the downsides to use Windows Server 2012 Essentials is that its built-in alerts, while useful for keeping your environment up to date, can be more than a bit too chatty. These alerts seem to pop-up for the most inane of infractions, and you will waste a lot of time dealing with them at first.
I wish I had better news on this one. If you’re familiar with how alerts worked in Windows Home Server 2011 or Windows Small Business Server Essentials 2011, then you understand the basics. But this is one area where Essentials 2012 actually does a worse job than its predecessors: In fact, the alerts are a bit out of control.
So what I can offer you for now—Microsoft tells me it will look at fixing the volume of alerts at some point—is more along the line of coping strategies than easily reproducible advice. The thing is, your approach to these alerts will vary according to the needs of your environment, where a home office might elect for more relaxed approach while a managed small business might want to take them a bit more seriously.
Also problematic is that some of these alerts force you down a rabbit hole of more complex management Windows Server administrative interfaces. These interfaces can be unfamiliar and inscrutable to those who stuck with Windows PCs or Windows Home Server in the past.
Anyway. Let’s see how this works.
If you sign in to the Essentials 2012 Dashboard, you’ll see an alert notification in the upper right corner of the window. This notification uses a series of colors to indicate the health of your environment, which includes not just the server itself but also all of the connected PCs. So you could theoretically see a blue informational icon with a “0” next to it, indicating that all is well and that you have no alerts. But since you will never actually see this, here’s what it looks like, next to the other notification types.

Far more common, unfortunately, is the yellow “bang” color, indicating you have some (real or imagined) issues, or, worse, the red “warning” color, indicating one or more serious issues. Signing into my own real-world Essentials 2012 server this morning, I see that I have 5 alerts to deal with. On a second testing server, I have two.
So let’s see what these alerts are, before moving on to dealing with them. Just click that notification icon to see the Alert Viewer.

On my actual Essentials 2012 server, I see the following (in which I slightly edited out non-essential information):
BPA scan results contain Warnings. BPA scan found 1 warnings in your network. From the server dashboard, click Devices tab, select your server, and then click Best Practices Analyzer to view additional details.
Important updates should be installed. ZENBOOK [one of my laptops]. One or more important updates are available to be installed. In the Alert Viewer, click Open Windows Update. Follow the instructions for initiating update installation.
Important updates should be installed. VM-ENT [another PC, in a VM]. One or more important updates are available to be installed. In the Alert Viewer, click Open Windows Update. Follow the instructions for initiating update installation
Low storage capacity on hard drives. MICRO [the server]. The following hard drives are low of capacity: Storage space (S:). To increase the capacity of the storage pool, add a new available hard drive to the storage pool. If you have already plugged the hard drive in, open the related alert, or go to Hard Drives tab on the Dashboard, select the hard drive that is low in capacity, and click Increase storage pool capacity task.
One or more server folders are located on the system hard drive. MICRO. The following server folders are located on the system hard drive: Folder Redirection, File History Backups, Client Computer Backups.  It is recommended that you move the server folders that are located on the system drive to a different hard drive to help protect your data against disaster. To move a server folder from the system drive to a different hard drive, select the server folder, and then click Move the folder task.
So what’s really wrong here?
The first issue, regarding the BPA scan, is related to a new feature of Essentials 2012, in which Microsoft has integrated a Best Practices Analyzer tool into the OS to monitor the system and ensure that it conforms to Microsoft’s known best practices. Here, my server has run afoul of a configuration change I always make on my servers, where I disable Internet Explorer’s Enhanced Configuration feature for administrator accounts; I do this so I can browse the web from the server when needed, but Microsoft does not approve of this behavior. The solution? You can fix it, I guess, or ignore the rule in the BPA tool. Which is what I did. That doesn’t prevent it from appearing in the BPA report, but it does prevent it from triggering an alert.
The next two issues involve two of my client PCs, which I don’t use regularly. Apparently they both need to be updated. On the VM, the required Windows Update isn’t important at all, not by any reasonable measure: It wanted me to install Silverlight. (I’ve also seen this alert triggered for Defender definition updates, which are very common and regular.) On the physical PC, there was a pending update for “Update for Internet Explorer Flash Player for Windows 8.” Now that one is arguably important. But here’s the thing: These PCs are both configured to automatically install updates, so I should never be warned about these issues. Installing the updates “fixed” the problems (removing the alerts), but they’re just going to come back when the inevitable future updates arrive.
The low capacity thing has been bothering me for a few days, and I admit to being stumped on this one. My storage space, the S: drive, is made of 2 3TB hard drives, and because I’m using a two-way mirror, the space “sees” a total of 3TB; the data should be equally spanned between the two disks. I’m only using 1TB of space, so I should have about 2 TB of free space overall. So I’m unclear why I get this error. I will investigate this one further. (In the meantime I simply added two more external hard drives to shut the thing up. Problem “solved.”)
The last issue is easily fixed, and yes, you should move all of the server folders off of the system drive. I’ve moved the other ones to S: (Company, Music, Pictures, Recorded TV, and Users, plus one I make called Software) and V: (Videos) already, and I’m not sure why I didn’t move the others. But doing so via the simple Move a Folder wizard in the Dashboard for each removed the alert.
What I’m left with is one alert that I can’t really fix, not yet. And from experience I know that I’m going to be dealing with some of the same alerts again and again. Like anyone administering a server, what I really want is for it to be working properly and not throwing alerts. Is there any other way to deal with these things?
Yes. As it turns out, you can ignore or delete alerts too. The difference between these choices may seem subtle, but it’s important.
Ignore. If you look at the Alert Viewer, you’ll see an “Ignore this alert” link in the description of each alert. Ignoring an alert will remove it from the health assessment for your environment, which is desirable in some cases, though it will continue to appear in the Alert Viewer. So if you choose to ignore alerts about pending updates on PCs (because you know they will be installed automatically), those alerts will no longer trigger a notification.
Delete. This option is hidden, and you have to right-click the alert name to see it. Deleting the alert removes it from the Alert Viewer (and thus from the network health assessment), which is certainly useful. But if the condition that triggered the alert continues, another alert will be generated.
Of course, most people aren’t going to be signing into the server interactively anyway, at least not regularly, and certainly not after the server is up and running and configured properly. So most of these alerts will be surfaced through the Launchpad application on your client PCs instead. As it turns out, the experience is similar: Tapping the alert notification icon in the Launchpad window will display Alert Viewer, this time on your client PC.

That said, you can always turn off these notification in Launchpad, or change the scope so that you’re only alerted to issues that are local to your own PC. To do that, access Launchpad settings from the strange little icon next to the window minimize icon at the top of the window.
This will hide problems, not solve them. But sometimes, after you’ve struggled with these alerts for too long, all you’re looking for is a little respite. And when it comes to these incredibly annoying alerts, selectively ignoring and deleting the alerts for issues you can’t or won’t fix isn’t enough.
That said, you may wish for even more alerts. Essentials 2012 can accommodate that need, too: You can enable an email alert notification through the Dashboard to get these notifications automatically. And you can even install a Health Report for Windows Server 2012 Essentials add-on that will let you run reports, automatically or manually, about the health of your environment.
OK, I’m not going to go there. :)


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Neil Young shows off his studio-quality Pono music player

Legendary guitarist and vocalist Neil Young is on a mission to save the world’s digital music collection from its low-quality depths. Appearing on the David Letterman show this week, the “Heart of Gold” rocker brought with him a working prototype of a new digital music player called the Pono. For those wondering Pono is the Hawaiian word for righteousness.
Pono has the ability to store and play the original master recordings of music albums from the various studios. Young wants to give consumers the ability to replace their low-quality MP3 files with high-resolution digital files that are faithful to the sound that the artists originally intended them to hear.

Young’s new device brings the decades-old debate about audio fidelity back to the forefront of the digital music landscape, as well as raising several questions regarding piracy and competition.
With the ability to play both studio tracks as well as your current library of MP3 files, the Pono could indeed be a powerful device, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. With digital piracy being rampant in the music industry, what happens when you give the master recordings to a consumer base that usually can crack any kind of DRM that has been put in place? Young’s take on piracy it is that is the new radio for this generation of listeners, with bands getting their work noticed by file sharing rather than hearing it on a countdown show or from a mix-tape from a friend.
Piracy issues aside, Young has gained traction for the Pono idea with the “Big Three” music studios; namely Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music. All three studios are said to have agreed to remaster their music catalogs for the device, which is a major step in the right direction. However, as you probably have already guessed, if you buy a Pono device you will have to repurchase all of your music in the new high-definition format, which is why the major studios are on board. Executives for those companies know that audiophiles will willingly hand over their hard earned money (again) to have a master copy of their favorite albums.
There’s currently no word on a release date or a price for the Pono or its music catalog. With the high-quality nature of the Pono format it’s safe to expect a premium pricing scheme will be put in place for the device and service.


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Windows Server 2012 Essentials Tip: Enable and Configure Media Sharing

While Windows Server 2012 Essentials is most obviously an update for Windows Server Essentials 2011, it also includes some features that make it an excellent next server for Windows Home Server fans. One of these is media sharing, which needs to be enabled first and then configured for optimal use.
You’re prompted to set up Essentials 2012’s media server as part of the initial setup tasks in the Dashboard. That said, if you skip over this step, you can enable the media server at any time by visiting Settings, Media from the Dashboard. Just click the On button to enable it.

There are three related settings here to consider.
Video streaming quality. This setting will determine the quality of video streaming from the server over both the local network and, via Remote Web Access Media Player, over the Internet. You can set this to one of four settings—low, medium, high, and best—but note that your server’s ability to effectively stream video at these settings is in fact determined by the performance of the server’s processor. This is unfortunately hard to gauge because—wait for it—Windows Server 2012 doesn’t actually provide a WEI (Windows Experience Index) score anymore. This Microsoft support page has some generally useless information about this issue.
Media library name. By default, your Essentials 2012-based media library will be seen as “Digital Media Library” in connecting clients such as Windows Media Player or the Xbox 360. You can customize this name to something you prefer.
Customize media library. If you click the Customize button, you’ll be presented with a window letting you determine which shared folders can present media to clients that connect to the server. If you select No for any of these folders, those locations will not be available when a media client (again, applications like Windows Media Player or the Xbox 360) connects to the server. (Folders that are disabled in this way still appear when your browse the server’s folder shares via Network Explorer from Windows 7 or 8, however. This is for media sharing purposes only.)

Enabling media sharing accomplishes two things.
First, it makes four new folder shares—Music, Pictures, Recorded TV, and Videos—available to clients that connect over the local network. Previous to adding the media server, Essentials provided shares such as Company, File History Backups, Folder Redirection, and Users. Each of these new shares will be available for normal Network Explorer browsing from Windows 7 and 8 clients even if you elect not to share media from some of these folders, as described above.
Second, it makes media available for sharing using standard DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technologies. You can “see” these DLNA-compatible media servers in Network Explorer, under the Media Devices group:

To use them, you need a compatible client. For example, in Windows Media Player, these servers and their shared media will appear in the “Other Libraries” area.

Likewise, you can browse the contents of these media shares from your Xbox 360 and then use the built-in music and video players to play the content you find. To do so, tap the Xbox Guide button on the Xbox 360 controller or remote. Then, from the Xbox Guide interface, navigate right to Media. Here, select either Music Player or Video Player, and then choose the media library from which to connect. On my network, I see two Essentials 2012-based servers, which are listed as MICRO: Home Server and ESS: Digital Media Server in Xbox 360. In each case, the capitalized first name is the machine name and the second name is the name of the media library.
Note: The Essentials 2012 media sharing feature will work with any DLNA-compatible device, not just Microsoft clients.
Media sharing works outside the normal Windows access rights controls. So while you may restrict the access of a shared folder to certain users, and then in more granular ways on a user-by-user basis, media sharing is either on or off. And if it is on, it is globally available for browsing and playback by any compatible client on the network. And that includes devices and PCs that are not part of the domain.


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Mozilla launches beta version of 'Persona' website authentication system

Mozilla launched the first beta version of its browser-independent website authentication system, Persona, on Thursday and hopes to convince the Web developer community to give it a try.
The Persona system was first launched as an experimental project called BrowserID in July 2011 with the goal of eliminating the need of creating and managing individual usernames and passwords for different websites.
Persona authenticates users against websites that support the system by using only their existent email addresses.
Users need to first create an account on Mozilla’s persona.org website, define a password and add one or more email addresses to their accounts. The ownership of each individual email address is verified by clicking on a link sent to it.
After that, signing into a website that supports Persona authentication is only a two-click process. Users who are not already logged into persona.org will need to input both their email and Persona password during the sign-in process, while users who are already authenticated will only be asked to select which verified email address they want to use.
Persona is conceptually similar to other authentication systems like OpenID that also allow users to authenticate on different websites using verified identities.
However, Persona relies on public key cryptography operations performed at the browser level without the identity provider—in this case the email provider—being involved in the actual authentication process as with OpenID.
This means that Persona provides a greater level of privacy as the system doesn’t track the activity of its users across the Web. “It creates a wall between signing you in and what you do once you’re there. The history of what sites you visit is stored only on your own computer,” Mozilla said on the persona.org website.
However, there are some drawbacks. While eliminating the need to remember separate usernames and passwords for every single website, Persona creates a single point of failure — the persona.org password.
If a user’s Persona password is stolen it can be used to impersonate them, Ben Adida, Persona project lead at Mozilla, said Thursday via email. “There is, of course, no way around this.”
In this respect, Persona is not very different from password management applications that also rely on a master password to keep all of the user’s identities protected. However, Mozilla plans to implement some additional protection mechanisms to tackle this issue.
“For improved protection, we are working on two-factor authentication in future beta versions,” Adida said. Two-factor authentication requires something the user knows, like a password, and something the user has, like a hardware device or a mobile phone. Without having both of these elements, an attacker cannot gain access to an account.
Mozilla has also implemented a session protection mechanism in order to limit the security risks that can arise if a user’s laptop is stolen while he’s still logged into persona.org or if a user forgets to log out of persona.org after using a public computer.
“Users simply need to go change their password from any other computer, and any existing Persona sessions are then locked out and can no longer be used to authenticate the user,” Adida said.
“When a user enters their Persona password on a computer they haven’t used before, the session is initially just 5 minutes long,” he said. “Extending it requires typing in the password again, at which point we prompt the user to tell us whether this computer is theirs or is public.”
Persona still has a long way to go until it becomes a practical authentication alternative. First of all, Mozilla needs to convince website developers and important Web services providers to adopt the system and implement it as an option into their websites. In order to facilitate this, a new and easier-to-use Persona API (application programming interface) was launched in August.

AMD launches Android app store for Windows

You may have seen the announcement of AMD AppZone and our work with BlueStacks, an AMD Ventures-backed company, to bring Android apps to AMD-based PCs. We are extremely excited about the collaboration and the new AMD AppZone Player that is powered by BlueStacks’ award winning LayerCake technology. Their technology makes it possible to run native Android apps on a Windows^® -based PC.
Why would you want to run Android apps on your PC? For starters, the Android app ecosystem is huge, boasting more than 500,000 apps. And, increasingly consumers have a mix of platforms across their devices, for example an Android phone and a Windows based PC. Maybe you like the Android version of the app better than the alternatives or maybe there isn’t an alternative available at all.
What’s special about the player on AMD-based products? There are many challenges with running apps that were originally designed for phones or tablets on a PC that in most cases has a larger screen and higher resolution display. To solve this, BlueStacks has designed  and optimized the player for AMD Radeon™ graphics and in particular, our OpenGL drivers found in our APUs and GPUs so you get a great ‘big-screen’ experience. Additionally, the apps are integrated into AppZone, our online showcase and one-stop-shop for apps accelerated by AMD technology.
There are two ways to get the player. You can download the player directly or download one of the apps, which will automatically install the player in addition to the app. Once installed, you can click the home page button to get the player home screen. From there, discovering new apps is easy! You can use the top buttons to browse recommended apps, use the search button to find apps across app stores or click one of the suggested apps along the right side that are recommended based on the apps you have previously downloaded.

One of the powerful features of BlueStacks’ technology is the Cloud Connect service that allows you to sync apps and SMS messages with an Android device. To setup, click the settings button and then Cloud Connect and follow the on screen instructions. You will also need to download the BlueStacks Cloud Connect app on your Android device.

Launching installed apps is easy. You can launch the player and apps from the start menu or better yet, click on the ‘Apps’ library, which contains shortcuts to all of your downloaded apps. This library integration makes it simple to launch right into your Android apps.

BlueStacks has achieved some incredible momentum since launching their alpha late last year with millions of downloads and over 1M Facebook fans. We are pleased to further our work with BlueStacks by incorporating Android apps into AMD AppZone and powering the AMD AppZone Player. Try it out!
Gabe Gravning is head of app ecosystem marketing at AMD.  His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.


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Windows Server 2012 Essentials: The Client Experience

While many Windows Home Server users are nervous about the Active Directory domain configuration in Windows Server 2012 Essentials, connecting and using client PCs in this environment is fairly painless and seamless. In fact, it’s not much different from using Windows 8 with a Microsoft account or local account.
While I’ll be examining the many administrative issues that arise while using Windows Server 2012 Essentials in future articles and just focus on the client experience here, we should at least touch on one important and related point. This article does assume that you’ve installed the server and are ready to start adding clients to the new domain you added during Setup. That all happens through a single (but important) Setup screen:

Done? Good. Here’s what it’s like to join and use this domain.
From any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC (Pro or higher: Domains do not work with the “home” versions of Windows), navigate with IE or anther web browser to the new server’s web site, which is preconfigured with page for downloading and installing the so-called Connector software. This page can be found at http://server-name/connect where, obviously, server-name­ is replaced with the actual name of your server. (This is the third value you entered in the Setup screen shown previously.)
The software you download and install here achieves a few things. First, it configures your PC to connect to the domain, rather than to a workgroup, as is the (silent) default in Windows 7 and 8. You will need to supply a valid domain user name—you’re prompted to create two such accounts during Essentials 2012 Setup, one an administrator and one a standard user, but you can (and maybe should) create other domain accounts in the server’s Dashboard at any time—and then reboot the PC, during which time the configurations are made, some automatically, and some in response to a short wizard you’ll need to step through.
Once it’s done, you can now sign in to the domain. The first time you do this with Windows 8, you’ll see an empty sign-in screen with text boxes for your domain account’s user name and password. It notes the domain name (THURROTT in my case) below the password box.

Don’t worry, though: Subsequent sign-ins work just like before where the user name is pre-filled in, and if you want, you can use a PIN or picture password as before, too.

When you sign-in and navigate to the desktop, you’ll see some information about migrating files and applications from your old user account to the domain user account—this is straightforward and involves that old standby Windows Easy Transfer—and two new Essentials 2012 applications, Launchpad and Dashboard.

The Launchpad application is a simple front-end to some common server tasks—Backup, Remote Web Access, shared folders, and Dashboard—and provides a server alert notification, which you will find to be annoying and “noisy,” offering up way too many notifications about unimportant server events. (More on that in the future.) I usually configure Launchpad to always startup minimized so I don’t need to deal with it. But you can (and should) spend a bit of time looking at the Launchpad settings, which let you tone down or even remove server alert notifications, among other things.

Dashboard is a RemoteApp version of the Dashboard management console you can also run directly on the server. This lets you administer the server without signing into the server interactively or using Remote Desktop.

I’ll be writing a lot more about actually administering this server later, so for now you can pretty much forget about most of this, though I do recommend thinking about configuring PC backup if you intend to use Essentials 2012 for that purpose. You can configure backup from the Launchpad application, or through the Dashboard in Devices.
At this point, Windows 8 should be working exactly as before, with one big difference: You’ve lost the ability to automatically connect to online services and sync settings through your Microsoft account (since you’re now signing on with a domain). So if you run one of Windows 8’s connected apps, you’ll be prompted to add a Microsoft account.

Rather than doing this, however, you can follow the advice in my article Windows 8 Tip: Sign in to a Domain and Still Use Live Services and globally link the domain account to a Microsoft account. You do this through PC Settings, Users.

Just tap the Connect your Microsoft account button, enter your Microsoft account credentials, and Windows 8 will work exactly as before.
And that, really, is the point: With just about zero configuration, you can be up and running with Windows Server 2012 Essentials very easily, and despite the fact that there’s now a domain running in your environment, it works much as with Windows Home Server: Centralized PC backup works. You’ve got a central location for your important documents and other data. You can share media as before (once you enable it on the server), though not over a homegroup. (Essentials 2012, like all domain-based Windows Server versions, is not homegroup compatible.) It’s all very similar, nearly identical really.
But there are additional benefits, too. Essentials 2012 supports Storage Spaces, so that centralized storage can be made redundant, cheaply and easily. Windows 8 PCs connected to the server automatically utilize Essentials 2012’s centralized File History backup functionality (in addition to the traditional image-based backups). This means that File History is stored on the server, with a portion of it cached on the PC, too, so it works when you’re not connected to the network.

You can also optionally implement a very simple set of group policies via a wizard that will apply security settings for Windows Update, Windows Defender, and the firewall on each connected PC, ensuring that your PCs are always secure. And as part of this wizard, you can configure folder redirection settings, by which you can redirect any or all user folders to the server, providing a more seamless experience for those that sign in to different PCs regularly.
More on that later. For now, the important thing to know is that while using a domain can add some complexity, as you’ll see when we look at the Dashboard and other administrative interfaces, it doesn't have to be very different for users. In fact, it’s almost identical.

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Looking for FREE / Open Source IT Monitoring Software

Most  IT monitoring software is costly, and requires a subscription, well here are two FREE options.

Nagios  

Going beyond basic IT monitoring capabilities, Nagios XI is an enterprise-class monitoring and alerting solution that provides organizations with extended insight of their IT infrastructure before problems affect critical business processes. Nagios XI provides organizations with many benefits, including:

• Comprehensive IT Infrastructure Monitoring: Provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components – including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network infrastructure. Hundreds of third-party addons provide for monitoring of virtually all in-house applications, services, and systems.


• Visibility: Provides a central view of your entire IT operations network and business processes. Powerful dashboards provide at-a-glance access to powerful monitoring information and third-party data. Views provide users with quick access to the information they find most useful.


• Awareness: Alerts are sent to IT staff, business stakeholders, and end users via email or mobile text messages, providing them with outage details so they can start resolving issues immediately.

Spiceworks 

So why Spiceworks? Well, in January 2006 the IT management market was pretty boring. When we asked IT pros to name their favorite IT utility they gave us a blank stare. Then they began to complain that IT products were pricey and painful to use… and that the companies building them were a bit "blah." It was clear we needed to spice IT up! So we took that inspiration, combined it with our mission to deliver an app that "just works," and threw in the notion of people working together on software… and voilà – the name “Spiceworks” was born!

Google Acquires Snapseed Team

Google has picked up its own photo-sharing app to rival Facebook's purchase of Instagram, acquiring the German photography software company Nik Software.
Nik developed the Snapseed application for iOS devices, which was the iPad App of the Year in 2011 and grabbed nine million users in its first year.
The application costs $4.99 (about £3) from the App Store and it is thought that an Android version of the software is in the works too. You'd imagine that process may be sped up a little now.
The app garnered huge popularity thanks largely to its multi-touch enabled editing capabilities, but Nik also boasts a range of photography software which is now under Google's control.

Joining Google+

The Snapseed team will relocate to the Google's Mountain View HQ to join the Google+ team, so Google's intentions are pretty clear on this one.
"We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone," said Vic Guntora, senior vice president, engineering and Google+ boss, in a blog post.
In a statement on the Nik website, the company said: "We are pleased to announce that Google has acquired Nik Software. For nearly 17 years, we've been guided by our motto, "photography first", as we worked to build world class digital image editing tools.
"We've always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google's support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures."

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iOS 6 launches tomorrow

iOS 6 launches tomorrow, if you forgotten what the features are that are coming, let's recap:

Let’s start with Siri, the feature that revolutionized voice-controlled assistants when it launched on the iPhone 4S last year. It’s received a lot of criticism since then, but in iOS 6, Siri is much-improved.

Now on iPad & iPod touch
For a start, it’s not exclusive to the iPhone 4S anymore; you’ll also find Siri on the new iPad, and on the fifth-generation iPod touch.

International local search
Until now, searching Siri for local business or nearby points of interest was exclusive to user in the United States, but now anymore. Local search is now available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It’s also coming to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in October.

Sports scores, restaurant reservations, movie showtimes, and more
In iOS 6, Siri is more intelligent than ever before. You can now use it to quickly find sports scores for your favorite team, and their league standings; to find nearby restaurants and make reservations; to find movie showtimes and see the latest movie reviews; and to launch the apps installed on your iOS device. You can also ask Siri to make posts on Twitter and Facebook — no fingers required.

MAPS

Google Maps is gone in iOS 6, which means no more Street View. But it makes way for Apple’s awesome new Maps app, arguably one of the biggest and best features of iOS 6.

Flyover
Forget satellite view and 2D imagery, Flyover is where it’s at. As its name suggests, Flyover allows you to fly over some of the world’s biggest cities, with interactive 3D views that let you zoom, pan, tilt, and rotate around skyscrapers, landmarks, and more. Apple’s highly-detailed imagery is like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and it’ll blow you away.

Turn-by-Turn navigation
Yes, I hear you — it’s about time! Android has it, Windows Phone has it, even BlackBerry has it. Now iOS has it, too: turn-by-turn navigation. Stick your TomTom on eBay and trust Apple’s new Maps app to get you where you want to go, with spoken directions, a 3D view, and real-time traffic integration.
And like everything Apple builds, the turn-by-turn feature looks great. It sports beautiful maps; large, shiny road signs and arrows superimposed over the images that show you which way to go and how long it’s going to take to get there; and dynamic camera angles that turn as you do. Turn-by-turn navigation even works from the lock screen, and provides roadwork alerts so that you can avoid the jams.

PASSBOOK

Like Maps, Passbook is brand new in iOS 6, and it’s the closest you’ll get to an iPhone wallet for the foreseeable future. Boarding passes, movie tickets, retail coupons, store cards and more can be turned into digital cards that all live inside your Passbook app.
Each one is intelligent, too; for example, your Starbucks card will tell you your remaining balance, while retail coupons and boarding passes will automatically pop up on the lock screen when you arrive at certain stores or at the airport — so you don’t even need to open Passbook to use them. And the best bit: they can be updated over-the-air, so if your gate changes after you’ve checked in for your flight, Passbook will let you know.

APP STORE

New look
In iOS 6, the App Store has been given an entirely new look. Gone is the traditional blue theme so familiar to Apple’s built-in apps, and in comes a new dark look that’s been completely overhauled from the ground up. It sports fancy rotating banners for features apps, the ability to see what’s new in each update without leaving the update tab. When you download an app, you will no longer be pulled out of the App Store and taken to your home screen (yay!), but you will get a handy status bar that shows the progress of your download.

No passwords for updates
You no longer need to enter your iTunes password just to download updates to your existing apps. I’ve never understood why this was a requirement, but thankfully it’s done in iOS 6.

New search
As you’d expect, the App Store’s search section has been given the same new look the rest of the store has, but it also gets an entirely new way to search apps. Rather than being presented with a simple list of apps when you perform a search, the App Store will show you all of your results in miniature previews that include a screenshot of the app. All you have to do is flick through them to find the app you’re looking for. If you used the Chomp service before it was acquired by Apple, this design will already be familiar to you.

PHONE

The Phone app has remained relatively unchanged since its debut on the original iPhone back in 2007. It’s had a new icon since then, and a few smaller features, but that’s pretty much it. In iOS 6, there are a number of new features you’ll love.

Reply with message
Can’t take a call right away, but don’t want to just ignore it? Well, in iOS 6, you can decline a call but send a message to your caller to explain why you couldn’t take it. Simply swipe up from the bottom of the display during an incoming call, then select ‘Reply with Message’. There are three default messages you can send instantly, or you can write your own.

Reminders
The problem I have when I can’t take calls is that I decline them, but then forget I ever received them. In iOS 6, you can ask your iPhone to remind you of a call later on, so that you can return it at a more appropriate time. What’s more, the reminders can be location-based, so you can ask to receive them when you leave work, or when you get home.



FaceTime over cellular
In iOS 6, FaceTime no longer requires a Wi-Fi connection. Finally! You can now make FaceTime calls to friends and family over 3G and 4G data connections, though you will need to ensure your carrier supports this feature, and you’ll need to be aware that some (such as AT&T) are charging extra for it.

 

Facebook Integration

Like Twitter, Facebook is now integrated into iOS, meaning you can post to your favorite social network from all sorts of places. You can post messages using the post button within Notification Center, you can upload photos directly from within your Camera Roll, you can post webpages and links from within Safari, you can post your favorite apps from the App Store, you can post your location from Maps, and lots more.



Clock comes to iPad
iOS’s built-in Clock app is now available on the iPad, only it’s much bigger (obviously), and much more beautiful. Like the iPhone’s clock app, it allows you to set alarms and timers, and set up different clocks for different cities around the world.

Retina shutdown spinner
This is a small one, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. The spinning wheel you see when you shutdown your iOS device is now optimized for the Retina display — two years after the Retina display made its debut with the iPhone 4S.

iTunes Match streaming
You can now stream iTunes Match music to your iOS device with the Music app — you’re no longer forced to download it.


(Source) *




*Pics & Features Listed

Razor medfield "intel" CPU based phone

Motorola's revealed the first smartphone to be borne from its team-up with Intel. Here in London, UK, it's a familiar-looking Android smartphone with an important internal difference. The RAZR i will be running on one of Intel's latest mobile chips (2GHz processor), differentiating it from what we saw from the Google-owned phone-maker a few weeks earlier. Motorola's calling the phone its biggest launch in the UK since the original RAZR.

Motorola's touting the (almost "edge-to-edge") 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 2,000mAh of battery and the same Kevlar coating -- it's water repellent this time. But this event is also about Intel's 2GHz processor inside. The chipmaker says it's optimized the architecture for web browsing, especially for Java-based activities. It's also pushing for power consumption even on processor-intensive activities like gaming -- but we'll have to wait for our own tests to check it out.

The RAZR i also packs a similar 8-megapixel camera and interface to those other new Motorola phones, with under a second start-up to get the camera app running -- we bet that dedicated camera button helps there. Intel made similar promises with the Orange San Diego, but were already intrigued by that Vanilla-looking interface.

NFC is already baked in, with Android Beam taking control of what you need, while its bootloader arrives unlocked. The RAZR i appears to be packing some iteration of Android 4 -- but we're still checking on whether it'll be coming with ICS or the newer Jelly Bean. The phone will arrive in the likes of UK, France, Germany and Brazil -- but no news on whether it'll appear inside North America's borders. In the meantime, you'll find a galley of pics below, plus a press release and publicity video right after the break.
 

Update: According to retailer Clove.co.uk stock should be arriving (in the UK at least) on October 1st, with a SIM-free price of £342 (about $555).

(Source)

Internet Explorer Zero Hack *UPDATE*

Source - photoXpress

UPDATE! Microsoft has now patched this bug, make sure you run your windows updates!!

A new zero day exploit has been discovered, and it affects Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 as well as older machines using XP, Vista and Windows 7. In other words it can hit millions of machines across the planet, and Microsoft has released free security software as a stopgap while it works on a more significant solution. It would seem that the ones who originated the exploit may be linked to the Nitro group that was very active late last year.


The zero day exploit was first revealed by Eric Romang, who discovered it as it infected his PC. At the time he had been "monitoring some of the infected servers used by the alleged Nitro gang." According to Romang, as soon as the hackers realized that their cover had been blown they removed all the exploit files from their source server. "The guys how developed this new 0day were not happy to have been catched ... But also more interesting the also removed a Java 0day variant from other folders." That suggests there was something else hidden away which Romang's activities inadvertently exposed, possibly linked to a Java-related zero day that was uncovered late August 2012.
The Nitro group, when it surfaced last year, was interested in military, government and chemical industry targets. According to Symantec "[the] attack campaign focused on the chemical sector with the goal of obtaining sensitive documents such as proprietary designs, formulas, and manufacturing processes." Some of the attacks were traced back to a Chinese server, and it was thought at the time that the user - operating under the name Covert Grove - may have been significantly involved in the hack.
A zero day attack is called that because the attack exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in the system, so that the attack occurs on "day zero" of awareness of the problem. Though Symantec and other antivirus companies have released defensive updates for this IE exploit, they may not be sufficient. Liam O Murchu, research manager for Symantec, pointed out that "the danger with these types of attacks is that they will mutate and the attackers will find a way to evade the defences we have in place."

(Source)

The Popinator......Popcorn Shooter

This is a video from popcorn purveyor 'Popcorn, Indiana' of the Popinator, a popcorn shooting cannon that allegedly uses a bin aural microphone array to identify where you mouth is when you say 'POP', then shoots a piece straight down your gullet. It's not a product for sale, just a marketing campaign for the company, and I'm not 100% sure it's even functional. You never get to see the thing shoot two pieces of popcorn at two separate targets in a single scene, so it might very well be faked. A move that, if not quickly disproved with another video, will require we boycott the company

(Source)

Amazon Starting their Own Map API

Update: Nokia has confirmed that it has licensed its location platform for maps and geocoding to Amazon for its maps program.

Amazon has opened a new Maps API so Kindle Fire app developers can ditch Google Maps and instead integrateAmazon’s mapping tech.
“When we announced Kindle Fire HD, we also made the Amazon Maps API available to our developer community,” Amazon wrote in a blog post announcing the Maps API. “The Amazon Maps API makes it easy for you to integrate mapping functionality into apps that run on the all-new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD. These new devices will also support location-based services through the android.location API.”
Amazon’s Maps API provides a migration path for developers using Google Maps for Android. It offers two major features:

• Interactive maps: Developers can embed a “Map View” in an app so users can pan and zoom across the globe. There is also an option for displaying current location, satellite view, and standard view.
• Custom overlays: Display locations of “businesses, landmarks, and other points of interest” with customized markers and pins.

Developers can apply now to get access to the beta release of Amazon’s Maps API.

Apple announces new devices

No comment.

New Amazon Kindle , Kindle Fire & Fire HD Announcements

 

UPDATE! Kindle Fire HD comes with ad free model for 15 dollars more.

Amazon New Product Teaser Commercial during Football game on

September 5th.

 The kindle paper white models -

Source - TechCrunch

 Features - 25% more contrast, 62% more pixels , 8 weeks of battery life using back light. Easier to read in bright light. Time shown left is chapters of your books

Price & Date - $119 order WiFi only. Order today ships Oct 1st, comes with free 3G for the $179 model.


 

The kindle fire models - New Kindle Gen 2, Kindle Fire 7" & 8.9 HD

Source - Engadget

Features - kindle fire (Gen 2) : 1gb of ram, longer battery life, faster CPU, 7" screen

Price & Date - $159 , order now, ships Sept 14th.


Kindle Fire HD

Features - Front facing camera 8.9"screen, 1920x1200 res, full spectrum color at all angles,
Polar filter to cut down on glare, Omap 4470 CPU, dual stereo speakers, Dolby digital plus sound,
Two antennas, auto sensing antenna, starting at 16gb model, whisper sync with voice,
Immersion reading feature , x-ray movies with imdb search info of actors.

Source - Slash Gear

Whisper sync for games, keeping your games saves on all devices, Skype with hd front facing custom
camera. Kindle free time for kids, multiple profiles, add to watch list from x-ray/imdb feature.
Bluetooth, hdmi out.


Price & Date - $199, 7"hd , 8.9" $299 order today , ships November 20th.
                         $499, 4g lte hd - 250mb a month, 32gb model order today, ships November 20th.