Info is sketchy but sources say that the computer runs on an Intel Atom processor 1.6Ghz, the very same one that fuels modern netbooks. The final specifications indicate the Eee Top boasting  a 15.6″ display, although the ET1602 and ET1603 names would suggest a 16″ display. For photo lovers, you’ll be glad to know there’s also 160Gb of storage and an integrated webcam.  If it comes with 2GB of memory, this will definitely eat into the midrange desktop line of HP.

Since the unit is expected to cost $499, I doubt the Top contends for the gamers market. The video most likely will be integrated and performance pegs at the entry level line of desktops. Don’t expect to play Halo on this one.

(but it sure makes a great anniversary gift to the girlfriend!)

Once only available in the UK and US, the service is available at www.PersonalNumber.com, where members can sign up for a free UK +44 number, easily forwarded to any landline (and cellphone in various nations) at no cost or via a Global SIM card.

Prospects can register online, and instantly be assigned their personal Global number. After accessing, free call forwarding can be installed to five numbers, or activated via voicemail. The call diversion can be modified by logging onto the website any spot the world. There is absolutely no fees to sign up, no paperwork, and no fees payable whatsoever. A free voicemail to email facility is available. Excited already? I am!

The service is superb for anyone (ie a business user) who wants to be reachable on a single number without shelling out for incoming calls, whatever location. Business members can issue their own Personal Number to associates and friends ensuring they will get all important calls. It is also perfect for companies that rquire a UK customer contact number with no costs applicable. It’s like your own call center!

The extension of the available countries opens up the market to year out students or ex patriates. Whilse abroad, friends and family enjoy a local UK number for persistent contact, which is easily re-routed to a SIM card or landline as they traipse to travel destinations.

In addition, there is a the Personal Number can be merged to a prepaid Global SIM card, so that members can take calls on the SIM card anywhere the world. Free incoming voicecalls to the SIMs are available in over 50 countries, including all of Europe, Australia and parts of the Middle East. Free voicemail storage is likewise available worldwide. The Global SIM card also boasts considerably cheaper outbound calls and texts whilst overseas than with regular Network Operators.

The privacy is ironclade for individuals who require to publish a phone number in correlation with printed or online classified ads - or when using any form of dating service.  (cool huh?) Since members never dial the user’s domestic cell or personal number, their anonymity is ensured.

More information? visit www.PersonalNumber.com or email Info@PersonalNumber.com.

Donned like a pair of goggles, the new AV310 is the pioneering video headset of its kind to feature the full 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio; while the AV230XL blows old technologies by using OLED (organic LED) screen technology for an vibrantly bright, high contrast display that drinks less power.

The launch of the two headsets increases the complement of Vuzix range to four models. The AV920 is the top of the line video headset, and there’s VR920 is a virtual reality goggle aimed at the gaming market which adds motion tracking and 3D capability to 80 PC titles and online games such as World of Empire Earth, Second Life and Earth Siege.

The new products are developed to complement an array of devices with TV Out capability such as theApple iPod range, MP4 players, games consoles such as Wii, and many of the latest cellphones from Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and HTC.

In fact, connectivity and access to content is now at such a level that most consumers across Europe could sit and watch on their personal devices ‘cinema sized’ video from YouTube, BBC iPlayer or other on-demand TV channels using a Vuzix headset.

CEO Paul Travers was one confident fella: “There is increasing demand and interest in this space. As screens in our homes get bigger, the screens we use on the move have stayed roughly the same size.

“With Vuzix iWear you can get the full big-screen cinema experience, in a device that is small enough to carry in your pocket. And the range of products you can connect to is increasing all the time as more and more mobile phones are released with video out capability.”

The new Vuzix models are provided with a snazzy “Made for iPod” cable that connects to the full range of iPod devices – including the Classic, the Nano and the Touch; and also to the iPhone. Cables for other leading handsets such as Nokia’s N95 and N96 are thrown right in

Both AV230XL and the AV310 Widescreen run on one standard AA battery, further aiding convenience, flexibility and portability. Yet the power drain is minute!

The AV230XL will initially retail at £129.99 and the AV310 Widescreen at £149.99. Both are available now and are being released at special introductory launch prices that will be held until Xmas.

Stockists include 3 retail stores, Firebox.com, Play.com, Applestore.com, Amazon.com or direct from www.vuzix.co.uk.

And for the complement of techheads who visit this site, here’s the stuff you want:

AV310 Widescreen:
• Screen size equivalent to 52” viewed from 9 feet
• Full 16:9 Widescreen Aspect Ratio
• Made for iPod compatibility and works with iPhone
• Compatibility with numerous mobile phones including N95, N96 and LG Viewty
• Independent +2 to -5 diopter focus providing individual adjustment for each eye
• Stereo 3D capable - Vuzix 3D watermark compliant
• Accutilt viewer with 15 degrees of tilt adjustment
• 5 hours battery life on one AA battery
• On screen display to control settings
• Removable comfort fit ear buds
• Adjustable hypoallergenic nosepiece
• Can be used with or without glasses
• RRP £149.99 (until Jan 1, 2009)

AV230XL
• Screen size equivalent to 44” viewed from 9 feet
• Made for iPod compatibility and works with iPhone
• Compatibility with numerous mobile phones including N95, N96 and LG Viewty
• Independent +2 to -5 diopter focus providing individual adjustment for each eye
• Accutilt viewer with 15 degrees of tilt adjustment
• 7 hours battery life on one AA battery
• On screen display to control settings
• Removable comfort fit ear buds
• Adjustable hypoallergenic nosepiece
• Can be used with or without glasses
• RRP £129.99 (until Jan 1, 2009)

Vista Codec Package has the following other editions available on this page: Vista Codec Package x64 Components.

Download:
Vista Codec Package 5.0.1 (link 1)
Vista Codec Package 5.0.1 (link 2)
Vista Codec Package 5.0.1 (link 3)

MindManager 8 is an application that allows you to map your ideas and information visually, starting with a central topic surrounded by subtopics arranged on lines, or “branches.”  The map is a visual diagram that imitates the creator’s thoughts, with the interactive benefits of embedded data, live hyperlinks, collaboration capabilities, and much more.  MindManager is an indispensable fifth productivity application, along with the word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and e-mail. While integrating with and augmenting all of these applications, MindManager 8 enables you to capture, organise, and act upon limitless ideas, data and knowledge without ever leaving your mind map. Millions of successful people use MindManager to manage projects, develop plans, create presentations, and accomplish a limitless number of other tasks.

MindManager Web is an all-new, elegant way to mind map and collaborate with others online. MindManager Web is a SaaS application which transforms your outline-oriented text documents into visually compelling maps.  You can edit your maps anywhere, anytime; co-edit maps with others; and pick who can access your maps within secure workspaces.  Designed with the pedigree of the world’s most popular mind mapping application, MindManager Web is fully compatible with MindManager desktop software, and entering new topics and subtopics is as simple as hitting the Enter or Insert key. 

MindManager 8, a desktop Windows application, constitutes a milestone release of the world’s most popular mind mapping program.  Working together with the Mindjet Player and MindManager Web, it eliminates the old barriers that have hindered the sharing of mind maps by making it easy for people to co-create and broadcast their fully interactive mind maps. It provides a remarkably effective way for individuals to collaborate and save time in the exchange of information. 

“MindManager 8 is a game changer for Mindjet and mind mapping tools,” said Mark Levitt, program vice president, Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 strategies at IDC.  “Mindjet has addressed one of the biggest hurdles facing mind mapping technology today: the inability to share fully functional maps with people who do not own the product.  Mindjet Player and MindManager Web will help many more individuals and organisations see the benefits of using mind mapping for getting information work done faster, better, smarter.”

Studies conducted internally by Fortune 500 companies document savings of up to 11 hours per week among workers who use MindManager to develop strategies, manage projects, prepare for meetings, and many other tasks. Workers found better clarity of thought, made faster, yet more informed, decisions, and realised an overall increase in time spent on strategic initiatives when incorporating MindManager into their daily routines.

“From day one we’ve had a mission: help eliminate information overload and improve productivity,” said Scott Raskin, Mindjet CEO.  “This is a great milestone for Mindjet as we significantly raise the bar for productivity increases and collaboration with MindManager 8 and MindManager Web.  In this unpredictable economy, only those who find new and better ways of managing their ideas and information and collaborating with others will survive.  These two new products are transformative for people who want to make an impact, and Mindjet is working day and night to help people reach that goal.”

The new capabilities in MindManager 8 include:

·       Mindjet Player – Transforms maps into fully interactive Adobe PDFs or Flash .SWF files. They can be shared with anyone, published to blogs and embedded in web pages.

·       Embedded Browser – Maps now incorporate a browser window so you can view Web pages and PDF documents without leaving MindManager.

·       Integrated Microsoft Office File Editing – You can view and edit attached Microsoft Word, Excel, Project and PowerPoint files from within MindManager’s embedded browser, eliminating the need to leave the map and launch a separate application.

·       Integrated Web Services – Google and Yahoo! searches can be initiated directly inside a map, with mapped and editable search results that can be refreshed with one click, or automatically updated each time you open your map. MindManager 8 can also search Amazon, Facebook, MySpace, Microsoft Live Search, eBay, and StrikeIron.

·       Searchable Maps – Maps created with MindManager are fully searchable by many popular desktop search applications. This includes the contents of maps, and also all of the attached documents.

·       Automated Task Management – No more hours wasted updating due dates and dependencies when a task varies from its original schedule. Automated task management provides instant summations of task start dates, end dates, level of completion, and exception management.

·       Database Linker – Real time information from spreadsheets and databases can be incorporated right into your map. MindManager can now access data from MS Excel, Oracle, IBM DB2, MS SQL Server, MS Access, and MySQL.
Pricing and Availability

English and German versions of MindManager 8 are available immediately.  French and Japanese versions will be available in early 2009.  MindManager Web is immediately available in English, German, French and Japanese.

Single-seat perpetual licenses for MindManager 8 are £199 with upgrades from previous versions of MindManager starting at £99.  Promotional upgrades are £79 between now and 31 December, 2008.

MindManager Web/Mindjet Connect packages are £8 per user per month with a one year subscription.

All purchasers of MindManager 8 between 11 November, 2008 and 31 December, 2008 will receive a free 6-month subscription to MindManager Web.

Click here to try  MindManager 8 and MindManager Web.

The two hackers will demonstrate their feat at the upcoming PacSec security conference in Tokyo, Japan.

WPA is a protocol that has been widely adopted as a replacement for WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), which has been known to be insecure since as far back as 2001. The initial attack on WEP was actually a dictionary attack, thus requiring great computational resources. This meant that attack scenarios on a large scale were highly unlikely.
The uncertainty ended at the beginning of 2007, when Erik Tews, along with two student colleagues from the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany, developed a new technique which allowed them to break WEP security in only two minutes. Their method, which became known as the PTW attack, prompted all security professionals to declare WEP a high security risk. In fact, the use of WEP as encryption protocol is what allowed hackers to steal millions of credit card details in the T.J. Maxx hit.

NetworkWorld reports that, according to Dragos Ruiu, the PacSec organizer, in order to crack the TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) key, the researchers found a way to trick the router into sending them large amounts of encrypted data. Combining this with what Ruiu calls a “mathematical breakthrough”, the attack time was reduced to a matter of minutes, between 12 and 15.

This is even more impressive as it is not a dictionary attack, because just as in the case of WEP, the idea that WPA might be vulnerable to a dictionary attack has always been voiced by researchers. However, considering the amount of resources, computational and time-related, needed to pull off such an attack, this has never been considered a big threat to WPA security.

The two researchers only succeeded in cracking WPA’s TKIP key, but they haven’t been able to actually decrypt the individual keys generated by the TKIP, which are used to encrypt the data packets sent between a computer and the router. Even so, this is “just the starting point,” Dragos Ruiu pointed out. “Erik and Martin have just opened the box on a whole new hacker playground,” he explained.

Mr. Ruiu also outlines the problems raised by this achievement, mainly the fact that WPA is now a requirement for security standards compliance almost everywhere. As a result, WPA has been adopted and is being used by many organizations and not just by individuals. “Everybody has been saying, ‘Go to WPA because WEP is broken’. This is a break in WPA,” concluded Ruiu.

Robert Graham, of Errata Security, begs to differ. According to him, WPA or WPA-RC4-TKIP as it is technically known, has been designed from the start as just a temporary fix to WEP and everybody should have known that. The entire reason for WPA-RC4-TKIP’s existence was to reduce adoption costs by accommodating older WEP hardware, which wasn’t able to support WPA2 (WPA2-AES-CCMP) at that time. The WPA2, which uses the AES “block cypher” and not the RC4 “stream cypher” implemented in both WPA and WEP is not affected by this new attack and, according to Mr. Graham, will continue to be secure for a long time to come.

“There are no weakness in AES or the WPA2 standard based upon it. It’s going to last for the next 20 years,” claims Robert Graham. He adds that since WPA and WPA2 have been basically standardized at the same time, but one as a temporal fix and the other as a long term one, “you should always have been planning WPA2-AES-CCMP eventually, and been planning to rely upon that for many years. If you planned to only do WPA-RC4-TKIP, then you were wrong”.

Regardless of whether you considered or were even aware of the temporal nature of WPA or not, you should immediately start planning for full WPA2 implementation, as it’s likely that not much time will pass until it is completely compromised. If you are a home user, check if your router has WPA2 support, which is the case for newer ones, and switch to it.

In addition, Erik Tews plans on publishing the findings in an academic journal in the near future, while Martin Beck has released parts of the attack code as tkiptun-ng, a tool incorporated in the popular and freely available Aircrack-ng suite, a collection of applications aimed at cracking wireless encryption.

source: news.softpedia.com

That’s the idea behind the innovative Survival in A Can- something no Eagle Scout or military commando should be without. Here we have a sturdy, rust proof, leakproof, crushproof tin can jammed full of 25 survival items. Go hunt in the forest, trek the tundras, fish the lake or conquer the wild wild west armed with your compass, rifle and this tin can. You’ll be confident that inclement weather or unexpected injuries won’t faze you. This kit is simply so complete and portable  that it’s a must to tote one in your car, SUV, motorcycle, fishing vest, backpack, kevlar vest, yacht, etc.

 The kit includes one of each of the following items: non-aspirin pain reliever, adhesive bandage, alcohol prep pad, antibiotic ointment, book of matches, compass, chewing gum, sugar, salt, energy nugget, duct tape, fire starter cube, first aid instructions, fish hook & line, note paper, pencil, razor blade, safety pin, reflective signal surface, tea bag, waterproof bag, whistle, and wire clip. In sum it, contains most emergency medical supplies , nourishment, navigation tools  and implements that can keep you alive till the cavalry comes! At 4.25″ x 3″ x .9″ , its almost feather light. It floats in water, and may be your best friend.

Here’s what’s inside:

You can save the most important life (yours) by purchasing this kit at: www.thinkgeek.com

I’d love this gift for christmas. It sure beats those ugly ties or socks I get from Marks and Spencers every season.

pico media projector

body.  The device is like a cellphone at  a mere 11.5cm x 5cm x 2.2cm and tiptoes the scales at just 160 grams. There’s more. The rechargeable lithium ion battery is good for an hour’s worth of playback time. Colors come out crisp and zany in a dark room. This is definitely a superb device to brag off you latest vacation photos with friends so they don’t have to peer into your slow loading Vista laptop screen.

So what’s the tradeoff? Movie mavens shouldn’t  expect full High Definition resolution from the Pico Media Projector though, as it won’t be able to reach even half that quality. Leave that to your standard Panasonic or Pioneer projectors.

You can scoop up the Pico Media Projector at an extremely affordable £299.99.

The saga  began on February 20th, when Mr. Shuttleworth announced the Intrepid Ibex, also known as Ubuntu 8.10, the next major release of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system. Ubuntu 8.10 is also the ninth release of Ubuntu OS,

“We want you to be able to move from the office, to the train, and home, staying connected all the way.” - said Mark Shuttleworth. Hmmm… sounds very much like Microsoft PR spiel!
Any way, lets get to the Highlights of Ubuntu 8.10:
· GNOME 2.24
· Linux kernel 2.6.27
· Guest session
· DKMS
· X.org 7.4
· Network Manager 0.7
· PAM authentication framework
· Totem BBC plugin

The slick desktop environment in Ubuntu 8.10, GNOME 2.24.1, offers a slew of helpful features. Here are a few of them:

· Intelligent terminal! How? For example, if you open a terminal window on the desktop , the path will be the one for the Desktop, not for Home!
· You can quickly mount archives and ISO files! For instance, that you don’t want to extract an archive, you just want to take a peek inside it, or to copy just two files from there… with a simple right click on the archive, you can select the “Open with ‘Archive Mounter’” option and voila;
· Private (encrypted) Directory really works, but you have to work some “wizardry” in the terminal to activate first;
· Superior screenshot utility! The default GNOME Screenshot tool can now remember the second you set for screenshot delay every time you open it, it is faster, and can include the mouse pointer in screenshots;
· Smart logout/shutdown button! Fast User Switch Applet is its name, and it now replaces the regular button for system shutdown. Along the usual restart, logout, lock screen, suspend and hibernate functions offered by this new applet, it will also emulate away, online, busy and offline functions from the Pidgin application (if it’s open, of course);
· The “Create Archive” window has some new features, such as “Password protection,” “Encryption” and “File Splitting”;
· The “Extracting files from archive” window has been improved, and will show you in real time what it does;
· The system will automatically shut down in 60 seconds if you just hit the shutdown button. I’ve tested it and the system shuts down in 60 seconds… However, I don’t see any reason for this function, except that it’s somehow cool;
· There are also a lot of radical desktop effects for you to toy with!

Ubuntu 8.10