Color vulnerable to simple GPS hack, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere

Color, the $41-million-in-funding location-oriented photo sharing startup, is susceptible to simple GPS spoofing. With nothing more than a jailbroken iPad or iPhone, you can use FakeLocation to trick Color into thinking you're somewhere else. Within seconds you can be browsing photos that were snapped thousands of miles away. With a little digging, you can pore through photos not intended for your eyes.

Of course, such a hack isn't illegal as such -- every photo you take with Color is public. With FakeLocation you are simply circumventing Color's very limited location-oriented security mechanism. It does undermine Color's usefulness (and uniqueness), though -- if nefarious types can sit in their bedroom or basement and eavesdrop on classy dinner parties and wild night club soirees, people might be less inclined to share personal photos with those around them.

Fortunately, both for Color and its users, this is an easy security hole to plug -- at least in the short term. The app (or server-side) code simply checks to see if the user has 'teleported' an impossibly large distance, without any intermediate steps in between. In the long term, though, Color's users must be aware that its social graph is completely public. Color's users must realize that every photo they upload is visible by anyone, from any place.

After the break, just to elucidate a little on Color's actual business model and ultimate intention, we have two amazing quotes from Bill Nguyen, Color's founder.

Continue reading Color vulnerable to simple GPS hack, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere

Color vulnerable to simple GPS hack, lets you spy on anyone, anywhere originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/29/color-vulnerable-to-simple-gps-hack-lets-you-spy-on-anyone-any/

Elsa Alexander Furtmann Siegrid Holstein Michael Vollmar Robin Jones

Daily Crunch: Rained Out Lunch Edition

Video: Complete Hand Recognition With 5-Finger Mouse Amenbo (Video) Konapun: Making Tiny, Inedible Food For Fun And Profit (?) The UNISROBO Robot Looks A Lot Like NEC?s PaPeRo ThinkGeek Now Selling The FastMac U-Socket, The USB Wallplug Gunbrella Will Get You Shot For Sure Audyssey Lower East Side Speakers Attempt To Mimic The LES In [...]

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/06/24/daily-crunch-rained-out-lunch/

Arne Koller Fiona Brandenburg Franziska Spanier Erna Van den Hout

How the iPhone 4S Stacks Up to the Competition [IPhone]

The iPhone 4S is here with a dual-core A5 processor, more storage space and a better camera. It's a minor update, sure, but how does it compare to other top phones (not to mention its predecessor, the iPhone 4)? Quite well, actually. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/o8v7wX33AWU/how-the-iphone-4s-stacks-up-to-the-competition

Nicholas Graul Malin Hock Helmut Hölzer Maurice Giese

Designing a website? Use this stencil kit!

UI Stencils has an awesome tool for all website designers that like to layout their designs on paper.  Their Website Stencil Kit comes with a stainless steel stencil, Zebra mechanical pencil, plastic protector, and 2 UI Stencils stickers.  It works perfectly with their Browser Sketch Pad.  The Website Stencil Kit is priced at $26.95 and [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/10/04/designing-a-website-use-this-stencil-kit/

Amelie Schweizer Elfriede Oltmanns Janine Hillenbrand Vivien Strupp

iPhone 4S hands-on!

It's not an iPhone mini or anything, but it's the first iPhone with Siri. And that has to count for something, right? Right? While it's no iPhone 5 (not even close, really), the iPhone 4S is far from being "last year's iPhone," and the greatly enhanced camera, bolstered A5 dual-core processor and inbuilt voice command should provide plenty of reason for folks to upgrade if they're near the end of their contract. Furthermore, having the option on Sprint -- despite Apple almost announcing it as an afterthought -- is bound to make folks already entrenched on the Now Network think twice about what their next phone will be come upgrade time.

We were able to spend a few quality moments with the refreshed iPhone 4 here at Apple's campus, the Sprint flavor no less, and as you might expect... it's an iPhone 4. But S-ier. Much in the same way that the 3GS improved the overall experience of the 3G, the 4S does likewise compared to the existing 4. The dual-core A5 chip is a laudatory improvement, and whisking about pages, loading the camera application and launching -- well, just about everything -- just feels zippier. As it should. The other major change, the antennas, weren't readily different at a glance, but as Mr. Cook stated, you'd have to be iFixit to notice (and we're sure they will).

The most impressive part was the demo of Siri, the new assistant that lets you do just about anything you can do on your phone -- but with your voice. We tried to psych it out with a bunch of random requests, including the history of Chester, Vermont (a lovely town) and the best Ramen places in San Francisco. Siri never faltered, never missed a beat. It worked as well as Scott's demo up on the stage. There's nothing better to say than that. We even sent ourselves a few text messages, which Siri transcribed to a T. Of course, the lady on the other end still sounds eerily robotic, but we're hoping for smoother responses from the alien within in a future update.

The 8 megapixel sensor doesn't look any different from the outside, but we're trusting that Apple's re-engineered the interior. We snapped a few photos in the demo room to test and not a one came out as great as the retina-bursting contrasty pictures of balloons and flowers we saw in the demo, but then again, we didn't have any balloons or flowers to capture.

As for weight and feel? Just like the old king. We'll be updating this post with our impressions live from Cupertino, and are working to get you some better pictures to look at. Hang tight -- they're coming!

Update: Sorry, guys, but this time around Apple isn't allowing anyone to take photos or videos of the new iPhone in the hands-on area at its event. But don't worry, we'll give you all that and more when we review it in the coming weeks!

Relive the announcement in our liveblog right here!

Gallery: iPhone 4S

iPhone 4S hands-on! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/rdT1EK15zrI/

Angelika Frey Mika Bernhardt Ingeburg Liebermann Elsa Alexander Furtmann

Piezoelectric system turns your balmy breath into pungent power

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a way to produce electricity from just about the most renewable source known to man -- his own breath. It's all thanks to a plastic microbelt developed by engineers Xudong Wang, Chengliang Sun and Jian Shi. Made of a material known as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), this belt produces an electric charge whenever low-speed airflow passes over it and causes it to vibrate -- a result of that vaunted piezoelectric effect. Eventually, Wang and his team were able to tinker with their system to the point where it could produce enough current to charge small electronic devices. "The airflow of normal human respiration is typically below about two meters per second," Wang explained. "We calculated that if we could make this material thin enough, small vibrations could produce a microwatt of electrical energy that could be useful for sensors or other devices implanted in the face." The researchers say their technology could be used to power smaller biomedical devices like blood monitors and pacemaker batteries, which typically don't demand vast amounts of energy. No word yet on when this system could make its way to the mainstream, but we'll be waiting with bated breath.

Piezoelectric system turns your balmy breath into pungent power originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/uuSJdPxFgl4/

Rita Imhof Angelika Frey Mika Bernhardt Ingeburg Liebermann

Google Talk Guru answers questions via your IM app

google talk guru answersBots -- like the kind which automate IRC rooms and Google Wave -- are a good thing to know about. There are plenty of useful bots worth knowing about, too, including the Google Talk Guru.

Just add guru@googlelabs.com to your GTalk buddies, and you can start firing off questions. Lifehacker suggests that the same types of queries supported by Google SMS will work, though we didn't have any luck getting a response out of the Guru with phrases like "score detroit red wings" or "sushi R3N 1Y1."

Still, Guru does answer a good variety of questions and it works right within your favorite IM app. It's well worth adding to your friend list, especially for getting answers on the go on your mobile device of choice.

Google Talk Guru answers questions via your IM app originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/30/google-talk-guru-answers-questions-via-your-im-app/

Olga Kreibich Nathalie Donnerhacke Anna-Lena Baumgärtel Sabine Kinzler

O'Reilly helps Japan, offers entire e-book catalog for 50% off, today only

O'reilly make some of the best computer books in the world. They also sell them as DRM-free e-books in a bunch of formats, including PDFs and Mobi for Kindle.

They usually offer one "Deal of the Day", which is a 50% discount code for a book chosen for that one day. But just for for today, they've created a discount code -- DDJPN -- that gives you a 50% discount on their entire catalog, and they give a part of the proceeds to aid Japan relief efforts.

So far they've raised over $60,000, and the day is still young. So if you've been recently hankering after some nerdy book (or three), now would be a great time to grab one.

O'Reilly helps Japan, offers entire e-book catalog for 50% off, today only originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/22/oreilly-helps-japan-offers-entire-e-book-catalog-for-50-off/

Lutz Yalcin Birte Höß Kerstin Klos Dieter Schreiter

Daily Crunch: Landscape Portrait Edition

Meet The Robostir, A Robotic Soup Stirrer Must-Have For Minecraft Fans: Grass Block Mousepad Review: ThinkGeek iCADE iPad Arcade Game Bowers & Wilkins Announce The Tiny PM1 Audiophile-Class Compact Loudspeaker Do Not Swallow: Olympus Releases Tiny E-PL Promotional Cameras

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/06/15/daily-crunch-landscape-portrait/

Oliver Büdenbender Christa Eymann Ingrid Schur Emily Trautmann