Microsoft Solves Office Mobile Incompatibility Issue

The upgrade solves an issue that prevented users of Windows Mobile 6.0 devices, which began hitting the market in the middle of this year, from reading documents created by users of Office 2007, which was released in January.

The upgrade lets Windows Mobile phone users view and edit Word documents and Excel workbooks and view PowerPoint slideshows created in Office 2007, which is based on the Open XML format.

The upgrade also lets Windows Mobile users view and extract files from compressed .zip folders.

A free download is available for existing Windows Mobile users who have Office Mobile.

Google Uses Cell Towers to Locate Users

Google Maps with My Location, currently in beta, locates users who don't have GPS-enabled phones based on their location to nearby cell towers. The result isn't as accurate as GPS (Global Positioning System) but works for people who lack the positioning technology in their phones.

"It helps users speed up search by showing the general neighborhood they're in," said Steve Lee, product manager at Google for the service. Without the location service, users must type in their address or neighborhood in order to find nearby businesses using Google Maps.

Google Maps with My Location will use GPS data to locate the user if the phone has the capability. But even for users of GPS-enabled phones, the cell location service might be useful, Lee said. That's because the cell tower feature works better indoors than GPS, it doesn't drain the phone battery as quickly and can bring up a result quicker, he said.

The service could be useful to a person who might be traveling in an unfamiliar city and looking for restaurants or other businesses. A user pulls up Google Maps and hits the zero key on the phone. A blue dot will appear on the map in the user's location. If the service used GPS in the phone, the blue dot will be solid. If the service used cell towers to determine the location, the blue dot will have a halo around it, indicating that the location isn't precise. The user can then search for nearby businesses.

Google says the cell tower technique will locate the user within about 1000 meters। It doesn't use triangulation, which calculates a user location based on the user's distance to three nearby towers. Instead, it essentially shows the range of the tower that the user's phone is connecting to.

For now, Google Maps with My Location doesn't feature any advertising, but it could in the future. "This product makes a lot of sense for advertising," Lee said.

In order to use the service, phone owners must download a free application from Google. The application will work on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones as well as many phones that support Java. A few notable exceptions include the Samsung Blackjack, Moto Q and Palm Treo 700W, which don't support the APIs (application programming interfaces) Google requires to find cell towers,

Hacker Uses Sony PlayStation 3 to Crack Passwords

Nick Breese, a senior security consultant at Auckland-based Security-assessment.com, has come up with a way to drastically increase the processing capability of cracking passwords, using a PS3.

By implementing common ciphers and hash functions using vector computing, Breese has pushed the current upper limit of 10--15 million cycles per second -- in Intel-based architecture -- up to 1.4 billion cycles per second.

Breese, who has been working on the project, called "Crackstation", for the past six months, used the Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console for his break-through research. PS3's Cell Broadband Engine technology was created by IBM, Toshiba and Sony. The companies collaborated to create the CBE, commonly known as Cell, processor, which consists of one scalar processor and eight vector processors.

By design, PS3 is very suitable for cryptography, says Breese. Intel processors are designed to do all kinds of complex calculations, whereas the PS3 is good at doing simple things very quickly. "And believe it or not, cryptography really is simple," he says. "Lots of simple operations being done one at the time."

The strength of cryptography implementations is usually based on its cracking time -- how long it would take for someone to sit down and crack it, says Breese. His discovery has demonstrated that the capability of cracking encryption algorithms has multiplied by 100.

Breese's discovery "will unfortunately make cryptography cracking faster", he says. However, he hopes that his research will help drive the need for stronger cryptography to be used, and push for better implementations of cryptography.

Taiwan Promotes Powerful UMPC for WiMax

The aim of the device is to take advantage of all the Internet has to offer via a WiMax wireless broadband network currently in the works on the island and in several other countries around the world, including the U.S.

The MTube, as the device is called, carries a 1GHz microprocessor made by Via Technologies Inc., an x86-based processor able to use software meant for PCs. But the MTube weighs only 150 grams and has a 2.8-inch screen, so it's small enough to fit in person's pocket. It can store 8G bytes of songs, photos and other data and runs on a Linux OS.

MTube also works with Wi-Fi connections, but does not work on 3G (third generation) mobile telecommunications networks, according to Shen Shu-heng, an official at Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry (III), one of the groups responsible for the device.

Microsoft's Next IM Version

Microsoft's next version of its instant messenger application will have a new security feature to report users who send unsolicited messages, known as SPIM (spam over IM).

That's one of several new features in Windows Live Messenger 9.0, which was released to some private beta testers on Tuesday, according to Liveside.net, a site that focuses on Microsoft's Live brand of Web-based applications.

Nokia Siemens announced an energy-efficient mobile network equipment

Nokia Siemens announced an energy-efficient mobile network equipment package, the first announcement of more to come that show a commitment to improving the energy consumption of its network gear, the company said.

The package includes software that can reduce the energy used by base stations by setting some components to enter a power-saving mode at night, a time when network traffic dramatically decreases.

Another feature changes the minimum temperature requirement for a base station. While base stations are typically stored indoors where the air is cooled to around 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) Nokia Siemens found that increasing the temperature to closer to 40 degrees Celsius can reduce energy consumption at the site by as much as 30 percent.

Nokia Siemens' energy-efficient package also includes network-planning tools that can allow operators to use fewer base stations, which would also save on energy costs.

Sports Tracker goes Web 2.0!

Nokia has released another element of their Ovi services strategy, in Sports Tracker Beta. As the name suggests, it integrates logging (and photos) from your own own workouts using the Sports Tracker tool for S60 with data from other users around the world.

Mozilla Readies Firefox Patch

Mozilla plans to release a bugfix for its Firefox browser next week, repairing a long-standing security flaw in the software.

The 2.0.0.10 update is in testing right now and should be released to the public next week, following the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. "We are giving it a couple of days to make sure that there are no issues found and we'll release it after Thanksgiving," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

Mozilla is calling on the Firefox community to test the browser during a quality assurance "testday" this Friday.