Channel

A seeming leak of iOS/Android plans from a Microsoft office in the Czech Republic seems like confirmation. But it’s really just confusion.

A rush of new products are designed to add "military grade" encryption to email, text messages and corporate data. None are perfect; none are revolutionary. Collectively they represent acceptance, for the first time, that users should have tools to keep their data secure even from their own employers and tech suppliers.

The Zeus and SpyEye Trojans are pretty effective at stealing financial data from victims, but they're not good at actually raiding bank accounts without having to try to hide warning screens. New malware adds an Automatic Transfer System to let your Trojans move money from your bank accounts without bothering you for approvals or signatures or calls to 911.

Apple and Google are fighting for dominance in the mapping/personal navigation market with high-res photos taken from "spy planes" showing more detail of cities, houses, power and water infrastructure and, Senator worries, people sunbathing in their own back yards.

A British company is making glasses using a dual-lens design that lets wearers adjust the focus to fit their vision, as a way to address shortages in the third world. Contact lens makers and DARPA are working on smart lenses with HUDs built in. How can clear vision compete?

Unlike in most other malware markets, malware writers aiming at Android have always had a strong profit motive. Now they're going even more capitalist -- delivering the value they promised by wrapping good code in malware rather than just pretending

Empowering users, threatening IT, making technology purchases a no-brainer? Why couldn't it have gotten here sooner? (Or why did it have to come at all, if you're among the naysayers in IT.)

The Pirate Bay is teaming up with Swedish researchers who specialize in copyright-, file-sharing and enforcement on survey designed to provide more objective data than that supplied by RIAA and MPAA to help counter rabid anti-piracy plunder-and-pillage copyright enforcement rules.