John Lister

Microsoft has signed a deal with Toyota to put WiFi Internet access in electric and hybrid vehicles. But the services will be less about surfing the web and more about improving the driving experience. The two companies plan to develop an ... electronics system for use in both all-electric and hybrid vehicles. The first vehicles to carry the system should be hybrid vehicles released next year, with a goal to have the system in all Toyota electronic vehicles worldwide by 2015. To develop the system, the two companies have invested a combined one billion yen (approximately US $12 million) into ... (view more)

YouTube has unveiled a section of its site dedicated to live video broadcasts. It could be the first step towards a full set of TV-style channels with original programming. Although the Google-owned site has occasionally broadcast live video (such ... as interviews with politicians and concerts), this is the first time its has had a dedicated section on the site for live streaming. The plan is to allow YouTube users to stream their own content in the future. This will be rolled out gradually, with the intent being to allow the site programmers to work out the kinks, though it may also be so staff ... (view more)

Two of the men who claim they (and not Mark Zuckerberg) created Facebook have failed in a bid to increase a previous settlement. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are stuck with the original court ruling awarding the men $20 million plus 1.25 million ... shares in the social networking firm. Twins Sue Zuckerberg for Facebook Rights As memorably depicted in the Oscar-nominated movie The Social Network, the twins sued after alleging that fellow Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, who they had hired to create a similar networking website, had unfairly stolen the idea to set up his own enterprise. Although ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced that Tuesday's security update will include patches for a record-breaking 64 security problems. They include fixes for a number of particularly high profile problems announced in the past couple of months. The update will be ... made up of 17 bulletins. That ties for the record, though this will be a new highest figure for the number of individual fixes. One of the bugs that's being fixed involved a bug in the Windows Server Message Block ("SMB"), the system that controls networking and file-sharing. The bug was disclosed in February and could theoretically have ... (view more)

A leading security firm says targeting personal data is becoming less of a priority for online criminals. Instead, there's now a greater effort to unlawfully access corporate data, including trade secrets. Word of this new trend comes to us courtesy ... of a McAfee report based on a survey of around 1,000 IT managers in seven countries. Only 1/3 Of Companies Publicly Admit Data Breach Perhaps the most dramatic finding was that previous estimates of data breaches may have been much lower than was reality, as just 30 per cent of companies questioned said they always make breaches public. Around 60 ... (view more)

An unspecified number of email users may be indirect victims of a recent data breach at a major marketing company. The breach was at Epsilon, which operates online mailing lists for many major companies, including seven of the ten largest firms in ... America. It's rumored that "millions" of email addresses may have been compromised in the attack. (Source: forbes.com ) The data theft means users should be on high alert for so-called email " phishing " attempts. Massive Data Breach a Gold Harvest for Online Scammers Epsilon says the breach involved the data relating to 2 per cent of its ... (view more)

Google is reportedly testing a streaming music service. It doesn't necessarily mean a public launch is imminent, however; the company would still have to reach an agreement with record labels, which may be complicated by the nature of the service. ... Google Music wouldn't be a download service in the same way as the iTunes store. Indeed, it's possible it wouldn't necessarily involve buying music at all. Streaming Music Across Devices a Possibility The idea is to provide a legal way for users to stream music from one device to another. While precise details are under wraps, it appears there would ... (view more)

In taking advantage of a security loophole, hackers have hijacked as many as four million website pages over the past week. It's thought to be the biggest attack of its type, ever. The attacks have been dubbed LizaMoon, named after the first ... destination to which visitors of hijacked sites were redirected. The hijack campaign has proven to be incredibly successful: on the first day, security firm Websense estimated 28,000 web sites were affected, but within three days that figure had risen to 500,000. Two days later and the number of affected pages were estimated to be as high as three or four ... (view more)

A computer security company has apologized after its software mistakenly reported that new Samsung laptops carry malicious software. The confusion was due to security software labeling a legitimate folder directory as being infected. The claims were ... first made by tech writer Mohamed Hassan in an article for Network World. He wrote on Monday that after buying a new Samsung laptop, he ran a security software check and found two cases of a keylogger known as Starlogger. A keylogger is a malicious application that records all keystrokes made by the user and returns them to the application's ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced that it won't be sending out Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) by automated update until the end of June this year. Originally, the plan was to send the Internet Explorer 9 update as an automatic download, providing the Windows ... Automatic Updates feature was enabled. The timeline for the automated update was to be scheduled for March 21, but that has since changed because Microsoft says the delay is a necessity due to its widespread corporate use. (Source: zdnet.com ) Internet Explorer 9 Rollout Cause of Delay Two-Fold There are two reasons being given for the June timetable. ... (view more)